Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

Vladyslav S. Kruglyk

, Alona V. Chorna

, Iryna M. Serdiuk

and Anton V. Marynov

Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, 59 Naukovoho mistechka Str., Zaporizhzhia, 69000, Ukraine

Keywords:

Distance Learning, Blended Learning, Platform, Informatization, Quality of Education.

Abstract:

The paper reveals the results of a study of the feasibility of using the Discord platform in a blended learning

environment in higher education institutions. The authors conducted an in-depth analysis of research on the

creation and establishment of convenient and productive elements of distance learning (methods of building

distance learning courses, special needs of distance learning, requirements for distance learning platforms).

The authors believe that modern distance education systems do not fully use the opportunities of blended

education, which creates conditions in which the educational process does not use its maximum potential,

which leads to a decrease in the level of intensiﬁcation of education. The main problem, scientists consider

the insufﬁcient level of development of distance communication systems and, in order to solve the problem,

conduct an experiment on the basis of the Department of Informatics and Cybernetics of Melitopol State

Pedagogical University named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky platform Discord as an environment of educational

process ofﬂine during distance learning, quarantine caused by the global pandemic virus COVID-19.

1 INTRODUCTION

Analyzing the statistics, we can note that 2020 was

the year of global informatization of all segments of

human activity, the reason for such an increase in the

need for IT development, was the global pandemic

virus COVID-19. Of course, among the leading prob-

lems of mankind, there is the problem of education in

full or partial quarantine, which in turn has become

a catalyst for research in a particular vector of the

educational process in a pandemic. Carrying out a

preliminary analysis of research, we can note a sig-

niﬁcant increase in the number of scientiﬁc publica-

tions on the educational process in the languages of

blended and distance learning, among the leading ar-

eas of research are: development of adaptive testing

systems for students, use of automated learning sys-

tems, process. However, we can note that the educa-

tional process, especially in secondary and vocational

education requires closer contact when communicat-

ing with the teacher and creating conditions for syn-

chronous communication and a preliminary analysis

of scientiﬁc sources showed insufﬁcient study of this

issue, which conﬁrms the relevance of our research

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5196-7241

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0062-1144

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6808-0586

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7421-0487

analysis and development of recommendations use of

distance communication systems in terms of quality

learning process on the example of using the Discord

platform.

2 RELATED WORK

Before the analysis of current research in a particular

area, we decided to identify the leading vectors of our

selection, it was noted:

• scientiﬁc developments on determining the spe-

ciﬁc needs of participants in the learning process

in terms of distance and blended learning;

• scientiﬁc developments on the peculiarities of the

use of the platform identiﬁed in the study;

• scientiﬁc developments on the coverage of the ex-

perience of using the means of distance communi-

cation during the educational process in terms of

distance and blended learning.

Thus, we expected to get a comprehensive and

comprehensive vision of the problem and ways to

solve it, to analyze the experience of using re-

mote communication tools by scientists and teachers

around the world and to develop recommendations for

the use of the platform identiﬁed in the study.

158

Kruglyk, V., Chorna, A., Serdiuk, I. and Marynov, A.

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process.

DOI: 10.5220/0012062600003431

In Proceedings of the 2nd Myroslav I. Zhaldak Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2021), pages 158-169

ISBN: 978-989-758-662-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

First of all, it is appropriate to note the contri-

bution of scientists who focused their work on de-

termining the fundamentals of the development and

conduct of distance or blended learning, among them

important in our study were (Bilousova et al., 2021;

Kalashnikova et al., 2022; Kukharenko et al., 2022;

Martyniuk et al., 2021; Nofandi et al., 2020; Osadcha

et al., 2021; Voloshinov et al., 2020).

Methods of using online communication and the

problem of creating high-quality blended learning in

general quarantine are revealed in (Osadcha et al.,

2020; Ovcharuk et al., 2022; Oyegoke et al., 2021;

Tkachuk et al., 2022; Trubavina et al., 2021).Impor-

tant for our study was the work of Jiang et al. (Jiang

et al., 2019), who partially revealed the features of the

problems of moderation of voice associations, in par-

ticular the problem of cyber-bullying, incitement to

hatred and other social problems. Based on the pre-

liminary analysis of the sources regarding the actual

topic of the study, it is important to note the contri-

bution of Odinokaya et al. (Odinokaya et al., 2021),

Ariﬁanto and Izzudin (Ariﬁanto and Izzudin, 2021),

Vladoiu and Constantinescu (Vladoiu and Constan-

tinescu, 2020), Lacher and Biehl (Lacher and Biehl,

2018), Ardiyansah et al. (Ardiyansah et al., 2021),

Di Marco (Di Marco, 2021), Warni et al. (Warni

et al., 2021), Uong et al. (Uong et al., 2022), Wiles

and Simmons (Wiles and Simmons, 2022) and Mock

(Mock, 2019). These scientists conducted similar ex-

periments on the introduction of the Discord platform

in educational institutions and revealed the peculiar-

ities of their experience, which enabled a signiﬁcant

expansion of the research framework and served as a

basis for further work.

