Experiment 1

Experiment description

An experiment was conducted at a college in Taiwan. The course period was 18 weeks during the fall semester of 2004 and the course title was The Principles of Microprocessor. The students were junior and Automation Engineering major. There were 76 students, 75 of them male. At the beginning of the course, the teacher requested that students record in their learning reflection blog weekly. In addition, every student was to give feedback to their peer’s learning reflection. The teacher also encouraged the students to extensively study the learning content, and share with

classmates through this mechanism. In order to encourage students to take a chance in reflecting and recording in their learning blog, a reward was promised to all those who participated fully.

The teacher sent students a questionnaire about system usage after eighth week in order to analyze their responses and comments. At the same time, the first assessment of learning performance was conducted. This assessment had two parts. The first part was about the midterm exam and was an ordinary assessment; in the second part, the number of meaningful reflections (messages) or feedback messages each student made were quantitatively counted. The teacher also reminded the students that the activity in the blog was part of the learning activity and would be included in their learning assessment. At the end of course, a second assessment was conducted in which the content was assessed in the same manner as in the first. Data analysis was performed right after the experiment’s completion. First of all, the correlation between students’ learning performance and student’s level of activeness on blog was tested.

Learning performance had two levels:

z Learning performance without taking the learning reflection into consideration, which is an ordinary assessment (it includes midterm, final term, quizzes, and homework assignments)

z Learning performance which took learning reflection into consideration. To quantitatively analyze the level of activeness on blog, the data had to be quantification. Only meaningful and learning content-related reflections which were equally distributed over the whole semester were counted and scored.

Experiment result

By using SPSS 10.0, a Pearson correlation analysis was performed to check the

correlation between learning performance with taking the score of learning reflection into consideration and the number of meaningful reflections (messages) or feedback messages each student had made. The results are shown in table 6-1. There was a significantly positive correlation between these two parameters as shown in figure 6-1.

To make detail analysis, another Pearson correlation analysis was performed to check the correlation between learning performance without taking the score of learning reflection into consideration and number of meaningful reflections (messages) or feedback messages each student had made. The results are shown in table 6-2. These results also show a significantly positive correlation between these two parameters as reflected in figure 6-2. We can therefore conclude that learning reflection has a positive effect on students’ learning performance (positive correlation). The teacher emphasized that blog activity was to be a part of the assessment in the eighth week.

To check to see if this announcement had any influence on student performance, a correlation analysis between the difference of accumulative number of reflections before and after the eighth week and learning performance was conducted. The results are shown in table 6-3 and figure 6-3. It shows that for the difference of accumulative reflections there is a positive correlation with learning performance. We can therefore conclude that students who have higher learning performance tend to take more time on learning reflection.

Table 6- 1: a comparison between number of reflections and learning performance

times score

times Pearson Correlation 1.000 .653**

Significance .000

count 76 76

score Pearson Correlation .653** 1.000

Significance .000

count 76 76

** Correlation is significant at a significance level of 0.001 (two-tailed)

Score takes introspection into account

100 80

60 40

20 0

times

50

40

30

20

10

0

-10

Figure 6- 1: a comparison between the number of reflections and learning performance

Table 6-2: a comparison between the number of reflections and learning performance without taking reflection into account

times score

times Pearson Correlation 1.000 .464**

Significance .000

count 76 76

score Pearson Correlation .464** 1.000 Significance .000

count 76 76

** Correlation is significant at a significance level of 0.001 (two-tailed)

score without taking introspection into account

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

times

50

40

30

20

10

0

-10

Figure 6-2: a comparison between times and learning performance without taking reflection into account

Table 6-3: a comparison between the difference of the number of reflection and learning performance

difference score

difference Pearson Correlation 1.000 .301**

Significance .000

count 76 76

score Pearson Correlation .301** 1.000

Significance .000

count 76 76

** Correlation is significant at a significance level of 0.001 (two-tailed)

Score takes introspection into account

Figure 6- 3: A comparison between difference and learning performance

Questionnaire result analysis

By investigating the questionnaire results, it was found that most of students do not have very much experience in using learning reflection regularly, especially in such a public fashion. To encourage students to take part in this experiment, a reward was given to students who made meaningful reflections. A special reward was given to students who gave constructive and meaningful feedback or made comments on other classmate’s reflections. About 88% of the students felt that expressing learning reflections on a blog was a positive experience. About 88% of the students felt that learning reflection had a positive influence on their learning. Over 90% of the students looked forward to receiving their classmates’ comments and feedback on their reflections. More than 86% of the students felt that viewing classmates’ learning reflection on blog has a positive influence on their learning. In summary, most of students felt that this system had a positive influence on their learning. They also look forward to receiving classmates’ comments and feedback. Finally, they felt this system was easy to use. From the results of the survey, the objectives of this system have been achieved.