Feedback from Experts and Teachers in Workshops

An important aspect of every workshop is getting feedback from attendees, thus, after every workshop, we directly or indirectly gathered feedback from students and trainers.

In some cases, we conducted small interviews, simply asked their opinions or tried to deduct their views from their behavior. We recorded user feedback on the assignments.

Sometimes the results confirmed out expectations, whereas other times we received unexpected feedback from user perceptions. For example, the need of learning content exchange coupled with the need of sharing didactical experiences provided unexpected feedback from teachers.

In order to get critical feedback and more detail on remaining problems throughout sys-tem usage, we defined a setting for anonymous interviewers. Anonymous interviewer refers to persons not directly involved in the system development and not connected as a user. Questions as a guideline for the interview were stated, that should encourage the test-person to talk about the problems in a useful way. By this mapping of problems and weaknesses urgent tasks for system development could be identified and repaired.

6.4.2.1 Teacher’s Mental Attitude Concerning IMLIS Teacher Portal

Whenever the idea of a teacher portal is presented, most teachers were interested, en-couraged and interested in how to use it. After an introduction to teacher portal screens, teachers began to doubt the usefulness of the system. Teacher doubt may have resulted because:

• Some teachers are still unfamiliar with digital media or at least they do not feel comfortable using it.

• They believe that they have to spend more time on the process of learning mate-rial transformation from traditional learning to digital media learning.

• Sometimes they face different digital media applications which tend to confuse them.

• The teachers are not sure that technology infrastructure would enable or support such systems. They worry about insufficient digital media hardware in schools.

• Some teachers relayed concerns about copyright issues on digital media.

To motivate them to use the IMLIS, we involved them in practical uses which can bridge this divide. They can try mobile devices themselves guided or motivated by an expert only when they become open and do some experiments according to their use

cases. In this effective action they learn the potential of the teacher portal. At least in discussions they stated that this system provides a more detailed and effective prepara-tion of learning materials. The chance to reuse material makes it even more interesting for them. Although a tool like teacher portal can clearly facilitate their work over a pe-riod of time, some teachers remain conservative and disinterested in changing their es-tablished teaching style.

6.4.2.2 Feedback and Criticism from Teachers and Experts

After each workshop, we asked from the teachers¹ and experts to state their general im-pression regarding the system, the performance and whether they can use it in their daily work with learners. These feedback are translated from German to English and listed below²:

- Mrs. Smith, School Director

“For me it is interesting that the system adapts by learning through the interaction. I like that you have to create a profile by supplying basic in-formation and the students can receive individual tasks and exercises in different levels according to their profile.

In general I liked the whole discussion today, for example the suggestion that there has to be a distinction between younger and older students. It will be really interesting to see how the students will respond to a presen-tation of this system. Often for young people it is different than from an adult perspective.”

- Mrs. Meyer, Teacher

“Well I like it as well, it is very interesting to understand what can be done with this system. I especially like that this system seems to be self-explanatory and can be used autonomously by the student and the system offers functionalities for checking outcomes - self-evaluation.

I am look forward to what will be possible with this system.”

- Mr. Fridrich, Teacher

“The co-modeling of the software with a person who comes from the teaching practice with students from this target group should be fostered.

The concept, the aim and practical use case should be defined closely with the teachers, or in a language that is more comprehensible.

1 The used names are not real and changed due to keeping the privacy.

2 As the workshops were done in German language, the citation feedback is translated into English. Most

The difference to a database that can be used for exchanging learning material should be more obvious. For specific topics, there are already applications that guide students step by step through the lesson in an in-telligent way. What is the difference to IMLIS?

IMLIS, as I could understand is an application that can manage learning material in an intelligent way and that is not specialized to specific topics.

There seems to be an immense demand with a huge amount of work! I think there should be a copyright solution, because the outcome of the use of such an application will be better if a community of teachers could share materials.”

- Mrs. Müller, Teacher

“I liked it very much, that this kind of system was started, but for me it is important that this approach is not only about minimizing the size so that the device with the application can be carried in a trouser pocket. It should be observed where it targets for this application exists, for exam-ple work assignment and job instructions that can be handed down. It was really good to see the example where it was possible to read the barcode of an object and to verify whether I chose the right material.

I would appreciate if the approach would carry on in this direction. Es-tablished processes should be reduced to an easy level, so that I can as-sign an action to someone and it can be done without annoying questions and check-ups.

Furthermore, I would suggest that attention be paid to what is for younger and what is suitable for older students.”

- Mrs. Brown, Teacher

“I think it is a really helpful project for our teachers of students with spe-cial needs. Of course the implementation or upload of learning materials should be continued. The specific opportunity of this system is that we get a detailed view on the abilities of a student.

I think that it might be not easy to create or find learning materials for students with multiple disabilities, so I think that it will take time to im-plement these materials. For students with small learning disabilities it is a really good challenge and for this group we have enough learning ma-terials to be implemented (uploaded).

I am convinced that it can be used for guided activities and for training units. For me, the personalization is the most important aspect. The

expe-rience how this system adapts to individual needs is interesting. For the implementation of additional learning, material time and effort are neces-sary.”

- Mrs. Clark, Teacher

“Today I understood what this system is all about and how it works. For me it is important, that every time a student will finish the work with an exercise, another exercise from the next level will be provided to him or her.

The preparation of the learning material will be done by the teachers, so that there will be a differentiated offer, implemented in the program that allows variations. This important aspect refers to the diversity of our stu-dents! I suppose that this media can motivate and support our students.”

- Mr. Bergman, IT administrator in school for people with special needs

“I got the impression that the system provides a lot of possibilities that can also be extended for different needs and contexts in classroom. For the setting in current schools we should discuss if this system should focus more mobile devices or a broader variety with stationary computers that will fit more to the current situation of technical equipment in schools.

In general, we can state that the teachers and experts could use and understand the sys-tem. In practical use they could comprehend what can be done with the system and what are the potential and requirements in use. Because of their practical involvement, they agreed that a learning system should be developed closed to teachers and their experi-ences. Nevertheless an adult perspective cannot be replaced the tests with students.

A second focus of their feedback aims the content upload functionalities of teacher por-tal and preparing learning material. Some state opportunities for managing content and some state that for practical use additional questions like copyright for exchanged mate-rial or even used images should be solved. Some stress on the need of creating matemate-rial that should be conceptualized simple and time saving. Most of them agreed for use cases in their daily teaching practice because they see that IMLIS has the potential to be adapted to the classroom teaching.