3 FEATURES OF USING THE

DISCORD PLATFORM IN THE

LEARNING PROCESS

Starting research on the use of any software to create

conditions for quality distance communication dur-

ing the educational process, it is advisable to analyze

the current scientiﬁc developments on the fundamen-

tal pedagogical principles of implementation and use

of distance education to further verify the feasibility

of using the Discord platform in education. process.

For this purpose it is expedient to refer to the works

of Valko and Osadchyi (Valko and Osadchyi, 2020),

Voloshinov et al. (Voloshinov et al., 2020), Bykov

(Bykov, 2008), Kyslova and Slovak (Kyslova and Slo-

vak, 2015), Kukharenko et al. (Kukharenko et al.,

2022), Dushchenko (Dushchenko, 2020). Thus, ac-

cording to Bykov (Bykov, 2008), we can identify pri-

ority properties that are common to all distance learn-

ing systems:

• Flexibility and adaptability. Students generally

do not attend regular classes in the traditional

form, but work at a convenient time in a conve-

nient place and at a convenient pace, which pro-

vides great beneﬁts for those who can not or do

not want to disrupt their usual, active social life.

• Modularity. The modular principle is the basis

of distance learning programs. Each individual

course creates a holistic view of a particular sub-

ject area.

• Economic efﬁciency. Due to the use of a more

concentrated presentation and uniﬁcation of the

content of educational material, the focus of dis-

tance learning technologies on a large number of

learners, more efﬁcient use of teaching staff and

material and technical base that provide training.

• New role of the teacher. The teacher is en-

trusted with such functions as: coordination of

the cognitive process, adjusting the course be-

ing taught, advising on the development of an in-

dividual curriculum, management of educational

projects, checking current tasks, and so on.

• Specialized quality control of education. In dis-

tance education, both traditional forms of qual-

ity control of existing and received education, and

distance forms of such work are used.

• Use of specialized technologies and teaching aids.

Distance learning uses special technologies: case

technologies; television technologies; video con-

ferencing technologies; combined technologies.

Distance learning technologies combine most of

the existing teaching methods and give them a

qualitatively new educational and technological

level.

The central link in distance learning is the means

of telecommunications and their transport base. They

are used to provide the educational process: the

necessary educational and methodological materials;

feedback between the teacher and the learners; ex-

change of management information within the dis-

tance learning system; access to international infor-

mation networks.

In summary, it can be argued that the tools and

methods of distance learning form a unique dis-

tributed environment, which provides the main fea-

tures, beneﬁts and problems of this promising form

of education.

Bykov (Bykov, 2008) describe modern means of

distance learning that adhere to certain properties, but

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

159

this range of tasks cannot be fully accepted in the con-

ditions of long-term learning during an emergency sit-

uation. This is primarily due to the low level of pre-

paredness of educational institutions for such situa-

tions and the low level of preparation of modern stu-

dents and schoolchildren for conditions of complete

isolation and independence in learning. Osadchyi and

Varina (Osadchyi and Varina, 2020), Osadchyi (Os-

adchyi, 2019) and Bykov (Bykov, 2008) claim that

the system environment of distance learning is a set

of methods and software that ensure the implementa-

tion of remote distance learning technology. In our

opinion, such an environment can be formed in two

ways: 1) using distance learning platforms (systems)

(examples may be Moodle, Lotus Learning Space,

Blackboard Learning System and others); 2) through

a set of services and services of the Internet (blog, e-

mail, online board, online video and audio, chats, fo-

rums, online testing tools, online presentations, elec-

tronic libraries, book publishing services etc). That

is, the use of only one online resource at the present

stage of development of distance learning does not

provide a sufﬁcient number of functions necessary to

create conditions for quality distance learning, there

is a need to use a set of resources to comprehensively

cover distance learning.

Modern distance learning systems allow full inter-

action with educational content and testing and other

forms of control, but communication between teacher

and student takes place in chat or video conferences,

which are not convenient for the student on a num-

ber of issues, the main of which there is insufﬁcient

provision of remote settlements with quality material

support (high-speed Internet, the latest computer soft-

ware, etc.). This leads to the impossibility of the stu-

dent’s perception of information in full. Analyzing a

similar situation in terms of the educational process in

schools, we can say about the low level of readiness

of students for self-study and the need for constant

interaction between teacher and student in the usual

usual format of the lesson.

Analyzing the functionality of modern distance

education systems on the example of Moodle, Lo-

tus Learning Space, Blackboard Learning System

(Bukreiev, 2020) it was determined that these systems

are developed in the vector of asynchronous commu-

nication to create greater mobility, but the direction

of synchronous communication needed by students

quarantine is almost absent. This determines the need

to use additional software to create quality conditions

for synchronous communication.

As part of the study, we identiﬁed the main tasks

to be performed by the online communication system.

So we were deﬁning general learning objectives as

the distribution of tasks for the teacher. They em-

phasize the need to decide what needs to be done

in the classroom, what can be learned, studied and

solved at home, which tasks are suitable for individual

lessons, and which – for group work on the project.

