The 11th International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education

Bucharest, April 23-24, 2015 10.12753/2066-026X-15-208

QR CODES IN EDUCATION - SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

Teodora Daniela CHICIOREANU, Essaid BILAL, Monica BUTNARIU Department of Training for the Teaching Career and Social-Humanities Sciences;

POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, Romania École NationaleSupérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, France

Banat’s University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine ”Regele Mihai I al Romaniei” from Timisoara, , Romania,

Abstract: We are nowadays used to access tens of links to get the information or to ask for information. Most of the times, during a talk, we bring in the discussion a webpage (link) where we can access a document, a tutorial, etc. In college, we truly assault students numerous times with tens of online pages, information useful to them and which they should access. On a webpage, a link can be clicked to visit another website, to send a message, to view a picture or to download a movie. But, in the classroom, these links are very difficult to give to them since, most of the times, they are very long and complex strings of character combinations. In order to facilitate the access to information, to access an internet address more easily and not only, the QR code were created. Thanks to the new technologies, anyone carrying a smartphone, iPod, or tablet device can scan the square barcode. The QR codes are more and more popular thanks to their capacity of fast reading and holding vast amounts of information. Are the QR codes just as popular in training/education, as well? In the first part of the paper, we present the results of studies on the extent to which the UPB professors use these codes in their daily activities and in the didactic activity. The second part of the paper shows alternatives of integrating these codes in the didactic activity

Keywords: quick response code - QR, education, mLearning, eLearning, Augmented Reality – AR

I. INTRODUCTION

The mobile device portabilityand their capacityto connect to the Internet from anywhere makes them the idealstorage place for reference materials and learning experiences, as well as general use tools for the field work, where they can be used to record voce, text or multimediaobservations, and accessreference sourcesin real time. Nowadays, most of thestudentscoming in a classroom bring their laptops and mobile phones with them.Moreover, it is now common practice for the participantsin a conference to bring their laptops and mobile phones in the sessions and interact with them while the speaker delivers the speech.

Some Trainers have started to embrace the new mobile technologies and use them strategicallywhile teaching. We can use the mobile devices as research data collectors. The mobile phones/tablets are two-way communication devices. Not only can they send information to the learner, but a learner can send informationback to a central database so they may be subsequently used by the collaborators.The mLearningrequires us to rethink how the learning process takes place and reformulate our approaches regarding the training.

Thanks to the new technologies, anyone having a smartphone, iPod, or tablet devicecan scana QRcode. The QR codes were first createdin 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. QR is the acronymof “Quick Response”. These codes are similar to the barcodes the retailers use to keep track of the stocks and product prices, the difference residing in the data quantity they can store. A QR codeallows the user to access content by using the mobile phone;it can include webaddresses,

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have Internetaccess, which shows a lack of interest to new, being well-known that all the faculties now provide the teaching staff with the possibility to connect to the Internet.

InternetAccessibility (%) Yes No 100 99.7% 0.3%

Table 2. InternetAccess

No.of uses (%) Types of locations Home School/work Permanent

100 9.4% 10.3% 80.3%

Table 3. Locationswith Internetaccess

A significant number of teaching staff members (64%) stated in their answers they did not know the term of QR codes.It is worth signalling that 34% of the teaching staff stated “Not yet”, denoting an interest in it and the possibility of their looking in it subsequently.

Knowledge of the QR concept (%) Yeas No Not yet 100% 36 % 30 % 34%

Table 4. Knowledgeof the QRcode concept

Picture 4. Distributionof the degree of awareness of the QRcodeconceptamongst the

investigateduniversity teaching staff

A significant 79% of the respondents stated they use the mLearningfor personal development, but only 32% within the didactic activities. Nevertheless, only 27% of the teaching staff members effectively use the QR codes in their daily activitiesand only 19% in their didacticactivity. Most of them mentioned they heard about them in the mass-media or in certain articles, but they did not try them.The Respondents using the QR codes were asked how often they used this technology.

