Tma02 part 2 extended

B8729250 H818 – TMA02 – Part 2 Extended Abstract Angela Phillips

The use of student generated webpages to improve

revision and ongoing mathematical development

Extended Abstract

Angela Maxine Phillips Seaford Meadows, South Australia, 5169, Australia

INTRODUCTION

Revision is an area that is often not taught well in schools or in some cases taught at

all, (Slater, 2012) suggests. (Cohen, 2013) indicates that in study of revision

techniques used, 80% were ineffective and could even hinder learning. (Dunlosky, 2013)

states, “Moreover, students are responsible for regulating an increasing amount of

their learning as they progress from elementary grades through middle school and high

school to college. Lifelong learners also need to continue regulating their own learning.”

Therefore, it is vital that students are taught different effective techniques for

revision (Pinantoan, 2012). This project has been designed to give students the

opportunity to revise in different ways and produce a continually developing web based

revision resource.

The conference theme for the project will be focussing on implementation. The

implementation of a project has the most impact on the outcome of the project

(Durlak, 2011). The different stages of implementation of this project will be shared

on an open forum (Minnesota Department of Education, n.d.), to ensure that the

process will benefit not only the students involved in the project, but others who wish

to develop similar projects in the future. The project will be showcased in full using a

webpage, (Phillips-5, 2014).

The project has been run as a case study, (UNSW Australia, 2013) states, ”A good case

has the following features:

1. It is taken from real life (true identities may be concealed).

2. It consists of many parts and each part usually ends with problems and points

for discussion. There may not be a clear cut off point to the situation.

3. It includes sufficient information for the reader to treat problems and issues.

4. It is believable for the reader (the case contains the setting, personalities,

sequence of events, problems and conflicts).”

This form of presentation represents the most relevant method for the project. The

choice of presentation has been redefined, due to feedback from my peers undertaking


H818. A report of the case study will be produced and presented at the H818

Conference.

A limitation of this project is no research relating to the use of student generated web

pages to support revision has been located. Research into the use of student

generated blogs is available (Orlando, 2010), however this research is not related to

Mathematics.

The project will be run with one class, from one year group. The results of the project

will be analysed and the effectiveness of the project will be determined. The project

can then be refined to meet the initial aims.

PROJECT APPROACH

Following attendance at the ACEC 2014 conference in Adelaide and an inspiring

presentation from Henrietta Miller relating to revolutionising homework with students

blogs (Miller, 2014). The use of student generated webpages was selected to aid

revision.

After the project brief was selected a group of students needed to be chosen to trial

the project. A year 8 Mathematics class were chosen, because:

Year 8 is the first year of Senior School in South Australia.

The class had already been set periodic extended homework tasks, which

encourage creativity and problem solving.

External examinations are not held for students in year 8.

The students completed the Semester 2 Common Test at the end of November.

The students had previously completed the Semester 1 Common Test and

therefore the students had experience of the revision completed in preparation

for the previous test.

“Expert teachers now are those who can bring together knowledge of subject matter, what

is good for learning, and technology (ICT)” (Australian Government Department of

Education, n.d.). The project has been designed to try and engage the areas of good

teaching and learning pedagogy, integrated with the use of technology. “Technological

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a framework that identifies the knowledge

teachers need to teach effectively with technology” (TPACK, n.d.). The TPACK model

has been considered during the design of this project, figure 1.


Figure 1 - Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org

(Dunlosky, 2013) indicates that the following are high utility rating:

Distributed practice, where a schedule of practice spreads out study activities

over time; and,

Practice testing, which can include self-testing.

While the following were moderate utility rating:

Elaborative interrogation, where the student generates and explanation for why

a concept is correct,

Self-explanation, where the student describes each step of problem solving

questions; and,

Interleaved practice, where different materials or topics are studied in a single

revision session.

Although evidence from (Dunlosky, 2013) is well researched, the study does not take

into account different ages groups, subjects or social economic statuses. Therefore,

other methods of learning that received low utility ratings were not excluded, if the

student wished to include them in their revision planning.

The learning activity was designed and put on the schools Learning Management System

(LMS). However, the activity was initially shared with teaching staff using LMS.

Feedback was received from two teachers, Michelle Payne (IT Integrator) and Sharon

Kennare (Senior Mathematics Teacher) from Westminster school. Michelle Payne

enhanced the activity, by suggesting several web based programs that could be used


for the activity. Sharon Kennare decided to use the activity with a class she teaches in

year 10. Figure 2, 3 and 4 show the activity from the LMS.

Figure 2

Figure 3


Figure 4

Once the activity had been reviewed by teaching staff, the activity was made available

to the students (Phillips-1, 2014). The activity was introduced in class and set for

homework. Standard revision activities were run during class time, to correspond with

similar activities in during Semester 1.

The students peer assessed each other’s webpages using Google Form Questionnaire

(Phillips-4, 2014). The feedback was then collated and distributed back to the

students, who were then asked to review the feedback of their pages and reviewed

their work.

The student generated webpages are available at

http://linoit.com/users/angphil/canvases/Year%208%20Revision%20Web%20Pages%2

02014 (Phillips-2, 2014).

The students completed the Semester 2 Common Test and then were given the

personal questionnaire, to complete to give their views of the activity and the impact on

the revision completed. Students were also asked to give their views on how likely they

were to continue to use the webpage for revision (Phillips-3, 2014).

