Qualitative Analysis of Student Comments Collected Through the Social On-Line Learning Platform Classroom Salon
Mentor 1
Anja Blecking
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
29-4-2016 1:30 PM
End Date
29-4-2016 3:30 PM
Description
College instructors often integrate reading into their curriculum to support student’s development of deeper understanding of the content and foster critical thinking. Unfortunately studies have shown that students often do not complete the assigned reading and therefore miss this valuable opportunity. Instructors in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department at UW-Milwaukee implemented the social learning platform Classroom Salon (CLS) into their high-enrollment introductory chemistry courses to counteract this alarming trend. They regularly assign content reading in ten key concept areas prior to covering the topic in class asking students to read and annotate the text, pointing out text passages they do not understand, have comments to, and answering few questions that have been embedded in the text. Students usually work on these assignments alone, but also have the opportunity to comment on their classmates’ annotation which opens up the opportunity for interactive content discussion. Real-time comment analysis then allows instructors to detect student questions and also student misconception regarding chemical concepts and are able to address these in lecture prior to any course examination. While quantitative analysis has already shown that the implementation of Classroom Salon positively impacts student course performance, this project concentrates on qualitative comment analysis. The presentation will describe the design and results of the analysis carried out utilizing the data analysis software NVivo. Individual student comments have been organized in distinct categories and emerging subcategories investigating correlations between existing content conceptions or misconceptions and student confidence levels.
Qualitative Analysis of Student Comments Collected Through the Social On-Line Learning Platform Classroom Salon
Union Wisconsin Room
College instructors often integrate reading into their curriculum to support student’s development of deeper understanding of the content and foster critical thinking. Unfortunately studies have shown that students often do not complete the assigned reading and therefore miss this valuable opportunity. Instructors in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department at UW-Milwaukee implemented the social learning platform Classroom Salon (CLS) into their high-enrollment introductory chemistry courses to counteract this alarming trend. They regularly assign content reading in ten key concept areas prior to covering the topic in class asking students to read and annotate the text, pointing out text passages they do not understand, have comments to, and answering few questions that have been embedded in the text. Students usually work on these assignments alone, but also have the opportunity to comment on their classmates’ annotation which opens up the opportunity for interactive content discussion. Real-time comment analysis then allows instructors to detect student questions and also student misconception regarding chemical concepts and are able to address these in lecture prior to any course examination. While quantitative analysis has already shown that the implementation of Classroom Salon positively impacts student course performance, this project concentrates on qualitative comment analysis. The presentation will describe the design and results of the analysis carried out utilizing the data analysis software NVivo. Individual student comments have been organized in distinct categories and emerging subcategories investigating correlations between existing content conceptions or misconceptions and student confidence levels.
