The Preferred Learning Environment for Digital Natives

Case study: The Preferred Learning Environment for Digital Natives

Educators are constantly seeking innovative methods to motivate their students and tools that will save them valuable time. Heather Kaiser, a 4th and 5th grade teacher at Pauline Jones Elementary School for the Arts in North Carolina, found that RCampus is the ideal digital learning environment that excites her students and streamlines her teaching methods. "RCampus is a Web 2.0 tool worth your time to learn because it helps you solve the issue of never having enough time to do everything. Teachers can develop projects, give student feedback, create rubrics, and assign student grades all in one place," Ms. Kaiser said. "I can provide feedback from anywhere at anytime and the students can log in to work anywhere/anytime. It really buys us more time with our students. The need for paper has been greatly reduced."

Changing the Method, Not the Material

Ms. Kaiser, who holds a master's degree in Educational Technology and has 12 years of teaching experience with 4th graders, feels that in addition to saving her time and effort RCampus makes her students excited about learning. "The students love it. My projects and curriculum haven't really changed much, but when they work on RCampus, students become much more motivated to complete the work. They are digital natives and this is their preferred learning mode. Anything we can do as teachers to tap into that is to our benefit. I am thrilled to have this bundle of tools all in one place!" she exclaimed.

Digital Portfolios for Digital Natives

One of the tools that Ms. Kaiser finds most valuable is the RCampus ePortfolio system which enables students to create organized digital portfolios to showcase their work. "The ePortfolios is one of the best features for me and my students. The 5th graders participate in a speech competition that requires persuasive arguments. This tool helps me to prompt them and helps them organize their facts and information as they gather it. They can use the information gathered and stored here to develop their final product," Ms. Kaiser explained. "RCampus offers a digital medium for today's digital native learners and simplifies the work of the teacher. I can create templates, guide projects, develop rubrics and use those rubrics for one-click grading. RCampus has changed the way I integrate project-based learning into my classroom."

Convenient Assessment for Teachers, Efficient Feedback for Students

The feature which enables Ms. Kaiser to evaluate her students' work in "one-click" is RCampus' assessment tool, iRubric. Although she has used other online rubric creators in the past, Ms. Kaiser now relies on iRubric to efficiently and conveniently provide students with thorough feedback on their work. "As I said before, I like that I can give them feedback without carrying a stack of papers home and having to wait to return them. Feedback becomes much more timely. I also like the ability to set up a gradebook and link rubrics to it. I love that I can click on the score boxes of a rubric and have a grade generated and stored in the gradebook automatically. This is a huge time-saver."