Engaging middle school students as multimedia designers: exploring students' project design skills and psychological sense of community
Year: 2005
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study, based on the participation framework, investigated students’ learning \nof project design skills, psychological sense of community, the relationship between \nproject design skills and psychological sense of community, and design implications in a \nlearners-as-multimedia-designers learning environment. One hundred and twenty-seven \nstudents from a middle school in the southwestern United States participated in this \nstudy. The treatment group consisted of students in the multimedia classes while the \ncomparison groups consisted of students from the Talented and Gifted (TAG) classes and \nregular classes. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected through Project \nDesign Questionnaire, Concept Mapping survey, Design Task Ranking survey, \nPsychological Sense of Community in the Classroom Scale (PSCC), open-ended \nquestions, interviews and classroom observations. The results from the pretest and \nposttest data indicated that students in the learners-as-multimedia-designers classes have \ndeveloped project design skills such as awareness of audience, research, and presentation, \nand maintained high levels of interest and mental involvement. However, they did not \nregard evaluation and revision as a critical task and showed variations in their planning \nand collaboration tasks. The findings also showed that students in the treatment group \ndemonstrated significantly higher sense of psychological sense of community than \nstudents in the TAG classes and regular classes whereas students in the TAG classes and \nregular classes did not differ significantly from each other in their psychological sense of \ncommunity. Quantitative data also showed that there were significant correlations \nbetween some design tasks (audience, presentation, and collaboration) and psychological \nsense of community. The findings also indicated factors like selecting authentic group \nprojects, providing facility access, and training interpersonal skills for group projects \ncould help promote the learners-as-multimedia-designers environment during its \nimplementation. This research implicated that teachers should create a classroom \nenvironment that engages students in collaborative constructive investigation as in the \nlearners-as-multimedia-designers environment.
Author: Yu-ping Hsiao Anselm
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1930189520