A Case Study: Embedding ICT for Effective Classroom ...

A Case Study: Embedding ICT for Effective Classroom Teaching & Learning Sandeep Vasant1, Bipin Mehta1 1

School of Computer Studies, Ahmedabad University, Gujarat, India

{sandeep.vasant,bv.mehta}@ahduni.edu.in

Abstract. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has presence in all sectors and so as in Education too. Instructors, Learners, Administrators and Researchers of education field are thriving for innovative teaching pedagogy to make the learning experience effectual. In this paper we have discussed the use of current trends in ICT such as BYOD, LMS and learning through Cloud Computing. We have also summarized the responses of teachers and students on the campus through online survey. Analysis shows the significant improvement in class participation and examination result of the students.

Keywords: BYOD, ICT, LMS, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, SCS, Moodle, MOOC, TED, NPTEL.

1

Introduction

In today’s technological arena traditional “Chalk and Talk” teaching pedagogy is either completely replaced with interactive e-learning tools/software’s or it is used in integration with ICT enabled tools/resources. ICT has touched almost all people and in all sectors at large and education is no exception in that. Researchers and Teachers are trying to find the ways since decade to make the teaching-learning interactive, effective and interesting. Use of ICT now a day is common amongst students and teachers. Hence effective use of e-learning tools is also common while teaching and learning. For effective communication with students, University/Institutes uses the various communication technologies such as SMS, e-mail, Portal and hence use of smart devices such as Smart phone, tablets and laptops quickly become ubiquitous amongst students. As per author, college students are part of big chunk of the heaviest user of technology. Findings of this research show that embedding ICT into classroom will encourage students to learn through smart devices [1] [17, 18]. Only challenge is to provide the sate-of-the-art Infrastructure which turns the traditional classroom into smart class room. Majority of the universities/institutes has the classrooms equipped with audio and visual resources along with internet connectivity. When teachers integrate the multimedia usage (audio, video, animation software’s), it enhances the capability of students to learn and conceptualization of the topic which

is being taught. Furthermore, Recording of such lectures/sessions will be useful for students either in their absentia or during their revision [2] [19 20 21]. In developed countries majority of the people are exposed to the use of ICT at fullest while developing country like India is still in the implementation phase of integrating ICT in education especially for effective and interactive classroom teaching [7]. Researcher in [3] has discussed the integration of ICT plays a major role to revive the economy of the country. Educational institutes foster and train students to use the ICT as vehicle to get prosper in their knowledge. Hence, use of ICT in classroom cannot be viewed as a burden. As per [6], it is teacher’s conviction and approach influence successful integration of ICT into teaching-learning process. It is only the positive stance of teachers’ for the effective use of ICT in education can truly provide interesting insight about the subject knowledge with its applicability.

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Current Trends in ICT for Smart Class Room  BYOD

BYOD stands for “Bring Your Own Device”. Concept is to give freedom to people to allow bringing their own devices at work place or class room but in a controlled manner. Concept emerged by the introduction of iPhones. Senior executives wanted to use their iPhones rather than a Blackberry. BYOD devices typically have an access to organization’s email, file servers, web servers and databases. BYOD is happening trend in Business and Education sector both. BYOD has certain benefits for educational institutes which are as follows [4][15][16], ─ ─ ─ ─ ─

Reduced Hardware Costs, costs shifts to the user of the device Availability of information anytime, any places any where Seamless Communication Makes the most of Cloud Technologies Reduced Software Licensing Cost

However, while allowing BYOD in Education or at work place there are few things to consider which are, continuous monitoring for intruder, best security policy, ethical and staff issue, heterogeneity conflicts such as Android/IOS/Windows devices and their communication with your server [4][16]. Author in [5], studied on Schools going Mobile in Western Australian independent schools and come up with interesting findings about m-learning. He revels in his research that use of BYOD will motivate and encourage students to conceptualize their subject knowledge and improves the student learning but at the same time there will be a challenge to manage the technology carefully to see its ethical usage and staff roles to deploy such technology in the campus.

 Cloud Computing Learning through the medium of Internet is contemporary now days and in near future Cloud Computing will hold a considerable stack in education. Through which, learners or instructors will have an advantage to complete their task with less cost by exploiting the available cloud based application in their day to day routing for teaching or learning. Cloud Computing enables user to consume the services on lease provided by the service provider such as Google or Amazon. To access the Cloud Computing services user just need a simple computer regardless of the back end platforms. There are various services which are available on Cloud are SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). In this paper author has presented a Framework for Cloud base e-Learning and shown some interesting result that suggest that soon e-learning will certainly steer in a new era of Cloud Computing [8].  Learning Management System (LMS) Learning Management System is a Software Application developed for effective management of a course to provide an effective training to students. It is a smart tool which allows teacher or student to interact with each other. Colleges or Universities are using LMS for recording Attendance, Grades, Assignments, Quiz and many more day to day activities of students. Typically LMS works on intranet or internet depends on the policy of the University/College. Objective of implementing LMS is to facilitate students and teacher to access their work and interact from anywhere and anytime [9]. There are few popular LMS adopted by many universities such as Moodle (Modular Object Oriented e-learning), Blackboard, Piazza, Sakai etc [11, 12, 13, 14].