A multimedia poster was produced to display the project and the outcomes. The poster

was designed to advertise the artefact for the H818 conference in February 2015.

(Purrington, 2014) indicates that the poster needed to be concise and clear, without

cluttering words and sentences. The accessibility of the poster also needs to be




considered, please see TMA02 – Part 1 for more information on the accessibility

features of the poster (Phillips, 2015).

The original draft of the poster was constructed using www.linoit.com, (Phillips-6,

2014), this draft was shared with the H818 cohort and the following feedback was

received:

“…I have clicked to view your poster but when I try and click into any of the

icons I get re-directed to a lino web page which tells me I must sign up to view.”

(Greenwood, 2014).

“I had the same. It wants me to log in in order to view. Sam” (Marks, 2014)

Due to the peer feedback it was decided that www.linoit.com did not meet the

requirements of this task. The page needs to be easily accessed by all (JISC, n.d.), to

ensure accessibility and ease of use.

Other H818 students produced posters, which in turn were reviewed. The review of

the H818 student’s posters helped to give a clear understanding of what was required

for the poster, for example, (Seaward, 2014) produced a very clear and visually

attractive poster, (Marks, 2014) produced a clear video with pictorial representations

of the points raised and (Walker, 2014) who produced a colourful Prezi.

Using PowToon, an animation website, a clip was produced (Phillips-7, 2014). The

following feedback was received from a H818 student:

“…Obviously, creating your own content helps with understanding and revision,

but do you think that the fun of creating webpages could overtake the learning

aspect? So, they might spend all their time making a cool-looking resource, and

not enough time on the actual content” (Kidger, 2014)

After this feedback was received, it was decided that there was not enough

information on the animated clip to answer this point, therefore the clip needed to be

embedded into a more detailed description of the artefact.

(Potter, 2013) describes how Prezi can be used for academic purposes, which has led to

the second version of the TMA02 poster. The techniques described by Potter (2013)

have influenced the Prezi poster produced for the artefact. An example of the

techniques include:

Prezi is non-linear and enables you to move around the screen to relevant

elements.

Prezi enables you to embed different types of media, such as video clips and

audio files.

A Prezi poster was produced and shared on with the H818 students (Phillips-8, 2014).

The following feedback was received:

http://www.linoit.com/

http://www.linoit.com/


“…You've given a clear title, remember also to include your name and affiliation,

and conference theme… Tell us what kind of artefact you will be presenting at

conference… The first slide starts with some assumptions about revision not

being taught well. Do you mean in your school? in maths? Do you have any

evidence to support this rather sweeping statement? I'm sure technology is

never the solution! Isn't learning activity the solution? Technology just enables

us to be able to design different types of learning activities? If you are going to

name sources, you need to cite them fully. Can you explain where the data

behind the pie charts comes from? I hope that's helpful feedback. Rhona”

(Sharpe, 2014)

“…As Rhona says, could technology based solutions help might be better than

technology as the solution. Technology can afford a different approach to the

revision. For me the headlines about the research worked. They told me what

had been carried out clearly. I also really like that you are linking to a website

externally, which looks great.” (Marks-2, 2015)

“… I do think your could remove some of the findings and share those with us at

the conference. Only because it might help unclutter some of the stages to allow

us to marvel at the beauty of it! It is definitely CLEAR but I would stick in

somewhere the words 'THEME: Implementation' if nothing more than to tick

the box!” (Mulligan, 2014)

Using the feedback from the H818 students, the poster was amended and version 2

(Phillips-9, 2014), was shared using Open Studios. Feedback included:

“… the music did not bother me. Would it be possible to cut some slides? I found

that the slide with "project brief" would maybe not have to be repeated as

often...or maybe it was because of the audio recording? Would it be possible to

have an extra click for those who wish to view/hear the accessible version?”

(MasseDuBois, 2014)

“…I actually did find the music a little problematic because at times it was

easier to hear the music than you (especially during the YouTube clip). Maybe

you could adjust the volume a bit” (Anderson, 2014)

This feedback led to the background music being deleted from the Prezi and also slides

being removed. The final Prezi Version 3 (Phillips-10, 2014) was produced taking into

account all the feedback received.

All versions of the poster, including the accessible PDF, the video and accessibility

statement have been shared as open content using a variety of methods, including

Twitter, SlideShare, the artefact website (Phillips-5, 2014) and Angela Phillips’s Blog

(Phillips-11, 2014).

http://students.open.ac.uk/iet/h81x/h818-14j/home.php?currentuser=mm27677


SUMMARY

In summary the project will now be reviewed and analysed including looking at the

impact of the learning activity. The results will be presented at the H818 conference

in February 2015.

The project has enabled development as a networked practitioner and the feedback of

the students and tutors involved in H818 has been extremely constructive and

insightful.

The case study will be published as an open resource (Phillips-5, 2014), where the

resources and outcomes will be available for all. This project will continue to be

monitored to see if the long term outcomes are achieved.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following would be acknowledged for the support and feedback given; Michelle

Payne, Sharon Kennare, Seaward, Marks, Walker, Kidger, Sharpe, Mulligan,

MasseDuBois, Anderson, Alice DE Rooy and Oliver Sterland.

Word Count:2056

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Tma02 part 2 extended

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