Forum Notifications | CCTE
OVERVIEW
Forum Notifications is a mobile Android app developed along with the Cognitive Sciences and Educational Technologies research team in the Computer Science Department at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.
This research was developed at the Instituto Federal de Pernambuco (IFPE) with students of technical training courses on remote teaching modality. The procedure for its development consisted of four phases namely: immersion, prototyping, experiment, and analysis. The results obtained from the perception of the participants allowed us to improve the interface of the application, generating a satisfactory experience of use for the learners of partially remote courses.
On blended-learning, interactions in the learning management system (LMS) are relevant for the continuity of the pedagogical course. Within the LMS forums stand out as shared spaces for discussion and exchange of knowledge. Therefore, for the b-learning context is essential that learners interact in virtual space. Therefore, awareness of events in the virtual platform are necessary. Thus, taking as basis Echeverría, Cobos e Morales studies on social awareness in Computer-Supported Colaborative Learning , the research understand the perception of social events in the shared space acts as a motivational factor for learner participation in the forums. Furthermore, this research presents the development process of a mobile notification app for interactions in forums, guided by the methodology of User-Centered Design. The process generated a total of two functional prototypes and four versions of the interface in an iterative process, close to real users. Moreover, the refined high fidelity prototype was tested in a formal experiment under actual use conditions, in a b-learning course. During the field experiment we used journals so students could write about their learning experiences along the course and at the end of this process interviews were performed with the participants. The journals and interviews given us a deep understanding of the learners experiences. This perspective made possible to understand the context and develop a new interface, influenced by the analysis of the final phase of the experiment and presented at the end of this dissertation.
USERS
1 - College Student from Blended-Learning Courses
RESEARCH PROCESS
I tracked two groups of students on its educational social media in a netnography process that took four months. Afterward, I interviewed twelve students from the first group to gather insights on their problems regarding social awareness and collaborative work. These interviews were the base for the first prototype design and mockups.
Furthermore, I presented the mockups using the Wizard of Oz method with ten students from the first group. Their feedback helped me to develop the first functional prototype, it was already an android app. Seven students from the first group installed the app on their phone and used for two weeks, during this period I tracked them in the educational social media system and interviewed at the end of this step.
Then, I started the final experiment with the second group of students. Eighteen students installed the app and used it for fifty days. These students were monitored on the system, they kept a diary, and were interviewed afterward.
In the end, I could develop the final conceptual design of the interface. This app runs along with the Instituto Federal de Pernambuco internal database and the Moodle Learning Management System. Now, any student can install the app to improve its collaborative learning experience.
In collaboration with: