Participatory Design of Feedback Mechanism in a Physics Blended-Learning Environment

This paper describes a series of participatory-design experiments conducted with physics teachers who use a blended learning environment, with the goal of developing mechanisms for collecting teachers’ feedback and opinions on the resources that they have used, which can assist peer teachers in search & discovery of appropriate learning materials. The main challenge that this study addresses is how to incentivise teachers to provide such feedback, as originally the response rate for feedback requests was very low. The novel approach that it proposes to address this challenge is by incorporating the idea of gamification into this crowd-sourcing challenge. First, we present a successful two-phase experiment conducted during the previous school-year, in which two gamification elements were implemented into the learning environment, resulting in a x2.6 increase in the response rate to feedback requests. Second, we discuss additional changes we are planning to implement in the feedback mechanism during the next school year. These are inspired by incentive frameworks, adjusted to the domain and context through interviews, questionnaires, and group discussions conducted with teachers who use the platform.