Social Learning for Engineering

8/14/2019 Social Learning for Engineering

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Social Learning for Engineering

By Kalyan Chatterjea, first published: March 2004

The world-wide-web is being explored by the Singapore Maritime Academy of

Singapore Polytechnic with the aim of improving the learning platform for varied

groups of learners. A Blackboard-based case study was recently conducted at the

Singapore Maritime Academy, where the viewpoints of the learners were given the

central stage and these learner inputs were further

processed by the learners themselves through

individual as well as group projects to build up

individual domain knowledge through constructivist

approaches. The study emphasized the social

dimension of learning (Vygotsky, 1978) through the

asynchronous e-learning channel, which was

considered essential for validating the learners own

knowledge domain.

The study was done for Shipboard Training &

Assessment, which was an Advanced Diploma

module in Marine Engineering for practicing marine

engineers. The module was originally taught as a

classroom-based module. To switch to an online

mode the participants needed extensive support. The

majority of the students in the module were foreign

students having minimal exposure to computers and

most of them had to be literally coaxed to use the

computers to communicate.

Reflective Practice

The domain knowledge was made available to the

students via Blackboard. The students were then

asked to go through these resources in Blackboard

and put some reflective entries on any of the related

issues on the Blackboard Discussion Forum. To

create a non-threatening environment and to entice

the students initially, they were assured that all of

them would get 10% marks if they provided a single

input on any of the relevant issues, which would not

even be qualitatively graded. These 10% marks were

originally attributed to student attendance in the

normal classroom-based module. A further 10%

marks were attributed to a short input on the

Blackboard Discussion Board for their entry on

critical reflections on some specific topics. Again

they were assured of these marks without any


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qualitative grading. Originally, these marks were attributed to the tutorials submission

for the module. The temptations of 20% easy marks proved to be too attractive and

about 80% of students gave these initial inputs.

What followed was interesting, as some of the issues raised by students triggered

further discussion and a flood of inputs poured in. It appeared that as the discussion

topics became of interest to the learners, they got motivated themselves and no furtherextrinsic intervention was necessary on the part of the facilitator.

As the number of inputs exceeded expectations, the discussion forum became difficult

to track individual learner inputs as the forum was only structured to track the

various threads of discussion. To tackle this problem, 47 individual forums were

created for all 47 participants, and these became their online portfolios. The next step

was to encourage learners to delve into the knowledge domain of their peers. An

individual project was planned, where the participants were asked to go through the

submissions by their classmates and prepare a reflective summary of these inputs. The

students had the benefit of going through the different student perspectives of the

issues discussed and constructing their own meanings in the summary. The summaries

were also posted on the individual student forums and became a part of their portfolio.These summaries were graded.

Group Project

The final assignment for the module was the GroupProject. The groups were asked to work on Specific

Training Procedures, which were earlier worked on by

the individuals as their individual project. The group

had to critically look through these earlier submissions

and suggest improvements. The findings were finally

presented as web-based slide shows.

Communication and Collaboration

With this emphasis on communicative processes, the

focus of the module shifted from content-based

approach, where the instructor plays a key role in

disbursing the content resources to one of

communication-rich, collaborative scenario, where the

group members were depending on each other for their

knowledge source.

Although the module started on a shaky note, the

establishment of the viable learning community was

probably possible due to following reasons:

It was ensured that the group members hadadequate knowledge or support to handle

technology related issues.

There was adequate extrinsic motivation, when


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20% of the module marks could be obtained by participating in the

asynchronous discussion forum.

The novelty of this method made the learners curious to join in this newactivity of learning through Internet.

The individual WebPages made the learners conscious of their own image inthe public domain and made and effort to improve the quality of their inputs.

An effort was made on part of the instructor to reduce the stress level in thecourse and this led to some enjoyment in participating in this new learning

environment.

This negotiation of knowledge though computer-mediation, among peers in the class,

was very new to students. This gave credibility to their interactions as the consensus

among all in the class validated their directions in discussions.

Multiple Perspectives

As we experiment with the online environment, some of its potential benefits become

more apparent in these situations. For example, theonline asynchronous forums or discussion boards

create a medium of knowledge capture, particularly

when dealing with mature students with diverse

experience. This was evident in the case study where

multiple perspectives of the content knowledge was

generated and shared by the learners. It became clear

that such interactions could lead to development of

learning communities with potential for growth of

both the community and a resulting knowledgebase,

which gets automatically updated during these

processes.

Learning Communities

To capitalise from these findings, it appears that the

institutes of higher learning could do well to create

such learning communities in various disciplines and

perhaps in conjunction with the industry to make

these resulting knowledge-bases useful for both

academia for pursuing research and teaching while

for the industry to tap these as knowledge

repositories for their day-to-day problem solving.

Reference

Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological

Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published

1934).


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Author

Kalyan Chatterjea

Kalyan Chatterjea is Course Manager at the Singapore Maritime Academy, Singapore

Polytechnic

Documents

Social Learning for Engineering