Author: Dr. S. S. Patil
Dear all,
Through the use of cutting-edge digital technology, this blog will assist in exploring the engagement triggers of cubbing activity, which will encourage active student involvement. The suggested method is tested on undergraduate students of 65-70 class strength (S.Y. B. Tech. Sem-I AY: 2023-24 – Object Oriented Programming using Java – AI209). The method was impressive when tested across the parameters of boredom duration along with lecture comprehension and engagement.
This methodology is chosen with certain motivations as like:
- To improve and elevate students’ comprehension adhering to OBE
- To explore joyful learning
- To improve group learning through student participation
The details of technique with experimental guidelines is as given below:
A. Procedure:
- Make use of dice to produce a random number and assign an question/activity to specific student/group respectively
- RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet
- RANDOM.ORG is used mostly for holding drawings, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive online games, for scientific applications and for art and music
- The service has existed since 1998 and was built by Dr Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. (Today, RANDOM.ORG is operated by Randomness and Integrity Services Ltd.)
Education usage
- Display 6 questions from the lesson. Students may be formed in groups of 4. Each group has 1 die. Each student rolls the die and answers the question with the corresponding number. If a number is rolled more than once the student may elaborate on the previous response or roll again.
- Questions:
- I want to remember …
- Something I learned today
- One word to sum up what I learned
- Something I already knew
- I’m still confused about …
- An “aha” moment that I had today
- Can use “Coin Flipper” or “Playing Card Shuffler ” utility for studying probability aspects in visual terms with random theory
- Can use “Gaussian Random Number Generator” with provided mean, standard deviation and significant digits
- All concepts where Random theory is applied
Demonstration
The step-wise procedure for using “Dice Roller” utility:
- Go to https://www.random.org
- Select the number of dice to be rolled virtually
- Select button “Roll Dice”
- Click “Roll Again” button for next repetitive random roll of dice for next number
B. Detailing of Technique:
This technique was demonstrated at Second year B. Tech. – CSE – AI&ML dept (OOPJ AI209 course). The proposed activity was planned for following lectures:
This activity is planned for following chapters/points:
- Chapter 1: Control structure (Time for this activity: Lecture-3)
- Chapter 3: Classification of exceptions (Time for this activity: Lecture- 9)
- Chapter 4: File management (Time for this activity: Lecture- 16)
- Chapter 6: Swing v/s AWT (Time for this activity: Lecture-21)
A live proof of activity conduction is provided below during each of the above stated lectures based on the content of delivery. One prepared for a lecture is as:
Few of my videos of conducting this activity is at link given below:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pkyoTr1GIEqtkk61iKcRlvcSurZuQsGI?usp=sharing
The activity has aided in maintaining the students focus attention in a lively classroom with an engaging delivery topic. The cubing exercise has supported students in comprehending fundamental ideas by providing them with keywords and hints.
C. Outcomes:
- Tangible outcomes:
A hand-raised based survey was gathered and examined to observe the decrease in the boredom time. The feedback was noted on two different questions as (on a scale of 1 to 3: 1 as Strongly Disagree and 3 as Strongly Agree):
- Is the activity helping to mitigate conceptual learning?
- Is it helping to improve engagement with collaborative learning?
The analyses for responses are stated as in below tables and graphs as:
helped to reduce boredom periods by an average of 74%. In addition, the percentage of joyful learning is higher than other metrics.
Intangible outcomes:
- Productive collaboration along with group learning
- Seamless attentiveness along with interest
D. Issues faced while conduction
For every one viz. myself and students, leading the events was truly a new experience. The aforementioned intangible results were added to the planning and execution of the plan in accordance with expectations.
Furthermore, few issues were faced during experimentation of these active learning strategies as follows:
- Time management
- Reaching almost students
- Channelizing questionaries
References:
- Prince, M. (2004) Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231.
- Bransford J., Brown A., & Cocking RR. (Eds.) (1999) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington (DC): National Academy Press.
- Hartikainen, S., Rintala, H., Pylväs, L., & Nokelainen, P. (2019) The concept of active learning and the measurement of learning outcomes: A review of research in engineering higher education. Education Sciences, 9(4), 276.
- Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., & Freeman, S. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476-6483.
- https://www.ramdom.org