Tobi

Ignatius Tobias Sembiring Soetjianto

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 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).

Our goal is to help mitigate this "learning loss," to cater to those students willing to constantly learn and improve themselves for the better.

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.

Reflection

Reflection of Investigation Process

Date/Time: February - March [Part of Investigation Reflections]

LOS achieved: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

We conducted a brainstorming session and held regular meetings (throughout this period most of our private discussions were conducted over private unrecorded discord conversations, calls, and messages) to find ideas for our project. Initially, we wanted to make a project related to a game we were all passionate about at the time, but naturally, that idea had to be changed and adjusted the more we thought about it. Most of what we did was planning, elaborating, and collaborating to start the foundations of our project.

Communication and open-mindedness were the two most important factors of this phase. We also had to be knowledgeable and inquirers to find out some issues in the current status quo that needed fixing. From an organizational standpoint, thanks to our smaller group communication weren't as difficult, but job division and management were important as we needed to properly delegate and efficiently complete our jobs. In this specific meeting, it was fun, intriguing, and somewhat difficult trying to find the right local issue to centre our project around. In this specific meeting, we were trying to seek approval and advice from Bu Farah in order to see if our initial idea of making a project related to a game (a mix of creativity and service conveyed through a game) was valid.

It was very relaxing, fun, and enjoyable when we tried to brainstorm ideas for our project. Since we were forced to divert our efforts to a more online project, the ideas flowing from each member were refreshing, entertaining, and very fun to discuss (especially seeing how it started). However, I also felt somewhat disappointed and worried that our project ideas were too unrealistic or not doable at all in the first place.

This experience simply marked the beginning of our CAS project. Being an inquirer, knowledgeable, and actively asking the community (naturally limited to online and school) were all enjoyable and valuable experiences for me that would help in my planning for any future endeavours and projects.

Date/Time: 28 May 2021 [Investigation and Preparation]

LOs achieved: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences, Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions.

Description: This was an initial test run of our tutoring service before we spread our invites to the rest of the target audience. One could consider this an initial focus group before the launching of our server.

Perseverance and collaboration are clearly shown in the way we answer questions posed by our "students" or server members. In this specific circumstance, we worked together in answering a private question posed by one of our server members, in doing so, we are also recognizing the ethics of choices and actions. We need to answer their question to the best of our ability and make sure to avoid making improper, inappropriate or communicating misleading statements. Today's experience actually marks one of our very first private tutor chats. It is a sign of our commitment and for the server, staff helped us shape and plan for any future private chat sessions. One of the rather challenging aspects of this private session is the fact that the server member requested a very specific subject. This forced us to adapt to the situation and re-learn their curriculum and then teach in a way that can be explained to their grade.

First is a sense of relief and enjoyment by seeing that there are still some students willing to reach out for help and ask for assistance. Being told that I could help someone else always filled me with a sense of fulfilment. On the contrary, I also felt a tinge of frustration and disappointment in myself because I was unable to very quickly and efficiently answer their question from the get-go. I simply had to accept the fact that I would be constantly reviewing older topics when answering some questions.

This experience marks the first legitimate private tutoring session of our project and our first step towards solving the main issue. It certainly did emphasize being knowledgeable, reflective, inquirers, and open-minded. We had to communicate, identify problems, solve problems, and translate the solution into a way that other people can understand.

Reflection of Preparation Process

Date/Time: April - June [Part of Preparation Reflections] / [Going into of Action]

LOS achieved: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively, Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance, Show commitment and perseverance, Recognize ethics of choices and actions.

The first of the aforementioned LOS is achieved by simply being open to communication, open-minded conversation, and discussion. After deliberating and changing our initial plan several times, we settled on our chosen topic "Discord Discourse" and are in the process of discussing it with our supervisor. I believe it is safe to say that we have shown our commitment to this project. We also had to carefully consider the ethics of choices under our project. We have to double-check our answers and sources so as to not spread misinformation or wrong answers. Collaboration was an invaluable tool in this project as it allowed our group to focus on multiple things at once (tutoring, server management, and website creation). We also still firmly believe that education is a global issue, especially in this pandemic and online classes.

