Online Lightning Talks
Mobile Devices for Literary Education in Teacher Training
Virtual Lightning Talk María del Rosario Neira-Piñeiro
The emergence of mobile devices has aroused researchers’ interest in the educational possibilities of these electronic tools. This work, using case study methodology, presents an innovative experience with m-learning focused on literary education in Higher Education. The experience - creating a video-review of a children’s book - was carried out with 68 students taking a Degree in Early Childhood Education. To evaluate its effectiveness, the final tasks were taken into account, as well as instructor and students’ perception. An instrument was designed to analyse the videos and two questionnaires to elicit students’ and instructor’s opinions. Findings reveal the flexibility of m-learning and its adequacy for literary education in teacher training. The students learned to select and evaluate children’s books and acquired some knowledge of children’s literature. The task involved searching for information, critical thinking, analysis and synthesis, decision-making, autonomy, development of communicative competence, creativity and team work skills, and helped to familiarise students with m-learning. Weaknesses detected suggest that more taught sessions are required, and more attention should be paid to oral skills, to the use of the task blog and to fostering social interaction. Finally, the study has educational implications which might be applied in similar contexts
Online Teamwork Assessment as a Tool for Addressing Attrition in Distance Education Students at a Regional Australian University
Virtual Lightning Talk Celeste Lawson
Attrition and retention is a significant issue for the higher education sector world-wide. This presentation outlines a unique tool used at a regional Australian university to engage students through online teamwork assessment as a means of addressing attrition. The pedagogy of the assessment design incorporates an authentic task, individualized grading and negotiated team selection, all situated in a online team environment. Students are provided online team management skills as part of the assessment so the management of the team becomes an output of the task itself. This presentation analyses the approach over a three year period in three advanced communications units (Advanced Public Relations, Organisational Communication, and Public Relations and the Media) at CQ University, Queensland, Australia. The approach has increased student engagement, retention and satisfaction, and encourages learning. The approach has received academic acknowledgement as best practice; been adopted by other disciplines; and is supported by industry.
Addressing Technology Concerns of Nontraditional Online Learners
Virtual Lightning Talk Cathy Tobin, Patricia Hoefler
Nontraditional adult learners are attending online college programs today, and the expectation is for increasing numbers in future years, primarily because more jobs are requiring post-secondary degrees. For example, worker projections for the upcoming decade expect at least 106 million Americans to have degrees for employment (Sherman & Klein-Collins, 2015). As this need for better-educated workers increases so does the need for more universities to open their doors to this population (Chen, 2017). The online environment seems the most viable solution for this group of students, as most find that traditional campuses do not allow for the flexibility needed for a student who must divide his or her time between employment, family, and coursework. Therefore, the need for schools that can focus their attention on the technology needs and concerns of this unique learner is significant. What can be done to help ease the student into the online learning experience and help prepare students for coursework that might involve a more sophisticated mastery of web tools? This presentation will offer ideas and advice for approaching these concerns, with examples of current technology tools and how to introduce nontraditional students to this less than traditional learning environment.
Ethnically Diverse College Students’ Perceptions upon Enrollment in a Hybrid Design Course: A Replication Study
Virtual Lightning Talk John R. Kleinpeter
This paper describes 39 undergraduate, full-time students’ responses to a quantitative survey immediately upon enrolling in a hybrid course in advanced design on the topic of visual communication for the built environment. Students were mostly female (56.4%) and between the ages of 21 and 24 (63.2%). They were Latino (35.1%), white (32.4%), and Asian (18.9%). Nearly 68% of participants in this study represented an ethnic minority group. Students described the most important aspects of the hybrid course as offering a flexible time schedule, a high level of access to course materials, and extra time to work at a job or internship. Students were most concerned about missing online deadlines and lack of contact with the professor. They were less concerned about lack of contact with classmates, getting a low grade, and confusion regarding assignments. Open-ended comments reflect that students appreciate the flexibility of the hybrid model to allow for outside responsibilities and the importance of regular communication with faculty regarding online assignments. These results are consistent with prior studies in terms of items identified as important to the hybrid learner; however, some of the items shifted in order of importance with the students’ experiences in a prior hybrid course. For example, in the original study students were very concerned about loss of contact with peers, and in this replication study, concern about contact with classmates was rated as less important. Educational implications are provided. Areas for future research are outlined.
Effect of Gross-Motor Movement on Decoding Ability: Using The Wilson Language Fundations Phonics Curriculum
Virtual Lightning Talk Rachel Terlop
I teach at a Title 1, inner-city elementary school, in Washington, D.C. Students in my class room were not accurately decoding three letter, consonant vowel consonant, words. The phonics curriculum that our school utilizes, Fundations, teaches fine-motor "tapping" skills. I formed the thesis - If students are able to practice their CVC decoding skills with gross-motor movement, as opposed to fine-motor "tapping," will decoding fluency skills, and accuracy of correct letter sounds, improve? I took Fundations large sound cards (letter, keyword, sound) and stapled them to the wall. Then, I tested students one at a time by providing them with a CVC word, and had students punch/tap/slap the letters of the word, while saying the sounds. I had them restate the word, and then spell it. This was done with seven words a day, every day, for a month. After 1 month of the intervention, students improved their whole words read by at least 5 words (half a years growth according to mCLASS assessment). The gross-motor intervention was successful in helping students correctly identify letters, and decode words.
