Abstract:

Experiences in introducing the online form as a very effective tool to communicate students and teachers in non-regulated environments with very positive results are presented. There has been a lot of work regarding this procedure in the context of the classroom. From real time interaction between students on a group assignment to the ability to perform collaborative work outside classroom hours, the number of advantages is very large.

However, the potential that lies in ubiquitous devices, such as smart phones and tablets, has not been explored so far. These devices can handle complex processes, such as online forms programmed in different platforms, or the use of advance features that demand high power graphics capabilities, for example, when dealing with 3D environments. The latter means that nowadays, students can bring with themselves a truly powerful computer that weighs only a portion of their regular belongings.

In this article, the authors push the use of such tools beyond the regular classroom. To that end, the subject "Natural Environment" from the Sport Science Degree at University of Alicante (UA) was selected for two reasons. First, all the practical work is done outside classroom so there will not be screens and projectors that can give real-time feedback to students. Second, the subject takes place in remote areas, where no electricity can be found, making it difficult to set up conventional computer equipments. These reasons would encourage teachers not to use the online forms since technology seems to be out of hand. However, the authors have proved that not only is the use of technology feasible but also very advantageous.

We have selected an orienteering competition between students for the study. For the development of the race, seven control points were spread across campus. The organizers placed a word soup in every control point to let participants find specific keywords that would help them to reach the next control point. Before starting the activity, one person from each team is chosen as the controller. This person, in turn, must choose five people to create a whatsapp group to exchange the information needed to perform the race.

Once teams and whatsapp groups have been correctly created, a link to fill an online form is given to the controllers, whereas a map with the location of the keypoints is handled to teams. Then the controller opens the form to tell the team that leads in which order they must find the control points. All forms were configured to display a single combo-like question with ten different keywords. From these possible answers, only one was present in the word soup of the corresponding control point. If the team failed to answer correctly, an error page in the form was opened that sent teams to an alternative page with a different questions other and checkpoints. The latter means that hitting the right answer was crucial to the development of the game.

As soon as the group finds the word in the word soup, they sent it to the controller via a whatsapp message. Then, the controller should answer the questionnaire to indicate the group what the next checkpoint was and the possible words that would be in the next word soup.

Through the results of the responses in real time, the teacher can check how much time is left for each team to complete the race. Once fully completed, runners must return to the initial checkpoint and the race is finished.

Keywords:

Forms, whatsapp, real-time, orienteering.