Engaging large cohorts of international students: Technology Enhanced Learning | Sharon Whippy & Kulari Lokuge - Monash College | TLCANZ17
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This session presents findings of an investigation into how staff used a fully-integrated Active Learning Platform to engage international students in large cohorts. It presents how the system enabled staff to engage students in the classroom and facilitate the review of class activities through recorded audio, presentation and other resources. The focus of this project was to promote student engagement through blended delivery and increase student performance using technology. It also highlights how the learning analytics within the Active Learning Platform was used to direct and guide students to increase academic performance and enhance their learning experiences.
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Engaging large cohorts of international students: Technology Enhanced Learning | Sharon Whippy & Kulari Lokuge - Monash College | TLCANZ17
- 1. Engaging Large Cohorts of International Students: Technology Enhanced Learning By Sharon Whippy & Kulari Lokuge
- 2. 22 Our Journey • Monash College Mission and Strategy • Key Drivers, Governance and Technologies • Learning and Teaching at Monash College • Echo360 Active Learning Platform (ALP) Pilot • Pilot Considerations • The ALP today • Conclusions
- 3. 33
- 4. 44 Monash College International Partner Network China Malaysia Melbourne Sri Lanka
- 5. 55
- 6. 66 Teaching Divisions • Monash University English Language Centre • Monash University Foundation Year • Monash University Diploma • Monash Professional Pathways • Monash University Bachelor of International Business
- 7. 77 Turnitin ALP Monash College Strategy Governance MoodleKaltura Mahara Camtasia Articulate Storyline Video & Stills Studios Micro Adaptive Nano Learning Technology Learning Technology
- 8. 88 Active Learning Platform (ALP) ALP at Monash College
- 10. 1010 IN CLASS OUT OF CLASS Pre-Class Post-Class Flipped Classroom Model
- 13. 1313 Context • Evaluate benefits/challenges of using TEL to engage large international cohorts in blended/flipped environment • Increase academic performance
- 14. 1414 Context • Introduction to Financial Accounting (450 students) • Engineering Mathematics A (72 students) • International students • Age: 16-21 years
- 15. 1515 Context • 80% Monash College students: • Second language users/learners. • No prior experience in subject matter. • Different cultural values and educational practices
- 17. 1717
- 18. 1818 • Cloud-based learning and teaching platform. • Content management, student engagement, lecture capture, and engagement analytics. • Integrated into LMS (Moodle). Echo360 Active Learning Platform
- 19. 1919 . • Interactive polling tasks: multi-choice, true/false, image- based, short answer, ordering. • Note-taking, book marking, confusion flag, question and answer features. ALP features
- 20. 2020 Data Gathering • Student survey: learning behaviour. • Focus groups and semi-structured interviews. • Unit leaders: reflection journals
- 21. 2121 Data Gathering • Limited number of survey respondents • Timing of survey?
- 22. 2222 17 13 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 2-3 TIMES A WEEK ONCE A WEEK EVERYDAY NEVER Number of students Time Utilisation of ALP (Weekly)
- 23. 2323 Utilisation of ALP (pre-in-post class) 2 18 18 8 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 BEFORE LECTURE DURING LECTURE AFTER LECTURE ALL OF THE ABOVE Number of students Time of use
- 24. 2424 Student Usability 25 7 3.5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 YES NO SOMETIMES Number of students Rate of usability
- 25. 2525 Perceived Benefits of ALP 59.5 23.8 16.7 42.9 35.7 21.4 43.9 29.3 26 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 YES SOMETIMES NO Percentage of students Helped to ask Questions Assisted Learning Usability
- 26. 2626 Teaching Staff Feedback • What was done using the Active Learning Platform? • What was the impact on students learning? • What changes are planned to improve students learning?
- 27. 2727 Teaching Staff Feedback • Combination of the ALP and traditional methods for content delivery • Interactive polling activities: comprehension checking and revision • The confusion flag • Lecturer perceptions positive – keep going!
