Kim Whittlestone, Graham
Phillips, Clinical and Biomedical Computing Unit, University of Cambridge
School of Clinical Medicine, UK
Current theories describe learning
as an active process of constructing knowledge, with an essential condition
being interaction between teacher, student and content. As we move into an
always-connected era, the challenge for teachers is to make best use of
existing resources in supporting learners developing
their knowledge, skills and attitudes. Online discussion groups seem to offer
many of the requirements that would allow students to develop their thinking,
but traditionally these have been difficult to manage. Student participation is
often uneven, dominated by a vocal minority, and the content tends to drift
away from the core subject.
At the University of
Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, we have been developing a
modification of the traditional discussion forum that encourages all students
to take part by means of a range of incentives and also reduces the burden on
teaching staff. Students are presented with a resource (a video clip or other
online resource) and a question. Access to each resource is time-limited.
Students who submit an answer can see all other answers submitted and the
teacher can grade each answer at any time. Once the question has closed, the
teacher has the option of providing a definitive answer or asking any number of
time-limited supplementary questions. Only those students who originally submitted
an answer have access to the supplementary questions and their answers.
We believe the Q & A Café could
be applied to many other disciplines and allows teaching staff to support
student learning interactively with little investment of time. Indications from
our first year are that students have found this a useful support in their
learning.
Participants attending this
presentation will find out about an approach to supporting (potentially large)
groups of students in an interactive yet simple and effective way. The issues
that encourage, and discourage students to participate in online environments
will be highlighted and results and feedback from the first group of 130
students to use the system will be outlined.
Kim
Whittlestone, Graham Phillips
Clinical & Biomedical Computing Unit (CBCU)
Hills Road,