Mobile Media Technologies and their Impact on Academic Collaboration Beyond the Walls of the Classroom
Douglas W. Conrad
Action Research Project - Outline
Mobile Media Technologies and their Impact on Academic Collaboration Beyond the Walls of the Classroom - Action Research Plan
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this action research project is to discover the effect of mobile media technologies on the learning thought of as "informal” that happens in the spaces and times outside of the classroom. Current research has shown that the use of mobile media tools has begun to change our understanding of place. It is possible that this change can be leveraged by schools to incorporate the academic collaboration and knowledge building that happens beyond the walls of the classroom into the students' "formal" learning environment. The impact that mobile media technologies have in this space is the focus of this action research project.
PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY:
The problem that I want solve, or stated differently, the opportunity I want take advantage of is a convergence of faculty interest in working with mobile media tools to encourage academic collaboration outside the classroom and the growing catalog of available academic technologies. I hear from faculty that they wish there was a way to encourage student discussion and dialogue outside of classroom hours, and even beyond the walls of the campus, that was something that students would naturally do rather than study groups that would need to be set up and managed. They are hoping for some form of organic application that students could easily adopt and use. What are the impacts that the use of these mobile media tools have on learning and communication? They are becoming virtual fixtures in our society How does their integration in education and the classroom impact these learning environments?
RESEARCH QUESTION:
Specific AR statement: What action can I take to discover the impact of mobile media technologies on academic collaboration and communication beyond the walls of the classroom?
BACKGROUND RESEARCH:
This research has helped frame my Action Research Project. My Lit Review resources along with my learning circle conversations have helped me focus the research on the impact of mobile technologies. The quote from Clay Shirky that we all love, where he points to a relationship of the more comfortable we become with technology, the more transformative it can be, is what I see all around me. As my cycle one action began right after cadre camp, my learning circle mates helped me stay grounded in what was taking place and helped me discern when cycle 1 was ending and cycle 2 was about to begin.
Alexander, B. (2004). Going nomadic: Mobile learning in higher education
Educause Review, 39(5).
Dewey, John (1966). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Free Press.
Evans, J. (2012). The second billion smartphone users: TechCrunch
Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/20/the-second-billion-smartphones/
Farkas, M. (2012). Participatory technologies, pedagogy 2.0 and information literacy.
Library Hi Tech, 30(1), 82-94.
Huang, C. D. and Behara, R. S. (2007). Outcome-driven experiential learning with Web 2.0. Journal of Information Systems Education, 18(3), pp. 329-36.
Kafka, F. (1971). An old manuscript from The complete stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken,.
LaMonica, M. (2006). Futurist: to fix education, think Web 2.0. CNET, available
at: http://news. cnet.com/Futurist-To-fix-education,-think-Web-2.0/2100-1032_3-6140175.html
List, J., & Bryant, B. (2009). Integrating interactive online content at an early
college high school: An exploration of Moodle, Ning and Twitter. Meridian Middle School Computer Technologies Journal, 12(1).
Roschelle, J. & Pea, R. (2002). A walk on the WILD side: how wireless handhelds may
change CSCL, International Journal of Cognition and Technology, pp. 51-60
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without
organizations, New York: Penguin Press.
Smith, Frank (1998). The book of Learning and Forgetting. New York, NY: Teachers
College Press
Squire, K. (2009). Mobile Media Learning: Multiplicities of Place. On The Horizon,
17(1), 70-80.
Thibodeau, P. (2012, October 23). Gartner's Top 10 Tech trends for 2013.
Computerworld.
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE:
My membership in the CoP that is Westmont college, a residential, liberal arts, Christian, undergraduate college is that of tech steward. My role is split between making sure the audio visual equipment hums along day after day and consulting/advising faculty on academic technology best practice use.