It is important that lessons take the form of project

defense, presentation, debate or discussion between

students or the teacher with students, which in turn

conﬁrms the need for “live” synchronous communi-

cation. The electronic unit should contain projects for

group work, creative, laboratory and practical tasks,

reference materials and links to additional materials

on the Internet, intermediate and test tests, as well

as tasks of increased complexity for gifted students.

Thus, the online communication system must satisfy

the possibility of conducting classes in the form of

project defense, presentation, debate or discussion be-

tween students or teachers with students, ie the sys-

tem should allow a large number of users to commu-

nicate and access visual material on their computer.

users. Thus, we can say that the creation of conditions

for quality active interaction between teacher and stu-

dent, especially in the context of distance learning of

students, is mandatory. Under quarantine, students

can quickly use their motivation, which will reduce

the quality of learning, so the use of distance commu-

nication should enable students and teachers to con-

duct quality and productive communication with the

addition of multimedia education. Summarizing the

general needs and tasks assigned to online commu-

nication services, we can determine that the service

should meet the following needs: low load on the

computer and the Internet; the ability to create con-

ferences in real time; providing the ability to simul-

taneously display the screens of all participants in the

learning process; providing the opportunity to com-

municate in the mode of individual consultation, or

consultations of a small group of users; creating a vi-

sual intuitive server interface for users; the ability to

administer the server and conﬁgure user rights.

Thus, having analyzed and identiﬁed the general

objectives and needs of the online communication ser-

vice, we will analyze the features of the Discord plat-

form to verify the feasibility of its use. Discord has

support for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux

and runs on all browsers. Determining the system re-

quirements for the computer for the normal operation

of the program, we can note the low level of load on

the system, for greater visualization, we conducted a

comparative description of system requirements be-

tween three software tools focused on video confer-

encing, the most popular nowadays is Skype, Zoom

and Google Meet (table 1).

Thus, we can say that Discord requires a lower

AET 2021 - Myroslav I. Zhaldak Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

160

Table 1: Comparative characteristics of the minimum system requirements of Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Discord.

Feature Skype Zoom Google Meet Discord

Processor 1 GHz 3 GHz 2 GHz 1200 MHz

Hard disk space 200 MB 500 MB 200 MB 256 MB

RAM 512 MB 8 GB 512 MB 256 MB

Bit architecture x86, x64 x86, x64 x86, x64 x86, x64

Operating System Windows, Linux,

Mac OS X, An-

droid, IOS

Windows, Linux,

Mac OS X, An-

droid, IOS

Windows, Linux,

Mac OS X, Google

Chrome OS

Windows, Linux,

Mac OS X, An-

droid, IOS

level of load on the system and works with almost all

operating systems. A signiﬁcant advantage of using

Discord is also a simple and fast software launch sys-

tem, for this you need to download the program from

the ofﬁcial website, install it and go through the reg-

istration procedure. Then you have the opportunity

to send invitations and start communicating. Conve-

nience is conﬁrmed by the fact that for Discord there

is no need to install a client, the user can commu-

nicate through a browser. To do this, you will need

to send him an invitation link. This method of use

greatly simpliﬁes the system of interaction between

teacher and student in a constant academic mobility,

because the system allows mobile connection to the

server from any access point and platform. This cre-

ates the necessary learning mobility conditions that

are required in distance learning during quarantine,

but other systems for webinars have not been devel-

oped. For such systems, the presence of the installed

software and all plug-ins to it is mandatory.

Discord is a completely free platform that does

not contain hidden payments or premium subscrip-

tions, which is very important for state and purely ed-

ucational institutions in the economic situation of the

state. Stable operation, good communication quality

and simplicity of the interface conﬁrm the expediency

of using Discord by users of any skill level. In addi-

tion, the platform has features: Push to talk and voice

activation, the system allows you to create conditions

for simultaneous communication of a large number

of user groups, while communication in other soft-

ware is exclusively synchronous or asynchronous and

requires a large number of mutually exclusive con-

nected servers to provide training of one course / ﬂow

/ school / etc. The platform allows you to add inter-

locutors to friends and make direct and group calls

with text chat support, which creates conditions for

working with students with high levels of nervous-

ness and students with low levels of logistics, which

causes problems when working with the general ﬂow

of students.

The analysis causes an increase in the level of rel-

evance of the use of Discord, but this is not enough to

determine the overall feasibility of the selected plat-

form, so it was decided to turn to the works of Striuk

(Striuk, 2021, 2022). The authors use the example of

training future software engineers to reveal the need

for intensive training of future professionals for pro-

fessional activities and emphasize that it can be effec-

tive only if the range of organizational and pedagogi-

cal conditions of its operation. In this case we can say

that opportunity: creation of high-quality conditions

for conducting practice-oriented individualized prac-

tical and seminar classes, motivating students to study

the subject component through a multimedia world-

view during the learning process, motivating students

to self-study and self-improvement; establishing syn-

chronous learning in terms of full interaction between

teacher and student; involving students in creating a

personal information environment.

