Milestone 2
Overview Video
A. Task / Problem Definition
In a hybrid synchronous environment, it is oftentimes difficult for the instructor to gauge how well students are interpreting material if they are attending remotely. This issue can cause the teacher to falsely believe that information presented to students has been fully comprehended and can cause the teacher to move on to new topics when some students aren’t fully ready. Because of the hybrid model of learning, it is tough to keep track of the progress of students who are learning from home as well as those who are attending in-person classes.
Seven Stages of Action:
- Goal: Professors want to make sure that students are learning and mastering the material.
- Execution: Professor plans lessons to break down material to teach to students. Students attend lectures to learn material that the professor is teaching.
- Evaluation: Professors in class can see students’ reactions to material. The students’ reactions let the professor know if they are understanding the material.
Users & How They Are Affected
- Students are affected by this problem and so are their teachers.
- The teachers are supposed to ensure that the students understand the required material before moving on to a new topic. The students are supposed to pay attention in class in order to learn the material to do well in the class.
- A solution to this problem would make the teacher’s job easier because they wouldn’t be stretched so thin trying to take care of both in-person and remote students, and the students would benefit by having a more direct system of learning even while remote.
B. Analysis of Existing Solutions
Describe Existing Solutions
- Some professors do weekly quizzes to test the students’ knowledge on material taught that week.
- Pro:
- Students need to keep up with material taught to do well on quizzes.
- With online quizzes like with eLC, teachers can view which questions were missed most often and correct lectures and teaching to account for this.
- Con:
- Quizzes sometimes are not monitored so students may not be keeping academic honesty when taking their quiz.
- If just a few students do poorly on a quiz, the teacher may not think much of it and move on to new material anyway.
- Pro:
- Office Hours are held every week.
- Pro:
- Students can get help from their professors if they did not understand the material that was taught.
- Con:
- Zoom office hours are less efficient than the previous way of face to face meeting.
- Not all students attend office hours.
- Students in elementary - highschool may not have access to one on one time with the teacher.
- Pro:
- Some professors use breakout rooms in zoom, where students can collaborate and talk more openly about the class material.
- Pro:
- Students get time to talk about the class material with others and ask questions.
- Sometimes the professor will visit breakout rooms in case there is confusion or questions.
- Con:
- There is very little time with the professor, and some students do not participate as openly as others, leading them to not fully engage with the course material.
- Pro:
- Sites like Piazza allow students to ask questions openly to everyone else in the class, including professors.
- Pro:
- Students can anonymously ask questions they may otherwise be afraid or embarrassed to ask during class time.
- Students can gauge others’ understandings and perspectives of the course content.
- Con:
- Message boards can easily become cluttered and difficult to navigate.
- This requires extra work by both students and professors and also uses an external resource outside of class time.
- Pro:
Potential Guidelines & Solutions
Strive for consistency: These existing solutions do not strive for consistency, as they use many different platforms and methods of communication to try and achieve the same goal. This principle would be very useful to our users as it would allow the students and teachers to use just one platform for class related communication and progress monitoring.
Seek universal usability: Again, this principle would be very useful to our users, as it would allow students and teachers to use our solution efficiently and easily, without having to learn a new platform.
Offer informative feedback: Perhaps the most important principle for our solution is offering feedback to both the students and the teachers. Informative feedback can let students know if they are not doing well in class, and it can let teachers know if they need to emphasize a particular topic more when teaching.
The guideline to Create Accessible Documents is at times not met with our solutions, especially if the user doesn’t have access to the internet, though if the user does have access, then all solutions given should be accessible to most all users.
The principle to Prevent Errors is difficult to achieve when setting up zoom office hours or any form of communication that requires an alternative medium that is time-sensitive and tech-reliant, such as piazza and break-out rooms. The solution should revolve around in-class time so that it is accessible to everyone, and so that students and teachers do not have to schedule separate times and potentially use other forms of communication that are not used in the class setting.
C. Proposed Solution
Propose a Solution
Our Proposed Solution is a question/quiz overlay or plugin that could be built into Zoom or another program that teachers are already using to teach remotely. This would provide more interactivity during lectures and class time. This could be done directly through a program like Zoom using some kind of overlay or plugin, similar to the poll feature but more tailored to quizzes and multi-question interactive activities. Having questions for students to answer throughout the class can keep them more engaged, and the students could be anonymous or chosen directly by the teacher. According to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, “Active learning… makes it impossible to sleep through a class,” and students are much more engaged with the material being taught.
The signifiers for this solution would be a screen that pops up on screen during class with one or more questions. The teacher can select what questions pop up based on the current material they are teaching, and who can see the question to give a single student the opportunity to answer. The results of the questions would let the teacher know how many students are getting the answers wrong, and help guide them on what they need to be emphasizing more in class.
This solution also does not require students or teachers to find time outside of class to determine if they are understanding the lecture material, and also does not require third party forms of communication, as it could be built directly into Zoom.
Compared to other solutions, this is much more convenient than outside resources, and also offers instant feedback to the teacher. While it offers instant feedback, it is not as personalized as one on one time with a teacher such as with office hours.
How to Measure Success
Success could be measured by how many students participate on the quiz, as well as how many students answer correctly. If students participate and many of them answer incorrectly, then the professor would be able to immediately recognize areas that the students struggle in and address this in future lessons or even right then and there. Afterwards, the professor can go over the questions with the class, and even ask further questions if necessary. On the other hand, if participation in the interactive questions is low, then the teacher can incentivize participation in some way, such as by making participation a grade component. Low participation can also be an indicator to the teacher that something may need to change in the ways that they teach.
Resources
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/14/11/benefit-interactive-learning
Anderson, J. (2014, November 17). The benefit of interactive learning. Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/14/11/benefit-interactive-learning