Archives of Design Research

Animation is an artistic, cinematic, and technical-driven medium that requires much technical skillset and collaboration to complete one fine product. Media design students learn to create animation in studio-based learning, an essential teaching method for any media-related education (Oh, 2018). In the studio, they generate ideas and visualize the story, background, and character design to bring them to life (Wells, 1998). Students learn from field experts and tutors and work on projects like professionals (Brocato, 2009). They need to know how to implement their project through the entire project pipeline—pre-production, production, and post-production—with consistent feedback and tutorial sessions from peers and teachers (Oh, 2018). Students work closely with their team members for a semester or an entire year to achieve highly refined animation projects. Animation is a practice that is closely associated with craft art (Ward, 2013); hence, students hone their skills by constantly practicing (Oh, 2018). Through this activity, students learn to collaborate to practice and take the opportunities to be active and independent learners during their course of study (Oh, 2018; Oh et al., 2018). Interacting and sharing with peers allows them to have a higher level of cognitive and social skills (Hetland et al., 2007) and foster a positive learning experience (Bazillion & Braun, 1998).

Dale (1946) introduced the first classic learning pyramid called "Cone of experience." Treichler (1967) revised the model by including the approximated percentages of what people generally remember (Table 1). Later, Sousa (2006) introduced rates of retention (Table 2).

The active and passive learning pyramid model (Figure 1) shows that active teaching methods, i.e., teaching others, practicing doing, and discussing, have a higher retention rate than passive learning methods, i.e., demonstration, audiovisual, reading, and lecture. Furthermore, Assadi (2018) pointed out that students retain more from what they learn using active learning methods like discussion, practicing, and teaching others. This argument corresponds with the classical model.

Figure 1 The active and passive learning pyramid model

Peer teaching is a concept and a teaching method that has been around for a few centuries (Briggs, 2013). Peer teaching effectively engages students with the complex idea of learning (Stigmar, 2016; Karpicke & Blunt, 2011) and their autonomous learning experience over the past decades (Benson & Danjun, 2013; Oh, 2017). In an animation classroom, students often collaborate on their projects. As Eisenkopf (2010) postulates, student's performance varies depending on their attitudes toward their groupmates and the project itself. Students are primarily motivated to perform well in teamwork because they want to maintain good relationships with their peers, mainly because they spend most of their time together in the studio (Oh et al., 2018). Cooperation encourages students to seek peer teaching and learning sessions using feedback to become more involved in achieving shared goals (Keppel et al., 2006).

When students alter their perceived role from a student to a teacher, they go through self-assessment, evaluation, monitoring, and learning (Stigmar, 2016) to allow their learners to understand well. Peer teachers keep constructing, retrieving, and reflecting on their knowledge to complement peer learners' existing knowledge, although they do not teach the new topic or materials as real teachers do. Teaching preparation helps them acquire a deeper understanding (L'Roy, 1983) about the subject, unlike learning shortcuts or memorization (Mazur, 2014).

For peer learners, the learning activity becomes more interactive and reciprocal (Boud et al., 2001) because they can easily participate in the pursuit of their learning. Peer-to-peer teaching and learning activities support all learners through a certain degree of freedom that allows them to ask questions or raise issues to the peer teacher. According to Oh et al. (2018), students' specific peer-to-peer teaching and learning culture is created and fostered in a studio-based environment by themselves. Peer learners experience the benefit of becoming more engaged and an enhanced sense of belonging in their peer group.

While the peer teaching approach transforms students' attitudes cognitively toward their learning, the flipped classroom physically supports them to be active and independent learners by providing a relaxed pace of adaptable lectures for all the students (Zarrinabadi & Ebrahimi, 2019). Students watch the video lectures on the platform created by their peers before the face-to-face tutorial time and engage with their peer teachers for the active, student-oriented, and self-regulated learning experience (Steen-Utheim & Foldnes, 2018; Oh, 2017). Conducting peer teaching in a flipped learning classroom fosters positivity in their learning and builds a dynamic and active learning environment.

