Lab Assistive Cloud Portal by Andrew Salisbury

Working in a lab environment with 25-30 students is a challenge at the best of times, particularly when attempting to give each student identical attention as the others and to ensure maximum student participation.  It is an apparent fact that with a high number of students the majority of them will have to sit towards the rear of the class further away from the professor.  Ideally, all students would be sat around the professor in a circular fashion ensuring the cohesion of knowledge transfer and maximum student participation.  I have spent quite some time trying to devise a system so as to get all students (effectively) sitting in the front row, so as to maximize student contact. This post will outline a simple approach to ensure maximum student involvement no matter how many students are present.  

The proposed system is based on a practical session such as building a database, though can be utilized for any other practical tutorial.  At the start of the class (or ideally 5 minutes prior), the lecturer logs into the cloud and emails all the students simultaneously, so as they can log it to the system via a link in their email (this takes just a few moments).  The emails do not have to be typed or copied one by one, the system allows one simple pasted action of all emails into the cloud’s setting menu.

Once students are logged in, the professor instructs them to have the cloud portal opened 1/3 of the total screen size on the left hand side and obviously the working software 2/3 on the right (see figure below).  It should be noted that they will be a 5-minute period at the start where students will play around a little writing some non-sense on the screen; this should be allowed so as to enable students to focus clearly on the goal at hand and to get accustomed to using the system. The lecturer, being the admin, has options however before sending the email to allow students to edit , view or just comment in the portal, it is strongly advised to restrict student access to commenting only, so as to avoid extraneous data input from the students. There may be case though where simply viewing only would be beneficial and more expedient.  If there are some students causing disruptions to the system, they can be (restricted/excluded) from the system within just a few clicks.

There are many systems available enabling such a practice, though for simplicity I will focus on Google docs, here is a step by step guide for a quick set up and go:

• Log in to Google docs.
• Start a new document
• Share
• Give it a name
• On the right click the drop down and choose (comment, edit or view)
• Every lab session will have a unique choice here depending on the professor’s lesson plan; in most cases just viewing is satisfactory though obviously for instant feedback, you will need commenting.
• Editing is not recommended as students spend too much time correcting their own comments, which if multiplied by 30 students become disruptive.
• Add emails (note as you are logged in, you can simply type the names and Google will fill in the emails).
• Click on advanced at the bottom.
• Choose change and select accordingly, usually the second one is the best option (anyone with a link – as you will send this link via email.)
• Save.
• There are more options (if you wish), though click send.
• Click send and done.
• Then very quickly you will see the students logging in and making comments, you can see their name above each comment, so that you can focus on them directly.

The power of this system is that the lecturer, although increasing his/her workload during the class session, can work through the tutorial and can paste extra information in the cloud window allowing students to follow step by step, whilst focusing on all students wherever they are sat, thus eliminating any issues such as, acoustic problems in the classroom, interruptions from other students or a plethora of other reasons. An additional psychological factor for the students is extra guidance and supervision thus making them feel safer in an unknown practical tutorial environment.

The lecturer can quickly also see real-time the names of the students who commented and exactly what the problem is, so that he/she can address them immediately, avoiding students getting behind and losing interest and causing disruption in the class (which getting lost and feeling isolated in a tutorial seems to be one of the main causes of disruptive behaviour).  Using this method there is no excuse for any student not to complete the tutorial or to get behind.  As is well-known there are many students who are shy to speak up (The Skillful Teacher by Stephen Brookfield: “Understanding our classrooms”), and the questions and thoughts they have are often duplicated by other students, so it would be efficient to predict those questions and to answer promptly, hence satisfying multiple students simultaneously, thus saving time.

An additional beneficial factor of this system is that at the end of the lecture, these notes gathered can be sent to students who missed the class or be uploaded for reference at a later date clearly showing the structure on a time structured basis of the material studied. Feel free to contact me for any further guidance on this method.

Andrew Salisbury

Lecturer, BAED

asalisbury@city.academic.gr