Using videoconferencing in the classroom

An interesting article about incorporating guest speakers into classrooms using Skype or a virtual classroom tool (Adobe Connect) and a new Skype service for educators to trade tips and tricks, called "Skype in the classroom."
http://chronicle.com/article/New-Question-for-Professors-/126073/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

(Thanks to Alistair for this link)

Eportfolios in Engineering – Advantages and Disadvantages

Recently, John Fielke talked to us about his experiences with using e-portfolios in his course ‘Computer Techniques’. This posting will highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages John found when using PebblePad with his first year engineering students.

Using PebblePad as a webfolio tool with engineering students - Advantages and Disadvantages.

Advantages:
I chose to use PebblePad as a tool for the students to use to submit their computer models and drawings. The year before, we used AssignIT where the students put all their work into one zip file and uploaded it into AssignIT, producing a series of files for assessment. By using PebblePad, I was looking at linking those files together with a bit of reflection from the students about how they completed the assigned tasks. AssignIT requires all of the student’s work to be bundled into one zip file and submitted as one file. I have used this twice now with large files and on both occasions, AssignIT has crashed as the students were submitting these very large files at the same time. PebblePad not only allows multiple smaller files to be uploaded, the students can upload these files gradually each week.

I used the profiler tool to get the students to look at their work and reflect on their learning outcomes by answering a series of questions. The profiler tool is a dynamic, real time resource so we can look at the students’ work and provide immediate feedback, and allow the students to act on this feedback prior to their work being assessed. In addition, it can actually make marking very easy because work can be assessed as it is submitted rather than in a block at the end of the course.

Students saw growth in their knowledge

Another advantage is file preservation. If the students upload their work regularly, they reduce the risks of losing files or having their files corrupted.

Students can create a personal page with a photo of themselves, a few of their aspirations and a some personal background allowing academics to get know the students on a personal level and not just their name and ID number. If webfolios are used across multiple courses, the students can just call up this page into each course webfolio.

Disadvantages:

To utilise some of PebblePad’s features the students need to upload their work regularly, but many were reluctant to do this. Few students took the opportunity to respond to the feedback we provided and make changes to their work before it was formally assessed.

Some students did not understand the importance of sending their work to the gateway. We also had the issue of students thinking they could use the one webfolio for two courses resulting in some students sending work to the wrong gateway.

PebblePad is an interesting repository for work but the way it is structured, asset tracking and asset finding is not very user friendly. Asset management issues included students deleting files and breaking links between files, or updating a file and not updating the hyperlinks resulting in missing files. All we see is what students link to their webfolio, not the work that they have uploaded into PebblePad. Additionally, some students compressed their work up in file formats not able to be opened by the university computers. The students needed to resubmit in the correct zip file format. We held a session on webfolio development but less than half the students attended that session. The students who attended the session found it much easier than those who did not.

In hindsight, I realise that I should have asked the students to submit a single zip file each week and post a reflective comment about that week’s work rather than submitting up to 10 files for a week. Accessing multiple files is very time consuming in PebblePad.

A passionate group of students absolutely disliked PebblePad as it was either too difficult to use or too simplistic in its capabilities. Others wanted to personalise it to the limits that other web authoring software allows. PebblePad did not easily allow this. The other drawback of PebblePad is that we were looking at engineering drawings and whilst it allows viewing of jpegs their resolution was not high enough for us to read these drawings very clearly and individual files had to be opened in a series of cascading menus to view their work and this became quite time consuming.

Future Directions

Some of the improvements that could be made to Pebble Pad are to give it a corporate UniSA rather than a primary school feel. I would like to see it re-badged, corporatised and the PebblePad name removed. The interfaces, the fonts and low-tech look of it do not appeal to engineering students.

I still think that e-portfolios are a good learning tool for the students and they integrate and roll everything in together. The students have a record of their learning, which they can reflect on if they want to. My advice to other academics would be to get on board and use some of these developments that the university is resourcing and not try to do these things on your own, but have the corporate body backing you. After my experience with PebblePad this year, I would love to use some form of effective, interactive, feedback providing, reflective online submission method in the future.

Eportfolios in Engineering

Today, John Fielke will be talking to us about his experiences with using e-portfolios in his course ‘Computer Techniques’, which is one of eight core courses common to all of The University of South Australia’s Bachelor of Engineering degrees.

