restatement of Research question for cycle 2:
Will
providing the three qualities of purpose, mastery and autonomy as
outlined in Pink's theory of motivation 3.0 increase the level of total
participation and constructive participation in the Edmodo community?
Collected artifacts
For this action cycle I collected the following artifacts:
- data points for total posts, constructive posts, and conversation starters
- samples of responses to the teacher posts
- Survey results from the Edmodo polls
Here are the artifacts:
Examples of purposeful posts
Exhibit 1-3: examples of successful purposeful posts by the teacher
Exhibit 4: Example of a poll used by the teacher
Exhibit 5: Example of an unsuccessful purposeful post by the teacher
Exhibit 4: Example of a poll used by the teacher
Exhibit 5: Example of an unsuccessful purposeful post by the teacher
Evaluation results:
The evaluation of cycle two revolved around comparing posting rates for cycle one against posting rates of cycle two.
total posts
Total posts per day by class in cycle 1:
55.46 posts/day Total posts per day by class in cycle 2: 70.14 posts/day Percent change in total posts: 26.46 % increase |
constructive posts
Constructive posts per day by class in cycle 1:
10.35 posts/day Constructive posts per day by class in cycle 2: 35.57 posts/day Percent change in total posts: 243.45 % increase |
Reflections
Cycle two drew upon the philosophies of Danie Pink to see if providing a better sense of purpose for conversing would increase both total posting rates and constructive posting by students. Cycle 2 revolved around the assumption that students had full autonomy over their posts, and the mastery of the Edmodo system.
As you can see from the data above, adding a more defined purpose to the Edmodo space increased total posts per day by 26% and constructive posts per day by 243%. It is encouraging to see that providing a purpose to the conversation elevated the percentage of constructive posts from 18% to 51%.
When reflecting back on the context of my posts, it was interesting to see which posts students responded to and which posts fell short. When designing posts, I thought of two main factors in order to craft content:
Students responded incredibly well to posts that stemmed from projects that they were currently ding in the classroom and supplemental material that had no relation to classroom content, but they did not respond well to posts that introduced content that was about to be taught in class.
This concept exemplified in the sample posts above. Exhibit 1-3 were posts stemming directly from a classroom content currently being taught or supplemented material being taught, Exhibit 5 was designed to be used as an introduction to a new science module. Exhibits 1-3 each had high response rates while Exhibit 5 did not get a single response.
I would like to take these findings with me to my next cycle and expand further on a single classroom topic. I believe that focusing on classroom content exclusively may be the key to raising the constructive post percentage.
As you can see from the data above, adding a more defined purpose to the Edmodo space increased total posts per day by 26% and constructive posts per day by 243%. It is encouraging to see that providing a purpose to the conversation elevated the percentage of constructive posts from 18% to 51%.
When reflecting back on the context of my posts, it was interesting to see which posts students responded to and which posts fell short. When designing posts, I thought of two main factors in order to craft content:
- Will the students think that the post is interesting?
- Will the post extend student learning?
Students responded incredibly well to posts that stemmed from projects that they were currently ding in the classroom and supplemental material that had no relation to classroom content, but they did not respond well to posts that introduced content that was about to be taught in class.
This concept exemplified in the sample posts above. Exhibit 1-3 were posts stemming directly from a classroom content currently being taught or supplemented material being taught, Exhibit 5 was designed to be used as an introduction to a new science module. Exhibits 1-3 each had high response rates while Exhibit 5 did not get a single response.
I would like to take these findings with me to my next cycle and expand further on a single classroom topic. I believe that focusing on classroom content exclusively may be the key to raising the constructive post percentage.