Incorporating Cidos With Social Network Sites to Facilitate Project Based Collaborative Learning

8/9/2019 Incorporating Cidos With Social Network Sites to Facilitate Project Based Collaborative Learning

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Incorporating Cidos with Social Network Sites to

Facilitate Project Based Collaborative Learning:

Need Analysis

Sharifah Nadiyah Razali

Faculty of Information and Communication Technology,

Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka,

Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100, Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia

[email protected]

Mohd Hafiez Ahmad

Electrical Technology Department,

Masjid Tanah Community College,

Paya Rumput, 78300, Malacca, Malaysia

[email protected]

Faaizah Shahbodin1, Norasiken Bakar

1, Hanipah Hussin

2,

1Faculty of Information and Communication Technology,



[email protected], [email protected] of Language and Islamic,



[email protected]

Abstract- It is difficult a graduate person to get hired with the fierce competition in the career market today. Now, most employers arelooking for good soft skills as the primary selection criteria for choosing the employee than their academic achievement. This study aims todetermine the collaborative learning strategy based on lecturer preferences in Malaysia Polytechnic. In this study, two types of instruments

used were semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Several interview sessions with the head of the program have been conducted to

and a set of questionnaire was personally administrated to 145 lecturers from Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan, Politeknik Merlimau, Politeknik

Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin, Politeknik Kota Kinabalu and Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah. All collected data had been analyzed using SPPS 19

software. The result showed that Polytechnic lecturers preferred to use project / assignment base strategy in their collaborative learning

process compared to other Collaborative Learning strategies.

Keywords-component; Col laborative Learning (CL), Learni ng Management System(LM S) Social Network Sites(SNSs)

I.

INTRODUCTION

Have excellent academic skills still does not warrant getting undergraduates jobs because of the intense competition in the marketfor career day. Now, academic achievement is not the main criteria for getting a job, but most employers are looking for good softskills as the selection criteria to select employees. Reference [1] state that there are seven (7) soft skills elements has been identified

which are communication skills, critical thinking and problem solving, teamwork skills, learning and information management,entrepreneurial skills, ethics and professional morality and Leadership skills that need to be controlled by graduate. Educators in the21st century, should prepare students according to 21 st century skills (collaboration, communication, problem solving and criticalthinking). Research done by [2] shows that collaborative learning promotes the development of soft skills.


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Collaboration in learning benefits has been proven by Social Constructivist theory [3]. Learning tends to be the most effectivewhen students are in the position to work collaboratively, express their thoughts, discuss and challenge the ideas of others, and worktogether towards a group solution to the given problem [4]. Research showed that undergraduates improve their academicperformance by interacting with their peers [5]. Today the benefits of collaborative learning are widely known but rarely practiced,particularly at the Higher Education level. There are several collaborative learning strategies such round robin, think pair shareJigsaw and project based. Among the easy to implement structures are Think-Pair-Share andRound Robin Technique [6].

Round Robin: It is primarily a ' brainstorming ' technique where the students generate ideas but not describe, explain, evaluate orquestion the ideas. Group members take turns responding to questions with words, phrases or short answer. The order response is

organized by proceeding from one to another until all students have the opportunity to speak. This technique helps in generating ideasbecause all students will participate, as it does not encourage comments that interfere with or obstruct the flow of ideas. Ideas that canbe used to develop a good paragraph on the topic.

Think Pair Share: created by Professor Frank Lyman from University of Maryland in 1981. It is a strategic method is generallyused in classrooms to get students to think and engage in classroom discussions. In this strategy, the question/problem that will bepresented by facilitators and students are allowed to think about it individually, and then discuss in pairs to solve the problem andfinally share their ideas to the class.

Jigsaw: Popularized by Elliot Aronson (1960) was used as a technique to reduce racial tension in schools in the United States inthe 1960s. It is a strategy that gives students the opportunity to actively help each other build understanding. Use this technique toassign students to the reading groups consisting of various skill levels. Each group member is responsible for becoming an 'expert' onone section of the assigned material and then 'teaching' it to the other members of the team.

