Designing a Personal Learning Environment: A Debating Website for College Students
I want to design a debating website for college students, which can function as a personal learning environment (PLE). Through this platform, students can join an online debating activity by writing down their thoughts on a popular topic and sharing their answer with other users.
My design is basically a website which can be created by Javascript. It needs a cloud space to store and manage the user information and questions. Here is a brief layout of my design:
On this website, students can choose from many popular questions or start a new question according to their course requirement or personal interests. Under each question, they can choose a standpoint and write down the reasons. Students can also view other answers and the total voting results of each question. Besides, the user account on this website can link to other social media accounts, so students can share the content on Facebook, Twitter, Wechat and other social media platforms.
The primary reason for creating this PLE is that debating activity is pervasive in course discussions of higher education courses. When we write essays or reading responses, I notice that students often raise relevant questions and answer from different perspectives. Therefore, I wish to build a platform to collect these thought-provoking academic questions and students' thoughts on the questions. In addition, debating is a great way to develop critical thinking ability. Students can make a comprehensive analysis when answering the questions and also learn from others' answers. Many educational institutions have raised the benefits of students debating, such as QatarDebate Center (https://www.qatardebate.org/en/page/benefits-of-debating). They think that debate can "providing an engaging, active, learner-centered activity," "improving rigorous higher order and critical thinking skills," enhancing learners’ analytical, research and note-taking skills" and so on (https://www.qatardebate.org/en/page/benefits-of-debating).
Dabbagh and Kitsantas (2012) concluded that "PLEs can be considered as a promising pedagogical approach for the deliberate or intentional integration of formal and informal learning spaces (p. 4)." The website can be used in both formal and informal contexts. The motivations of users include the course requirement, personal interests and the opportunity of communicating ideas. As a supplement for formal courses, instructors can start a question related to the topic of a course for students. For informal learning, general college students can search for interested topics and give answers according to their own knowledge background.
According to Dabbagh and Kitsantas (2012), "the framework for using social media to support self-regulated learning in PLE" includes three levels: "personal information management", "social interaction and collaboration" and "information aggregation and management" (Dabbagh & Reo, 2011a; Kitsantas & Dabbagh, 2010; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). For "personal information management", users can create their own accounts and identities according to their personal background. For "social interaction and collaboration", users can communicate with others on the same topic and learn from others' perspectives. For "information aggregation and management", users can manage their own learning by answering questions, viewing others' answers, collecting interested questions and sharing questions/answers on other social media accounts. Digital literacy and critical literacy are required when joining in the debating activities: Students should know how to analyze the problems and compose the answers.
On this website, users can add different "tags" on their profiles, such as "Literature", "Internet", "Society", "History", etc. Students can add tags according to their specialized areas or majors. They can also join different question groups based on specialized areas.
I think important ways to maintain the online community are to encourage user interactions and give rewards for valuable answers. To encourage user interactions, the website can add functions such as "comments and 'likes' for each answer" and "chatrooms". To give rewards for valuable answers, the website can add a ranking system for users. The managers of the website should also regularly check for the answers and delete irrelevant answers.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
References:
Benefits of Debating. https://www.qatardebate.org/en/page/benefits-of-debating
Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The Internet and higher education, 15(1), 3-8.
Hello April,
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of an online debating platform. Something I've noticed with online courses is that it can sometimes get difficult to facilitate and follow conversations, especially when there is no set time and everyone is posting in different time zones. I think that your proposal provides an organized way to make sense of what everyone is thinking, and I really appreciate the visualization of information. Out of curiosity, what platform did you use to create the prototype?
Aoi
Hi Aoi!
DeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts! I create the prototype using Marvel: https://marvelapp.com/
I also used Sketch before and I think Marvel is easier to use.
April
Hi April,
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of the online debating platform is very cool, since it can not only be applied to school settings but also can be used as an informal learning tool for people to develop their personal interests and practice their communication skills. I am curious about : can people create topics on their own or they are only able to debate on the existing topic? I feel that if there's an option for them to post the topics that they are interested at or they are confused about, it may be helpful to keep the community grow. In this way, this platform can serve more than just as a debating community, but also as a go-to-place for people to look at the opinions from their peers and exchange their ideas on the topics that are relevant to our everyday life.
April,
ReplyDeleteHi! This is a great idea and I think a missing link to many classes especially in online classes. We miss that interaction of debating the readings and topics throughout the course. I agree students “often raise relevant questions and answer from different perspectives” this would be an excellent platform to continue the discussions. I like how you would structure the formal and informal sections for users engaging in discussions. In regards to the awards, I think it would promote a sense of ownership for the users to reflect and commit to detailed and organized submissions to the debates. It would be a great add-on to Canvas.
Cheers - Jennifer
Hi Ming,
ReplyDeleteI used to be a British Parliamentary Debater during undergraduate time. I know a website Debate.org (https://www.debate.org/) for debaters to share and collect motions and arguments. It is all about big internet issues, value problems, policies and so on. You have raised such a great idea to connect debating with course discussions. I think this is more student-friendly and can promote the classroom interactions. The link to other social media also facilitate the community to grow as it penetrates to students' daily life. It is a perfect combination of formal learning and informal learning.