Facilitating discussion with big data for Humanities in Indonesia
Social tasks can be added into simple classroom activities to enhance student-teacher communication
Abstract
Teachers are constantly trying to find new ways to improve how they interact with students. As education becomes more and more digital, teachers and students can become more and more distant if not careful.
Firstly, traditional didactic ways of teaching needs to change to prepare students for the digital future. A recent survey showed that 38% of millennials feel education hasn’t prepared them for the digital world. But firstly, classrooms need to be converted into a digital nature that is suitable for real world experiences.
One emerging pedagogy is collaborative learning. There is a potential to enhance collaborative activity between students and the teachers within a classroom context. This article will discuss the use of Soqqle, a social e-learning app that was used in a public policy class in a mainstream state university in Indonesia. The goal is to facilitate discussion through collaborative learning, and to document learning outcomes. With this exercise, we document the creation of new student-generated content, as well as supporting students who would otherwise not have asked questions.
Background
It’s not easy for teachers to stand out to incorporate collaborative and problem based learning in the classroom. These sit within a larger domain of social emotional learning. Therefore there is a steep adoption curve for teachers to introduce social emotional learning in the classroom is high.
The need to inspire and motivate incentives for students to participate is a challenge. Bundick, Quaglia, Haywood (2013) documents that 60% of high school students are cronically disengaged. This number seems to be relatively unchanged today. This is especially so if we consider that students are evaluated and motivated based on summative assessments.
To meet these demands, the class we piloted in has a major rubric in participation. The teacher looked to incorporate new methods and mediums of presentation through the use of posters on x-frames. Students will present and then vote in the end for their preferred teams. The teacher was going to use survey forms to achieve this. However, we felt that that the student feedback and justifications would be lost. If the information could be captured on an app like Soqqle, it could give him more insights about student learning.
Gamification has been an increasing way for teachers to create some fun in the classroom. However one-off activities like games could over sometime create fatique for the students. In some cases, the students go “AGAIN?” when they hear of them. To develop this further, Pramukantoro, Yahya (2016) proposed a E-learning Framework based on gamification that could be more scalable.
Social gamification has been seen to work in modern applications. For example in apps like TikTok, despite the steep learning curve, students learn how to create content and share videos. They then gain followers that provides a deeper motivation to continue doing so. If a social activity can be incorporated into the classroom, it could create a more sustainable incentive for students to create content.
The Approach
The setup of the classroom are as such
- 2 groups of students will share their presentation over 10 minutes. Presentation are also shared in the form of posters on x-banners.
- The Soqqle app will be used in two activities to capture comments and visuals. After each presentation students are asked to share a “5 words on what is your immediate impression”. These are then gone through on a dashboard by the teacher to facilitate discussion.
- Students will share their “Users Choice” through a vote using Hashtags in the end.
Easing with Scaffolding
The end task will require students to do a 1 paragraph posting of their vote and their comments on why.
But it’s a shift in student mindset to participate in social posting about learning. To manage this, we will phase the process in two. The first is a low-touch “Share the first thing that come into your mind about the presentation, in 5 words”. It will be done twice. Then finally we ask students to capture their final votes.
Once students gradually get into the mood of social postings, there will be a higher probability of a good result for the end task.
Student Buy-in and Analytics
To reach a higher buy in from students, the teacher will give a heads up to the experiment the week before. We will also prepare certificates of critical thinking / social emotional learning as a measure of the learning outcome.
For this pilot, our goal is to organize and sequence the offline to online transition of data first. All data will be collected onto the dashboard for fine-tuning of the display, and output required for easy assessment.
Expected Outcomes
Content
Student’s critical thinking will be documented and shared. There will be an opportunity for increased in-class peer to peer learning. Supported by the Soqqle app, there will be a wider and deeper breath of content available that can be used to evidence improved learning outcome. The rubrics will remain the same with participation a large component.
Content shared is then saved as a dashboard for the teacher to review and maintain as a growing document of student generated content.
Engagement
Due to increased volume of student-generated content, there will be evidence of higher engagement. More questions can be accommodated and asked by students. The motivations for students to inquire can be increased because its seen as a social posting as opposed to “just another student activity”.
Teacher analytics
A dashboard will provide a view of captured content. Teacher will be able to streamline his review of content generated from the classroom. For the first time, the teacher is able to document and justify his activities in the classroom.
However it is expected this to be an iterative adjustment. The quality of content is as good as the preparation, as well as execution of the activity. For example, for this class we had to create scenarios to “scaffold” students into creating their own content. The first activity was 5 words, then we incorporate hashtags, then finally a one paragraph content.
Preparation
University
- Prepare and give students a heads up on the activity
- Each group to submit their hashtags that will be used.
- Confirm the presentation groups
- Send the pictures of the banners that can be uploaded onto the app
Soqqle
- Prepare Certificates that can be distributed to students
- Add content on the app, and prepare a teacher dashboard
- Product Finetuning: Incorporate hashtags and check teacher dashboard
- Prepare a 5–10 min initial presentation on how to use the app
Measure of Success
Increased student-generated learning content that otherwise would not have been created if exercise was done in traditional learning environment
Timeline
Outcome
The most impressive outcome of the exercise was the ability to capture a larger number of questions within a short amount of time. Within a 3 minute span, an average 10 comments were added. In total we received about 40 posts (1 for each student). A remainder 10 minute was used by the teacher to go through the comments and invite elaboration.
Students gave feedback this is an interesting and useful way for students to share comments and feedback. It creates a new type of engagement that they had never experienced before. There were also some suggestions for user experience improvements that needs to be incorporated.
The interesting part was that the teacher was able to use hints from the teacher’s dashboard (which consolidates all posting) to ask students to elaborate. The students may not have made those comments in person. The outcome would then be, discussions are not based on who is the loudest in the classroom, but who is sharing the most interesting and meaningful content.
Notes
The first posting was not successful as students gave non-meaningful posts. The teacher had to ask students to be more “creative” in their posts. After sometime, it got better. The app also lagged for about 5 minutes at a few points in time.
Conclusion
The potential benefits of incorporating social activity in the classroom is clear. Creating an environment for student-generated content to be generated and shared could be a huge win. Authentic information could be derived and consolidated by teachers. If done over a period of time (for example a semester) it could yield much deeper insights into a students learning progress to help teachers to personalise learning outcomes better.
As we continue to do more pilot proof of concepts in schools, the benefits are showing. The biggest goal is to help teachers to manage large classes better (as proven in this proof of concept in a vocational school). Large teacher-student ratios could be enhanced by technology. With new tools like Soqqle, making sense of information generated by students could be now made better.
References
Bundick, Quaglia, Haywood: Where Student, Teacher, and Content Meet: Student Engagement in the Secondary School Classroom (2013)
Pramukantoro, Yahya: Belajardisini : The E-learning Framework Based on Gamification Concept (2016)
