Academy of skills research
Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are mostly focused on theoretical knowledge leaving a gap in supporting the development of practical skills. The research project evaluates the online learning of the practical skill of cardboard modelling by evaluating various ways of being taught this practical skill. The research aimed to answer the extent to which a normal class in learning a practical skill can be replaced with the Academy of skills or a hybrid between online and in-class education by means of pros’ and cons’ for each way of learning based on the learning experience of students. Results regarding the quality of the models’ indicate that the in class results are of better quality. Looking at the pros’ and cons’ of all three ways it can be concluded that the Academy of skills still needs some tweaks before being able to replace a regular class including the meaningful discussions and quality in feedback. Nevertheless both online manners of teaching show potential for education.
User study participant working on cardboard models using AoS.
Class session cardboard modelling.
Cardboard modelling using the Academy of Skills.
Web page Academy of Skills, giving feedback on video.
Webpage academy of skills, create video of activity.
Cardboard modelling using the Academy of Skills.
Expert assessment of various created models sets during test.
Feedback session on in-class created cardboard models during test.
Cardboard modeling website used by participants in hybrid group.
“You have done a great project and have done an insane amount of work. We appreciate your work and, with some work, it is suitable to bring to a conference. At the same time we are also critical of the amount of work and the difficulties in framing it towards a concise research question and a concise result. More focus would have made the story more clear. Nevertheless this is very useful work and we are very happy with it and how you remained standing in this barrage of input.”
Joep Frens & Mathias Funk, coach and assessor
Research Academy of Skills
Find out more about the "Academy of Skills" research
For the research project Michelle continued upon an existing design: ‘The academy of skills’. Setting up research based on an existing design allowed to set up an elaborate research. To be able to set up this research first design elements that needed change were defined. ‘Bureau Moeilijke Dingen’, the project owners, made these changes. Expert meetings were set and books regarding user research were read to carefully set up the questions while avoiding biases. To understand the quantitative data generated in the project michelle followed the course ‘Insight into experimental data’. Nevertheless qualitative data fitted the research better as more depth and rich data was required to explain the results.
Qualitative research was conducted by means of structured interviews which analyzed by means thematic analyses through coding. In the first version of the research paper the qualitative data and quantitative data gathered were combined. The amount of data collected was immense and to better be able to analyze the results the study actually should be split into two separate researches and questions. One evaluating the Academy of Skills platform and one comparing the regular classroom and flipped-classroom setting.
OVERVIEW
Grade:
Good
Client:
Joep Frens (TU/e)
Course:
Research project, M1.2
Coach:
Joep Frens (TU/e)
Competences:
Design & research processes, User & society, Math, data & computing, Communication & collaboration
Key learning points:
Conducting qualitative research, scientific writing, dealing with large amounts of data, video editing, project management
Deliverables:
Timeframe:
February 2017 – July 2017