MY ACTIONS
Cycle One Action Resesarch question: If I set up a Twitter pilot project in an academic course, how will use of this mobile media technology impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
Actions:
- researched other projects that used Twitter
- met with the professor to strategize how to fit this research with his pedagogical goals for his class
- developed a plan to implement "disposable" Twitter accounts for his classes (2 sections of about 35 each)
- The plan:
- separate class Twitter account for each class
- set up "disposable" Twitter accounts for each student
- show students how to "follow" the class account and each other
- attended classes first week of school and helped students set up accounts
- sign up for The Archivist (tweet archive.com) to monitor and analyze student activity
- follow up meeting with professor
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED:
- Twitter archive analysis
- AR journal
EVALUATION: In this first cycle, I did the planning and working with others to include them in the action of the research but it all happened so fast right after I got back from Cadre camp that some important details did not get included in this first cycle. I did meet with the professor of the courses and we both agreed that not only did this research project match his pedagogical goals, but it was a course worth taking. One of the things I feel I overlooked in this first cycle was that the students did not get much of a context for their part in the action. It's not that I took their tech level or sense of purpose for granted, I think that it all happened so fast that in a rush to implement at the beginning of the semester, the briefing that may have helped student involvement got overlooked. This is one of the first key pieces of information gleaned from cycle one, that students are not necessarily going to naturally adopt new technology just because they can. We think of this generation as being so digital, but without much of a context they did not adopt this new plan. The cycle began with a flurry of action setting up the logistics and then stepping back to let the students take it and run with it. The first week, the discussions were robust and the project showed promise. The second week, the student use of Twitter dropped to almost nothing. Twitter was a new tool for the professor and he became way too busy with the responsibilities he had for regular operation of his classes that he too stopped using the tool or talking to his class. I tried numerous times to meet with him to discuss and maybe take another path, but we were not able to meet. I felt at first that this was not going to work out, but it became clear that more clarity was needed for the professor and the students. While journaling about this, I realized that I had a group of students that, like a class, I had a connection with. I set up this same project for my student staff of 14 to discuss technology topics outside our work together. This gave me some hope that I might be able to have a more direct role in the action. To keep the data collecting the same, I did not give them much of a context aside from telling them that this was a topic I was researching for my Masters program. The same result for this group without much guidance, they did not naturally give this much time. In discussing my challenges with my Learning Circle, I realized that I was ready to take a modified action and begin cycle two. While I feel that there are things I could have done differently in this cycle, it did prove a valuable step in understanding the implementation of new technology in a CoP. I am taking what I learned in this first round of action and applying them to cycle two. So Cycle two will have the adjustment of adding a explanation of context to the students and clear guidelines to direct them in how to get the most out of this mobile media technology.
Cycle Two AR question:
If a Twitter channel is set up for three sections of students and specific use guidelines are given, how will this mobile media technology impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTIONS:
- meet with the professor to set new aspect of plan
- the plan:
- Professor will take class time to talk about the context of the research project
- Professor will tweet one class question per week and give class participation grading for student response
- I will meet with my student staff to talk about the context of the research project
- I will tweet two group questions each week (on Tuesday and Thursday mornings)
- meet with Professor for action research project progress assessment
- do Archivist analysis once a week
- conduct student interviews
- conduct professor interview
- assess actions and data and plan for cycle 3
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED:
- Archivist analysis
- AR journal
- student survey
- professor interviews
EVALUATION:
I will evaluate the outcomes of this action by looking at the analytical data along with interviews of the cycle two action users. The mobility of the technology offers the potential for students to bring the discussion on course topics into the everyday places of their live outside the classrooms walls and schedule. I will look at the ways that this ubiquitous use has an effect on the informal learning. I will do this by looking at the quantity of discussions threads (Tweets) and on some level, the quality of the topics (were there academic conversations or was it about the lunch offerings in the cafeteria?) I will record faculty and student interviews to discern the impact that this action had on their learning experience from their perspective. I may gather some of this from a Twitter poll with these classes and professor. In addition, I will use my AR journal to add my perspective on the action taken and what can be learned from it for the next cycle.