As we have already mentioned, creating condi-

tions for improving the level of students’ motivation

for self-study is one of the most important tasks of

any distance learning system. Taking into account

a certain range of requirements for a modern remote

communication system and to further verify the fea-

sibility of using Discord, we will conduct a compara-

tive analysis of software functions when working with

them, for comparison we will also use Skype, Zoom

and Google Meet (table 2 and table 3).

Based on the results of the analysis, it can be ar-

gued that there is a signiﬁcant advantage in the use of

Discord compared to other software tools in the vector

of creating quality conditions for synchronous educa-

tional process. The problem point of Discord remains

the limitation of the number of users on one video

channel, but given the need for small groups of up to

30 students, this factor can be considered weightless.

During the study, a detailed review of the possibil-

ities of working with Discord was conducted:

1. Create an unlimited number of servers. Creating

the conditions for a quality management system of

the educational unit is the most important factor in

the development of the distance learning system.

Thus, the problem arises in the absence of modern

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

161

Table 2: Positive characteristics of Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Discord software functions.

Function Skype Zoom Google Meet Discord

Individual text messages + + + +

Conference text messaging + + + +

Individual calls + + + +

Conference calls + + + +

Screencast + + + +

Ability to control users + + + +

Table 3: Negative characteristics of Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Discord software features.

Function Skype Zoom Google Meet Discord

Multiplayer screen - - - +

User rights settings ± ± - +

Creating parallel channels - ± - +

Connecting bots - - - +

Restrictions on the number of users - - - -

Limitations on the number of concurrent video conference participants 25 - - 50

Set voice priority - - - +

User Activity Report - - - +

Server moderation - + + +

Creating a separate server - + + +

Figure 1: Developed a distance learning server on the Dis-

cord platform.

remote communication systems. With the func-

tionality of the Discord platform, a high-quality

system for the distribution of training units has

been created, which allows for full stratiﬁcation

of user rights and a transparent monitoring system

(ﬁgure 1 on the left). In terms of the learning pro-

cess, this feature allows you to create a large num-

ber of servers that can conditionally divide the

overall structure of distance learning into clearly

deﬁned groups (division by faculties or classes).

Subject to the development of a quality server sys-

tem, conditions are created for further reporting

and quality control of the educational process by

moderating each individual structure of the learn-

ing environment.

2. Conﬁgure the interface language and general in-

formation about the server. Analyzing the needs

of the learning space, we identiﬁed the need to

create a high-quality and clear interface of on-

line communication servers to create conditions

for high-quality perception of information by stu-

dents or schoolchildren. To solve this problem,

Discord has created: the ability to deﬁne the lan-

guage region of users; setting up an instant notiﬁ-

cation system; creation of AFK-channel for auto-

matic transfer of currently inactive users to a sep-

arate room, which in turn allows you to reduce the

load when working with individual channels; cre-

ating a unique server logo, for greater separation

of each individual server. This feature allowed us

to create a high-quality clear interface for all par-

ticipants in the learning process. Thus, students

and teachers already at the initial stage had an in-

tuitive interface that allowed to start work with-

out a long period of training and training of users

in the skills of using the platform. What works

best during training is important to create condi-

tions for quality learning of foreign languages, so

for foreign language classes it is advisable to cre-

ate a server using the interface of the language,

which will qualitatively affect the learning pro-

cess through full immersion.

3. Creating an unlimited number of text and voice

communication channels. One of the main prob-

lems of the total number of remote communica-

AET 2021 - Myroslav I. Zhaldak Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

162

tion systems is the development of asynchronous

communication and the need to use a single com-

munication channel. This problem signiﬁcantly

affects the possibility of conducting streaming

classes in terms of distance learning in the long

term. Modern systems of remote communication,

in the long run, need to create a developed sys-

tem of synchronous communication and the abil-

ity to create a large number of parallel channels

for different academic groups. The previous anal-

ysis showed the need to create a common system

that would be able to use the school in full. This

need determines the need to create separate com-

munication channels for each group or class, to

solve this problem, Discord provides a fairly op-

timal system (we can see the implementation in

ﬁgure 1) to create an unlimited number of voice

and text channels. Thus, we were able to create

a stream of learning and a system of quality syn-

chronous communication of all academic groups

of students in the distance learning.

4. Create invitations of new users by invitation-link,

invitation from the list of friends, invitation by cre-

ating a widget for the site. In emergency situa-

tions, ﬁrst of all, there is the problem of creating

a single channel of communication, which cre-

ates aggressive conditions that do not allow qual-

ity dissemination of information and general ac-

quaintance of all users with the future form of

work. When using Discord, server administrators

have the ability to create user invitations in several

different ways, such as creating new user invita-

tions by invitation-link, Discord friend list invita-

tion, and invitation by creating a site widget. This

allows full coverage of all communication chan-

nels of recipients of training services in order to

speed up their connection to the general system.

Using a certain range of ways to invite users, in

the conditions of our experiment we managed to

deploy the server within one week and ﬁll it with

users.