Shifting the role of students as passive recipients (Steen-Utheim & Foldnes, 2018; Stigmar, 2016) to teachers as active providers is a big challenge for students. Contrary to the traditional lecture-based classroom, animation learners in the media design course always engage in unique ways, such as peer critique and sharing sessions in their studios (Oh, 2018). This advantage of constant peer interaction keeps them feel engaged, effective, and self-authored. It also provides them with a sense of belonging (Oh et al., 2020; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Peer teachers must change their mindset in an animation classroom by preparing lectures and ensuring their peers understand them clearly through hands-on practice sessions. Engagement is an enthusiastic attitude towards learning activities and a willingness to get involved more (Christenson et al., 2012). According to Fredricks et al. (2004), students experience different dimensions of engagement in a session: 1) behavioral engagement, which focuses on participation in both academic and social activities; 2) emotional engagement, which comprises both positive and negative feelings for overall experience at school and makes students more enthusiastic with their projects; and 3) cognitive engagement, which integrates motivation and attention to master skills.

The procedure of peer teaching also equips students to lead their peers with a sense of autonomy (Benson & Danjun, 2013) and ownership. According to Ryan and Deci (2000), in their self-determination motivational theory (hereafter SDT), the sense of autonomy is one of the critical attributes for students to feel intrinsic motivation. Autonomy is a person's choice to be self-determined and to handle opportunities for self-direction (Deci & Ryan, 2002). In addition, Deci and Ryan (2002) continue to postulate other essential attributes of SDT that are competence and relatedness. Competence is the quality of a person who feels effective during interactions with others. Meanwhile, relatedness means that a person feels a sense of belonging to a community.

Changing the classroom dynamic, such as peer teaching in a flipped classroom, encourages students to have a more autonomous attitude when engaged and motivated throughout their studies. Learners are inspired to amplify their autonomous and independent learning outcomes by interacting with peers (Flink et al., 1990; Oh et al., 2018). Adopting a blended learning environment motivates students to be more interactive and supportive in and out of the classroom and facilitates a discursive learning environment by nurturing intrinsic motivation (Rasiah, 2014). Ma (2016) suggests that the benefit of peer interaction in the blended learning environment can foster a positive interpersonal relationship, which creates an engaging and motivating learning experience (Mazer et al., 2009).

Learning engagement is a popular topic in education research. This study investigates the effects of peer teaching under flipped classroom practices on classroom learning engagement and motivation. This study adopted the engagement framework of Fredricks et al. (2004) and the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985, 2002).

Under the engagement theory, scholars investigated learning engagement from three dimensions: behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004). First, behavioral engagement has three different definitions: positive conduct, involvement in learning and academic tasks, and participation. Students are said to have good behavior (Finn, 1993) if they make an effort, pay attention, contribute to classroom discussions (Finn et al., 1995; Skinner & Belmont, 1993), and participate in school activities (Finn, 1993).

Second, emotional engagement refers to students' reactions in the classroom, including feelings of interest, boredom, joy, unhappiness, and anxiety (Skinner & Belmont, 1993) toward their learning experience with teachers. Fredricks et al. (2004) also postulate that emotional engagement is associated with motivation, as this paradigm focuses on interest, value, and rapport between teachers and students.

Third, cognitive engagement denotes an investment in learning that involves self-regulation, strategy, ambition, and a challenging mindset related to psychological investment (Newmann et al., 1992). Students are willing to learn, master their knowledge and skills to accomplish a task (Zimmerman, 1990), and invest psychologically. By showing effort, students become more cognitively engaged and motivated at the same time. Students would choose to work harder independently while trying to be flexible in finding better solutions to their problems. Hence, they can cope better when they experience failures.

Another essential theory the researchers adopted for this study is self-determination theory (SDT hereafter). Deci and Ryan (1985) developed SDT for students' psychological needs, and it has been one of the most critical theories in educational research (Liu et al., 2009; Oh et al., 2020). SDT concerns of intrinsic motivation signify an individual student's pure interest and satisfaction (Oh et al., 2020). In this study, researchers employ the SDT model created by Deci and Ryan (1985) and initially modified by Oh et al. (2020) in their previous study. Ryan and Deci (2000) postulate that if an individual's three psychological needs, namely competence, relatedness, and autonomy, can be satisfied, their intrinsic motivation is heightened regardless of the situation. The first need, competence, motivate learners to interact effectively in their environment. Subsequently, learners feel optimal and effective when interacting with their social environment, experiencing opportunities, and expressing their capacities (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Shapira, 1976). The second need, relatedness, involves having warm and caring interactions and a sense of belonging in a community (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Furrer & Skinner, 2003). The last need, autonomy, refers to acknowledging choice provisions made by learners (Patall et al., 2013) and recognizing their self-determined and self-authored actions (Deci & Ryan, 2002).

