559 SnappEd : MANAGING SCHOOL TASKS
USING INTERACTIVE MOBILE APPLICATION
Muhammad Syahid Aiman bin Muhammad Bazlan1 Iliyas bin Jamil
Muhammad Iqbal bin Azmi Muhammad Adlan Faris bin Nor Azizan
Amir Amsyar bin Zamzan
1IX Ventura Tech Sdn Bhd, Malaysia (Corresponding E-mail: [email protected])
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract: Technology usage in education has become more pervasive ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, where schools shift into online distance learning (ODL). However, one of the most severe issues in ODL is the struggle of juggling online classes and managing school tasks via email or messaging platforms. SnappEd is a mobile application designed to assist teachers, students, and parents in managing school tasks. Equipped with many interactive features and a whole new level of gamification, SnappEd has gained overwhelming support from over 11,600 users within five months of its official launch. Most of the schools using this mobile application came from suburban and rural areas. Its interactive features are ranking system, penalty system, record and analysis, integration with Google Classroom, virtual support system, and gamification. All of these elements were designed based on the continuous feedback received from the users. As such, this conceptual paper discusses the potential of SnappEd, including the findings from utilization analysis.
Keywords: SnappEd, mobile application, school tasks management, interactive features ___________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
Technology has been implemented and adapted in assisting teaching and learning. The need and demand for implementing Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education have been prominent in the educational field (Idrus & Salleh, 2017). Duai and Nasri (2021) stated that teachers are utilizing technology to facilitate the teaching and learning process.
Technology usage in education has become more pervasive ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, where schools shift into online distance learning (ODL) due to Movement Control Order (MCO). Numerous issues have arisen due to the ODL, and one of the issues is managing school tasks. SnappEd is one of the solutions that aim to tackle the issue of school task management.
The Concept of SnappEd
SnappEd is an online edu-tech platform designed to assist teachers, students, and parents in managing school tasks. This mobile application can be downloaded from Google Playstore or Apple Appstore. This application is also available in a mobile web version where users can use SnappEd directly from internet browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and others.
560 The name SnappEd was inspired by its main feature, which is to 'snap' pictures to submit homework. The idea came from the observation that despite having numerous Learning Management Systems (LMS) out there, most teachers and students still use messaging platforms such as Whatsapp or Telegram to manage school tasks (Syed Lamsah, 2020).
Messaging platforms become an alternative to manage school tasks because it is widely used and allows real-time interaction between teachers and students. However, messaging platforms are not explicitly designed to manage school tasks; therefore, the utilization cannot be fully optimized. Hence, SnappEd was designed based on the benefits of messaging platforms, LMS, and gamification.The way SnappEd works is more or less the same as how school tasks were managed regularly in school. Teachers will upload their assignments; the students will still do their homework physically, submit their answers; then, the teachers will mark their answers and give feedback. However, all of these processes will now be conducted in SnappEd.
The Main Features of SnappEd
There are numerous interactive features in SnappEd designed based on the initial study conducted by the developers and the feedback gained from the users. According to Eppard et al., (2016), cost as well as ease of use was deemed as a factor to consider in choosing a mobile application. Therefore, the features of SnappEd were customized according to the needs of the users.
Ranking System
According to Espeland and Sauder (2016), rankings are viewed as intruments that foster surveillance and normalization based on comparisons of performance. In SnappEd, every assignment completed by the students will be marked and graded accordingly by the teachers.
These marks will be recorded, and the students will be ranked according to their average marks.
There are three types of ranking available: class ranking, batch ranking, and national ranking, which involves the whole users of SnappEd. The ranking system was developed to encourage healthy competition in academics and to motivate the students to complete their school tasks.
Penalty System
For every assignment assigned, the teachers will set a due date of submission. Therefore, marks will be automatically deducted for every late submission detected by the system. The penalty system is made optional according to the settings chosen by the teachers. The penalty system was developed to encourage the students to be more alert with the due date of submission as well as to promote a sense of responsibility for the students in managing their own school tasks.
This is supported by a correlational study conducted by Ramdassand Zimmerman (2011) that shows students' self-regulation skills and motivational beliefs correlate positively with homework activities.
Record and Analysis
Each assignment submitted by the students and marked by the teachers will be recorded and stored in cloud storage throughout the year. From the record and marks, the system will analyze the students' performance and provide the report. The students will be able to monitor their performance, and the teachers able to generate analysis reports. With these features, it enables the teachers to make well-informed decisions to adjust their teaching approach accordingly.
Ellen (2012) highlighted the importance of teachers using data to make instructional decisions.