5. Conﬁgure user roles. To create conditions for

quality operation of the remote communication

server, there is a need for extensive rights of users,

in order to prevent offenses by users of the server.

Thus, we have developed a system of strict strat-

iﬁcation of user rights. This simpliﬁed the server

management process and the process of moni-

toring user actions. With the help of a well-

developed system of rights, a number of mea-

sures were taken to ensure the quality of education

(checking couples by the head of the department,

mutual visits of couples by teachers of the depart-

ment).

6. Setting access rights for different communication

channels. As mentioned above, in order to cre-

ate conditions for quality operation of the remote

communication server, it is necessary to branch

out the work areas of each individual user or user

group, therefore there is a need to conﬁgure access

rights of each user group to individual commu-

nication channels. channel “Faculty Council”).

This creates a clear stratiﬁcation and user man-

agement system, as shown in the ﬁgure, creat-

ing separate text channels for use by individual

courses and channels for use by each individual

study group.

7. Audit journal and moderation. It is important in

the work of distance learning systems and services

for their operation is to create a high-quality re-

porting system, in order to create such a system

in Discord created a quality system of moderation

and audit, which allows visual and textual display

of each user’s actions. opportunity to check the

quality of work of teachers and students. Thus, we

were able to fully verify all the actions of partic-

ipants in the learning process and conduct trans-

parent monitoring of the success of user actions.

With the help of this system, the administration of

the educational institution has the opportunity to

take similar measures to check the quality of the

educational process and the availability of teach-

ers and students in the classroom.

8. Pin messages for each of the channels. During the

work of the educational institution an important

factor is the early and high-quality dissemination

of information among all participants in the ed-

ucational process. Typically, systems that work

in real time have the ability to quickly “clutter”

the open text chat, to create the ability to sepa-

rate and highlight the most important messages,

created the ability to pin messages in each text

channel. Thus, we have created conditions for the

dissemination of information among users with-

out determining the date of their connection to the

system. This has greatly facilitated the informa-

tion process due to the gradual connection of new

users to the platform over a period of time.

9. Live broadcasts. The most important feature of

each system of distance communication in a qual-

ity learning process is the ability to conduct on-

line broadcasts by both teachers and students, this

is primarily due to the need for quality trans-

mission of information during lectures, and the

possibility of feedback (student comments, ques-

tions, screen display for veriﬁcation and clariﬁ-

cation, etc.). Discord’s GoLife mode allows you

to display a speciﬁc application or screen in real

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

163

time, and all registered users with a deﬁned ac-

cess and installed Discord software can connect to

this broadcast. Thus, we managed to create condi-

tions for a quality process of conducting classes,

which fully allowed to reproduce the usual for-

mat of classes. This created a reliable channel of

active communication between teachers and stu-

dents, which helped increase the number of active

students and increase the level of activation of stu-

dents.

10. Management of user communication tools. In the

conditions of active work of a large number of si-

multaneous users (especially work with primary

and secondary school students) there is a prob-

lem with conveying information due to too high

a level of noise, usually the causes of noise can

be: microphone noise; general household noise

of users; presence in the group of energetic and

restless students and more. To solve this prob-

lem, it is possible for administrators of the system

of user communication to have full control. This

function includes: reducing the level of “voice” of

each individual user; mute the user’s microphone,

mute the speakers / user headphones. Using cer-

tain functions, you can solve problems with the

conditions of high-quality information transfer in

the shortest possible time.

As part of the study, we conducted an experiment

that took place over one year in two stages, in the ﬁrst

stage (March-May 2020), the developers of the Dis-

cord platform were ambivalent about the use of the

platform in the educational process, as the platform

was primarily developed as a tool communications

during the gaming process, but under the ﬁrst quar-

antine, the number of simultaneous broadcasts was

expanded to 25 people in one voice channel, which

generally made it possible to use the platform for ed-

ucational purposes. However, at this stage we no-

ticed a number of signiﬁcant problems that occurred

when using the platform, namely: high noise lev-

els during communication, problems with video con-

nection and broadcasting in some students, problems

with low bandwidth of Discord servers and insufﬁ-

cient the level of informativeness of user instructions.

In addition, minor problems included the lack of a

Ukrainian-language interface and a generally insufﬁ-

cient range of languages for use on the server and en-

cryption of documents when sent in messages, which

led to the need to disclose more information before

sending. However, all these problems were found to

be insufﬁciently critical to complete the experiment.

During the ﬁrst half of the year, the developers of

the platform completed improvements and today we

can emphasize the correction of a signiﬁcant num-

ber of signiﬁcant problems related to the ﬁrst stage

of the experiment, namely: a new noise reduction

system for Krisp communication was developed and

the system for conﬁguring audio input and output and

video information, which in turn solved the problems

of most students; The developers carried out high-

quality work on debugging and expanding the server

part of the platform, which solved the problem of low

bandwidth.