- 28. 2828 Support Staff • Engagement analytics: learner interventions • Training and support • LMS (Moodle) integration: benefits and challenges
- 29. 2929 Considerations from Pilot • Limitations • Individual use: behavior and performance • Student perception and data on usage
- 30. 3030 The ALP Today • Increase in the number of units and students using the ALP • Community of Practice
- 31. 3131 Survey Results • 108 respondents • 60% indicate the ALP helped their studies and made their lectures easier to understand. • 60% indicated they use the ALP in lectures. • 30% indicating they used the ALP before, during and after lectures • 50% indicated the ALP encouraged to attend lectures.
- 32. 3232 Survey Results • 60% students indicated they enjoyed using the platform.. • 60% students indicated they thought the ALP helped them study better. • Interactive polling tasks and video presentations • 40% students indicated they took more notes
- 33. 3333 Conclusions • Student/lecturer interaction • Insight into student engagement • Increase in student pass rates: positive correlation • Need for further research • Where we are now…
Editor's Notes
- It is my pleasure to share our journey at Monash College with Engaging Large Cohorts of International Students – with Technology Enhanced Learning - specifically the Echo360 Active Learning Platform, which I hope you will have successfully logged into! A couple of things to note with navigation inside the platform: you are in charge of moving through this presentation on your screen – using the arrow keys. As participants in this session you have the opportunity to be active! You have a students view of the platform. (Go through navigation interface.) You have the capability of taking notes, asking questions, flagging your confusion and taking part in the interactive polling tasks that I have set for you. Before we continue: my disclaimer, I will address your questions as much as I can once I have finished my presentation…
- Today I will walk you through our journey using the ALP.
- But first, I will ask you to answer a question – using your devices –Monash College has four main offshore partners, 3 of which you can see, mark on the map, where you believe the fourth partner of MC to be. You can mark your answer my clicking anywhere on the image and then submitting. Have a go! As you answer the question you can see on my screen the number of responses increasing… This is when the lecturer can look out at the number of students sitting in the lecture, and the number who have responded. …and when I think enough of you have responded, …I will close the question, and reveal the answer… We have four off shore partners currently running our programs, in China, Malaysia , in Melbourne – and the fourth partner – is Colombo Sri Lanka!
- We have four off shore partners currently running our programs, in China, Malaysia , in Melbourne – and the fourth partner – is Colombo Sri Lanka!
- This is another example of a polling activity, a multi choice question, please select the answer you think is correct – if you don’t know have a guess! Again, once I see the number growing…. I can close the activity…. and reveal the answer…. There are 5 teaching and learning divisions that make up MC!
- Monash College has five divisions, our English Language Centre, Our foundation year program A diplomas division Our professional pathways program and Our steadily growing bachelor of international business.
- This diagram shows our technology enhanced teaching and learning ‘ecosystem’’ – with Moodle at the heart of it, at the foundation of which is our eLearning strategy and Governance. Our Moodle integrates an eportfolio tool – Mahara, Kaltura, Turnitin , and of course the Echo360 ALP… You can see we also support the use of different authoring tools to develop our resources which we also house in Moodle.
- Our use of the Active learning platform in our Diplomas division is facilitated by: our elearning strategy, and our learning design process, it is also informed by the need to provide a learning experience for our students that allows them to actively participate and engage with the content and our teaching and learning.
- We follow Gilly Salmon’s Carpe Diem Learning Design process – this image is from one of our early workshops. The purpose of this workshop is to collaborate towards designing for enhanced student engagement and scaffold for learning through blended delivery, we align learning outcomes and assessments. It’s a very collaborative process that involves members of the CeLT as well as the teaching staff for the particular units we develop for. These workshops typically run over an entire day, and we create an action plan for the development of learning activities that come out of this workshop
- We also align our model for delivery of content with Monash University. That is - a flipped and blended environment of pre class, in class and post class structure for learning activities. This is to ensure our students are provided with a smooth transition into their further studies at MU.