In addition, the analysis report can assist in conducting Class-Based Assessment (CBA) as
561 required by the Ministry of Education. In the future, SnappEd is looking at the possibility of utilizing Artificial Intelligence to automate CBA without excluding the human factors in assessing the students.
Google Classroom Integration
Google Classroom is one of the platforms utilized under the Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa). Since numerous schools highly utilized Google Classroom and in order to prevent the abundance of workload for the teachers, SnappEd has enabled integration with Google Classroom. This means the teachers’ SnappEd account can be linked with their Google Classroom account, which enables them to publish and export reports into their Google Classroom folders. This feature was developed upon request and feedback received from the early adopters.
Virtual Support System: EdRI
EdRI is the virtual assistance provided by SnappEd, which stands for Educational Resources and Information. Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for new schools' onboarding process has been developed to provide continuous support and tackle teething issues. Before onboarding, EdRI would create the account for every student and teacher and assign them according to their respective classes and subjects. By doing so, it can eliminate the extra burden for the teachers. Then, training and briefing sessions would be conducted for teachers, students, and parents to give them a clear understanding of how to operate the applications. After that, Telegram groups would be created exclusively for each school, where the customer service team would be made available 24/7 to assist the users. According to Armstrong (2010), the process of change will develop better with the help of change agents who are credible, internal or external - people who facilitate change by providing advice and support for the users.
Gamification
According to Kirkayoka et al. (2014), gamification is an effective approach to make positive changes in students' behavior and attitude towards learning, to improve their motivation and engagement. The idea of gamification employed by SnappEd is by integrating the application with mobile games. SnappEd is in the process of developing a metaverse in the mobile game Roblox. Students can convert their homework marks into Battle Points within this metaverse to enhance their character and battle with other players. This game encourages collaboration and peers support. Collaboration in education is a milestone for the effective implementation of active learning (Glover, 2013).
Reward Program
Cacioppe (1999) stated that proper implementation of a team and individuals reward strategies could contribute to organizational change and success. In order to motivate and encourage users, SnappEd came out with the initiative of organizing various reward programs such as the Top Achievers Award, Teachers Giveaway, School Appreciation Program, and many others as an appreciation to the users. By conducting these rewards programs, it serves as a motivation for the existing users and part of the marketing campaign to the other schools within the same geographical area.
562 The Traction of SnappEd
SnappEd first launched a simple mobile web version and conducted its beta-testing in December 2020 with 50 users from 2 different schools. This beta-testing occurred within two weeks to gain a better understanding of the problems faced by the target market. Beta-testing fulfills a range of important functions and can provide valuable insights for researchers (Van Teijlingen and Hundley, 2001). From the beta-testing findings, various improvements and enhancements were deployed in order to meet the users' needs.
After significant enhancements were completed, SnappEd managed to secure a
collaboration with Perlis State Educational Department and conducted a pilot test with 297 users from 14 different schools within three weeks duration in March 2021. After the pilot test, Perlis State Educational Department was satisfied with the findings and results, leading towards implementing SnappEd for the schools in Perlis.
In April 2021, SnappEd officially launched the mobile application version where users can download the application via Google Playstore and Apple Appstore. This launching was conducted concurrently with the second phase of implementation in Perlis Schools. Ever since the official launching of the mobile application, SnappEd has further collaborated with Sarawak and Selangor State Educational Department and Pasir Mas District Educational Department. As of 31st August 2021, there are a total of 11,642 users from 28 schools. 48% of the users have downloaded the application, while the rest used the mobile web version. A total of 6084 assignments have been uploaded by the teachers, with an average of 1521 assignments uploaded per month, indicating a positive utilization by the teachers.
Since the official launching of the mobile application, the growth rate of users traction has been steadily increasing at an average of 15% per month. It is expected that by the end of 2021, SanppEd will achieve 25,000 users.
Objectives of the Study
The main objective of this study is to analyze the utilization rate among the users of SnappEd.
In terms of utilization, it revolves around the percentage of active users, homework submission rate, and teachers' marking rate.