At the ﬁrst stage of the experiment (March-May

2020) a remote communication server was created

and implemented on the basis of the Department of

Informatics and Cybernetics of Bohdan Khmelnitsky

Melitopol State Pedagogical University for students

of I-III courses: 122 Computer Science, 014.09 Sec-

ondary Education (Informatics), 015 Vocational ed-

ucation. During the ﬁrst stage of the experiment, a

number of measures were taken to check the quality

of interaction between students and teachers:

1. General organizational and educational hour.

During this event, conditions were created for the

simultaneous transmission of three parallel simul-

taneous broadcasts with ﬁrst- and third-year stu-

dents. This approach, unlike other remote com-

munication software, creates conditions for unit-

ing students and teachers in improvised groups,

which have an active connection with each other,

which allowed the general information of a large

number of students and receiving feedback from

them at the same time. This qualitatively reduces

the time required for work and creates the condi-

tions for intensiﬁcation of the learning process in

terms of distance learning.

2. Mutual visits and veriﬁcation. During training it

is very important to create an opportunity to check

the quality of classes. With the help of the devel-

oped server, we created the possibility of fast tran-

sition between channels, which enabled the ad-

ministration departments of the educational insti-

tution to conduct a qualitative check of the pres-

ence of students in pairs and the quality of their

education. A big problem in the conditions of dis-

tance learning is the problem of mutual visits of

teachers in order to check the quality of educa-

tion, improve the educational process or gain ex-

perience of teaching by young teachers from the

faculty. In the conditions of the developed server

and the period of the experiment, a number of mu-

tual visitation activities were carried out, where

the teachers had the opportunity to join the pairs

of their colleagues and follow the course of the

lesson. They had the opportunity, if necessary,

to ask questions or clarify, join the broadcast and

turn on their own.

AET 2021 - Myroslav I. Zhaldak Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

164

3. Conducting classes online. During the whole

period of the experiment, classes were held on

the basis of the distance learning site of Bohdan

Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical Univer-

sity (https://dfn.mdpu.org.ua), but direct commu-

nication, lectures and seminars were held on the

Discord server. According to a survey of teachers

and students, which was attended by 102 students

and teachers (table 4), 41.18% answered about

the signiﬁcant negative impact of quarantine mea-

sures on learning, but after the introduction of

the Discord platform 74.51% of respondents said

that signiﬁcantly increased the quality of percep-

tion and transmission of information, students had

the opportunity to ask questions during the lecture

broadcast, and teachers could adjust their report or

explanation of students’ questions.

4. Conducting active seminars. During the period

determined by the experiment, laboratory and

seminar classes were conducted strictly in the or-

der determined by the schedule. In the process

of pairing, conditions were created under which

students simultaneously launched parallel broad-

casts on one voice channel and performed tasks,

transmitting their work to the teacher, this process

signiﬁcantly accelerated the lesson and all tasks.

Focusing on further comments from students, it

can be emphasized that it has become much easier

for students to complete classes in an environment

where the teacher can look around and advise on

possible approaches to solving problems. In ad-

dition, the opportunity for students to join each

other’s broadcasts was a qualitative fact, which

created conditions for working in groups.

5. Work in online groups. Creating conditions for

synchronous work and connecting students to

broadcast each other, created conditions for group

work, so students, divided into groups, developed

individual projects under the supervision of the

teacher, then on the general channel, were perfor-

mances and defense projects of each group.

Carrying out of these actions acted in conﬁrmation

of expediency of use of the created system and conﬁr-

mation of expediency of use of the Discord platform

as it provides opportunities for carrying out certain ac-

tions while the majority of them are impossible in re-

alization on other systems for carrying out webinars.

The survey (table 4) showed a qualitative increase

in the level of students’ interest in the educational pro-

cess in quarantine, so 83.33% of students adopted the

new system as a quality application to create condi-

tions for synchronous communication with teachers

in quarantine, 75.51% of students emphasize that the

system greatly simpliﬁes the process of perception of

information and 77.45% consider Discord more con-

venient than the currently available software. How-

ever, 82.35% of students emphasize the need to de-

velop distance communication systems, and 80.39%

say the need to improve the educational server Dis-

cord to expand its pedagogical potential. We consider

it appropriate to address the direction of automation

of student management processes in pairs, develop-

ment of bots for the server and training on the use of

the platform in general.

We consider it important to determine the fac-

tor of psychological isolation of students, so when

asked about the use of audio and video, only 79.41%

and 38.24% answered positively. This highlighted

the need to create quality conditions to reduce the

emotional load on students and reduce their stress

during training through pedagogical and psycholog-

ical training, development of automated learning and

conﬁdence-building measures during the adaptation

of ﬁrst-year students.

During the ﬁrst stage of the experiment it was de-

termined that the constant activity of students in in-

teraction with teachers (online lectures, visual semi-

nars, etc.) in the system of distance communication,

leads to a qualitative increase in the quality of stu-

dent interaction. Summing up this stage, we can say

about improving the quality of the educational pro-

cess by activating the desire of students to continue

their studies in a familiar and convenient for them,

which is as close as possible to real classes. To this

end, we considered it appropriate to state that a num-

ber of activities are mandatory in the context of long-

term distance learning. Creating a remote communi-

cation system for these activities is a priority. These

measures include:

1. General organizational and educational hour.

2. Mutual visit and check.

3. Conducting couples online.

4. Conducting active seminars.

5. Work in online groups.

To carry out these activities, a system of monitor-

ing the conduct of classes and the opportunity for stu-

dents and teachers to visit couples who are not part of

the spectrum of their personal inﬂuence was created.