The researchers developed the conceptual framework for this research using the primary motivators within the classroom engagement attributes in Fredricks et al. (2004) and SDT (competence, autonomy, and relatedness). In Table 1, critical engagement theories and SDT were adopted to propose the right-hand column, "Motivational barometers of peer teaching in the flipped classroom." The column presents the expected outcomes when applying these two theories' attributes to our specific research situation.

From the data analysis, combining peer teaching and a flipped classroom with online resources is an innovative pedagogy in animation education. Teaching by peers and learning from peers brought students a distinctive learning experience. The four most mentioned experiences in the data are:

Freedom of choice. Students were empowered to choose the curriculums to teach in their sessions. They selected topics according to the expertise within the group or the topics they thought were interesting and essential in animation study.

Variety of teaching resources. When students prepared their teaching materials, they collected information from various sources such as previous education, experience, the internet, or books. The procedure of finding resources broadens their perspectives and inspires them to think further.

Effective learning from peers. As teachers, students worked very hard to understand the curriculums they were going to teach, as they needed to use the knowledge to teach their classmates thoroughly. As learners, they claimed that they felt comfortable learning from group mates and classmates, which reduces the hesitation of asking questions.

Favorable result of the flipped classroom. Students created tutorial videos and put them online for classmates to view and revise. Most of the students agreed that the online tutorial videos helped them prepare for the hands-on session and change after lessons.

This learning experience and environment reduced the learning barriers. Students engaged more in teaching and learning, which enhanced their learning motivation.

In traditional animation education, interaction is not very often, and students are primarily passive learners. For instance, they usually passively observe the teacher's demonstration and attempt in their projects. However, the observation and interview results of this study show that students who participated in peer teaching have a significant change in learning attitude, as in the following:

More effort was involved. When students have the responsibility to teach, they are more willing to put effort into it. For example, they might learn from groupmates or research to make sure they know the topic very well. Students also became more considerate, as they cared about how many classmates could learn from their teaching. They tried their best to help in the hands-on sessions and answer questions.

Self-regulation enhanced. To deliver a good teaching session, students put determination into planning, time management, and getting learners engaged. Students who were less interested in animation were self-initiated to learn more when they became teachers.

Active participation. From the learners' point of view, students paid serious attention during peer teaching sessions. They enjoyed learning from classmates, as they thought the curriculum was helpful and exciting. Students also stated that when their classmates were teaching, they felt very casual when raising their hands and did not hesitate to ask questions. These changes in learning attitudes show that the peer teaching approach allows students to learn more effectively, which may improve future learning.

During this action research, students experienced intense interaction with peers. They must collaborate in groups to complete the teaching tasks, and they learned from other classmates. The practice is like the project-based learning they used when creating animation. But this time, it included a brand-new area for them, which is teaching. Therefore, students learned skills from each other, and, at the same time, they worked closely to communicate and collaborate. After all, most of the participants said that they gained the following from their peer teaching approach:

Knowing their classmates better. Students were happy to get the chance to know more about their classmates with the online profiles created in the flipped classroom platform and the time they worked together. They knew more about their classmates' personalities, abilities, and strengths. Some of them stated that they can now easily find the corresponding classmates if they have questions in a particular skill. They also think they can now easily find groupmates for future projects.

Motivation from peers. Students claimed that they are motivated when they see the brilliant teaching materials done by other groups. It gave them a benchmark to pursue and a feeling of competition. Students wanted to prepare for their teaching sessions and do better in their projects and future work.

These findings indicated that peer teaching with flipped classroom pedagogy significantly influenced students' learning experiences, their attitude toward learning in animation classrooms, and their relationship and collaboration with their peers.