2. Literature Review
The Implementation of Technology in Malaysian Schools
In order to levitate the betterment of the education system in Malaysian schools, it is undeniable that the significance of the implementation of technology. Therefore, many initiatives have been made to accomplish this feat, and one of the initiatives is Frog Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Frog VLE is a learning management system implemented nationally by the Ministry of Education (MOE) for its 10,000 government-sponsored schools (Cheok &
Wong, 2016). In Malaysia, it was introduced in primary schools by mid-2013. Ahmed, Zakaria, and Elmi (2013) mentioned that Frog VLE is a cloud-based learning platform that bridges the school's ecosystem between administrators and managers, teachers and students. This content management system for learning allows teachers to supply their students with materials remotely. Teachers, students, and parents can use the network to share instructional resources, interactive learning, and dynamic communication (Phoong et al., 2020). Frog VLE is an
563 initiative by Frog Education through the 1BestariNet project to simplify and enhance teaching and learning, communication, and administration. However, the Education Ministry announced that it had declined YTL's offer to extend the 1BestariNet free internet service contract (Basyir, 2019).
Subsequently, the latest initiative by MOE is called Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa), which is a platform where the ministry works together with Google, Microsoft, Apple in culminating several years of their efforts. The DELIMa Platform provides all the apps and services for teachers and students in Malaysia, including digital learning technological infrastructures like Google Classroom, Microsoft 365, and Apple Teacher Learning Centre. (Microsoft Malaysia, 2020). Along with that, DELIMa has collaborated with some applications and services such as Seneca Learning, Quizizz, and Khan Academy. Besides, DELIMa has discussed three guiding principles: platform democratization, lifelong learning, and digital transformation.
In conjunction with the DELIMa launch, by averaging 1.7 million monthly active users, the platform is one of the world's largest national deploys. Malaysia is advancing enormously in its digital transformation and future-readiness with 10,000 schools, 370,000 teachers, and 2.5 million students in the system. From time to time, there will be more approaches and initiatives moving towards the betterment of the education system in Malaysian schools. From the chalk-and-talk approach to the DELIMa platform, it is a progressive move from the ministry that benefits the education ecosystem in all aspects.
The Importance of Data-Driven Decision Making
Big data is an extensively used term today to describe and define the recent emergence and existence of data sets of high magnitude. It can be utilized in many sectors including education.
According to Vaitsis, Hervatis, & Zary (2016), big data and analytics have added value in different contexts and consequently have proven to be extremely useful approach for investigating its possible impact in academia.
Teachers can use data to inform instructional practice. Means et al. (2011) found that teachers have a certain degree of understanding of using data but lack specific skills needed to be effective. They also found that teachers working in data teams help to compensate for individual teachers’ lack of competence with data. According to Gummer and Mandinach (2015), data literacy is typically interpreted as the collection, examination, analysis, and interpretation of data to inform some sort of decision in an educational setting. SnappEd aims to assist teachers to make data-driven decision making with its big data capacity.
Gamification in Education
Gamification is an increasingly popular area of research and practice that entails adopting game elements in non-gaming environments (Deterding, 2019; Werbach and Hunter, 2012). In education, gamification can help the learning process as it can enhance the involvement of learners. It is not surprising to education that many educators are faced with student interest and involvement concerns in their classes. Educators have in the past tried to employ a variety of approaches, including motivational techniques. Nevertheless, it was only a short timeframe that the intervention lasted. Gamification can, because of its entertaining and playful nature, be
564 a fantastic way to solve student engagement and problems of classroom involvement (Kim et al., 2017).
Gamification in education and learning is a series of activities and processes used or implemented to tackle challenges related to learning and education. Serious learning and education games are games designed to achieve educational and learning goals in the real world. The game players can learn during the game and reach the goals when the missions in the game have succeeded. In other words, serious games are integrated into games with real- world concerns. The aim of gamification in learning and education, on the other hand, is to create authentic environments that encourage learning and the solution of problems. It is done in the actual world (Kim et al., 2017).
The anchoring effect is a phenomenon of cognitive distortion that uses initial knowledge for decision-making (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). If an anchor is established, it can affect individual decision-making since it uses the anchor to assess the other bits of information. The idea of anchoring effects will be used in SnappEd. For instance, when students know their homework or assignment marks can be converted into Battle Points to enhance their character and battle with other players, they can be motivated to do more and more homework. The anchoring effect is also used in games. Game players start playing from the most straightforward task and take on more challenging tasks step by step. The players believe additional missions are conceivable because of the anchoring. For example, level 1 players cannot figure out how to complete level 5 missions, yet levels 4 players who have finished level 1, 2, and 3 can do level 5 tasks (Kim et al., 2017).
Besides, the anchoring effect can alleviate the apparent difficulty of an exercise that students can do. The teachers can employ anchorage to assign learning activities to students rather than providing a long-term, end-of-life, and challenging objective in the beginning.
Learners who accomplish a task effectively may have higher feelings of self-efficiency and may be more confident about moving on to the next level of activity (Kim et al., 2017).
