Nuradin G.B., Duisenova N.T., Jolchibekova K.

Taraz state pedagogical institute, Kazakhstan

 

"ELIADEMY" EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM SYSTEM’S PRODUCTIVITY IN EDUCATION: ONLINE COURSE, EXPERIMENT

 

         The first section. Online course.

         Nowadays, there are a lot of educational platforms, Web services, special programs to transform the educational process on the Internet. The main purpose of the Information Technology Center which was opened in Taraz State Pedagogical Institute is  to innovate the learning process, to improve the competence of teachers in the educational process, to ensure the widespread use of modern information and communication technology.

        "Eliademy"’s concrete steps as an educational platform for online course:

1.   Planning of the Internet-based platform for an online course;

2.   Definition of the length of the course and main topics;

3.   Definition of the title of the course (our course is titled as "The opportunities of use of modern Internet technologies in the educational process", because it is an online course, in which participants can perform their tasks and make research);

4.   Providing the information about the course (All the information is given in the introduction of the online course);

5.   Invitation and registration of the participants;

6.   Selection of participants (Who should participate in such testing course? In what level should be their computer knowledge?  Of what field’s experts they should be? Youth? Computer programmers?  Should we invite heads of departments involved in the organization of educational process? Who should be involved?);

7.   Review and identify the number of participants; (We selected the following members of the group: Director of Academic Affairs (1), Director of the Registrar Office (1), Dean (1), Heads of sections (2 specialists), Heads of the Departments (2), teachers of Computer Science (2), teachers in the Humanities, (in language areas 1, 1 in the field of technology);

8.   Sending e-mail invitation to each participant; (after registering on www.eliademy.com they will be able to see the course material. This course is available only to participants invited in advance);

9.   Registration of participants through the invitation and claim their profile settings; (At the beginning only two participants downloaded their profile image and provide their portfolio);

10.   The first task is "Two trues, one false" is a phase of introduction; (The activity of performing of the first task was low, that is why we asked the next question: So it means that participants never worked with any online platform or didn’t know or understand what they need to do.  So we decided that it is necessary to organize a meeting because it was necessary to explain the principles of the course);

11.   Organization of the meeting in the computer class (The meeting was successful as profile and registration settings to platform weren’t so difficult. The next task was to get acquainted during the game "Two trues, one false". The participants wrote some comments and 24 posts to each other using forum service);

12.   The possibility of opening a new forum (by the end of the meeting 5 new forums were opened on various topics, such as training effectiveness, information management systems, ways to improve the efficiency of the use of modern technologies in the teaching process, the effectiveness of e-learning platform to improve the quality of education, as well as issues related to the use of Internet technologies, 22 posts at all);

13.   Holding an overview on the difficulties they faced during registration among the participants. According to the survey we found out that 75% of participants have never taken part in online courses. “What did you use to register in Eliademy learning platform?” was the next important question? While registration 70% of them used a computer and 30% of them used their mobile phones. The members showed the following results: no problem during registration - 62.5%, technical difficulties (slow speed internet, malfunction of a device) - 37.5%, language problems, as all the participants are Kazakh speakers (English, Kazakh) – 12%. The initial language of a program is English, but in the settings it might be changed into Kazakh. It was informed that the main part of the course will be online;

14.The main content of the course.

1.   In the platform brief information about the topic, link to the website, exact tasks and time for the tasks (3 days) were given. The results of this stage were not good enough, but there was progress anyway. Three of our participants have fulfilled their performance without any difficulties and began discussion with each other. Two of our participants had some technical difficulties and they wrote about it in the forum. They were given advice on time. One of them did not fulfill a task, but completed a test.

1) On the first unit we added a test. The results of the test would be shown by percentage and automatically goes to the record book of a teacher.

2) We prepared a task for self assessment.  And we hope that this would help to estimate their actions.

After studying "Eliademy" learning platform online the participants needed to implement it into practice. Taking into consideration the complexity of monitoring and evaluation of a great number of students as described above, we organized the experimental groups consisting of 55 and 15 students. One of the authors of this article G.B. Nuraddin conducted “Culture studies” subject to the first-year students who enrolled in large group and N.T. Duysenova conducted the German Language to small group of students.  Firstly we had a meeting with the students in advance, we explained the advantages of the "Eliademy" platform, and then in accordance with the ethical standards we received their agreement.

"Eliademy" learning platform is the centre of performing additional tasks, assessment and monitoring the students’ activity outside the classroom, where grades are visible to all students. Another advantage of this educational platform is that the given task should be made in a specific period of time (deadline). Meanwhile, the teacher has to evaluate creativity, make analysis and comparative analysis, research-oriented tasks and test each action performed by students. If the tutor needs all participants he/she can make an announcement. At the same time the tutor is able  to evaluate each student's work, to indicate their achievements and need to improve some skills. However, during the first weeks the next difficulty after the registration was keeping up with deadlines. It showed that students didn’t have certain skills of completing their tasks in definite period of time. For this reason we had to extend the deadline of assignments for a week to give a second chance to the students.

As it was shown in the following table the teacher can give and prolong the terms and the date of the given assignment. Such requirements can help the students to do their tasks in time. It is possible to use the platform of video and audio materials in order to make the test and the tutor can include numerous questions to the test.

"Eliademy" learning platform helps control students’ assessment  effectively. It was proved by our experiment. This fact was also confirmed by more than 85 percent of the students.

In this article we would like to share the results of the learning course for teachers on online platform by the experiment with the students. The platform has a possibility of granting any volume and formats (using video, audio, texts, graphics) using additional tasks to students, to check and estimate the results. It is especially convenient to estimate large lecture groups and for the organization of SIW  and SIWT.

This article consists of two parts:

 1) E-Learning → carrying out course online web technologies for teachers on the Eliademy learning platform;

2) results of experimental usage of the Eliademy platform in the course of training.

Literature:

1.   David Scott, Robin Usher ‘Researching education 2nd edition’

2.   Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Kelth Morrison ‘Research Methods in Education 5 th Edition’

3.    Ïðîáëåìû è ïåðñïåêòèâû ðàçâèòèÿ îáðàçîâàíèÿ: ‘ Ìàòåðèàëû VI Ìåæäóíàðîäíîé íàó÷íîé êîíôåðåíöèè – Ïåðìü, Ìåðêóðèÿ 2015.