PLAN Cycle Three AR question: If a Twitter channel is set up for a section of students and a Glassboard channel is set up in a second section of students and specific use guidelines are given, how will these mobile media technologies impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTION
In this cycle, the action I took was to set up a new Twitter user group - one team-teaching group of two teachers and their class and gave them a context for the use of this tool. I consulted extensively with this new set of participants to make sure that Twitter was a good fit for their pedagogical goals. The professors teach an education department course to student teachers working on their teaching credentials. In the current course, the students spend the majority of their course time, interning in local K-12 classrooms. In my pre-cycle discussions with the teachers, they thought that Twitter would be a good fit for their pedagogical goals of encouraging their students' academic collaboration outside of the classroom meeting times. The specific use guidelines given to this class involved the quantity of tweets in a week and the professors regularly gave direction for content. In the second group, I helped the student group from Cycle two (AV support student group) set up Glassboard accounts and had an initial discussion about the context for their participation in this action research project. I gave this second group the same use guidelines as the first.
EVALUATION
Mobile media technologies like Twitter and Glassboard allow users to communicate with a selected group without limitation of being bound to any one place. The mobility of these technologies and their simple set up seem to enable the acquisition of information and building of knowledge outside of the formal learning structure. The content of communications during this cycle between the students showed their concentration on academic collaboration. In this cycle of action research, the participants were primarily focused on their communications and collaborations during their out of class hours. While technology has been readily integrated in the formal learning environment of the classroom for presentational purposes, the personal mobile device is still viewed as too disruptive by most educators. In contrast, the knowledge building that happens in the less formal, or informal learning spaces of our lives seem to be greatly enhanced by the powerful mobile media devices that we all carry.
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED
- Tweet Archivist snapshot
- SurveyMonkey poll
- professor interviews
CYCLE FOUR RESEARCH QUESTION
If a Twitter channel is set up for one section of students and a Glassboard channel is set up in a second section of students and guidelines for using photos are included, how will these mobile media technologies impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTION
In this cycle 4 action, I added the action of including photos in the academic collaboration the students were engaged in with Twitter and Glassboard. The use guidelines added were to include at least one photo that helped illustrate an academic topic per week in Twitter and Glassboard discussions. Students were encouraged to add this action of including photos regularly to their discussions during this cycle. The focus of the collaboration for these groups were stated to be related to their academic work in building knowledge in the areas they were working on together. The hypothesis was that combining text and images would allow students to bring the learning that took place in their informal learning environments back into the formal learning environment of the classroom.
In this fourth and final cycle of my action research project, I continued with the same two groups from the previous cycle (one was a teacher credential students group and their two teachers using Twitter and one was an AV students group using Glassboard). I met with the faculty involved at the beginning of the cycle to plan for the action. The professors involved in the Twitter project were planning to present a paper on their part of this action research at a conference in April of this year. This added an extra level of engagement for these professors in the action. The two groups continued using the mobile tools in their academic collaborations outside the classroom with the inclusion of the use of pictures to convey ideas.
As a tech steward, my involvement was in the work to strategize with the users groups, help with the set up and implementation of the tools, guide the assessment and lead the reflection. I was not involved in the day-to-day Twitter or Glassboard conversations. To capture and assess the user group experience, I solicited responses to the same questions using a Surveymonkey poll and analyzed the data. It is the students’ response to their participation with these mobile media tools rather than their specific tweet-by-tweet discussions that I used to assess the action. Sample pictures were also coded and analyzed. Tweet Archive Twitter analysis app was used to show a sample of the academic collaboration topics during this cycle for the Twitter group. There were 16 students and two professors in the Twitter group and 7 students in the Glassboard group.
EVALUATION
Mobile media technologies refer to the specific devices (cell phones and Wi-Fi enabled tablets) as well as the Apps (Twitter, Glassboard etc.) that allow users to connect to and communicate with their world. Labeled as participatory technologies by some (Farkas, 2012), these tools may have the potential to enable a blurring of the lines between the formal and informal learning environments in our lives. The data gathered in this cycle shows how the inclusion of pictures in digital collaborations impacted academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom.
The 25 participants in this cycle used mobile media technologies that were originally designed for social communication, to work together on academic projects. The mobility of these tools was a good fit for their process as they were rarely in the same physical space at the same time. While they were able to connect using their laptops, the device of choice for these users was the smartphone. The web interface did allow for the 3 students who did not have a smartphone to participate in the discussions. The ubiquity of these mobile tools has been seen as a distraction in our learning environments as they are both a computer and a personal device that we all carry with us everywhere. Rather than turning these devices off or locking them away when they are brought into our learning environments, the data suggests the potential for strategic use of these devices in and out of the classroom.