- We gave our Moodle a face lift! This is an example of one of the ‘themes – look and feel’ that we developed and implemented into our Moodle, to provide a more attractive, intuitive user experience.
- This is the Monash College Learning Village, where we run most of our Diploma programs, this space was created to accommodate the huge growth we have experienced over the last 3 years, this is fondly referred to as our ‘pop up learning village’ because it literally popped up in the space of a few months - once where a car park lived.
- Let me tell you about the context for our pilot. In the beginning of 2016 we kicked off a pilot in the use of the Echo360 Active Learning Platform in two units, in our Business and Engineering Diplomas programs. One of our key aims was to evaluate the benefits (and challenges) of using TEL opportunities to engage large, predominantly international cohorts of students, in active learning. We hoped the this might help increase academic success rates.
- We had a total of 522 students taking part in the pilot. 450 of them were enrolled in the Introduction to Financial Accounting unit and 72 in an Engineering Mathematics unit. The students were aged from 16 to 21 and as mentioned before, mostly from the Asia region.
- Most of our students are international students - mainly from China, they all study and live with English as a second language. Most are away from home for the first time, navigating sets of different cultural values and educational practices. While many have completed some higher education in their home counties, more than often they have no prior experience in the subject matter. This is an intense time for them, the odds can seem quite stacked against their successes
- This is a picture of one of the 5 100-seater ALP capable lectorial spaces we use in our Learning Village, If you look in the background you can see the wall mounted displays, how many wall mounted screens do you think, in total, this space has…
- Cloud-based learning and teaching platform which allows the integration of content – student engagement – lecture capture and analytics. During a lecture – like now, both the lecturer and students work in the platform via their devices. The lecture presentations are also recorded and housed in the platform and can be revisited by students. At MC the ALP is fully integrated into our LMS – Moodle. This means accessibility via single sign-on – for both lecturers and students.
- Lecturer/student engagement via the platform can occur through: The use of interactive polling activities some of which you have seen already. The Note-taking function which allows our students make notes that are synced with the lecture recording or PowerPoint presentation. And which they can return to their notes and edit as necessary after the lecture. The “bookmarking function” which allows students to literally bookmark important points of the lecture – via timestamp which they can use when reviewing to easily return to specific points in the lecture recording. Students can flag their confusion with the hit of a button which acts as a visual indicator for the lecturer. And the QA function which allows students to ask the lecturer questions through the platform:
- The data that was gathered was done using a number of different methods: an evaluative student survey of the ALP usability, focus groups and semi-structured interviews. And the two unit leaders and teaching staff also provided their perspective on their students’ experiences. The student survey was a Google form that was provided via a link in Moodle. We asked a mixture of closed and open-ended questions to allow for some depth and breadth of data collected. The pilot initially ran over the course of one trimester, and the survey was conducted with students at the end of the trimester 1, 2016, prior to their examinations. The students were informed about the survey and that their participation was voluntary. The survey had eleven questions and aimed to elicit reflections from the students about: their experiences using the use of the tools might assist overcoming language barriers and learning the unit content, and any comments they might have for ways to improve their experiences. The survey results were recorded in an anonymous manner. The unit leaders involved were requested to journal their reflections in addition to participating in focus group discussions. They were asked to produce a summary report based on their work. Overall the continuous feedback throughout the trimester through theses channels enabled us to gain insights about the progress of the new approach and to make small changes to the use of technology for the course delivery model.
- Its important to note here that despite the large number of students who were enrolled in these two units, only 42 participant responses were recorded. On reflection, the timing of the survey may have had a negative impact on gathering responses as it was distributed after the trimester classes were completed and students were busy preparing for their exams. Although only a small number of participants responded to the survey, it did reveal some interesting information to the Monash College team.