This study indicated that peer teaching built a favorable environment for students to learn animation skills. Through the active participation of teaching peers and learning from peers, students obtained solid skill sets and knowledge about producing an animation. Compared with the teacher-led learning, students showed a more positive attitude and effort. They paid more attention in class and were more persistent in their learning. This performance perfectly matches the idea of behavioral engagement, which is essential for students to achieve academic outcomes and avoid dropping out (Fredricks et al., 2004). For a practical subject like animation, when students are behaviorally engaged and become active learners, they demonstrate a very positive phenomenon about learning by doing. Meanwhile, the flipped classroom online material acted as a strong reinforcement for students. Even if some of them cannot follow in class, they can always go back to review.

Furthermore, students can exercise and express their capabilities in the related curriculum more when digging into animation knowledge and preparing teaching materials. They became more confident with their skills, and this enhanced their sense of competence. In self-determination theory, a sense of competence is one of the core elements of motivation. Someone with a higher sense of competence would be intrinsically motivated on a specific task (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Teaching could be much more effective when students have higher motivation in learning.

From the school perspective, peer teaching supported by a flipped classroom pedagogy successfully facilitated the learning of animation skills. Students gained a better skill set in creating animation after the three months of classes. It significantly leveled the imbalance of students' knowledge and ability, bringing an overall higher standard of animation skills level.

When our students learn drawing or animation in their previous education experience, there are very few opportunities to collaborate with others. Most of the students in the class show relatively introverted personalities and have a certain level of hesitation in interaction with people. In experiencing this action research, students were assigned a heavy workload on teamwork. They were no longer working on their own. They need to communicate with classmates as they share the same goal closely. Students' feedback indicated that the outcome of peer teaching practice surprised them. The passion for creating animation they shared made them willing to open their minds and communicate. They felt satisfied when successfully conveying their idea to others. Their classmates inspired them, and they enjoyed solving problems together. Communication and collaboration result in higher relatedness in the classroom. The research results in the motivation field have indicated that when people think they have a closer relationship or higher feeling of belongingness in a group, they are more motivated to put effort into the task. (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Moreover, students learned to care about classmates during peer teaching. They tried to step closer to see how classmates are doing and try to answer their questions. After all, they gain the feeling of being important (belongingness) and being appreciated (value), which enhances their emotional engagement (Finn, 1989). Communication and collaboration skills are one type of tacit knowledge that students can only obtain through experience (Leonard & Sensiper, 1998). This peer teaching try-out engaged students in the opportunity of communication. This approach would become one of the most effective tools in nurturing well-rounded students.

Peer teaching with a flipped classroom pedagogy creates favorable learning momentum in the learning cycle (Figure 3) for animation education. First, the engagement enriches students' knowledge. The enriched knowledge then enhances their sense of competence. Together with autonomy and relatedness, this led to higher motivation in learning. Then students would actively participate in learning and request more knowledge, which they can use to improve their peer teaching.

Figure 3 Peer teaching with a flipped classroom model

The study found that passive educational methods, e.g., lecture, reading, audiovisual, and demonstrations, were transformed into active learning. Because of peer teaching needs, students are motivated to learn independently and prepare for their lessons, which generates more intrinsic motivations to learn. Therefore, the whole learning process changes from passive to active in peer teaching with a flipped classroom model (Zheng et al., 2020).

Students were given complete freedom on the entire operation of peer teaching. They were empowered to pick the curriculum they wanted to teach, create teaching material, lead in the way they thought was good, and learn at their own pace. Although some of the students claimed that this was very challenging for them, they still wanted to complete it beyond the requirement. During this practice, they gained a strong feeling of autonomy. Again, autonomy acts as one of the core elements in intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Because of the empowerment, students thought that they had more responsibility to teach well. Therefore, they performed self-regulation in the preparation process. They designed various strategies to make their teaching more exciting and engaging. Students demonstrated cognitive engagement in class.

Along with enhancing classroom engagement and intrinsic motivation, this pedagogy creates a favorable environment to nurture creativity. Much research has indicated that intrinsic motivation positively affects creativity (Amabile, 1985; Stenmark, 2000; Casakin & Kreitler, 2010). Additionally, being confident and having freedom of choice in their learning largely benefitted students' idea-expression in animation, as they have sufficient skills and confidence to realize their ideas. Since creativity is one of the core elements that animation students need, peer teaching with flipped classrooms would influence animation education's overall learning outcome.