Abstract:

As early as the Spring 2015 semester at Middle East College, several mathematics faculty members started using mobile messaging applications for student consultations and student feedback. Most common to this form of communication is the use of WhatsApp. Initially, WhatsApp was used as a direct but controlled communication line between students and teachers. Students can ask short questions to the teachers and send solutions of attempted mathematical problems. Teachers can give short answers, check the solutions, or advise the student to come for a face to face consultation. Later on, the use of this mobile messaging application evolved to creating WhatsApp groups for the class, where common questions may only be answered once, or classmates can answer the questions in behalf of the teacher. In both instances, this created an environment where immediate feedback is possible most of the time. In this paper, we discuss in detail how WhatsApp, and other mobile messaging applications, were used in the mathematics classes; how the feedback was given, how the teachers attempted to limit or control the discussions to relevant matters, and how the group chats created discussions even during outside class hours. We will also look at how the students performed in summative assessments for classes that used mobile messaging applications in their discussions. In some classes, WhatsApp discussions only started in the middle of the semester. In these classes, we can also compare student performance at the time where WhatsApp was not used and at the time when WhatsApp was used. Finally, we look at some anecdotes from the students themselves, and what they think of using mobile messaging applications for their classes.