Peers Supporting Peers through Structured Bulletin Boards

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Peers Supporting Peers through Structured
Bulletin Boards

• Joe Luca Catherine McLoughlin
• ECU ACU

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Outline

• Aim
• Course Design Issues
• Categories
• Context Assessment
• Usage Patterns
• Criteria for Success
• The Technology
• Demo

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Aim of the Unit

• To design learning tasks/activities that help
  learners actively engage in learning

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The Ultimate Aim

• Peers supporting peers without tutor intervention
• )

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Key Criteria Number 1

• Pedagogical Design of the Unit

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Instructional Design Strategy

• Task design must
• Provide an Authentic Context
• Promote Self-Regulation
• Promote Reflection
• Is followed by the consideration of resources and
  supports

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Framework
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Application to Course Design
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A Pro-active Role in Learning

• Initiating
• Managing
• Monitoring
• Questioning
• Applying prior knowledge
• Sharing ideas
• Reflecting evaluating learning processes

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Peer Learning at University

• Students have increased responsibility for their
  learning
• Online tools help scaffold the process
• Discussions
• Review of ideas
• Inquiry
• Reflection

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Online Support

• Use the attributes of technology to increase the
  benefits of
• Peer work
• Interdependence

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Key Criteria Number 2

• Authentic Context

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Context

• 51 final year students (Multimedia)
• Project Management Methods unit for multimedia
  development
• Much teamwork (50 of assessment)
• Authentic assessment - web site for real client
• Students use product as part of their CV

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Collaboration Peer Support Needed for this
Context

• Benefits of collaborative learning can be
  transferred into the electronic environment for
  increased motivation learning
• McConnell, English Yazdani, Klemm Snell,
  Collis etc

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Learning Environment Design
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BB Category 1 - Career Management (x4)

• Professional Skills - New skills you are
  learning, evidence for this learning, areas where
  you need to improve how the course helps you to
  learn swapping ideas and examples that
  demonstrate evidence of common employability
  skills
• Career Management issues that relate to career
  planning and finding your career niche

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BB Category 1 - Career Management

• Networking share employer contacts. career
  news, professional organizations, ideas, referees
  (industry and ECU), word of mouth opportunities
  etc.
• ePortfolio Development discuss the practical
  issues of storing / presenting evidence of your
  skills, including job applications

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BB Category 2 - Industry Project

• Syllabus unit information - questions related
  to marks, dates, syllabus etc
• Project Management Issues - PM issues include
  client, legal, time tracking etc.
• Technical Issues programming, application
  development other technical issues
• Prototype Design Issues present prototype and
  design ideas for feedback comments
• Other Issues - any other issues not related to
  the above categories

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Key Criteria Number 3

• Assessment

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Assessment (3x5 15)

• Each team member is encouraged to use the BB to
  discuss PM issues, share experiences and help
  other students. Students are expected to
  contribute their expertise to issues raised
• Can be in the form of advice, problem solving
  ideas, sympathy, praise or assisting other
  students with technical knowledge or other
  helpful advice. The more meaningful the
  contributions the more marks you get

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Assessment (3x5 15)

• Assessment of comments are ranked as follows
• Irrelevant, unhelpful attract no marks and are
  monitored for disruptive influence. Nobody
  appreciates junk mail
• Attempt at involvement, not fully grasping ideas,
  asking for help - is mainly what the BBs have
  been set up for, as a means of communicating and
  receiving help from students and tutors
• Contributing with help, progressing debate, new
  ideas, summarising difficult concepts

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Assessment (3x5 15)

• Sending 5 quality comments per assessment item
  can obtain full marks. Quality input is needed,
  not quantity! i.e. students are not required to
  answer every question
• Appropriate language must be used respect shown
  for others students questions. Also, making fun
  of other students questions, being sarcastic,
  making rude or irrelevant comments will attract
  penalty marks

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Assessment

• Is necessary for Kick Start!
• Particularly at beginning of semester
• Once confidence grows, a clear usage pattern is
  seen

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Types of Comments/Posts

• Agreeing with exemplars or experiences
• Supportive comments
• Feedback - positive and constructive
• Suggestions for improvement (prototypes)
• Experiences
• Helping (URLs, solutions etc.)
• Advice
• Recommendations

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Students Able to

• Discuss their progress - post design ideas and
  prototypes to a shared workspace
• Request feedback from others to help make
  improvements
• Tutors and experts instructed not to answer
  immediately, but to wait for a day or two

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Tutors Experts

• Not to answer immediately - give peers a chance
  to contribute
• Wait for a day if no other response given
• Intervene if the discussion incorrect or not
  approaching a solution (gently!)
• Support positive and helpful comments by simply
  agreeing

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(No Transcript)
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Student Usage Patterns
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Students Reasons for Use of Specific Threads

• Clearly defined
• Objective in nature
• Easy to relate to
• Non confrontational
• Non personal in nature

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Criteria for BB Success

• Unit Design
• Authentic Tasks
• Assessment
• Tutor and expert visibility
• Tangible Benefits - information, help feedback
  from peers, experts and tutors (PM, prototypes,
  technical, design client issues)
• Multiple Perspectives - being challenged by
  peers, experts tutors

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Technology

• Mac OS X Server
• Reliable?
• Apache Web Server
• PHP 4
• 12,000,000 domains in 4 years (php, 2003)
• MySQL 4
• 4,000,000 customers (MySQL, 2003)

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Open source

• Isnt it great?
• Support?
• Updates?
• Bugs?
• Not me. Ask the developer

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Demo
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The Ultimate!!

• THE UNIT RUNS ITSELF
• )

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QA