Keith Brown – @KeithBrownBath
Dr Julie Letchford – @JulieLetchford
Dr Albert Bolhuis – @microbol
University of Bath
The app described is part of an on-going project ‘the App Factory’ which aims to establish an app eco-system for Peer Learning (PL). PL is increasingly important for higher education (1-3) and successful PL schemes have been reported (2, 4).
Although the initial focus of the project was for students and alumni to be able to create and share apps, in practice there appears to be more appetite for social media which has been an increasing influence for the project (5-11). As a result, a key output has been the implementation of ‘Study-Space’, a PL app designed in collaboration with students and academics.
Study-Space provides a safe community environment for students to ask questions anonymously and to learn from academics and peers. Designed to be easy and convenient to use, it exhibits many of the benefits associated with Peer Learning on-line and in the classroom (1-4).
The app has been trialled with second year pharmacy students studying the unit ‘Applied Pharmaceutical Microbiology’. Users are limited to a closed group comprising the teaching staff and 140 students enrolled on the programme unit. Some 60% of students have used the app, enabling a PL based community that also allows academics to make posts and run quick-questions or voting competitions that are useful for start/stop/continue questionnaires or feedback.
The app has facilitated a vibrant community of students that overcomes some of the barriers identified using main-stream social media apps:
- many students perceive their main-steam social media as highly ‘personal’ and do not want to use it for ‘work’. Study-Space is entirely ‘work’ oriented.
- the data for Study-Space resides on internal University of Bath database servers and is private and secure.
- Postings can be (and mostly are) anonymous
- The app is only available to a closed community, and cannot be shared or exploited by others
Importantly, all of the student cohort are able to engage with the app which is available in the following formats:
- iOS
- Android
- Web
An on-line student evaluation survey is on-going. Feedback so far is promising and indicates that the app is easy-to-use, and useful for supporting learning. There is agreement from students that the app increased feedback and that it facilitated a community of students and academics working together. There is also evidence that students would like to use the app for other programme units.
This is further supported by a separate end-of-unit evaluation conducted in May 2016 where students provided positive feedback and expressed a desire to use the app for other units.
Feedback from teaching staff is complementary: The Study-Space app enables engagement outside of the classroom and is convenient, easy-to-use with a minimal workload. It enables staff to easily collect student feedback to monitor how well students have understood the teaching materials.
Also, there has been significant interest from academics. As a consequence the software is undergoing further development for trials in other departments starting in September, with a long term view to pilot the app at other universities and colleges.
References
- Hammond, J.A., Bithell, C.P., Jones, L., Bidgood. P 2010. A first year experience of student-directed peer-assisted learning. Active Learning in Higher Education 11(3) 201–212. http://alh.sagepub.com/content/11/3/201.refs
- Keenan, C. 2014. Mapping student-led peer learning in the UK. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Peer_led_learning_Keenan_Nov_14-final.pdf
- Dawson, P., van der Meer, J., Skalicky, J., Cowley, K.. 2014. On the effectiveness of supplemental instruction: A systematic review of supplemental instruction and peer assisted study sessions literature between 2001 and 2010. Review of Educational Research 84 (4), pp. 609–639
- Beaumont, T.J., Mannion, A.P. and Shen, B.O. 2012. From the Campus to the Cloud: The Online Peer Assisted Learning Scheme. J. Peer Learning 5 (6), 21-31
- Balakrishnana, V. and Gan. C.L. 2015. Students’ learning styles and their effects on the use of social media technology for learning. Telematics and Informatics 33(3) 808–821
- Bowman, N.D., Akcaoglu, M. 2014. “I see smart people!”: Using Facebook to supplement cognitive and affective learning in the university mass lecture. Internet and Higher Education 23 (2014) 1–8
- Hopkins, B. 2016. Advantages of Using Social Media in Education. https://www.academiaapps.com/advantages-social-media-education/
- Clark, D. 2016. Social media as powerful method of learning – the evidence. http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Social+media+as+powerful+method+of+learning+%E2%80%93+the+evidence
- Purvis, A., Rodger, H. and Beckingham. S. 2016. Engagement or Distraction: The use of Social Media for Learning in Higher Education. Student Engagement and Experience Journal Volume 5, Issue 1
- C. Haythornthwaite. 2015. Social media use in teaching: Results from a questionnaire on use in higher education. Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYo4pHfwPII
- Brown, A. and Addison, B. 2015. The role of social media in undergraduate pharmacy education. Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference 2015. https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/socmedhe/files/2015/12/aly_brown_SP1.mp3