Dr. Fielke identified three interesting areas that arose from his experience with using e-portfolios, or webfolios, for the first time in 2009 in his Computer Techniques course.

The use of online formative feedback for students using webfolios

PebblePad is a ‘real time’ webfolio tool, which allows academics to review students’ work and provide formative feedback. During my Computer Techniques course I gave my students feedback and then allowed them to update their work. However, very few students took up this opportunity. I suppose the students could be helped to see the benefits of the provision of this type of formative feedback if marks were allocated for the use of the feedback, but it is still up to the students to decide if they want to use to take advantage of this.

Using the Profiler tool in PebblePad to assist students to reflect on his/her development of the UniSA Graduate Qualities

Another part of PebblePad that I used was the profiler tool where I got the students to reflect on their learning outcomes. The profiler offered the opportunity for me to ask students questions and I tailored these to allow the students to reflect on the university’s graduate qualities. For example, I asked questions about their background knowledge of computer-aided engineering drawing before the course, and then I asked them to rate their knowledge after the course.

The profiler tool not only provides information about the students, but also allows the students to reflect on their own development. For example, I asked the students to rate the effectiveness of their learning in specific learning environments such as the computer practicals or the lectures. This allowed the students to acknowledge that they did learn differently in different modes. The best part of the profile is that you see this in real time as the students are working on it and you can use the reporting function to find out where everyone is up to at a specific time.

Students reflected on their modes of learning

The students might be inclined to put off their thinking about the graduate qualities until they near graduation, however, presenting a series of questions that they have to answer about their current personal development makes them reflect on this and helps them to think very clearly about the skills they are developing even at this early stage of their studies.

Self-assessment using the Profile tool in PebblePad
I also used the profiler tool to ask the students to reflect on their effort and learning in the course, and predict their grades. I was surprised at the number of students that self-rated themselves quite low and identified that they did not put a huge effort into the course. They included many comments to justify why this was the case. Some students did think they deserved a HD, whereas other students thought they deserved a C and suggested that they had understood most of the course but had a few difficulties here and there. Some self- rated themselves as a P2 and commented that they did not try too hard, but thought they had done enough to scrape over the line. A couple of students rated themselves as an F and explained that they had not had the time to put the effort into the course. I was very surprised at how accurately they predicted their grades, probably within one grade. It really showed to me that the students do acknowledge the amount of work they put in and they do aim for a grade. They are not all after a HD for an assignment, they might like it but in reality, they are just going to do enough work to get the grade they are aiming for.

It was very easy using the profiler tool. The reporting function allows quick and easy access to information provided by the students. However, there is so much functionality in PebblePad that we still have not used.

Wikis in Engineering

Today we have Liz Smith, from the School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, to share some of her experiences using wikis to support student project work in different courses.

We have used wikis in Engineering for the past couple of years. A couple of examples include....

In 2008 we used PBwiki with the common first year course Sustainable Engineering Practice. The students used the wiki as a place to create an online portfolio of assigned tasks. The tasks were focussed on developing the student's understanding of the engineering profession. This included collecting three on-line news articles on engineering and sustainability and commenting on each article and how it related to sustainable practice; collecting two on-line job advertisements for graduate engineering positions and summarising the attributes for which the employer was looking; developing a career plan map and discussing how the student planned to manage their ongoing professional development; reporting on the industry speakers who presented throughout the course and preparing a resume. Each of these tasks was approximately 200 word equivalents.

For more information on how we used PBwiki and what the students thought about it, check out our paper:
http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/atna/article/viewFile/378/288

And here are our presentation slides from the ATN Assessment conference 2008:

Liz Smith et al 2008

View more OpenOffice presentations from Diana Quinn.

In 2009 we used PBwiki for the second year course Mechanical Engineering Practice. The major assessment task for this course is the Weir Minerals Design and Build Challenge. This challenge is for nominally second year mechanical engineering students working in groups. To assist in working collaboratively, each group were required to use a wiki to simulate an engineering design file. In their wiki, students collated information related to the project, such as drawings, calculations, and meeting minutes.