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED
- Tweet Archivist snapshot
- SurveyMonkey poll
- professor interviews
The purpose of this action research project is to discover the effect of mobile media technologies on the learning thought of as "informal” that happens in the spaces and times outside of the classroom. Current research has shown that the use of mobile media tools has begun to change our understanding of place. It is possible that this change can be leveraged by schools to incorporate the academic collaboration and knowledge building that happens beyond the walls of the classroom into the students' "formal" learning environment. The impact that mobile media technologies have in this space is the focus of this action research project.
PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY:
The problem that I want solve, or stated differently, the opportunity I want take advantage of is a convergence of faculty interest in working with mobile media tools to encourage academic collaboration outside the classroom and the growing catalog of available academic technologies. I hear from faculty that they wish there was a way to encourage student discussion and dialogue outside of classroom hours, and even beyond the walls of the campus, that was something that students would naturally do rather than study groups that would need to be set up and managed. They are hoping for some form of organic application that students could easily adopt and use. What are the impacts that the use of these mobile media tools have on learning and communication? They are becoming virtual fixtures in our society How does their integration in education and the classroom impact these learning environments?
RESEARCH QUESTION:
Specific AR statement: What action can I take to discover the impact of mobile media technologies on academic collaboration and communication beyond the walls of the classroom?
BACKGROUND RESEARCH:
This research has helped frame my Action Research Project. My Lit Review resources along with my learning circle conversations have helped me focus the research on the impact of mobile technologies. The quote from Clay Shirky that we all love, where he points to a relationship of the more comfortable we become with technology, the more transformative it can be, is what I see all around me. As my cycle one action began right after cadre camp, my learning circle mates helped me stay grounded in what was taking place and helped me discern when cycle 1 was ending and cycle 2 was about to begin.
Alexander, B. (2004). Going nomadic: Mobile learning in higher education
Educause Review, 39(5).
Dewey, John (1966). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Free Press.
Evans, J. (2012). The second billion smartphone users: TechCrunch
Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/20/the-second-billion-smartphones/
Farkas, M. (2012). Participatory technologies, pedagogy 2.0 and information literacy.
Library Hi Tech, 30(1), 82-94.
Huang, C. D. and Behara, R. S. (2007). Outcome-driven experiential learning with Web 2.0. Journal of Information Systems Education, 18(3), pp. 329-36.
Kafka, F. (1971). An old manuscript from The complete stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken,.
LaMonica, M. (2006). Futurist: to fix education, think Web 2.0. CNET, available
at: http://news. cnet.com/Futurist-To-fix-education,-think-Web-2.0/2100-1032_3-6140175.html
List, J., & Bryant, B. (2009). Integrating interactive online content at an early
college high school: An exploration of Moodle, Ning and Twitter. Meridian Middle School Computer Technologies Journal, 12(1).
Roschelle, J. & Pea, R. (2002). A walk on the WILD side: how wireless handhelds may
change CSCL, International Journal of Cognition and Technology, pp. 51-60
Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without
organizations, New York: Penguin Press.
Smith, Frank (1998). The book of Learning and Forgetting. New York, NY: Teachers
College Press
Squire, K. (2009). Mobile Media Learning: Multiplicities of Place. On The Horizon,
17(1), 70-80.
Thibodeau, P. (2012, October 23). Gartner's Top 10 Tech trends for 2013.
Computerworld.
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE:
My membership in the CoP that is Westmont college, a residential, liberal arts, Christian, undergraduate college is that of tech steward. My role is split between making sure the audio visual equipment hums along day after day and consulting/advising faculty on academic technology best practice use.
