Sean

Sean Michelino Lim

Goals

In the wake of the pandemic, many schools have adapted by adopting online learning classes. Students and teachers alike needed to work together in order to create a functioning learning environment inside their homes, this was to avoid the further spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). As fellow users of online classes, most students are a part of the 92% that believe online learning is as, if not more effective than on-site learning. Students and teachers are able to schedule their study times and—for schools—can casually enter classes and allow for a potentially more productive learning session. Not many doubt the effectiveness of online learning.

However, there is no doubt a hint of bias among the common consensus of online learning. Although online mediums have proven their effectiveness in terms of convenience and efficiency, there are cases where students are unable to learn at an optimum level. Speaking from our personal experience, learning virtually poses a degree of difficulty that mass surveys and research papers are simply unable to represent. Oftentimes they require additional individual study to truly understand the topic. And we plan to help aid those students willing to deepen and strengthen their academic knowledge. Cooperating with teachers and perhaps substituting them, we plan to create a server where most academic advice is easily accessible. Establishing a learning community in the process to inspire those who feel discouraged in learning. We want to know their issues, their problems, and their feedback in order to better ourselves and convey to the teacher in the long run.

Our group believes that an online student-led tutoring session will be one of the most effective methods of teaching other students, especially seniors to juniors. Our interactions will be held online, so as to avoid the dangers of the pandemic. We will create a discord server, a well-known media application, and utilize its various unique features for academic purposes. As a side product, we also plan to create a website documenting and listing down topics we have covered so anyone can revisit previously discussed topics. This website will also act as our backup plan. In case that our server receives few direct tutoring requests, we will instead create tutorial videos and enrich our site. The topics we will cover will include mathematics, sciences, English, Bahasa Indonesia, and general skills (preview for DP subjects, courses, and [QoL] quality of life skills).

Experience Description

CAS Project Strand: Creativity and Service

Duration: 1st April 2021 - 27th August 2021

Place: Online

LO1: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

This learning outcome would be achieved by simply running and maintaining both the discord server and the website. Our server will act as physical evidence of our tutoring actions, while we will create a compilation and record important milestones along the way. Our commitment and perseverance will not only be shown by the evidence but also the product of our endeavors. The website, discord server, and the end of the program student reviews.

LO2: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working, collaboratively

This project is not a one-man task, it will require collaborative work. Research published by Gaskell, A. from Forbes suggests that working collaboratively will improve our performance in doing our project. Our project will have multilayered management; Material research, Website Building, and most importantly the tutoring itself. Collaborative work will be required to distribute the load so as to keep CAS a project we can do without bothering our academic lives. The success of the project will be proof of our success in our collaborative work, as well as our group management.

LO3: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

As many students are having problems with their academics, we will be engaging with the issues of global significance. Research done by the University of Illinois exposed that one fatal issue with online classes is student discipline and literacy of technology. This also applies to the teachers and faculty members who aren’t used to teaching their students using the complete tools at their disposal, leading to severe inefficiencies. Our project aims to combat this global issue of learning inefficiency, especially for those students who are struggling to keep up with classes using the online medium due to unsatisfactory or inefficient teaching methods.

Many students are stressed out due to the pressure from school teachers and parents when it comes to academics. We will support their academics and help them to understand their studies even more.

LO4: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

We must conduct our tutoring sessions ethically by acknowledging academic honesty. Our activities will not involve providing direct answers to the students’ questions or doing the students’ schoolwork for them. But instead, we will teach them how to come up with solutions to the problems they are facing by teaching them to solve similar problems.

Reflections

Reflection of Investigation Process

Date/Time: May 2021

Type of Experience: P

LOs achieved:

Collaborative skills

Ethics of choices and actions

Global Engagement

Description:

At first we were contemplating how we could get the audience to join our project. So we started doing various things to attract students into this program by making Google forms and also direct invitations. We were also recommended to invite certain students who are of concern to teachers so that we can help them catch up better. It was quite exciting seeing students pour in from different grades to our Discord server and welcoming them in.

Collaborative skills were displayed from the collective effort to gather students to participate in our project

Ethics of choices and actions are displayed from the methods that we use to invite students to ensure that they won't interfere in learning and are imposing and forceful to most of the students.

Global Engagement is displayed from the topic of education and online learning amidst pandemic and ways we are trying to help the situation

Reflection of Preparation Process

Type of Experience: P

LOs achieved:

Commitment and Perseverance

Description:

To explain briefly, our project is called Discord Discourse and it focuses on helping students that are having problems both because of the pandemic and also those who are having problems with general education or the curriculum and system that IB has. To do this we created a Discord “server” which is similar to a group chat but with multiple different rooms which we can designate as different things. In the Discord server itself we have 3 main sections. The first section is a general chat which can be used as a normal group chat in case someone wants to chat with the participants in the project they are free to do so. The second section is called the “Tutor Hub” here is where students can request tutors if they are having problems with either school curriculum or subject topics which is where we will be helping them to the best of our abilities. The last section is the forums. This is inspired in part by sites such as Quora and the IB’s own Discord partner (official), Discord server where people could talk about their respective topics and people could help freely no matter who it is or what the question is as long as it relates to the respective forum's topic.

Commitment and Perseverance is displayed from our elaborate brainstorming process to come up with this system that aims to be accommodating for as many students as possible with a familiar layout.

Reflection of Action Process

Date/Time: April - June 2021

Type of Experience: P

LOs achieved:

Collaborative Skills

Commitment & Perseverance

Description:

So far Discord Discourse has moved on somewhat well. There have been a few people requesting help, however, none are so serious as to require personal meetings. The project mostly consists of people asking questions on our forums which would be answered directly. I feel as though this may be a better method as it feels much more relaxed and students would (from my own personal experience) absorb the lesson better this way. Some of the members have also opened up, showing similar interest with me personally and I look forward to hanging out with them to ease the tension from different grades, as well as to aid them to study better. Aside from the actual teaching, we are moving forwards on our plans to create a website, explaining about the IB as well as creating a website where students can freely lookup and review from. Overall I would say it has been a success and we will continue to provide help to the members of Discord discourse.

Collaborative skills as well as Commitment and Perseverance are displayed in the action of our members assisting forums questions, sometimes with multiple stepping in at a time, where at times one would give resources while the other would explain

Date/Time: August

Type of Experience: P

LOs achieved:

Collaborative Skills

Description:

For the audio guides, I have been assigned to work with Anezka and Hanie, 2 of the project members. We set a time and had a google meets where we recorded each of our own lines and Anezka then compiled the 3 audios into one to ensure that the audio quality would be better individually and not have one of us be a lot more muted than the others. It was quite fun and enjoyable doing this with them.

Collaborative skills is displayed in the collaboration to create the audio guide

Supporting Evidences:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-haJCJfXTj_1ILvG91eDW6tAnAOTE-TL/view?usp=sharing

Additional podcast from other members:

CS Audio Guide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L3JxoHRPaj4EhzmTMOTQx_e02LQLsLO7/view?usp=sharing

Sciences Audio Guide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/102RX_1PLbdfrti9u70FHRnUWAxhFzGLu/view?usp=sharing

Business Management Audio Guide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzaA11txJGiQm88Q0v67HSgM5klAabYU/view?usp=sharing

Economics Audio Guide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b1GVTjeOO0TD_XDHHJQkr_Y1vHU-FAUp/view?usp=sharing