This made it possible for teachers and the administra-

tion of the educational institution to check the qual-

ity of the educational process, and students had the

opportunity to create their own individualized vector

of education by visiting additional pairs with the per-

mission of the teacher. Thus, a system was created

to fully cover all the needs of educators to create a

quality educational environment in terms of long-term

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

165

Table 4: Survey of students and teachers on the feasibility of using Discord in the educational process (%).

Question Yes No It is difﬁcult to answer

Have you been negatively affected by the transition to distance learning

during quarantine?

41.18 32.35 26.47

Do you use the Discord platform while studying? 83.33 16.67 0

Does the Discord platform make the process of perceiving information

in pairs easier for you?

74.51 18.63 6.86

Do you combine the use of a distance learning site with the Discord

platform?

76.47 16.67 6.86

Do you ﬁnd Discord more convenient than other online communication

software (Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, etc.)?

77.45 9.80 12.75

Do you use audio communication in your work in pairs? 79.41 20.59 0

Do you use video communication in your work in pairs? 38.24 61.76 0

Has the notiﬁcation process improved since the launch of the Discord

platform?

69.61 8.82 21.57

In your opinion, is it important to further develop the system of remote

communication?

82.35 2.94 14.71

Is it necessary to reﬁne the Discord training server to expand its peda-

gogical potential?

80.39 0.98 18.63

In your opinion, is it appropriate to use Discord in your learning pro-

cess?

79.41 3.92 16.67

distance learning. This conﬁrmed the assumption that

the use of Discord is appropriate in emergencies and

in the transition to distance learning qualitatively ac-

tivates the work of students, facilitating the process of

perception and assimilation of the material.

In the second phase of the experiment (September-

December 2020), we expanded the functions of the

Discord platform to test the asynchronous component

of the educational process to determine the possibility

of integrated use of the Discord platform as a single

platform for distance learning and blended learning.

During the second stage of the experiment, in ad-

dition to those already mentioned in the ﬁrst stage,

a number of measures were taken to test the quality

of interaction between students and teachers in condi-

tions of complete limitations in the means of conduct-

ing classes only Discord platform:

1. Conducting the total number of classes. During

all classes, conditions were created for the simul-

taneous transmission of parallel broadcasts with

students of I-III courses, by expanding the struc-

ture of the educational unit and constant coverage

of lectures and practical materials on the appro-

priate channels of groups and conducting practi-

cal classes in constant open communication. The

result was the conﬁrmation of the results of the

ﬁrst stage of the experiment, because unlike other

remote communication software, with the help of

the Discord platform we managed to create con-

ditions for uniting students and teachers in impro-

vised groups, debates between students and pre-

sentation of group and individual results. All this

signiﬁcantly reduced the time required for stu-

dents to perceive the information, which created

the conditions for intensiﬁcation of the learning

process in terms of distance learning.

2. Carrying out settlement practice. During the

study, we had the opportunity to test the feasibil-

ity of using the Discord platform not only in the

context of general disciplinary classes, but also

a more complex process of computational prac-

tice in third-year students majoring in 122 Com-

puter Science. Prior to the internship, students

were asked about their wishes for the internship

platform and according to the results it was de-

termined that 87% of students voted for the in-

ternship based on the Discord platform, 11% sup-

ported all options and 2% voted for the internship

based on the Zoom. This survey once again con-

ﬁrms the high level of motivation and support of

students in the vector of using the Discord plat-

form compared to other modern platforms. The

result of the work was an excellent increase in

the pace of work of students, relative to the re-

sults of previous years, all students coped well

with the task of practice and managed to defend

their work. Regarding the increase in the level

of quality of work performed, we can emphasize

that there is a decrease in the number of students

with a “medium” level of knowledge and a rel-

AET 2021 - Myroslav I. Zhaldak Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

166

ative increase in the number of students with a

“high level of knowledge” (table 5). We see the

reason for this trend in the group work of students

in synchronous mode, students were able to sup-

port and complement each other, which signiﬁ-

cantly reduced the level of students with insuf-

ﬁcient knowledge and expand the creative abil-

ities of students with sufﬁcient and high levels

of knowledge. In addition, communication in a

student-friendly mode signiﬁcantly reduced the

level of psychological stress and accelerated the

time of work.

3. Carrying out modular control. At the ﬁrst stage

of the experiment, all forms of student certiﬁca-

tion were conducted on the basis of the Zoom

platform, but the free form of the Zoom platform

is not enough for such an event, so it was de-

cided to conduct an experimental modular con-

trol based on the Discord platform. In general,

the results fully justiﬁed the hypothesis of the ex-

pediency of using Discord, all periodic modular

tests were conducted in a timely and productive

manner, students did not have a high level of psy-

chological load and in a convenient and “already

familiar” format for them on the Discord plat-

form passed periodic control and conﬁrmed their

assessments. Conducted at the end of the peri-

odic module control stressed that 82% of students

“very positively” evaluate the transition of peri-

odic module control to the Discord platform.

