Rain classroom is jointly researched by Xuetang online and Online Education Office of Tsinghua University. It was officially open to the public free of charge in April 2016. Rain classroom is a hybrid teaching software based on PowerPoint and WeChat. It helps to connect teachers and students smoothly through internet. Rain classroom combines PowerPoint and WeChat perfectly with complex information technology. Rain class enables teachers and students to establish interaction and connection before, during and after class. Pre-class preview courseware, such as MOOC video, exercise and voice can be pushed to students' mobile phones. Teachers can arrange preview tasks, understand students' Preview situation, make targeted teaching preparation. In class, real-time question answering, bullet screen interaction and random roll call can improve students' learning enthusiasm. Students receive PPT and test questions in real time on the mobile terminal, and can feed back the knowledge points they don't understand to the teachers through the "don't understand" button, which is conducive to the teachers to timely grasp the students' learning status and make targeted explanation. After class, the teacher will have MOOC After class review courseware of video, and exercise and voice are pushed to students' mobile phones to arrange review tasks after class, expand frontier knowledge of disciplines and broaden students' vision. Curriculum reform in Colleges is committed to increasing the interaction between teachers and students ,improving students' self directed learning[[i]],while rain classroom can help a lot.
Compared with digital resources, students tend to review with digital resources, especially two weeks before the exam[[ii]]. Information and internet develop so fast, various social networks have emerged and dominated at different stage (ie, QQ, micro-blog, WeChat, Tiktok).Social software has greatly influenced college students’ behavior, playing an increasingly irreplaceable role in college students' life or learning. WeChat is the most popular social media platform in China[[iii]] and also the main social software used by Chinese college students[[iv]]. WeChat has many functions, not only for social intercourse, but also for health education [[v]-[vi][vii]] and teaching[7,[viii]]. Educational reforms should be carried out integrating social media[[ix]],and the combination of WeChat and software program is well applied in teaching which help facilitating students’ self directed learning ability[[x]]. Rain classroom has established a seamless connection between teachers and students, it makes up for the lack of class time, students can control over learning hours, place, and learning progress via WeChat and internet. In rain class, preview materials and preview questions are released before class. During class, courseware is synchronized to the mobile terminal, and random roll call and interactive online answers are carried out. After class, development materials and review questions are released to enable students to prepare before class. In class, teachers explain and synchronize exercises to deepen their understanding of knowledge and skills. After class, frontier knowledge can be expanded and knowledge learned can be consolidated. Teachers can support students’ participatory learning by providing guiding support and learning conditions[[xi]].
The means of SDLA is that individuals make use of all learning resources, determine learning objectives, formulate learning methods, and evaluate learning effects. It is active, whether with or without help from others[[xii]]. Nursing has made great efforts to explore SDL readiness from the mid-1980s to 1998[[xiii]]. SDLA has been regarded as an important ability in nurses’ professional career [[xiv]]. The complexity of patients' condition and the speed of updating medical knowledge require nurses to have the ability of self-directed learning [[xv]-[xvi][xvii]]. Nursing students should develop self-directed learning ability in school. Rain classroom teaching mode is conducive to the improvement of self-directed learning ability. Rain classroom provides students with digital learning resources, and learning is not limited by time and place. In this study, the rain classroom teaching group's self-directed learning ability had been greatly improved, and students' final exam scores were significantly higher than the traditional teaching group. Some researcher had proved that higher self directed learning ability had a positive impact on academic results[[xviii]-[xix]].The satisfaction scores of the two groups had no significant difference, but the scores of teaching effect and teaching measure dimensions in rain classroom group were significantly higher than those of the traditional teaching group(p<0.05). While the ability of self directed learning is correlated with personal characteristics and demography[[xx]], teachers should adopt individualized teaching methods. Rain classroom teaching arouses the enthusiasm of students and learning enthusiasm, so it achieves good teaching effect. At the same time, rain classroom teaching requires students to have sufficient mobile phone power, fast and stable network speed to ensure effective interaction with teachers. The enlightenment to managers and educators is to reasonably configure power sockets and improve network speed.
This study has some limitations as folowings. Firstly, there was no large sample size and multicenter large sample study hasn’t been included, and the impact of large sample studies on the results is not known. Secondly, the course lasted for two months. We only observed the short-term teaching effect, but the long-term influence of rain classroom teaching on students' self-directed learning ability is not clear. Finally, because the teachers engaged in stomatology teaching are clinical teachers, who are busy and whose time is limited, there is no qualitative interview on rain classroom teaching. We only carried out questionnaire investigation and final examination to evaluate the two teaching methods’ teaching quality. How rain classroom works to promote students’ self-directed learning ability is unknown.
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