Project Investigator(s): Marina Milner-Bolotin, Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy; Gerald Tembrevilla, PhD student, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
Project Description
For the last three years, we have used extensively Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS) developed at UBC in physics teacher education. While we have collected ample data, we haven’t had an opportunity to analyze it in order to produce a rigorous publication and disseminate the results. We are confident that CLAS has a lot of potential in teacher education, but a systematic study of its impact is still missing.
Research Questions
- What is the nature of physics teacher-candidates’ interactions via CLAS platform?
- How do physics teacher-candidates engage with CLAS (the nature of comments, responses)?
- How do physics teacher-candidates view their own engagement with CLAS?
- How do the mini-lessons produced by teacher-candidates in the course of their physics methods course evolve?
- What are some of the effective teaching strategies that instructors can implement in order to support student collaboration on peer teaching?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
The results of the study can impact not only my teaching, but also the teaching in the Faculty of Education. We have almost a 1000 teacher-candidates annually and I can see CLAS as having a huge potential in teacher education.
Project Outcomes
“As a teacher educator, I always try to keep myself abreast of with the new technologies and pedagogical innovations. However, I remind myself that teachers have to pause and reflect on the deliberate use of technology. The biggest lesson I have learned in this project is to allow myself time to try new pedagogies, to listen to students’ feedback, and to make relevant adjustments. I decided to use Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS) to support student reflections on their mini-lessons. However, after using it for the first time, the students recommended me to use it with the different course. I also learned how to provide feedback effectively using CLAS and not to overwhelm the students.”