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Embedding ICT for Class Room Teaching-Learning @School of Computer Studies, Ahmedabad University.

School of Computer Studies (SCS) is running Master of Computer Application course and is affiliated to Ahmedabad University in Gujarat, India. SCS has adopted the state of the art infrastructure to meet the requirement for contemporary education and innovative teaching – learning pedagogy. It is equipped with latest IT infrastructure and use the concept of BYOD and Cloud Campus through server virtualization. Each classroom is having audio visual resource with plug and play mobile devices. Figure – 1 shows the class room enabled with BYOD concept. Teachers and Students can bring their mobile devices and plug and play through Wi-Fi or LAN connection and perform their day to day college activities such as reading, completing lab assignments, watching educational video by connecting to a college server easily.

Fig. 1. BYOD Enabled Class Room@SCS

Figure-2 depicts the implementation strategy of Server Virtualization in the campus. One Physical Server is partitioned to run number of secure virtual server which caters the different kinds of user for different functionalities such as Mail, File and Database server. It also benefits in terms of scalability of users either increasing or decreasing. So in a single classroom different students may access different virtual servers under one roof of server virtualization [10]. State of the art IT infrastructure gives the flexibility with ease to teach and learn in the campus. It also motivates students to stay longer period of time in the campus which will increase their duration of learning and sharing the educational tasks with their peers.

Fig. 2. Strategy for Server Virtualization (Source: x2technologysolutions)

Figure- 3 Shows the screenshots of the LMS - Moodle implemented on the college server along with (24*7) availability on intranet and internet both. Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Learning) is an open source project which facilitates teachers and students to interact for online course training and learning. Moodle is widely popular and in practice in many Indian and foreign universities/colleges. Moodle has salient

features starting from sharing Class Notes, Power Point Presentations, Online Assignment Management, Forum Discussion, Multiple Choice Questions Quiz, Blogs, RSS feeds, Wikis, Embedding Audio & Video URLs, User Administration and Online Notice Board etc.

Fig. 3. Online Course with some activities created on Moodle for teacher student interaction

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Results and Discussion of online survey of Teachers and Students on the campus

Online survey is carried out to know the impact of embedding ICT in class room and campus for teaching and learning process. Responses of 18 teachers and nearly 150 post graduate students have been recorded. The questions and consolidated responses of students and teachers are shown in table-1.

Findings of this survey indicate that use of BYOD is very useful in classroom teaching and it gives the greater flexibility to students and teacher to complete their task with ease. It also reveals that e-learning tools like Moodle is being used extensively for Online Assignment, Quiz, forum discussion, blogs etc. which not only helps in increasing the participation in class discussions but also improves the final result of whole class. Out of 18 teachers 12 are using other e-learning tools such as MOOC, TED Talk and Videos from NPTEL to extend the knowledge beyond the curriculum. Whether Teacher or Student 99% of them are using college server from outside campus as well which helps them to study and interact with each other for doubt solution. At last, overall result of this survey indicates that educational institute should leverage the ICT for effective teaching pedagogy. Embedding ICT in classroom learning has high potential and provides a greater clarity to students for understanding a particular topic.

Sr. No. 1 2 3 4

Question Please select your role in your institute. Are you aware of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Concept? Are you using your Mobile Device in Campus for your day to day activity? If Your answer to previous question is YES, Do you feel it gives you a greater flexibility to complete your day to day routine?

5

You use Moodle

6

Do you use Moodle from Outside Campus?

7

Which feature of Moodle from following, you are using for your course?

8

9

10

If You are a Teacher, do you see increase participation/interest of Students in Moodle based learning as compared to traditional teaching-learning Whether you are a Teacher or Student, have you noticed significant improvement in result after using ICT based Teaching-Learning. Do you use any other tools other than Moodle for Teaching - Learning

Response 15% - Teacher 85% - Student 90% - Yes 10% - No 85% - Yes 15% - No 36% - Strongly Agree 55% - Agree 2% - Disagree 47% - Extensively 53% - Moderate 0% - Not at all 99% - Yes 1% - No 93% - Online Assignment 60% - Assignment Evaluation & Feedback 79% - Online Quiz 50% - Forum Discussion 20% - Blogs 4% - RSS Feeds 9% - Embedding Audio/Video 13% - Other 29% - Yes 6% - No 11% - Maybe 74% - Yes 3% - No 23% - May be 27% - MOOC 18% - TED Talk 18% - NPTEL 57% - Other

Table 1. Responses of the survey questions

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Conclusion

The objective of this cases study was to explore the perception of Teachers and Students about embeding ICT for effective teaching pedagogy in a classroom at School of Computer Studies, Ahmedabad University. Analysis of this sutdy finds the significant improvement in class participation and result both. Furthermore, findings of this study will be useful to other educational institutes or universities who are yet to embed ICT or are in the process of embeding ICT to their classrooms. Challenges could be to adopt the new technology, skilled staff and an extensive training to be

given to the users. The success of this stretagy is highly depends on effective involvement of all the stack holders of the implementing insititute or university.

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