Acoustics Research

Dr. Siu-Kit Lau (Eddie)

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#ONL212 Design for online and blended learning

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The current pandemic has forced teaching to go online. Learning is compromised when content is delivered remotely and often does not conform to the high standards of learning through face-to-face (FTF) interaction, and in the bargain, an important learning opportunity is lost. Moving forward, we need to look at ways to motivate and engage students in creative learning activities without the crutches of grades, assessment anxiety, and tutor control and instead promote collaboration, flexibility, and social learning.

In online learning, passive or active pedagogies result in students downloading course material and uploading the assignments, which form isolated knowledge from selected information and activate some prior knowledge. On the contrary, constructive or interactive pedagogies result in students participating in co-creating knowledge and learn more deeply as per the ICAP framework. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is an interactive student-centric pedagogy grounded in social constructivist theory. Students work in groups to construct knowledge by interacting in activities that are designed and scaffolded to develop skills, ideas, or concepts. POGIL is based on the learning cycle of exploration, concept invention, and application. In the exploration phase, students assimilate and process data to explore patterns, in concept invention, students further develop concepts, and in the application of concepts, which students learn to apply concepts in new situations and determine their generalisability. The success of POGIL depends on the quality of interaction between the members of the group that varies a great deal in synchronous, asynchronous online and FTF sessions.

Since 2019, I have been implementing the interactive pedagogy of POGIL on improving students’ cognitive performance and learning experience in a class of 150 students in undergraduate Architecture. I found that although there is no difference between the cognitive performance of students on online or FTF medium, a change in overt engagement behaviour was observed that altered students’ approach to learning. Students reported the need for additional tutor support in the online medium, which is consistent with previous literature findings. Factors such as group dynamics and discussion quality also changed between the two media. The study highlights the differences between the two media related to the POGIL framework and suggests ways to adopt it for online learning.

Also, architecture students are attuned to substantial interaction with peers and teachers in their design studios that have a low student-teacher ratio that permits this. On the contrary, preparatory courses are predominantly taught in traditional lecture classes with a high student-teacher ratio that impedes such a synergy. Inadequate levels of engagement and interaction lead to diminished motivation and eventually lower student learning outcomes. Deliberate pauses between long lectures to stimulate interaction is known to be a powerful tool to retain attention, boost motivation and improve performance. However, it is challenging to execute such a ‘Pause and Recall’ strategy efficiently is a large class. To implement this in a preparatory module in Architecture, Wifi-enabled devices were used as ‘Clickers’ that allowed students to be actively involved with the content during the ‘Pause’, participate in class discussions and pose questions as they surfaced without getting the negative attention of their peers. During the student feedback, students reported that they found the lecture sessions engaging and were prompted to learn the content at a deeper level.

With the growing challenge of increasing students and decreasing tutors, this becomes difficult to achieve in large lecture classes. ‘Pause and Recall’ strategy to enhance lecture recall has been known for more than three decades. But with careful design and the help of technology, it is possible to use a well-known technique to not just improve lower levels of cognitive learning like ‘recall’ but also to improve higher order thinking among students.

Source:

Joshi, N. and S.-K. Lau (2021). “Effects of process-oriented guided inquiry learning on approaches to learning, long-term performance, and online learning outcomes.” Interactive Learning Environments: 1-16.

Joshi, N., et al. (2020). “Clickers in Class: Fostering Higher Cognitive Thinking Using ConcepTests in a Large Undergraduate Class.” The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher.

#ONL212 Learning in communities – networked collaborative learning

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Large classes are typically taught in a lecture format where learning material is dissipated, and students submit their final assignments from self-developed understanding. To create a shared understanding of the learning material wherein students actively interact, infer and co-create knowledge, a student-centric method grounded in social constructivist theory called Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) was employed in an undergraduate class. In POGIL, students work collaboratively in class in groups of four on a specifically designed activity under the guidance of a tutor to answer critical thinking questions that progressively build understanding on a topic towards the end of the session. Interactions are scaffolded in three phases: (i) exploring patterns from learning material, (ii) developing new concepts and ideas to solve a novel problem, and (iii) finally develop generalization applications and principles beyond the given problem. As per the ICAP framework, interactive activities provide deep learning opportunities, more than constructive, active, or passive sessions such as a lecture setting.

I found that students taught with POGIL pedagogy performed better than those taught with active learning strategies on immediate, near, and delayed cognitive performance tests. Students also showed a greater increase in deep approach to learning and a lesser increase in surface approach to learning. Most students reported an overall positive impact of POGIL activity on their learning experience, which promoted a collaborative atmosphere for meaningful discussions and dialogue within the module and an attitude of collaboration outside the module. The study highlights the challenges and provides suggestions for implementing such a pedagogy in a large class.

