Learning supported by peer production and digital ink

Abstract

This paper describes experiences that combine digital peer production with digital ink affordances. Rather than preparing papers to obtain a summative final mark, students work over the course of the term producing different small learning resources such as short engineering problems, reasoning or synthesis where the lecturer acts as manager and supervisor. Teacher intervention is carried out using digital ink over each individual student production being possible to share the results throughout a public or group repository and in class offering a pro-active argument about preventing common mistakes. In order to enhance students programming skills important efforts are oriented to produce learning objects in the form of Java applets. It has the additional advantage of fostering collaborative knowledge construction because any object serves to the whole group as learning material as soon as it is already produced and validated. Qualitative and quantitative results show both an overall satisfaction from students participating in the experiences, and better results in the common written exams, when compared to the other groups following the traditional method.