Title: Learner in the role of instructor: promoting student peer-collaboration in learning management systems

Authors: Nancy Alajarmeh; Abdullah Rashed

Addresses: Tafila Technical University, Tafila, Jordan ' Minho University, Guimarães, Portugal

Abstract: Recent advances in collaborative and distant learning, enabled through Learning Management Systems (LMSs), have changed conventional practices towards delivering educational content to learners. These advances ultimately aim at fostering the engagement of students in the learning process. In this paper, we investigate the effect of 'On-the-fly Notes' on learners. 'On-the-fly Notes' is an application that facilitates the capture and transfer of in-class instructor's notes instantly to students, thus promoting collaboration between learners and instructors. The obtained results after implementing 'On-the-fly Notes' show that students participated more often than they usually do in collaborative discussions with each other when in-class notes were transferred, using 'On-the-fly Notes', to a free LMS adopted in several classes taught at TTU. Results corroborate with the hypothesis that peer-to-peer collaboration in a monitored session tends to provide more accurate information to the instructor on how well students do in different aspects in the subject.

Keywords: e-learning; education; instruction; collaborative learning; class notes; smart devices; cloud services; learning management systems; blended instruction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTEL.2019.098791

International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 2019 Vol.11 No.2, pp.121 - 135

Accepted: 16 Oct 2017
Published online: 02 Apr 2019 *

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