Also, architects may prefer the visual language and thus, to encourage a deep approach to learning, visualisation is used as a tool to teach technical concepts in a module. My results show students with deep approach to learning performed relatively better on higher cognitive tasks such as application and analysis. In the treatment group, students with higher spatial cognitive ability displayed significantly lower levels of surface approach to learning when taught using visualisation. Design students, such as architects, have relatively higher spatial cognitive ability as a result of visual training. Thus, the visualisation tool can promote deep learning among them. Students reported an increased interest in the content and claimed the lectures to be more engaging that provoked them to learn deeper. Overall, a positive effect of visualisation was observed. The presentation discusses ways of implementing visualization to encourage deep approach to learning and heighten interest of design students in relatively technical subjects.

Source:

Joshi, N. and S.-K. Lau (2021). “Effects of process-oriented guided inquiry learning on approaches to learning, long-term performance, and online learning outcomes.” Interactive Learning Environments: 1-16.

Lau, S. K., et al. (2021). “Visual Instruction to Enhance Teaching of Technical Subject to Design Students.” International Journal of Art & Design Education 40(1): 165-183.

#ONL212 Open Learning – Sharing and Openness

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In the week of 18 to 31 October, we discuss the sharing and openness in open learning for the ONL 212. We started with the definition of the openness. There may be several definitions in the existing publication. It included ““It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices” (Bali & Koseoglu 2016)

 There may be some difficulties in sharing some materials due to copyright issues. Searching the openly licensed resources may still be hard in my field. I share my recording lectures and materials in my classes via the Learning Management System (LMS). A few of the lectures are open to the public. I plan to involve the blog in my class in the coming years for open learning. Technology may help a lot for distribution of the learning materails and videos. However, there is still a restriction of open education for places with limited internet access. It need to be free to use. For science and physics topics, one of the resources may be the https://phet.colorado.edu/. There are many animations for teaching.

There are advantages for open learning, including easy accessability of the learning materials and activities, creation of a sociocultural perspective on learning. The cost of learning can be reduced.  Open learning also strengthens social justice if implemented properly. However, there may be some potential drawbacks from open learning. The difference between cooperating and learning from each other and plagiarism may not be clearly identified. A negative social justice effect may also occur if it is inappropriate implemented.

MOOC is one of the examples of open learning.  At the National University of Singapore (NUS), we join the network of EdX that provides a large number of online courses for staff and students. Faculty in the university can also have the opportunity to offer their courses on EdX. In addition, NUS students have an option to make their own courses using the EdX resources. There are many other examples for open learning, including open education resources (OER), Open textbooks, Open access publishing, Open data, Open source, etc.

I am still learning my ways to share and use the resources via the open education practices (OEP) and open education resources (OER). It looks good to talk and share my knowledge and collaborative learning from each other using the current technologies and networks. However, the validation of information from the internet may still be needed. Therefore, we hope there will be more reliable open resources for students and lecturers.

#ONL212 Digital Literacies

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I am glad to participate in the second course of Open Networked Learning (https://www.opennetworkedlearning.se/onl212-course-overview/ ) in 2021 (#ONL212). The community includes all the participants from all over the world. I have chances to discuss with colleagues and friends from Sweden, Ukraine, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, etc. We apply the FISH (i.e., Focus, Investigate, SHare) model for the study in four topics.

We have spent two weeks on the first topic of digital literacies. A scenario has been provided for discussion. There is a dichotomy of private, personal, public, and institutional spaces. David White has offered a seminar on digital literacies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOmuzwVuqgc ) and proposed mapping the digital literacies on two dimensions (i.e., Visitor and Resident, Institutional and Personal).  Different people may have different maps for digital literacies. For online teaching and learning, various communication channels may be required for connecting lecturers and learners. Digital literacies also cover those areas of visitors who collect information from the internet, such as Google search. I am participating in Group 6 of the ONL212.  Our group has produced a video to overlap the maps of our members.

My map for Digital literacies. I am still developing it.

Though I have a Twitter account, I am not familiar with using it. The Tweetchat was an interesting experience. We shared our thoughts and responses of some questions simultaneously. However, it may still be messy for me to identify previous and all other discussions. In addition, Twitter may not be common in our countries.  Perhaps, alternatives are Slack and Telegram.

During the sharing section, we have discussed a wide range of topics, from definitions to the application of digital literacies.. I express my concern of some students and graduates, who may go with surface learning and seek a shortcut to identify the solutions of a problem rather than learning the fundamentals. How do we prepare/equip students to choose appropriate tools for the tasks they need to complete is important. Students seem to favor using YouTube and don’t want to put in the time and effort to engage with a range of tasks. This impacts their growth from fundamental to advanced knowledge and skills because they access YouTube to solve one small problem at a time but don’t engage with the complexity of the whole. I like a video shared by one of our members, which may answer a part of my concern. The information on the internet may not be validated. Learners should be trained to evaluate the information collected on the internet.

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