Social Homework
http://eduDOTonline.com
Cooperative Online Learning Platform – Better Learning Solutions for the Connected World
Zvonko Hlousek and Thomas Gredig
Department of Physics & Astronomy, CSU Long Beach
Abstract:
The Social Homework is designed to allow students to effectively communicate
and work in small teams to solve problems, discuss lecture material, and
review material.
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Most importantly, students are allowed to actively contribute, mentor peers,
synthesize, create, and evaluate course material. The Social Homework
website has the feeling of a social network.
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There are several key innovations, including creation of micro-communities,
automatic role assignment, instant peer-feedback, textbook and lecture notes
integration, grading boards, extensive behavioral statistics, smart-phone
support, and an advanced equation editor.
Key Features:
Instructor Tools:
• Automatic group assignments: students are grouped into micro-communities
• Automatic role assignments to groups
• Inbox messaging center
• Personalization of account with image and notifications
• Ability to upload images from a local device
• Advanced editor for equations (LaTeX) and images
• Like and thank you support
• Subscription and Email notification management
• Assignment due dates
• Showcase with group results
• Sortable statistics and grading tables for instructors
• Custom Digital Publishing platform for Class material
• iPhone, iPad, etc. compatible styling sheets
◇Automatic grading options
◇Progress reports and graphs
Motivation:
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3)Traditional paper textbooks in sciences are difficult to use for students and
have become unnecessarily bulky and lengthy. A more personalized approach
is needed that answers specific student questions in a shorter and more
manageable fashion. The publishing component of the SHW allows each
instructor to selectively use customized materials that best fits a particular
student population.
Before
Skeptic comment: “The area was given in cm2. To convert to m2 you have to
multiply by .0001 instead of .01.”
I am I’m not sure I can rely
on comments from other
students to help me find the
correct answer
“At first I was skeptical about how Social Homework would benefit my learning experience in
Physics. But using it has helped me in how to tackle homework problems and to understand
how to apply formulas and concepts to different kinds of problems.”
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“The Social Homework forums were beneficial in collaborating with other students and
learning from each other. A good number of people were signed in when I went online, so it
was reassuring to know that students of the class are participating on the forums and that if I
had a question or wanted to look up something, the forums were a good source to turn to.”
How much time on average,
weekly, did you spent on
SHW?
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“Doing my duty for our group's social homework, reading other groups' questions, making
enough comments, and having the pressure of writing comments so that they get 'liked'
every week made students too competitive to get some points.”
“I think the social homework website is a good idea if used correctly: extra homework help,
extra online problems, discussions, etc. However, most of this can already be found online
on WileyPlus. SHW just presents it in a more user-friendly format.”
Individual work, for 3 units about 9
hours of work
Social Homework
(Physics)
Develop Deeper Understanding
“I agree with this approach to use Faradays. I think that the problem is
actually stating that the magnetic field is 60 degrees from the axis of the
coils. It seems to me that the coils lie across the chest on the x axis and
stretch to increase their area as the lungs expand along the y-axis.”
“Your question is similar to my group’s in the way that we both had the
concept of using a camera faced in to the water and finding the angle of the
refraction ray. … we decided to use something involving the thin lens
equation.”
Self-­‐Reflection
Main Site with Discussion Threads:
“Guys I found another mistake in my calculations. … The error lies in the fact
that the incident and refractive rays are at different angles (the picture threw
me off) so it’s not a perfect triangle like it looks.”
Group homework, automatic groups
of 5-6 students with assigned roles
Personalized
images.
Result is important, documentation of Path is important, the path
how the result is absent
emphasizes the concept
Bookmarking.
Specific problem, details provided,
number crunching
After
Having specific responsibilities
for each assignment has helped
to keep me engaged in Social
Homework activities.
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Traditional Homework
(Physics)
Peer-­‐Instruction
“[..]- if you could make the drawing more clear by labeling all parameters. …
could you also label them? (nwater = 1.333, etc) as this would make the
diagram a lot clearer.”
I have found SHW
activities helpful for
thinking about how to
solve Physics problems
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2)Increasingly, students have become more sophisticated using Internet
resources to circumvent the intended goals to work on homework assignments.
Detailed solutions to most textbook questions can be found online. Role:
2 = Director
3 = Researcher
4 = Executer
5 = Sceptic
Student Examples
I have found online activities
(WileyPlus, Webassign, …) to be
good for thinking about about
solving Physics problems
Student Survey:
1) Introductory classes that promote conceptual understanding rather than
memorization require special tools. Students find little lasting value as they
mostly prepare a few days before the exam and focus on memorization not
understanding of the concepts. Metric: comments posted to
other groups
Open-ended personalized problem
Summary
• Advanced communication tool with micro-communities support.
• Implementation of peer instruction.
• Problem solving with automated user roles.
• “Synthesize”, “evaluate” and “analyze” categories of Bloom’s taxonomy
• Students use vocabulary, language of course
• Fosters decision making and makes personalized real world connections
User likes.
Textbook problems relevant to general Internet resources are important;
textbook content
connection to real world is made
Number of comments in discussion.
Equation editor.
Acknowledgements
Project was sponsored in part by Gerry Hanley, Office of the Director of
Academic Technology Services, California State University Office of the
Chancellor
March 2013