Project Title: PsyText: Using Mobile Text Messaging to Support Communication, Engagement and Interactive Activities in Psychology Teaching
Project Leader(s): Pete Lonsdale, Chris Stiff and Alex Lamont
- Communication with students: we have identified a need to expand the range of methods available to send information to students, especially information that is last minute or urgent (for example, notification of a workshop that has been rescheduled or has been organised due to demand). We propose to mobile text messaging to send information to students that requires their urgent attention. This can be achieved through the use of web-based tools for easily sending text messages to multiple participants. Students will be asked to submit their mobile contact number to a database which will then be used to setup specific groups that can contacted directly, i.e. without having to send out global messages. This kind of functionality is provided by web-based providers such as TextAnywhere.
- Data collection in the field: students already collect field data for use in lab classes, but this collection process is carried out away from the lab and as such students do not receive any prompts or feedback on the data they collect until after it has been collected. We propose to design data collection activities that allow students to receive prompts and information via text messages that can guide and encourage their data collection. Feedback could also be provided about how much data has been collected and the nature of that data. The intention is to provide a more structured experience, giving feedback in situ and then easily building a shared pool of data to which all students have contributed. Prompts sent out to collect data at specific times or during specific situations could also enhance the research process itself, allowing experience sampling or time-based sampling to be easily coordinated. This would give students expanded experience of the range of data collection methods used in Psychology and potentially provide new avenues for them to pursue in their own individual dissertation projects. Mobile text messaging has previously been used in the behavioural sciences to enable data collection (for example Reimers and Stewart, 2009) and we propose to build on this work to produce something that is relevant and useful for teaching at Keele.
PsyText: Using Mobile Text Messaging to Support Communication, Engagement and Interactive Activities in Psychology Teaching by Pete Lonsdale, Chris Stiff and Alex Lamont, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Project Title: The Use of Video Games in Learning and Teaching
Project Leader(s): Mark Featherstone
The aim of this project is to integrate popular video games into the learning experience of students through:
(a) their inclusion in the academic content and assessment regime of particular modules on the Sociology and Media, Communications, and Culture programmes and
(b) the design of a new module appropriate for both Sociology and Media, Communications, and Culture that would consider the history, meaning, and importance of video games to contemporary society.
Funding is sought to employ a Research Assistant working in the field of video games to spend 90 hours in total investigating (a) the copyright issues and cost effectiveness of the use of commercial video games in learning and teaching, (b) the critical literature on the use of video games in module design, and (c) a review of key contemporary video games that should be employed on a module on the meaning of gaming. The Research Assistant will spend 30 hours on each section of project and provide a report at each stage of the project as explained in the timetable (point 9). On the basis of this evidence the principal investigator will complete the assessment and module design elements of the project and produce a final report.
Project Title: Deeper Understanding and Faster Feedback: A Question Bank for Computer Assisted Assessment in Physics
Project Leader(s): Boyd Duffee, Rob Jefferies and Coel Hellier
The National Student Survey (NSS) 2007 highlighted the need for better feedback to students on their work. By giving students regular formative evaluation early and often in the course, their engagement with the course improves. Student response to on-line learning activities is overwhelmingly positive and on-line learning systems can collect data that shows how much a student has engaged with the material. This data can identify students at risk of leaving or failing allowing early intervention.
This project aims to create a question bank of physics problems to pump-prime the use of on-line assessment in Physics in order to improve feedback, promote student engagement and raise retention by identifying at-risk students. We are targeting mathematical skills in physics because difficulties with maths are the primary academic reason for withdrawal from the Physics and Astrophysics courses. Mathematical skills are the bedrock of everything that follows in a linear course like Physics/Astrophysics. Strengthening those skills early in the program will reap benefits in the following years, allowing students to concentrate on the physical concepts being presented, rather than struggling with the mathematical representations.
Deeper Understanding and Faster Feedback: A Question Bank for Computer Assisted Assessment in Physics by Boyd Duffee, Rob Jefferies and Coel Hellier, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