3. Research Methodology
A quantitative approach was chosen to conduct the study on the utilization rate among the users of SnappEd. Williams (2011) stated that quantitative research involves collecting data to be quantified and subjected to statistical treatment. The data for this study was retrieved by the back-end system of SnappEd, which stores every homework uploaded by the teachers, answers submitted by the students, and marked answers by the teachers. The back-end also automatically analyses the submission and marking rate for each assignment. Through this record and analysis, comprehensive and valid reports can be generated, which are accessible to schools and state education departments in order for them to monitor progress, eventually assist in decision making. Aliaga and Gunderson (2002) describe quantitative research methods as explaining an issue or phenomenon through gathering data in numerical form and analyzing with the aid of mathematical methods, in particular statistics. The population of SnappEd users is 10,524 students and 1,118 teachers from 28 schools. However, 6 schools are newly onboarded and have not yet started to use SnappEd. Therefore, the sample size for this study is 8777 students and 907 teachers from 22 schools.
565 4. Results and Findings
Table 1: Total Number of SnappEd Users
Schools Students Teachers
28 10,524 1,118
Figure 2: Number of Students and Teachers According Schools
According to Table 1, there are currently 28 schools onboarded in the SnappEd system with 10,524 students and 1,118 teachers. However, only 22 schools have started using SnappEd, while 6 schools are newly onboarded and have not yet started using SnappEd.
Figure 3: Percentage of Schools According Category
566 According to Figure 3, the majority of the schools using SnappEd are primary schools (including pre-school) with a total of 20 schools (71%). Another 6 schools (29%) using SnappEd are secondary schools.
Figure 4: Percentage of Schools According States
According to Figure 4, the majority of the schools using SnappEd are from Perlis, with a total of 21 schools (75%). Another 4 schools (14.3%) using SnappEd are from Sarawak, followed by 3 schools (10.7%) from Perak.
Figure 5: Percentage of Schools According Geography
According to Figure 5, the majority of the schools using SnappEd are from suburban areas, with a total of 14 schools (50%). Another 10 schools (35.7%) using SnappEd are from rural areas, followed by 4 schools (14.3%) from urban areas.
567 Figure 6: Rate of Active Users for Teachers
Teachers who have started to upload and mark assignments using SnappEd are considered active users. According to Figure 6, an average of 40% of teachers is considered active users of SnappEd. Out of the 28 schools on-boarding SnappEd, 6 schools are excluded from the data because they are still newly onboarded and have not yet started to use SnappEd.
6 schools have achieved over 50% active users for teachers, while another 16 schools are still recording below 50% active users.
Figure 7: Rate of Submission and Marking
568 The submission rate is the percentage of assignment submissions received over the total number of students in the class. The marking rate is the percentage of assignments marked by the teachers over the number of assignment submissions received from the students.
According to Figure 7, 37% is the average percentage of submission by the students. 5 schools have achieved more than 50% of submission rate, while another 17 schools are still below 50% submission rate for students. Meanwhile, the average marking rate for teachers is 76%. 21 schools have recorded an excellent rate of marking exceeding 50%, while only 1 school is below 50% of the marking rate for teachers.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
Based on its interactive features, traction, and the increasing number of users, it is evident that SnappEd has the pulling factors in attracting teachers and students to use this mobile application to manage school tasks. From the findings, it is evident that most of the demand came from primary schools. Most primary school students rely on their parents' devices to perform online learning and complete their school tasks using SnappEd. Therefore, it can be concluded that parents' involvement did play a significant role in facilitating childrens' learning process.
Another significant finding is that most schools using SnappEd are in suburban and rural areas compared to urban areas. This is because the mechanism of SnappEd is convenient to be used, and it does not consume a lot of mobile data, which makes it appealing to users who have poor internet bandwidth.
Regarding the percentage of active users for teachers, only 40% of the teachers actively use SnappEd. Therefore, this opens up future research opportunities to identify the rest of the reluctant teachers to use SnappEd. The findings could be utilized to enhance the application further and improve users' experience. The same case could be applied for the submission and marking rate. The majority of the schools have not even achieved a 50% submission rate, indicating issues and reluctance among students. Even though the marking rate is positive where the majority of the schools have exceeded 50%, there can still be room for improvement.
Hence, further study can be done on users' journey and satisfaction.
Therefore, the findings of this study are essential to the developer of SnappEd to improve the mobile application further and also crucial for the teachers and school administrators to make data-driven decision making in schools and pedagogical approaches, whether in ODL or face-to-face learning. In conclusion, the usage of mobile applications in managing school tasks is a concept worth explored by the schools and every stakeholder in the educational system.
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