EVALUATION OF REFLECTION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SIMULATED LESSONS BY CLASSIFYING AND VISUALIZING FEATURES UTILIZING CLUSTERING
1 Faculty of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University (JAPAN)
2 Graduate School of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University (JAPAN)
3 The United Graduate School of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University (JAPAN)
4 Center for Information and Communications Technology, Tokyo Gakugei University (JAPAN)
About this paper:
Conference name: 16th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 13-15 November, 2023
Location: Seville, Spain
With the rapid spread of digitization in education, in Japan, it is becoming increasingly important for teachers to learn ICT skills during teacher training by designing and conducting lessons that simulate real lessons (hereinafter, simulated lessons). It is hoped that awareness can be obtained by reflecting after simulated lessons. However, it is not easy for student teachers to reflect on the features of entire lesson such as their tendencies. In addition, it is difficult for student teachers to reflect on the trends in simulated lessons they have conducted so far and make use of it when designing future simulated lessons. One promising direction is technologies such as clustering, which could group together data that have similarities. The purpose of this study is to support the objective reflection of simulated lessons conducted by student teachers. We have developed a reflection support system based on the classification and visualization of simulated lessons utilizing clustering, and then evaluated its effectiveness.
2. Development of a system:
We classified 42 simulated lessons that have been conducted in lectures at a university in Japan by clustering and classifying them into three clusters. In other words, by adding the data of simulated lessons conducted by student teachers to our dataset and clustering them, the student teacher's simulated lessons could be classified into one of three clusters. Based on the results, we developed a system as a Web application with four functions. The functions are as follows.
- It allows student teachers to register and view records.
- It allows student teachers to register simulated lesson data into the system. This Function also performs clustering and makes visualizations.
- It allows student teachers to register their self-assessment of the simulated lessons they have conducted.
- It visualizes changes in simulated lessons that have been conducted by student teachers.
3. Practice Simulated Lessons:
We conducted practice lessons utilizing the developed system in a university lecture. A total of four simulated lessons were conducted. In design lectures of simulated lessons, the student teachers designed one lesson and registered their lesson plans to the system. In implementation and reflection lectures of simulated lessons, the student teachers conducted a simulated lesson. Then, they register simulated lesson data into the system. The system performs clustering and visualizes their features. From the fourth lecture, the changes of the conducted simulated lessons were visualized by the system. The student teachers could view the dashboard and reflect on the tendencies of the simulated lessons conducted.
We conducted a questionnaire to clarify whether the student teachers were able to objectively reflect on the simulated lesson. As a result, the student teachers may have been able to identify the features of all four simulated lessons that they conducted. And it was suggested that through a total of four simulated lessons, the student teachers may have been able to identify the tendency and changes in the simulated lessons that they had conducted.
We developed a system consisting of a series of processes starting from the design of the simulated lessons to their implementation and reflection. In the future, we plan to consider a method to encourage improvement their lessons in our developed system.Keywords:
Student teacher, Simulated lessons, Reflection, Clustering, Classifying, Visualizing.