- Of the 42 participants who responded to the student survey,25 (59.5%) were enrolled in Introduction to Financial Accounting and 17 (40.5%) were enrolled in the Engineering Mathematics unit. Despite the limited number of respondents - reassuringly - 90% indicated that they enjoyed using the ALP. All of the respondents indicated they used the platform to varying degrees; however the majority (40.5%) said they were using the platform 2-3 times a week. We thought this number could be related to the the number of lectures and tutorials scheduled - also being 2-3 times per week.
- The data showed our students were using the platform mostly during lectures - (42.9%). It is necessary to be in the platform to participate in the polling activities, we had introduced a BYOD policy – but at this point it was being implemented at different levels across the college – it was hoped that it would support this type of environment. Students also told us they were using the platform after lectures (42.9%) – which could indicate, this was for review purposes or possibly as catch up for those who did not attend the live lectures. This is another benefit of having the lectures recorded and housed in the platform for students to revisit.
- We asked our students to rate the usability of the platform and there was an interesting split in responses, with most saying it was easy to use, but 16.7% indicating they thought it was not These numbers could be indicative of how different groups of students were supported to use the platform, what activities and tasks were taking place in the lectures, and issues such as accessibility and connectivity, in and out of lectures. We do know students will only come back to a system routinely if it can be easily used. We also asked students if they thought the ALP made their lectures easier to understand, the majority (42.9% thought that it did, 35.7%) of students thought it did. When students were asked whether they thought their lectures were made more interesting through the use of the platform, the majority of respondents (50%) thought sometimes it did.
- We asked students whether the use of the ALP encouraged them to their attend lectures; and an equal amount of students – responded yes (38.1%) and answered no (38.1%). This could point to students attendance to lectures being less of a necessity - by the fact that the recordings are available to attend to when they are. We also wanted to know how certain tools n the platform might support our international students during a lecture – to ask questions. A majority 43.9% agreed that it did, however 29.3% believed it helped sometimes, and similarly 26.8% felt it did not help. A result of nearly 50% of survey participants is indicative enough to warrant further investigation into how specific tools within the ALP, such as the question/answer feature could provide avenues for students to actively engage with their lecturer during a lecture. We made this inquiry in our latest survey. Regarding the system’s ‘helpfulness’, a majority of respondents (78.6%) indicated that they wanted access to the ALP for their other subjects, and only 21.4% stated they did not. This is consistent with findings from other studies indicating students’ positive response to lecture-recording (Lokuge Dona, Gregory and Pechenkina, 2017).
- The two unit leaders involved in the trimester 1 pilot were also asked to document their responses to three key questions: what was done in trimester 1, 2016 using the Active Learning Platform? 2) What was the impact on students learning? 3) What changes are planned to improve students learning?
- As to be expected with any introduction of Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning system, there needs to be allowances made for changes in teaching practice by the users. Our staff used a combination of the platform with more traditional methods for content delivery. Both unit leaders reported using the interactive activity slides, (multiple-choice questions, true false questions, short answer) as one of the main methods to check comprehension. How it seemed to impact students learning? The unit leaders found the ‘confused button’ facilitated an environment where students could easily indicate their confusion and provided insight for our lecturers for what needed additional explanation allow them to respond in real time by re-explaining or reframing the content. One of the unit leaders referred to the benefit of having the content available for his students for revision purposes as one of the key impacts on his students learning. Overall lecturer’s perceptions towards the Echo360 ALP was – and continues to be very positive. As far as changes to improve students learning? Both lecturers agreed to continue to use the platform and do so. One unit leader explicitly attributing the increase in his students’ pass rates with the use of the platform.
