SLE: Student Learning Environment

Nathan Campbell Lisa Doan

Kirill KireyevMalte Winkler

DLC 2006 Project

Clicker Question!

• What is more important and why?

A. Design

B. Learning

C. Collaboration

D. None of the above

E. All are equally important

Challenges of Large Lectures

• Difficult to gauge students’ understanding and engagement

• Students hesitate to ask questions– Stall large class– Personal embarrassment

• No peer discourse– Lacking useful elaboration– Less engaging– Stern, anti-social atmosphere

Opportunities of Large Lectures

• Large lectures are prevalent and inevitable

• Can we positively exploit:– Large body of knowledge?– Diversity of opinions?– Teaching assistants?– Existing technologies (laptops)?

Clicker Question!

• Are clickers effective?

A. Yes – they help me gauge how much I’m learning

B. No – I get attendance points and don’t care about getting the right answer

C. Other answer

Clickers

• ProsPros:• Inexpensive• Easy to use• Instructor learns

about students’ performance

• Students test their skills

• Peer discussion

Clickers (cont)

Cons:• One-way communication

– Students can’t ask questions– Students can’t give feedback

• No justifications for answers• No means to store questions/answers in context

FEEL (DLC 2004)

FEEL (Cont)

Pros• Students can ask

questions– Anonymously– No interruption

• Students may “support” other’s Q’s

• Students give feedback– e.g. “Lecture Too Fast”

Cons• Distracting

– Overloads instructor

• Limited student discussion

• Not integrated with notes, context

Clicker Question!

Do you remember what some of our design issues were (from our IR Presentation)?

A. Yes, they are… (answer in reasoning box)

B. No. I am lame and forgot all of them.

C. What presentation?

Technology Design Issues

• Balance online vs. face-to-face– How to integrate?

• Structured (WebCT) vs Unstructured (wiki)– Freedom may be messy, overwhelming

• General vs. specific• Mediation?• Support flexibility, evolution

– Users will use in different ways

• Sensitive to context, time

Making Collaboration Successful

• Shared motivations, common goals• Adequate incentives• Positive interdependence• Symmetry of ignorance

– Diversity of opinions, backgrounds

• Flexibility, opportunities for creativity• Establishing team goals, deadlines, roles• Regular synchronous meetings• Social relationship building

Our Design Goals

• Build on previous projects– Student’s inquiries, feedback

• Leverage the TAs time, knowledge

• Students can ask questions– Others give “support” vote

• Raises question’s importance

– Instructor sees “confusion level”

• Incorporate note-taking

Our Design Goals

• Justifications for answers– Carl Wieman does this “by hand”– Students become exposed to opinions, justifications

• Stimulates thinking• Promotes engagement• “Beaten Path”

– Provide submitted justifications during the questions• Catalyses discussion

– Incorporate into grading • extra credit• attendance

Student Learning Environment (SLE)

• Incorporates feedback, clickers

• Uses the ubiquity of computers

• Professor is minimally informed

• Students choose participation level– Can integrate with notes and context

SLE

Notes

Clicker Questions

Random Justifications

Students’

Questions

Current

Questions

What is “L3D”?

Student’s View

Students’ Questions

Answer/ Discuss

Ask Questions

Justifications

Notes

TA’s View

SLE: Instructor’s View

• Try to make Instructor’s UI minimally distracting

“Confusion” Level

Ask Clicker Quesionts

Architecture

• Web Application– Portable– No installation required

• PHP pages

• Dynamic content via Ajax

• XML data persistence

• Authentication

Future Work: End-User Design

• Lecturer– Create animations, interactive demos– Images/charts/pages– Applets, AgentSheets

• TA’s– Gather statistics

• Students– Integrate into email, calendar, chat– Personal profiles/pages

Other Future Work

• More robust Interface

• Integrate with presentation, multimedia

• Better note-taking system

• Timeline reflecting notes, questions

• Chat?

Conclusions• Large lectures are a challenging

environment...– Can’t get rid of them

• Yet many opportunities exist

• Technology may make large lectures more– informative– engaging– collaborative

Clicker Question!What did you think of the SLE?

A. Awesome! B. Brilliant!

C. Flippin’ sweet!

D. How can I be as cool as you guys?

E. OK, but you should add some features…