The following will be trialled at my IWMW 2010 session in Sheffield.
The intention is to experiment with using an outside location as part of a classroom activity. The activity is based around a previous blended learning activity which uses clickers and VLE quiz banks (see slide 11 and 12 of http://www.slideshare.net/andyramsden/bath-spa-keynote-tl-dat).
The rationale for getting people to work outside as part of the activity is so I can engineer the groups to force people to work outside the peer groups. An observation of many of the clicker activities is although they encourage group activity, many fall down because people are static in lecture threatres and tend to sit next to their friends, people also tend to sit in the same area of the room throughout a taught course.
Therefore, to maximise the educational benefits of this design I need to change the groups. The design principles are based on a social constructivist approach. This suggests students come into the activity with predefined knowledge, they will collect more information as part of the activity and discussions and construct further understanding through the interactions they have with others (who have different knowledge constructs).
The learning activity is an application of an economics MCQ question. The authors of which (http://web.uct.ac.za/projects/cbe/mcqman/mcqappc.html) suggest a successful answer requires the ability to recall the relative economic rankings of various countries (knowledge) and understand the basis for such a ranking (comprehension). They must be able to apply these concepts when information is supplied to them (application) and they must be able to analyse the given information in order to answer the question.
However, I’m keen for them to do this as a group activity. Therefore, I’ve adopted the Dufresne Sequence, which has been applied to the use of Clickers (http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/ilig/qpurpose.html). This focuses on the use of class-wide discussion enabled through audience response systems.
The idea is to set the participants in groups. Give them the question (instructions sheet), which requires them to locate and scan QR Codes. These QR Codes are text based, and contain economic data about countries (one QR Code per country). After collecting the data, the group need to answer an MCQ question (via texting their group name and answer) around suggestions of the countries.
I’m very happy for them to share the data amongst themselves, and they will be instructed on two key points. Firstly, they must collect all the data as we’ll be using it in a later session. Secondly, I will be selecting some groups to explain their answers in the next lecture. However, they’ll not be notified beforehand. Both of these are designed to motivate the students to collect and apply themselves to answering the question.
The instructions are available from: https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1bKCz14blYoK3bYGaBepd094GY73Hei8CsIcT6oJhYs8&hl=en&authkey=COey57gM
The QR Codes are available from:
http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AcaF5QN3s_UDZGY2azRwajVfMTE4ZDY2em5waHM&hl=en&authkey=CK3Xw8wJ
The data set is available from:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1yaXD-k7vvnavnawkYeGq-d49akYofeOjCwPY4eMmL4Y&hl=en&authkey=COLN7Eo
A suggested learning sequence would be;
Prep work
- Create MCQ bank in Moodle
- Create the lecture replacement videos in Panopto
- Set up work groups in Moodle
- Release the student support documents for finding and installing a QR Code reader on their phone
Week before deployment
- Release the instructions
- Announce in lecture, include setting out expectations and motivations for students to participate
- Inform need to access the lecture replacement video (which includes explicit reference to the exercise)
Week of deployment
- Place QR Codes
- Monitor responses to the SMS server
- Check Panopto logs to track those who have not accessed video. Email (?)
- Analysis response pattern, and identify groups who you would like to feedback
Week + 1 of deployment
- In lecture, show results, get people to present why they made the selection they did, continue the discussion, summarise and close
- Set a Moodle quiz based on questions around the data set they have collected
Week + 2 of deployment
- Check the grades in the MCQ
- Provide generic feedback via Panopto recording
- Make reference – walk through parts of panopto recording in lecture
When I deploy this next week, I’m particularly interested in trying to identify what the QR Code offered as opposed to simply giving them the data set.