4. Session control. As part of the experiment, it was

decided to conduct a series of exams for third-

year students based on the Discord platform. Be-

fore the beginning, the hypothesis about the expe-

diency of using Discord during the examination

control was determined, but after the examination

control, the determined hypothesis was partially

refuted. The reason for this refutation was the

insufﬁcient development of internal resources of

the Discord platform to record the control. Ex-

amination in distance learning requires a com-

plete record of the entire process of writing and

defending the student’s work, its evaluation and

possible reﬁnements, but the Discord platform in

its free format does not allow recording the pro-

cess, which required the teacher to ﬁnd additional

screen recording software. The solution to this

problem was found in the use of Bandicam Screen

Recorder and Faststone Capture software, which

are shareware and do not fully solve the prob-

lem assigned to them. Therefore, at this stage of

platform development, we consider it appropriate

to use external platforms (Zoom, Skype and oth-

ers) for session control, or additional use of screen

recording software.

Table 5: The results of the calculation practice of students

in 2018-2020 (%).

The level of knowl-

edge of the student

2018 2019 2020

Average 33 28 11

Sufﬁcient 54 66 55

High 13 16 34

Therefore, we can conclude that the experiment

allowed us to mark the Discord platform as useful in

terms of general educational process, organizational

and educational activities, administration of educa-

tional process and periodic control, but needs to ex-

pand the functionality and additions to reporting on

session control, which requires recording the process

of passing the exams by the student. The conducted

questionnaires and analysis of the results of students’

calculation practice emphasize the presence of a high

positive evaluation of the platform by users (espe-

cially students). The growing level of students mo-

tivation to use the platform and the intensiﬁcation

of their educational activities conﬁrms the positive

impact of using the Discord platform on the quality

of students’ knowledge during distance and blended

learning. The presence of constant development of

the platform by developers, their attitude to the prob-

lems of society in quarantine allows us to empha-

size the signiﬁcant constant growth of the platform

and make a hypothesis about the possibility of solv-

ing the problems of the platform in the future. All

this conﬁrmed the assumption that the use of Discord

is appropriate in emergencies and in the transition to

distance learning qualitatively activates the work of

students, facilitating the process of perception and as-

similation of the material.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

The purpose of our study was to determine the fea-

sibility and features of using the Discord platform

as an environment for creating a quality system of

distance communication in distance learning during

emergencies. To solve the main task of the study, we

analyzed information sources on safety during quar-

antine activities related to the pandemic of viral dis-

eases and concluded on the needs of users of educa-

tional services to provide a quality means of distance

learning and communication in long-term emergen-

cies. Having identiﬁed the general tasks and needs

Using the Discord Platform in the Educational Process

167

of the online communication service, a comparative

analysis of its Discord platform with Skype, Zoom

and Google Meet systems was conducted. The results

of the analysis showed that Discord requires much

less load on the system and works with almost all op-

erating systems. Further work revealed the features

of using Discord functions to establish a quality en-

vironment for learning and reﬂected the results of an

experiment conducted in the study, which surveyed

students and teachers on the quality of the initial pro-

cess. For educational activities, a system of monitor-

ing classes and the opportunity for students and teach-

ers to visit couples who are not part of the spectrum

of their personal inﬂuence was created. This made

it possible for teachers and the administration of the

educational institution to check the quality of the ed-

ucational process, and students had the opportunity

to create their own individualized vector of education

by visiting additional pairs with the permission of the

teacher. Thus, a system was created to fully cover all

the needs of educators to create a quality educational

environment in terms of long-term distance learning.

This conﬁrmed the assumption that the use of Dis-

cord is appropriate in emergencies and in the tran-

sition to distance learning qualitatively activates the

work of students, facilitating the process of percep-

tion and assimilation of the material. The experiment

made it possible to mark the Discord platform as use-

ful in general educational process, organizational and

educational activities, educational administration and

periodic control, but needs to be expanded and sup-

plemented in terms of reporting on session control,

which requires recording the process student exams.

The conducted questionnaires and analysis of the re-

sults of students’ calculation practice emphasize the

presence of a high positive evaluation of the platform

by users (especially students). The growing level of

students ’motivation to use the platform and the inten-

siﬁcation of their educational activities conﬁrms the

positive impact of using the Discord platform on the

quality of students’ knowledge during distance and

blended learning. Thus, a system was created to fully

cover all the needs of educators to create a quality ed-

ucational environment in terms of long-term distance

learning.

In further work, we consider it necessary to ex-

pand the existing functionality of the developed plat-

form in the vector of automation of educational pro-

cesses (class schedule, notiﬁcation, automatic testing

of students after class, creation of automated bots for

conducting control tests) and conduct an experiment

to identify their impact on the quality of education, in

order to increase the quality education under quaran-

tine restrictions or other man-made disasters.

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