Description

This online learning platform, which is named as jijijaja (http://jijijaja.sd.polyu.edu.hk/SDTVC/), was used to facilitate the learning and teaching of two subjects: SD3831 Advertising Design Studio 2.3 – Television Advertising and SD3833 Advertising Design Studio 3.1 – Copywriting.

The key features of the platform include: 1) It has a simple interface for displaying students’ works for easy comparison and comments; 2) It supports “peer assessment” in that (a) students can grade their peers’ works on the platform and (b) how good they assess their peers’ work is also graded to ensure they think before they grade; 3) Students can do their homework whenever they think is good and for whatever amount of time they are willing to spend.

Intended Educational Value

The platform is created to engage students in learning and to better train their critical and creative thinking skills.

The current situation is: 1) Students usually only focus on their own works, even though there are class discussions and presentations. 2) Chinese students tend to especially passive when they are asked to comments. As a result of this, it is very difficult to achieve group learning, which is especially important for learning subjects like advertising, where opinions and viewpoints are important.

The platform requires students to actively compare the works of the whole class and actively comments and grade the works (because how much effort they spend on grading peers’ works will be reflected by the platform). And they can choose the time for doing the homework, so that they are less likely distracted from the learning.

Because of the platform, students can have a chance to open their mind to different opinions and viewpoints, and they also exercise their judgment with critical thinking skills. With the knowledge of different viewpoints to the same brief, they can also motivate themselves to come up with more creative solutions.

Example of Application

One of the typical exercise is this:

1. Student writes the copy on a designated layout and submits it to the platform before the deadline.
2. He/she can view the works of 25 other students on the platform. They can compare, grade and comment the works before a deadline.
3. He/she then can check how his/her work is commented and graded (individually & collectively by his/her peers.) He/she can also check how he/she perform in assessing peers’ works.

Evaluation/ Comments

A thorough evaluation was conducted to investigate student’s involvement in the course activities, student’s understanding of creativity and student’s capability of coming up with creative solutions. Questionnaires were sent out to students in both subjects and the response rate is 80%. The number of words of students’ comments on the platform was collected for analyzing the engagement level and the effectiveness of collective learning. A number of 8 students in SD3832 were interviewed individually. Tutor’s reflection on their experience in the teaching process was collected for analysis. Students’ reflection reports were collected to compare with those last year and students’ SFQ and final grades in these subjects were also compared.

Key findings:

• Student’s engagement was improved especially at the beginning
• Hard-working and shy students were benefited more than others
• Students had become more creative
• Students enjoyed creative challenges more but they might not be capable of handling them
• Students wrote better English

Remarks

The platform can be further developed if parties with good computer programming skills are interested in collaboration.