Inclusive learning: creating interactive asynchronous resources and discussing their pedagogical benefits.

We are aware that discussion boards in higher education can often look like the Gobi Desert, (empty and quiet). So, at the Global Business School for Health (GBSH), we started to explore how could bring life back to the discussion board. Students were asked before our intervention what they would rate discussion boards (out of five) they gave it a very generous 3.33 (see graph 1.0). The main reasons supporting this 3.33 were the ability for discussion boards to increase confidence (17% strongly agree, 50% agree) and satisfaction (11% strongly agree and 28% agree) (see graph 1.1). Roughly 40% of students believe that discussion forums do not help their employability, this is something we are still working on (see graph 1.1). We decided to set up a weekly task to help them build their professional profile however this fell flat for reasons I will mention later.

One student articulated something that I will develop into a learning resource for academics at GBSH,

I don’t feel comfortable commenting on my colleagues’ answers because I worry about being over-positive or critical and perceived as offensive. It would be good to have some commenting tips to make it constructive and see some mock answers and comments to make the discussions helpful, polite and empowering.

If you have any great resources on peer-to-peer (PTP) please let me know via a comment on this post.

First step

The first step was to figure out how we could increase the intrinsic motivation of students. Our idea was that if you increase the interactivity and number of students posting it would look after itself. So we decided to relate the online discussion forums to the face-to-face seminars. This meant the students need to answer preset questions before they came into class. However, this was not sustainable. The discussion boards that were not monitored by teachers failed to take shape, those that were monitored were full of life and bright ideas. Monitoring in this circumstance meant keeping an eye on who was and wasn’t posting as well as posting stimuli and feedback. So, the academics and post-graduate teaching assistants monitor these spaces. The aforementioned ‘job readiness discussion forums’ were not effective because they were not monitored.

Second step

Now that we knew that monitoring was effective the second step was to create a sense of continuity therefore discussion forums were included each week as module activities to assist in preparation for the seminar. This created a stronger community and further highlighted students who were not interacting. To find out who was not interacting we used Moodle logs, if necessary these students could be approached and asked if they needed support.

Third step (pedagogical developments)

The third step was to collect data on what the students thought about the discussion forums. We used MSForms and Menti. The best method for collecting information was to go to classes and get small groups to complete the MSForm. From the data we can see an overwhelming response that discussion boards were beneficial (see graph 2.1 and 2.2).

Next steps

• Collect feedback on what students would now rate discussion boards out of five.
• Use the same methodology of monitor and continuity in all modules.
• Develop a discussion board that develops job readiness.

By now if you haven’t heard of ‘Menti’ you’ve been on a holiday that everyone would be jealous of.

Mentimeter is a tool that allows for synchronous data collection as well as asynchronous data collection. I will focus on the asynchronous nature of Menti.

Our lectures are flipped classrooms at GBSH so students do not get to ask questions live in the lecture and the lecturer cannot gauge the level of understanding of their students. However, as a way to mitigate the lack of interaction in our lectures, all module leads were trained on how to use Mentimeter.  Below is what all academics were trained on

Step 1: Create your question on Mentimeter.com,

Step 2: Make sure that question is turned to audience pace

Step 3: Download the specific menti question’s QR code and copy into the lecture

Step 4:  Give explicit instructions to answer the questions in your narrated Powerpint.

Step 5:  Now you have the student’s thoughts being collected in a space where you can access and reflect upon in preparation for the face-to-face sessions.

What does the data say?

In a flipped classroom interactive lectures significantly improve the learning experience (see graph 3.0).

Next steps

• Expand upon the idea of what is an interactive lecture and look at new learning technologies
• Follow up with module leads who may not have used interactive lectures

You may not have heard about Microsoft Sway, it is a tool that allows you to make a website as part of the education journey of your students. It is freely available to everyone at UCL. If you have used Rise before then Sway is a much clunkier, outdated model of Rise. If you are looking to author content, I would personally stick with Moodle especially as Moodle 4.0 is around the corner. Albeit the data (see graph 4.0) shows that students had a good experience this did not capture the issues that students faced with logging in and hence my advice is to avoid using Sway unless you have time to experiment.

Next steps

• Focus on student feedback about not being able to log in.
• See if there are alternatives to Sway that are freely available.

We all know someone that has said something akin to ‘you have to listen to this podcast’. Why are well-curated recording sessions so entertaining? Is it because you do not have to watch a screen allowing you to clean the house, drive or nap on a long-haul flight? At GBSH we looked at how podcasts can be used in education. Below is the task outline.

Students, in week 5 of a 10 weeks module produced a podcast [using their phone] for an economics module. They had one hour to read an abstract of a scientific article in economics that mentioned some course content. This abstract was just the trigger for students to then produce a podcast that would take the abstract as the starting point to present a concept in the course content. – Simon the Module lead

What does the data say?

 We collected data using Microsoft Forms.

The regression confirms that enjoying doing the podcast triggers students to declare that they have learned more, Enjoying doing the podcast increases the probability of declaring one has learned by 37%.

• A bit more than two-thirds (70%) of the students declare that their knowledge increased when doing the podcast.
• A bit less than two-thirds (63%) of the students declare that their confidence in learning Economics increased when doing the podcast.
• Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the students would listen to other people podcasts.

Next steps

• Develop a podcast in another module to be able to compare student perspectives.
• Run the podcast in the same module to see how varying cohorts respond to creating podcasts.
• Consider starting a student-led podcast for Global Business School for Health.