Student engagement with out-of-class activities is becoming more difficult as students spend fewer hours outside the classroom studying the content. This research developed a mobile educational platform, Dysgu, to provide students with an optimal learning experience outside of the classroom. Dysgu includes social networking and gamification features to increase student engagement. The platform offers interactive auto-graded assessments to help students practice concepts and take tests. Students can see their scores and a summary of the performance of the rest of the class. We used Dysgu for multiple out-of-class activities at two universities with different student demographics for two semesters. The data shows that students obtain better grades when using Dysgu. We also saw more on-time or ahead-of-time submissions with Dysgu. Survey responses indicated several Dysgu features which students found helpful. We conclude that digital educational platforms should consider features to support scaffolding to master the concept, peer influence to keep students engaged, self-reflection to foster critical thinking, and easy adaption of the platform to reduce faculty workload and improve students’ acceptance of the system.
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The Effectiveness of a Mobile Educational Platform for Engaging Students in Out-of-class Activities
Getting students engaged with out-of-class activities has been a long-standing challenge. With large class sizes, providing timely feedback to students is also challenging for faculty members. Students are spending fewer hours to study class content outside the classroom for several reasons, including working more hours because of rising tuition and living expenses. This paper describes a newly developed mobile learning system, Dysgu, which provides an engaging learning experience for students outside the classroom. Dysgu has interactive and auto-graded exercises to help students practice concepts. Students can see their progress and class standing as they work on the exercises. The mobile platform was deployed in two semesters at two different universities. We saw improved student grades, more on-time submissions, and the acknowledgment of useful features such as interactive activity and the ability to see the overall class status using this new mobile platform.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1712030
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10408672
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2023 IEEE World Engineering Education Conference (EDUNINE)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUNINE57531.2023.10102869