Project Based: Reference [7] define project based as integration of knowing and doing. Students not only learn the knowledge and

core elements of the curriculum, but also applying what they know to solve authentic problems and produce significant results. It is aninstructional method centered on the learner. Instead of using rigid lesson plan that directs students to a specific learning path learningoutcomes or objectives, project-based learning allows in-depth investigations about a topic worth knowing more about.

II.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

There were two instruments used in this study: semi-structured interview and questionnaire. The purpose of this interview is togather information about the problem of employment among polytechnic graduates. A few sessions interviews were carried out withthe head of program from selected Polytechnics. In addition to gain more information, a questionnaire has been carried outMeanwhile, the use of the questionnaire is to obtain information about the use of collaborative learning in the teaching and learningprocess. The questionnaires were personally distributed to 145 lecturers from Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan, Politeknik MerlimauPoliteknik Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin, Politeknik Kota Kinabalu and Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah. The respondents were randomlyselected in order to collect information for this research.

III. FINDING

This section presents the findings based on the focus of this study, which is to determine the collaborative learning strategy basedon lecturer preferences in Malaysia Polytechnic. Therefore, only the items relevant to the focus are presented in this section. In thisstudy, reliability test has been performed and Cronbach value was 0.870. [8] and [9] indicates that a questionnaire has highreliability. Therefore, it can be concluded that the internal consistency of the data was achieved.

Several interview session has been done with head of program to view the main factors of graduates are unemployed. Responsesreceived as a result of the interview session was as follows:

Personally I see the importance of soft skills in complementing theacademic excellence today. But students who have great soft skillswill surely find employment although not getting good academicresults.

(Lecturer 1)

Soft skills factor

(Lecturer 2)

Soft skill and individual factors itself

(Lecturer 3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Robinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Robin


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As shown in Table I, it is clear that 78.6% of lecturers implemented collaborative learning strategies in their class and 62.8% oflecturer preferred to use project / assignment base strategy in their collaborative learning process compared to other CollaborativeLearning strategies (Table II).

TABLE I. IMPLEMENT COLLABORATIVE STRATEGY IN CLASS

Valid Frequency Percentage

Yes 114 78.6

No 31 21.4

Total 145 100

TABLE II. COLLABORATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY

Valid Frequency Percent

Round Robin 21 14.5

Jigsaw 13 9

Think Pair Share 17 11.7

Project / Assignment Base 91 62.8

Table III showed that 65.5% of lecturers evaluate their Collaborative activity, but only 31% of lecturers assessed their studentsprojects based on output and student contribution. 35.9% of lecturers measured only the output and another 33.1% of lecturers did notmeasure anything (Table IV).

TABLE III. EVALUATE CL PROCESS TABLE IV. MEASURING STRATEGY


Yes 95 65.5

No 50 34.5

Total145 100


Do not assess anything 48 33.1

Assess only the end product 52 35.9

Assess product and student contribution 45 31

Total 145 100

IV.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Employability 2012 data obtained from the Department of Malaysia Polytechnic shows only 46.64% of former students areemployed and only 15.7% of students get jobs according to their respective fields. Moreover, the feedback collected from industryshows that Malaysia polytechnic students do not meet the level of competency and working attitude expected by the industries [10].And from the interview session with head of program of selected polytechnics, they agree that the main cause of unemployment is the

polytechnics graduatelack of soft skills. It shows that having excellent academic skills still does not guarantee a graduate person getsa job due to the fierce competition in the career market today. Now, the academic achievement is not the primary criteria for getting ajob but most employers are looking for good soft skills as the selection criteria for choosing the employee. Therefore, the author agreewith [11] that universities around the world will be increasingly needed to produce highly skilled graduates that meet the needs ofemployers.


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The benefits of collaboration in promotes the development of soft skillshave been proven by Social Constructivism [2]. From theresult shows that most of the lecturer has implemented collaborative learning strategies in their teaching and learning process and themost preferred strategy is project / assignment base strategy. Project based, collaborative learning strategy is an instructional methodthat provides students with complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems. It involves the students' problem solving,decision making, investigative skills, and reflection that includes educator facilitation, but not direction. Through Project basedcollaborative learning, students learn from these experiences and take them into account and apply them to the world outside theirclassroom. It helps students learn key academic content and practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication,

problem solving & critical thinking).