Degree of using the new m-learning technologies

Evaluation levels (%) Very frequently Frequently Relatively

frequently Very little Not at all

100% 14.6 % 16.8% 25.7% 16.4% 26.4%

Table 4 . Theuse of QRcodes for acquiring new knowledge in the every-day life

The statistic data processing allowed us to highlight a series of correlations between the teaching staff’s computer use and performed everyday activities. There correlations are synthetically presented in the following Table.

How often do you use the computer

Where do you use the computer

Do you have

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Facilitating the student-teacher communication r=.679, r=.761, r=.803,

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How often do you use the computer

Where do you use the computer

Do you have

internet access

through the data offered by the QR codes p=0.05 p=0.01 p=0.01 Planning learning tasks in the virtual environment r=.618,

p=0.01 r=.639, p=0.01

r=.642, p=0.01

Creating learning resources (containing QR codes) r=.610, p=0.01

r=.629, p=0.01

r=.626, p=0.01

Designing computer-based/online assessment toolsfor the trainees/pupils

r=.613, p=0.01

r=.631, p=0.01

r=.629, p=0.01

Using/accessing learning guides in the online environment

r=.607, p=0.01

r=.625, p=0.01

r=.621, p=0.01

Viewing audio-video resources (e.g. YouTube,Slideshare, Vimeo, Teacher Youtube, etc.)

r=.722, p=0.01

r=.794, p=0.01

r=.797, p=0.01

Accessing teaching resources within the social networks

r=.763, p=0.01

r=.712, p=0.01

r=.722, p=0.01

Using/accessing storage and picture presentation tools (e.g. Picasa, Flikr)

r=.809, p=0.05

r=.817, p=0.05

r=.825, p=0.05

Using audio-video materials for teaching/learning activities

r=.714, p=0.01

r=.735, p=0.05

r=.731, p=0.05

Table 6. Significant correlations between the computer usage and the QR codeusage in the didacticactivity

The teaching staff’s wish to improve in the futuretheir abilities required for creating and integrating the QR codes in the didacticactivity was investigated subsequently to viewing a small tutorial (available in the questionnaire by means of a short multimediamovie) presenting the making of the QRcodes and ways to integrate them in the classes.

The data collected from this perspectiveare found at the same appreciation value level, namely, “Very frequently” and “Frequently”. The idea thus arises that the higher-education teachers wish to attend training courses to acquire skills for creating and integratingQRcodesin their daily routine. On the other hand, we noticed the extremely low percentage of respondents amongst the teachers (approx. 7%) who did not find it necessary and useful to integrate the QR codes in the didactic and personalactivity.

III. HOW CAN WE INTEGRATE THESE CODES IN THE TEACHING ACTIVITY?

In his book QR Codes in education (June 2013),researcher David Hopkins states that “QR code are a great way to pass information from one source to another:from teacher to student, from studentto student,and even from student to teacher!”.

Following the questionnaire data analysis, but alsothe classroom experience of the authors and of other researchers (Bocan V[1], Gheorghe A, Radu C.[6],Butnariu, M; Milosan, I [2][3]; Caunii, A[4];Grossesck G.[7][8];HolotescuC [9], Radu C[20])the following ways to integrate the QR codes in the didacticactivity were found:

- Teacher(s)’ contact information: to share the website address, e-mail, telephone and a short message, and access to the social media pages of the teacher/course;

- Additional resources The easiest way to send the studentsthe links to additional resources is through these QR codes. In college, we oftentimes bombard the studentswith tens of on-line pages, information useful to them and which they should access. On a webpage, one can click a link to visit another website, to send a message, to view a photograph or to download a movie. In the classroom, it is however very difficult to pass these links on to them, because, they are, most of the times, very long and with character combinations of the most diverse. In order to facilitate the access

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IV. CONCLUSIONS

The QRcodes facilitate learning and the exchange of knowledge, the prepare the young people for the future and offer the teachers, pupils and studentsnew opportunities which should not b e wasted, but used to their full potential.Just as studentsuse technology to enhance their learning process, and productivity and to promote creativity, teachers should use technology to support the instructivepractice and in order to improve productivity.

The use of innovative didacticstrategiesis matter of wide interest both for theorists, and practitioners, and it will remain open for debate, study, and experimentalinvestigationin order to continuously improve them.

“There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do” - Henry Ford

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