It was hoped the wiki would help students work collaboratively. Here is a link to our example wiki http://meng2009-coordinator-2009.pbworks.com/

The benefits of using the wiki, as identified by the students include: the flexibility of uploading information at home, sharing and storing files in one location, displaying images and videos, and the ability to provide feedback on each other’s contribution. However, even with the wiki, the preferred channels of communication between group members were via phone and email, where email was the preferred method to share documents between group members. The benefits of using the wikis, as identified by the teaching staff include: indication of group progress, avenue for providing formative feedback and identification of group members who are not contributing.

Course Coordinators regularly checked each group’s wiki and provided formative feedback on its content. Students then used this formative feedback to further improve their wiki site. Although the formative feedback was appreciated, students’ comments suggest they would prefer regular summative assessment tasks based on their wiki to keep them on track.

Overall, I really like using wikis. I particularly like using PBwiki as you can create private wikis for free. Other wiki tools such as Wikispaces require you to pay a monthly amount to keep the wiki private.

After using PBwiki in 2008, I declared that I would never use PBwiki as my wiki tool again. But, since then they have updated the software so that it has more functionality and easier to use (it also has a new name PBworks). So when deciding on which wiki to use in 2009 I chose PBwiki – better the devil you know...

This is not an advertorial for PBwiki, it is just my wiki of choice. There are plenty of wiki tools availble, a good comparison of the different wikis available can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wikis

How wikis work?

Wikis can be a fast and easy way for students to work collaboratively and be more active in their learning.

Wikis have been available for a few years now as free software, some of which that have been supported by LTU's Online Education Support Team. However, wikis are also embedded in the e-Portfolio learning tool, PebblePad (webfolios), and they will become 'mainstream' from 2010 within our new UniSA Learning Management System, (LMS), Moodle.

A UniSA research project is looking at how UniSA staff have been using wikis in their classes and would like to know why academics have selected wikis, how they prepare, support and assess students, and what the students experienced within the wiki learning environment. They aim to create a framework that can be applied generally to help staff use wikis to support student collaboration.

The research is being conducted by Tangi Steen, Dale Wache, Jo Hanisch and Kirstin Wache primarily using short (10 min) anonymous online surveys. If you are planning to use wikis in your teaching in 2009 then please consider contacting Kirstin Wache to register your interest.

You may also be interested in this paper and presentation from last year's assessment conference from Snelling and Karanicolas - Why Wikis Work.

Cathy Snelling And Sophie Karanicolas 2008

View more OpenOffice presentations from Diana Quinn.

Mixing it up for more engagement

Do you accept the argument that people have different learning style preferences and therefore we need to mix it up a bit as teachers so we are not favouring one learning style preference over another?

This notion is build into our assessment policy - section1 - Assessment Principles and Requirements. 

1.1.4 Assessment tasks should be diverse.

Assessment practices should be inclusive and support equity principles, catering for both individual and group diversity. It should be recognised that all assessment models have limitations and a capacity to disadvantage certain students. Every effort should be made to minimise such disadvantage by, for example, using a variety of

 assessment techniques. Inclusive language must be used to avoid gender, racial, cultural or other language bias.

Honey and Mumford (1992) developed a learning styles questionnaire that grouped learning style preferences as

• activists - prefer to do something practical
• reflectors - prefer to read and take time to consider options
• theorist - prefer to read and analyse
• pragmatists - prefer to do something related to the real world. 

Later, Palmer and May (2004) tried to map different online environments on to these learning styles. 

• activists - prefer simulations, discussion groups and noticeboards
• reflectors - prefer online content, multimedia, tasks and research
• theorists - prefer structured content and structured systems
• pragmatists - off-line tasks, focused discussions and just-in-time learning.

Palmer and May then wanted to apply this information to balance assessment - with learners being reassessed in different learning styles. 

The questions this raises for me are many - for example - do I teach to my preferred learning style (pragmatic) as this most the most sense to me? Will the teachers in a program have enough intrinsic variety in their preferred learning styles/teaching that students will get a fair go across a program? Are learning styles a disposition that is shared by many in a professional/discipline group?  With the focus on experiential learning at UniSA - will this curriculum re-design better suit the pragmatist? Is Peter Lee's preferred learning style pragmatic? Does it matter?

Interested in your thoughts...

References

Honey and Mumford (1992)  The Manual of Learning Styles (3rd ed) Maidenhead: Peter Honey. 

Palmer and May (2004) Using learning style theory to improve online learning through computer assisted diagnosis' 8th CAA Conference, http://www.caaconference.com/pastConferences/2004/proceedings/Palmer_May.pdf