e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

The Feedback from Learning by Teaching

The evidence of learning in terms of measurement performs an important role in students' progress. From traditional exams to more technology-sophisticated assignments, feedback draws a crucial result point.
In terms of the recursive and reflexive evaluation process, the traditional and linear test simply might not fit into, at least not by themselves. Knowledge construction, inclusive in digital ecologies context is more dialogical than transmissive, recursive rather than linear. (Cope and Kalantzis, 2017).


To make feedback effective, a recursive approach draws more complete outcomes. The concept itself is about keeping the feedback-and-improvement loop, and this can be achieved by either machine feedback or machine mediated human feedback which might involve parent feedback as stated by the director of School Education from Grattan Institute (Australia). [https://youtu.be/OPG2JkMz8qY].
Besides, the different sources of feedback include learning by teaching (LBT). As reported by Okita and Schwartz (2013), in LBT students learn especially when they assume the role of the teachers, and in this context, I experienced a meaningful situation.
Undoubtedly one of the main aspects of technology growth is mobile apps development. As working in computer science and technology education, I had the opportunity to teach a group of students the basics of mobile app development using a simple web-based platform.


The starting point was a deep discussion of the main components that can be used in an app such as buttons, labels, images, etc. and some of the fields and scenarios those apps could be used for. As an example, I demonstrated the apps development application on Math to solve basic functions and in Physics to create a temperature converter. Just by using these two examples, we could study a bunch of different components that can be used for mobile apps development.
The second point was the proposed project itself. The classroom was split into multiple groups and they were all requested to teach the same concepts they had learned to students from other public schools from the city.
During my supervision, I could notice how engaged they were and worried about how to explain better and better to "their students". These concerns used to make them come to obtain a better understanding of some specific topics to teach them later. They decided to use a quiz (https://quizizz.com/) as well after explaining some topics, what took them to track their class progress. A questionnaire was also elaborated so the guests could evaluate them. I realized that doing so, I could see they were also learning by the 'givings' and not only the 'gettings'.


At the end of the process, we got a discussion also about how challenging teaching experience can be. They related good comments about the whole process, but some said it took a lot of their time and preferred to take traditional exams instead. I also remember a particular group of students performing an amazing job, demonstrating teaching skills, a lot of patience, and engagement. Since then I've been trying to repeat the experiment whenever I can.

References:

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies. New York: Routledge.

Okita, S. and Schwartz, D., 2013. Learning by Teaching Human Pupils and Teachable Agents: The Importance of Recursive Feedback. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22(3), pp.375-412.