Deployment  Three:Engineering  Students

sLearn is an app to support students’ learning when conducting course-related activities in-situ. Therefore, it is necessary to demonstrate that this model is not only for the HCI or UX students, but that it could be used by different courses outside the computing field. Thus, in order to prepare engineering students for their real life occupation, lecturers are encouraged to apply the situated learning theory by visiting authentic sites to support their students’ understanding of the field (Galloway, 2007). They visit construction sights, bridges, roads, and river docks, to name but a few. There are various risks that could be faced when a person is in such a location. Thus, it is important for future engineers to know how to conduct a ‘risk assessment’.

According to the Health and Safety Executive (2013) “Risk assessment is simply a careful examination of what, in your work, could cause harm to

people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm”.

However, for this study, the purpose was to suggest that this model is applicable to different disciplines. The evaluation design for this study was concerned with the ‘Micro’ level of the evaluation framework.

6.4.1 Contextual Inquriy

In order to understand the activities that the students are required to perform and to have a better understanding of the situation, a contextual inquiry similar to the one done in the HCI case study was conducted. This included lecturers’ interviews and observation of a similar activity.

A number of unstructured interviews were carried out with programme leaders of the Civil and River and Coastal Engineering courses. It was necessary to consider:

• The activity and the students.

• sLearn’s Role

The concept of sLearn was described and the HCI version of sLearn was demonstrated to them.

6.4.1.1 The Activity and Students

The activity was designed for the induction week level one for students enrolled in both Civil Engineering and River and Costal Engineering. During this week, they go on a field trip to the Bristol Docks to carry out a number of activities such as producing a set of engineering sketches of particular structures. However, before doing any of the activities they are required to conduct a risk assessment. Hence, sLearn would be used to support this risk

and are given a time and a point of meeting. The lecturers described the students who enrol in those two courses as usually being engaged and committed.

6.4.1.2 sLearn’s Role

SLearn is intended to support the students in conducting a thorough risk assessment. The lecturers feel that having the ability to conduct the risk assessment using a mobile application would aid the students in many ways.

They feel that typing in on a mobile application could be easier in that context than pen and paper. In addition, providing students with structured hints would help in identifying potential hazards. Furthermore, having the ability to take photos of the identified hazards would enhance their assessment.

6.4.1.3 Observation of a similar activity

To have a clearer picture of how the field trip is run, a similar field trip was observed. This was a field trip for a group of sixth formers students doing very similar activities that would be undertaken in the induction week with the level-one undergraduate students. However, in this case the risk assessment was already completed and given to the students. When arriving at the location the students were briefed. They were split into groups and were asked to read carefully through the risk assessment sheet that was handed to them prior to performing any activity. They were then allowed to go and perform engineering sketches of a particular bridge and given a time to meet.

6.4.2 Customising sLearn’s content

In order for sLearn to support the activity, the content needed to be modified.

The lecturers of any module are the best source of the suitable content for

their students. They know their students’ strengths and weaknesses and thus, deliver the appropriate content that would help augment their students’

learning. In the case of the HCI, the content was derived from weaknesses and strengths of the students that were known through the contextual inquiry approach in addition to what the lecturers thought would best support their students. However, in this case study, since this area is completely different from HCI and since the purpose of this study is to show that sLearn can be used in various contexts, the main source for the content of sLearn for this study was intended to come from the lecturers. One problem was that the lecturers were under pressure due to various unconnected engagements.

This meant that they were not able to provide the content of sLearn for this study. Hence, the content was created from the risk assessment sheets that were given to the sixth form students as explained in 6.4.1.3. Thus, it might not reflect the weaknesses and the difficulties they encounter when learning in-situ, which might have affected the main goal of sLearn: supporting students when learning in-situ. This is shown in some of the results of the deployment in 7.5.1.

6.4.3 Deploying sLearn in the Engineering Context

Participants

As described earlier, this study was for students enrolled in two undergraduate engineering courses: Civil Engineering and River and Coastal Engineering. They were required to carry out a number of non-assessed activities on a field trip in the induction week of their first year at the University

Evaluation Design

Students were asked to self-divide themselves into groups of five, where each group would have students from the two different courses: Civil Engineering and River and Coastal Engineering. Seven groups came to the field trip, where they were told that there was an app to help them conduct one of the activities. Students were informed that they could use their own mobile phones if they had an Android-based smartphone. They were told that there were five HTC desire smartphones to borrow, and they were asked for a volunteer from five different groups. Five students came forward; each was given one HTC with the sLearn app preinstalled. However, two other groups did not have access to sLearn; either they did not have access to an Android-based smartphone or they did not volunteer. The concept of sLearn was explained to them. Other group members were told that they could download the app if they had an Android-based smartphone. The five students were handed a paper questionnaire to fill in after the activity.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire handed to the students was similar to the one given to the HCI and UX students; it had two parts: System Usability Scale (SUS) and Pedagogical usability statements. There were slight changes to the pedagogical usability to reflect their activity.

The Pedagogical statements were as follows:

1. The app helped in conducting the risk assessment.

2. The app gave me hints on what to look for.

3. The app helped me organise ideas.

4. The photos in the app were useful.

5. Using the app as a group encouraged us to share ideas.

Table 15 Evaluation design for Engineering

M3 Evaluation Level Evaluation Aspect Evaluation Method

Micro 3- Interface usability 2009) was deployed and that the contextual blended model had an impact on the traditional teaching and learning practice. An educational institution might consider making such an app available to various courses.