MY ACTIONS
Cycle One Action Resesarch question: If I set up a Twitter pilot project in an academic course, how will use of this mobile media technology impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
Actions:
- researched other projects that used Twitter
- met with the professor to strategize how to fit this research with his pedagogical goals for his class
- developed a plan to implement "disposable" Twitter accounts for his classes (2 sections of about 35 each)
- The plan:
- separate class Twitter account for each class
- set up "disposable" Twitter accounts for each student
- show students how to "follow" the class account and each other
- attended classes first week of school and helped students set up accounts
- sign up for The Archivist (tweet archive.com) to monitor and analyze student activity
- follow up meeting with professor
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED:
- Twitter archive analysis
- AR journal
EVALUATION: In this first cycle, I did the planning and working with others to include them in the action of the research but it all happened so fast right after I got back from Cadre camp that some important details did not get included in this first cycle. I did meet with the professor of the courses and we both agreed that not only did this research project match his pedagogical goals, but it was a course worth taking. One of the things I feel I overlooked in this first cycle was that the students did not get much of a context for their part in the action. It's not that I took their tech level or sense of purpose for granted, I think that it all happened so fast that in a rush to implement at the beginning of the semester, the briefing that may have helped student involvement got overlooked. This is one of the first key pieces of information gleaned from cycle one, that students are not necessarily going to naturally adopt new technology just because they can. We think of this generation as being so digital, but without much of a context they did not adopt this new plan. The cycle began with a flurry of action setting up the logistics and then stepping back to let the students take it and run with it. The first week, the discussions were robust and the project showed promise. The second week, the student use of Twitter dropped to almost nothing. Twitter was a new tool for the professor and he became way too busy with the responsibilities he had for regular operation of his classes that he too stopped using the tool or talking to his class. I tried numerous times to meet with him to discuss and maybe take another path, but we were not able to meet. I felt at first that this was not going to work out, but it became clear that more clarity was needed for the professor and the students. While journaling about this, I realized that I had a group of students that, like a class, I had a connection with. I set up this same project for my student staff of 14 to discuss technology topics outside our work together. This gave me some hope that I might be able to have a more direct role in the action. To keep the data collecting the same, I did not give them much of a context aside from telling them that this was a topic I was researching for my Masters program. The same result for this group without much guidance, they did not naturally give this much time. In discussing my challenges with my Learning Circle, I realized that I was ready to take a modified action and begin cycle two. While I feel that there are things I could have done differently in this cycle, it did prove a valuable step in understanding the implementation of new technology in a CoP. I am taking what I learned in this first round of action and applying them to cycle two. So Cycle two will have the adjustment of adding a explanation of context to the students and clear guidelines to direct them in how to get the most out of this mobile media technology.
Cycle Two AR question:
If a Twitter channel is set up for three sections of students and specific use guidelines are given, how will this mobile media technology impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTIONS:
- meet with the professor to set new aspect of plan
- the plan:
- Professor will take class time to talk about the context of the research project
- Professor will tweet one class question per week and give class participation grading for student response
- I will meet with my student staff to talk about the context of the research project
- I will tweet two group questions each week (on Tuesday and Thursday mornings)
- meet with Professor for action research project progress assessment
- do Archivist analysis once a week
- conduct student interviews
- conduct professor interview
- assess actions and data and plan for cycle 3
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED:
- Archivist analysis
- AR journal
- student survey
- professor interviews
EVALUATION:
I will evaluate the outcomes of this action by looking at the analytical data along with interviews of the cycle two action users. The mobility of the technology offers the potential for students to bring the discussion on course topics into the everyday places of their live outside the classrooms walls and schedule. I will look at the ways that this ubiquitous use has an effect on the informal learning. I will do this by looking at the quantity of discussions threads (Tweets) and on some level, the quality of the topics (were there academic conversations or was it about the lunch offerings in the cafeteria?) I will record faculty and student interviews to discern the impact that this action had on their learning experience from their perspective. I may gather some of this from a Twitter poll with these classes and professor. In addition, I will use my AR journal to add my perspective on the action taken and what can be learned from it for the next cycle.
PLAN Cycle Three AR question: If a Twitter channel is set up for a section of students and a Glassboard channel is set up in a second section of students and specific use guidelines are given, how will these mobile media technologies impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTION
In this cycle, the action I took was to set up a new Twitter user group - one team-teaching group of two teachers and their class and gave them a context for the use of this tool. I consulted extensively with this new set of participants to make sure that Twitter was a good fit for their pedagogical goals. The professors teach an education department course to student teachers working on their teaching credentials. In the current course, the students spend the majority of their course time, interning in local K-12 classrooms. In my pre-cycle discussions with the teachers, they thought that Twitter would be a good fit for their pedagogical goals of encouraging their students' academic collaboration outside of the classroom meeting times. The specific use guidelines given to this class involved the quantity of tweets in a week and the professors regularly gave direction for content. In the second group, I helped the student group from Cycle two (AV support student group) set up Glassboard accounts and had an initial discussion about the context for their participation in this action research project. I gave this second group the same use guidelines as the first.
