Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, attending after-school activities now becomes a luxury to students, which used to establish interests, friendships and social networks in an informal setting. Students lost contact with peers and teachers and were forced to attend blended courses at home, which may constitute threats to their non-academic issues, especially social needs and mental health of the most vulnerable students. This article overviews a new interpretation of extracurricular activities (ECAs) to teach artificial intelligence (AI) via a social networking site (SNS) among junior secondary school students in Hong Kong. A three-stage action research with the use of semi-structured interviews, motivational surveys and lesson observation was conducted. Based on how students perceived such pedagogical changes, the teachers employed various strategies to transform the “after-school” activities online. The investigation presented the planning processes on how to transform the informal learning activities to an online mode via SNSs that can reach the roles of ECAs in schooling. Our study indicated that meaningful activities rely on teachers’ leading role to build a collaborative social media environment in order to facilitate social engagement among students.
Highlights
As the dangerous pandemic COVID-19 spreads globally, according to United Nations statistics, by March 18 2020, 107 countries around the world temporarily closed universities, secondary and primary institutes for an indefinite period of time due to the high risks of contagion in densely populated areas, affecting 862 million students, roughly half the global student population (Viner et al, 2020)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, attending after-school activities becomes a luxury to students, which used to build up confidence, friendships and social networks in an informal setting (Haripersad et al, 2020; Stein-Zamir et al, 2020)
As the focus of the study was not how the educators teach artificial intelligence (AI) via social networking site (SNS) in an informal setting, this article will mainly discuss how SNSs were used to reach the educational purposes of social engagement in extracurricular activities (ECAs)
Summary
As the dangerous pandemic COVID-19 spreads globally, according to United Nations statistics, by March 18 2020, 107 countries around the world temporarily closed universities, secondary and primary institutes for an indefinite period of time due to the high risks of contagion in densely populated areas, affecting 862 million students, roughly half the global student population (Viner et al, 2020). All extracurricular activities (ECAs) were cancelled at schools which may constitute threats to academic disengagement and emotional health of students. This is supported by scholars who have found a linkage between participation in structured leisure activities to positive youth development and association of ECA involvement with both academic and risky behavior outcomes during youth adulthood Educators designed some flexible and meaningful ECAs to enrich students’ learning and foster whole-person development with the use of social media tools and digital technologies in secondary schools (Şendurur et al, 2020; Nerantzi, 2020). An action research approach was implemented in three stages to modify the artificial intelligence (AI) ECAs at a secondary school in Hong Kong to explore the use of SNSs on students’ extra-curricular learning to enhance their motivation and social engagement in this digital era
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