Planning, being principled, and communicating are important in this experience as we had to create a rough plan and draft a timeline accordingly. Time management would be a recurring theme across all of the CAS, as we needed to make sure that everything is on track and according to our plan. Here is the date we present our original google forms in order to inquire about the perspectives and opinions of the students in SVP's secondary school. It was also this time that was the most crucial of our project as we had to make sure we attracted at least a dozen or so students so that our project could work or at least help a good amount of students.

It was enjoyable during the planning stages but in practice, it was sometimes very troublesome to set up even though it was a very simple project in concept. It was fun because using discord has become a part of our (or at least my) daily life, but it was tedious because we actually had to ensure that every step of the way we are always thinking of the CAS project.

This stage, for the most part, consisted of constant research, investigation, and meetings. As we finally got our proposal finalized and job descriptions approved, we were finally able to see a clear picture of how to actually commence our action. The learner profiles that we demonstrated were definitely Inquirer, being principled in our deadlines, and actually developing my knowledgeable LP. This was because our final project became that of a tutoring server that helps and provides answers for students and underclassmen that may have reservations when contacting a teacher in school. It also helped me realize that we had to be more risk-takers in order to complete and achieve what we want. Being open-minded and staying optimistic is also what this experience taught me.

Reflection of Action Process

Date/Time: June - August

LOs achieved: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences, Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions, Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

I believe through this action, we have proven our perseverance and collaboration. Simply by responding to the requester, we prove that this project is an ongoing endeavor that is not directly bound by any time limit. We also recognize and consider the ethics of our choices by ensuring that no misinformation or opportunities for academic dishonesty occur during this exchange. By helping one extra student every time they pose a new question, we are able to engage in student support, with the global issue of the challenges of education during the pandemic we hope that this action was able to help a student in their own personal way.

This experience—the 'private ticket' function—was the longest session thus far, acting as a milestone or a marker of our project. In my opinion, this experience went wonderfully as we were able to help guide, tutor, and teach the server member about all of his questions. Through collaboration, we were able to avoid any wrong answers and improved upon each other's clarity. What was memorable in this experience was that it was just one of the only 'private tickets' that was actually used to its fullest potential.

As the private ticket channel/tutoring session lasted for a couple of days, there were times where I felt annoyed at the times during which the server member posted his questions. However, I mostly felt satisfaction and content with the outcome as we were able to deliver all of our materials and teachings clearly to the members.

This experience contributes much to my caring, thinker, and knowledgeable learner profiles. Along with my team members, we demonstrated commitment and genuine concern, and careful consideration when engaging in the tutoring session. Ensuring that we were knowledgeable enough to answer the questions and being thinkers in making sure we avoided simply giving the server member direct answers to their questions.

Date/Time: 21 July 2021 [Action Reflection]

LOs achieved: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions, Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

Today's "advice-giving session" was semi-improvised when I was conversing with one of my juniors after orientation day. Through my actions, I was able to show my commitment by willingly following with their request to invite their other friends into the google meets in order to listen to my personal advice on the IB DP program. Although this was more of an individual action that is connected to my CAS project, I still believed that this connects to the issue of global significance; the challenges in education and academics during online class/pandemic. I was also able to consider the choices and ethics of my actions in the advice that I provided the juniors.

This experience actually marked one of the first—unofficial—face-to-face tutoring sessions of the CAS project. This was an independent action but I believed that it is still connected to the CAS project as our aim is to help juniors answer questions and give them tips for anything related to school. It was difficult at times since I had to improvise and give the most appropriate answer to the best of my abilities. However, I easily overcame them and I managed to build a more casual tone with the juniors which allowed them to be more open to me in how they wanted to converse with me.

To be quite frank, I felt very happy during this experience as I actually had subjects to directly talk to and share my experiences with. This experience contributed to developing the learner profiles: knowledgeable, communicator, and caring. Emphasizing more on the communicator side, I had to adapt to the situation and be more active in giving out my personal advice. Caring and knowledge were both necessities ever since I undertook the CAS project and agreed to this google meets session.