Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes

Talk at SITIAE 2013. students using git and LaTeX to produce collaborative notes of classes, as a part of their learning process.

Transcript

1. Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles jgb@gsyc.es http://identi.ca/jgbarah http://twitter.com/jgbarah GSyC/LibreSoft (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) Seminario de Investigaci´ on en Tecnolog´ ıas de la Informaci´ on Aplicadas a la Educaci´ on (SITIAE) Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Mostoles (Spain) May 9th 2013 Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
2. (cc) 2013 Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona. Some rights reserved. This work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of full license, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, or write to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
3. In the beginning there was the source code Uses from the free software community: “Show me the code” Learning by reading the code written by others Learning by modifying, even ruining the code written by others Co-learning by working with the same code Learning by writing your own code Incrementally improving by peer-review Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
4. The pattern Read, then modify, then write ...learn all the time Listened to many educators: When you read, you learn something when you write, you learn more when you explain, you really learn Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
5. The idea Let students improve their learning by writing collaborative notes of learning sessions Background: In many cases, students’ notes are the best notes for a subject Students have a lot of motivation for writing good notes for themselves All students in a subject write about the same topics Laptops, recorders, make it easy to have everything digital Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
6. The background URJC master’s program on free software As much as possible, learn by doing Subjects on technical and non-technical issues Interest in showing common practices in free software communities Precedent: subject on free software http://master.libresoft.es Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
7. The experience: context Three non-technical subjects: introduction, legal issues, economic issues 10-15 students in class Blended learning: students expected to perform significant off-line activities One laptop per student, WiFi-connected Not all students have a computer engineering background 20 hours of lectures / in-class exercises Collaborative notes: graded activity Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
8. The experience: git Source code management system Started for managing the source code of the Linux kernel Low-level, but many options, many modules around it Becoming de-facto standard A lot of documentation is available Free hosting of git repositories in software forges most popular these days: GitHub http://git-scm.com/ http://github.com Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
9. The experience: product The final result is a git repository with a LaTeX document LaTeX source code is (almost) plain text LaTeX is friendly to git Some students specialize in LaTeX maintenance PDF, HTML and other versions are produced Some students fork their own version The result should be usable for studying The final product and the changes by each student can be tracked and graded Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
10. The experience: schema Talk about the activity: 15 min. Talk on the use of git: 30 min. Talk on the use of LaTeX: 30 min. Organization: completely among students in part in class, use of forum encouraged Students share git repository with lecturers Some students take notes in class, upload to git repo Some students refine notes later in git repo All students supposed to fix bugs here and there Some cases, supporting by sound recordings of classes Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
11. The experience: results Uneven participation and success very different from year to year very different from student to student Positively valued in surveys to students Final product of mixed, and varying quality In some cases results are in fact unusable In some others are very good Our evaluation: despite problems, the experience improved significantly the level of knowledge about the subject https://github.com/mswlEco2012/CollaborativeNotebook Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
12. The experience: variations and options Using wiki instead of git Using Google Docs instead of git Using ODF or other word processor formats instead of LaTeX Basing the notes on previous (students or lecturers) notes Providing more incentives (eg: publishing a final book) Using new generation systems such as FLOSSManuals / Booki Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
13. Related experience: translation of the GPLv3 Collaborative activity by students LaTeX maintained in a git repository Translation done in about 6 weeks 6 students participated Different roles, use of tickets and forum for coordination They performed their own QA Final product of good quality: linked by FSF http://hjmacho.github.io/translation_GPLv3_to_spanish/ Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
14. Related experience: notes in Google Docs Notes for a part of a master on Internet Business No software engineering background Familiarity with Google Docs and similar (some students) Organization using a forum Started with trying to work collaboratively during the class Too much trouble in synchronizing Ended up as “one takes notes, others improve later” Difficult to track who did what Troublesome to get good layout for final product Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes
15. Conclusions Students value the experience Lecturers value the experience Details still have to be hammered out Results very unpredictable Results include a product: rewarding! Easy combination with other collaborative activities Interesting to see it in a true p2p learning case Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles Peer learning: Creating collaborative learning notes