About Dsygu

It is challenging to keep students motivated and engaged with course content outside the classroom. While there is plethora of research on different in-class student engagement methods, there is a dearth of research on keeping students engaged with traditional out-of-class activities. This research will develop a new learning environment, called Dysgu(learning in Welsh) which will optimize the learning experience outside the classroom.

The Dysgu environment will provide students with interactive and motivating out-of-class activities, and accommodate personalization and adaptation to satisfy student’s specific needs. This research employs a novel approach by incorporating four distinct factors; interactive out-of-class activities, mobile technology, social networking, and gamification. The interactive activities are smaller than traditional out-of-class activities allowing for instructional scaffolding that can be deployed more frequently and with higher expectations to promote self-fulfilling prophecy. Mobile technology based learning environment will be used to deliver and administer such activities, as current generation of students are active users of this technology. Incorporating social networking in the learning environment will allow students to anonymously participate in interactions and view their own progress compared to their peers. Finally, the gamification components will be used to encourage students to participate and become engaged in the activities. Having a mobile interactive learning environment will allow faculty to facilitate learning even after the students leave the classroom and enable early intervention when students fall behind their peers.