According to [12], to establish and maintain an active collaboration is a challenging task due to the lack of or low participation ofother group members to participate actively in their group work. It is important in encouraging student participate in collaborativeactivity. Educators cannot assume that each member makes an equal contribution to the group work and then give the same marks toall members [13]. Therefore, educators must give marks based o n students contribution to an encourage student participate activelyin their group work activity [14]. Education research provides the same evidence on how to increase willingness to workcollaboratively [15]. But the collected data shows just a few of them evaluate the collaborative process and most of them onlyevaluate the output product. Therefore, lecturers had to apply certain instrument to record and monitor student discussion and toassess student contribution from the discussion. For that reason, the authors propose to use the Learning Management System (LMS)as a tool to record and monitor student discussion and then evaluate student contributions. Malaysia Polytechnics use Moodleplatform called CIDOS as their LMS. Incorporating Cidos with Social Network Sites to facilitate Project Based CollaborativeLearning as recommendations for future research is suggested.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to thank people who have been supportive throughout this study. First and foremost, Associate ProfessorDr. Faaizah binti Shahbodin, Dr. Norasiken binti Bakar, and Associate Professor Dr. Hanipah binti Hussin for their advice, support,encouragement, and guidance. The author would also like to thank the management, lecturers, and students of the polytechnics fortheir involvement, cooperation, and support in this study. Last but not least, the author would like to express an infinite love to herbeloved husband, family, and colleagues for giving much support and encouragement. This research was done by a PhD candidatefrom UTeM.

REFERENCES

[1] N. M. Radzi, S. Mohammad, and M. S. Abu, Current and Future Teaching of Engineering Mathematics to Civil Engineering Students: Issues Relating toEnpowering and Enhancing Critical and Creative Thinking Skills, in Int. Graduate Congress of Engineering and Science., 2008.

[2] P. Sancho and J. Torrente, Enhancing moodle to support problem based learning. The Nucleo experience, Global Engineering , pp. 11771182, 2011.

[3] L. S. Vygotsky,Mind in Society. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press, 1978.

[4] R. T. Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, Cooperation and competition: Theory and research.Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company., 1989.

[5] Y. Chen, Learning styles and adopting Facebook technology, in Technology Management in the Energy Smart World ( , 2011, pp. 19.

[6] J. E. Schul, Revisiting and old friend: The practice and promise of cooperative learning for the twenty-first century., The Social Studies, vol. 102, no. 2, 2011.[7] T. Markham, Project Based Learning, in Teacher Librarian, 2011, pp. 39(2), 3842.

[8] M. N. A. Ghaffar,Penyelidikan Pendidikan.Skudai: Penerbit Universiti Teknologi Malaysia., 1999.

[9] J. C. Nunnally, Psychometric theory,New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.

[10] J. W. Y. Juen, V. Pang, and J. W. Vitales, OBE CurriculumImplementation Process in Politeknik Kota Kinabalu: A Possible Evaluation Framework, inProsiding Seminar Transformasi Pendidikan Teknikal, 2010, pp. 172181.

[11] J. Andrews and H. Higson, Graduate Employability, Soft Skills Versus Hard Business Knowledge: A European Study,Higher Education in Europe, vol. 33,no. 4, pp. 411422, Dec. 2008.

[12] R. Chiong and J. Jovanovic, Collaborative Learning in Online Study Groups: An Evolutionary Game Theory Perspective,Journal of Information TechnologyEducation: , vol. 11, no. 1998, 2012.

[13] Q. Wang, Using online shared workspaces to support group collaborative learning, Computers & Education, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 12701276, Nov. 2010.

[14] K. Swan, J. Shen, and S. Hiltz, Assessment and collaboration in online learning,Journal of Asynchronous Learning , pp. 4562, 2006.

[15] C. Li, Z. Dong, and R. Untch, Peerspace-an online collaborative learning environment for computer science students, inAdvanced Learning , 2011, pp. 409411.

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Incorporating Cidos With Social Network Sites to Facilitate Project Based Collaborative Learning