Self-Regulated Learning Strategies to Master an Enriched Advanced Level Primary Five Mathematics Curriculum
Virtual Lightning Talk Prakash Singh
The primary purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether mathematically gifted pupils in Nigerian primary schools could master an enriched advanced level curriculum in mathematics using self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies. An enriched curriculum in mathematics was therefore developed for the experimental study that was conducted with sixty primary five pupils who were considered to be gifted in mathematics. Gifted pupils who participated in the Mathematics Enrichment Programme (MEP) were divided into two groups, the control group and the experimental group, with thirty pupils in each group. Pupils in the control group were exposed to direct teaching strategies, while the experimental group used SRL strategies in the MEP. This paper focuses on the attitudinal survey conducted after the completion of the MEP. Pupils’ responses in this survey affirmed the significant relationship between SRL and an enriched advanced level differentiated curriculum for primary school gifted pupils. They strongly believe that the MEP was a realistic alternative to the present common core regular curriculum for gifted pupils in the mainstream of Nigerian education. Furthermore, they affirmed that the MEP provided them divergent thinking opportunities for using a problem-solving, self-discovery approach to work autonomously in a flexible learning environment. They also pointed out that gifted pupils who have the ability to work at a faster pace must not be compelled to do more of the same boring work from the textbook in the traditional classroom. Evidently, this study evokes the significance of using SRL strategies in implementing a differentiated enriched curriculum for gifted pupils in Nigerian primary schools.
University Tutors in Mexico: A Study of Assessment Instruments
Virtual Lightning Talk Salvador Ponce Ceballos
In the year 2000 in Mexico, a very important project in higher education called academic tutorials was started, this project was proposed as a national strategy to strengthen the training of university students, as well as contributing to the reduction of negative indicators related to the training trajectory professional and school dropout. Currently a large number of institutions are designing evaluation strategies to identify the degree of development and impact of tutoring in institutions, this evaluation has focused on various dimensions such as tutor, program, services, instrumentation, among others. This work intends to make a specific contribution on the evaluation of the performance of the tutors, presents the partial results of an investigation that sought to characterize the questionnaires to evaluate the university tutors of Mexican institutions. The methodology of the investigation was proposed under a mixed approach of exploratory and descriptive scope, based on four stages: 1. Analysis of the state of the art; 2. Selection of 32 participating institutions; 3. Design of an instrument to analyze questionnaires and 4. Analysis of questionnaires. The results show limited evidence of documented experiences on the assessment of tutoring, as well as limitations of access to institutional instruments to assess tutoring, and little evidence of technical quality of the instruments collected was found. The conclusions point to the importance of evaluating the tutors with valid and reliable instruments, as well as making the evaluation processes public.
Social Emotional Learning via Facebook: An Informal Online Peer-Support Network
Virtual Lightning Talk Heidi Stevenson
This qualitative study focuses on a peer support system created and facilitated by a high school student using FacebookTM as a major component. A review of literature discusses Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Data include four one-on-one interviews with the creator of the support system discussing her experiences throughout its facilitation, anonymous notes from students and FacebookTM posts. The study focuses on the process of developing a peer support group using FacebookTM and notes in a locker as anonymous mediums for peer support and SEL development. This study identifies the benefits and details of the creation of this peer-facilitated and governed support system for students.
On Tutoring Features of the Internet Dictionary LexSite
Virtual Lightning Talk Elena Berg, Mark Kit, Elena Berg
In addition to information retrieval services, Internet dictionaries can interactively communicate with the user. The authors (who are also developers of the LexSite dictionary) exploited this opportunity and implemented tutoring features in the dictionary design. These features are based on lexical searches carried out by the user. The searches for translations are automatically stored in the search log. The user can select searched words/expressions and add them to his personal dictionary thus creating a personal learning tool. Personal dictionary can be edited as needed in the course of language learning. Having built the personal dictionary the user can make lexcards, which are electronic equivalents to widely used flashcards. The lexcard’s headword is the word/expression for which the user sought translations. When making lexcards, the user selects either all translations of the lexcard headword or only translations relevant to what he is learning (e.g. translations for the word bus can be limited to transportation field only or include technical and scientific meanings). Stacks of lexcards offer a variety of learning techniques since the cards can be edited or removed from the stack, shuffled, shown with or without translations, etc. Users can run lexcard sessions where the cards will be shown automatically in a random order. This educational technology has been originally developed and implemented for the English-Russian language pair, however it is applicable for any other language pair.
Online Shift in Learning Culture
Virtual Lightning Talk Alexander Vengerov
Mass-education requires increased learning efforts since human teaching resources are too limited and expensive. Actually, it requires a new Learning Culture stepping away from the idea that students are customers and teachers provide some teaching services. The student-consumer-and-rater-of-the- “services” approach is rapidly becoming an obstacle to the adaptive and large-scale transformation of modern higher education system as well as its further life-long continuation. A new Culture of Learning requires different approaches, methods, technologies, and attitudes among students and teachers and should be increasingly based on online sources and communications. Such Culture has to be supported by the government, educational organizations, educational “workers,” and students.