- The eLearning team members found the value of student tracking capability with the use of ALP engagement analytics . The data within the ALP provided insights of student’s behaviour and added importance for teaching and support staff to provide additional attention to students at risk. This is an ongoing area of inquiry. Providing training and ongoing support to the teaching staff was another major undertaking the staff were supported through group, one-to-one training, and drop-in sessions. The pilot also linked staff directly to key contacts within the college’s IT support team. The integration of the Active Learning Platform with the Learning Management System was initially quite challenging meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders, however with great support from all parties, solutions and interim measures have been implemented
- One limitation of the research in our pilot is that it only takes into account two specific courses with a limited number of students responding to the survey. A replication of the current research within different courses and a different student population has been under way and these results has enabled us to start making some more general statements about the effect of ALP on student learning experiences and performance. Another limitation of the pilot study is that it did not consider a more detailed individual use of the ALP and tracking of individual student behaviour and performance, we have tried to address this in our most recent survey. It is not clear if students hold different views about the system compared to data on actual usage. It is currently not clear how different levels of access affect academic achievement. With more detailed insight into these individual differences, the possible influence on exam performance can be established on a more individual level.
- By Trimester 3, 2016 the number of units using the ALP had increased to 16 with a total number of 636 students. Our student survey from this trimester had 108 responses and of the 108 respondents to our student evaluation, nearly 70% of the had used the Alp in previously. Our survey showed 60% of students indicating the platform helped their studies, and nearly 60% stated it made their lectures easier to understand. Our survey indicated, nearly 60% of the students use the ALP in their lectures – we have a BYOD policy so there is a necessity for students to engage with the lecture content. Nearly 30% indicated though that they were using the platform before, during, and after lectures. The fear that making lecture content/recordings available on line might stop students from attending lectures, showed, Nearly 50% of students stating the ALP encouraged them to attend lectures, just over 30% of students saying sometimes it helped, and 23% stating it did not promote attendance. Nearly 60% of respondents indicated they enjoyed using the platform, with the same number indicating they thought the ALP helped them study better. Unlike previous Our students engaged with the interactive polling activities in class – which has become a very useful way for lecturers to gauge their students comprehension, followed by 25.9 students using the notetaking function, and video presentations. Students found the activities the most helpful for their study, this was closely followed by the video presentations and the notetaking feature – with nearly 40% of students stating they took more notes using the ALP than other subjects. Transformation in Teaching and Learning Vendor relationships and the external community.
- By Trimester 3, 2016 the number of units using the ALP had increased to 16 with a total number of 636 students. Our student survey from this trimester had 108 responses and of the 108 respondents to our student evaluation, nearly 70% of the had used the Alp in previously. Our survey showed 60% of students indicating the platform helped their studies, and nearly 60% stated it made their lectures easier to understand. Our survey indicated, nearly 60% of the students use the ALP in their lectures – we have a BYOD policy so there is a necessity for students to engage with the lecture content. Nearly 30% indicated though that they were using the platform before, during, and after lectures. The fear that making lecture content/recordings available on line might stop students from attending lectures, showed, Nearly 50% of students stating the ALP encouraged them to attend lectures, just over 30% of students saying sometimes it helped, and 23% stating it did not promote attendance. Nearly 60% of respondents indicated they enjoyed using the platform, with the same number indicating they thought the ALP helped them study better. Unlike previous Our students engaged with the interactive polling activities in class – which has become a very useful way for lecturers to gauge their students comprehension, followed by 25.9 students using the notetaking function, and video presentations. Students found the activities the most helpful for their study, this was closely followed by the video presentations and the notetaking feature – with nearly 40% of students stating they took more notes using the ALP than other subjects. Transformation in Teaching and Learning Vendor relationships and the external community.
- Nearly 60% of respondents indicated they enjoyed using the platform, with the same number indicating they thought the ALP helped them study better. Our students engaged with the interactive polling activities in class – which has become a very useful way for lecturers to gauge their students comprehension, followed by 25.9 students using the notetaking function, and video presentations. Students found the interactive polling tasks the most helpful for their study, this was closely followed by the video presentations and the notetaking feature – with nearly 40% of students stating they took more notes using the ALP than other subjects. Transformation in Teaching and Learning Vendor relationships and the external community.