EVALUATION
Mobile media technologies like Twitter and Glassboard allow users to communicate with a selected group without limitation of being bound to any one place. The mobility of these technologies and their simple set up seem to enable the acquisition of information and building of knowledge outside of the formal learning structure. The content of communications during this cycle between the students showed their concentration on academic collaboration. In this cycle of action research, the participants were primarily focused on their communications and collaborations during their out of class hours. While technology has been readily integrated in the formal learning environment of the classroom for presentational purposes, the personal mobile device is still viewed as too disruptive by most educators. In contrast, the knowledge building that happens in the less formal, or informal learning spaces of our lives seem to be greatly enhanced by the powerful mobile media devices that we all carry.
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED
- Tweet Archivist snapshot
- SurveyMonkey poll
- professor interviews
CYCLE FOUR RESEARCH QUESTION
If a Twitter channel is set up for one section of students and a Glassboard channel is set up in a second section of students and guidelines for using photos are included, how will these mobile media technologies impact academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom?
ACTION
In this cycle 4 action, I added the action of including photos in the academic collaboration the students were engaged in with Twitter and Glassboard. The use guidelines added were to include at least one photo that helped illustrate an academic topic per week in Twitter and Glassboard discussions. Students were encouraged to add this action of including photos regularly to their discussions during this cycle. The focus of the collaboration for these groups were stated to be related to their academic work in building knowledge in the areas they were working on together. The hypothesis was that combining text and images would allow students to bring the learning that took place in their informal learning environments back into the formal learning environment of the classroom.
In this fourth and final cycle of my action research project, I continued with the same two groups from the previous cycle (one was a teacher credential students group and their two teachers using Twitter and one was an AV students group using Glassboard). I met with the faculty involved at the beginning of the cycle to plan for the action. The professors involved in the Twitter project were planning to present a paper on their part of this action research at a conference in April of this year. This added an extra level of engagement for these professors in the action. The two groups continued using the mobile tools in their academic collaborations outside the classroom with the inclusion of the use of pictures to convey ideas.
As a tech steward, my involvement was in the work to strategize with the users groups, help with the set up and implementation of the tools, guide the assessment and lead the reflection. I was not involved in the day-to-day Twitter or Glassboard conversations. To capture and assess the user group experience, I solicited responses to the same questions using a Surveymonkey poll and analyzed the data. It is the students’ response to their participation with these mobile media tools rather than their specific tweet-by-tweet discussions that I used to assess the action. Sample pictures were also coded and analyzed. Tweet Archive Twitter analysis app was used to show a sample of the academic collaboration topics during this cycle for the Twitter group. There were 16 students and two professors in the Twitter group and 7 students in the Glassboard group.
EVALUATION
Mobile media technologies refer to the specific devices (cell phones and Wi-Fi enabled tablets) as well as the Apps (Twitter, Glassboard etc.) that allow users to connect to and communicate with their world. Labeled as participatory technologies by some (Farkas, 2012), these tools may have the potential to enable a blurring of the lines between the formal and informal learning environments in our lives. The data gathered in this cycle shows how the inclusion of pictures in digital collaborations impacted academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom.
The 25 participants in this cycle used mobile media technologies that were originally designed for social communication, to work together on academic projects. The mobility of these tools was a good fit for their process as they were rarely in the same physical space at the same time. While they were able to connect using their laptops, the device of choice for these users was the smartphone. The web interface did allow for the 3 students who did not have a smartphone to participate in the discussions. The ubiquity of these mobile tools has been seen as a distraction in our learning environments as they are both a computer and a personal device that we all carry with us everywhere. Rather than turning these devices off or locking them away when they are brought into our learning environments, the data suggests the potential for strategic use of these devices in and out of the classroom.
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED
- Tweet Archivist snapshot
- SurveyMonkey poll
- professor interviews