Carnegie Mellon University introduces social learning platform to educators in Qatar

"Learning from each other is an important aspect of education," said Ananda Gunawardena, associate teaching professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, who led the workshop. "Both the Tablet PC and Classroom Salon are platforms that promote interactive learning, and enhance communication between teachers and students."

Gunawardena presented the benefits of the Tablet PC as both a teaching and a learning tool, where PC's are networked and assignments can be easily exchanged between teachers and students, keeping the students more engaged and the teachers more aware of students' progress. Classroom Salon (CLS) is a web-based platform developed to encourage the students to actively read the course material and make comments, essentially mimicking social networking, which then aids educators in gauging the students' comprehension of course material. Gunawardena is leading The Measuring Learning Consortium, a global consortium supported by HP, which will develop new technologies such as CLS for measuring students' competency in STEM areas of study.

In the CLS session, participants learned how to creatively use their course documents to create assignments, concept relationships and assessment measurements. "With Classroom Salon, it is possible to detect prior knowledge of subject matter through creating reading activities and exercises on which assessment measurements can be built," explained Gunawardena. "In Classroom Salon you have a way to present the content to students and have them answer questions and make comments in sort of an 'online discussion group' setting. It is possible to group and filter the responses, which helps the educators get a good visualization of where the class stands on a particular concept. Groups can review other groups' responses, which encourages collaboration, to see if they learned something. This social group learning platform is applicable to many disciplines."

Because of its broad-reaching application of the platforms discussed, this year's CS4Qatar workshop was open to teachers not only in the subjects of information technology and computer science, but in mathematics and chemistry as well. More than 80 registrants had applied to the 60-seat workshop.

Carnegie Mellon University and its Computer Science Department have always taken initiative in leading outreach events that positively impact its local community. This tradition has carried over to the campus in Qatar, where there is large potential to make impact in the region.

"This kind of social learning is a good platform for Qatar, where there are challenges with technical reading and comprehension," commented Gunawardena. "Classroom Salon helps with both the English reading comprehension as well as the understanding of technical content as interpreted by a group of people."