With the betterment of wireless
technology, new devices utilizing wireless mode of communication are being
developed every day to help the mankind. One of the areas benefited with advent
of wireless technology and devices that I came across recently is Student
Response System.
Scenario
I was doing a research project
where I had to collect responses of 100 students about, how safe they feel
about privacy option on Social Media sites. I was discussing with my Professor
about the simplest and inexpensive way to collect this data. We came across
different ways in which this can be done and at the same time we wanted the
responses to be genuine. The problem with traditional paper style survey is the
peer might not be interested thereby providing fake response. To make this
session more interesting we thought of using technology and we came across
Student Response System.
What is it?
In simple words, Student Response
System is basically a handheld remote control device used for providing
response by clicking the options they agree upon. It works like any other remote
control device using Radio Frequency or infrared to record the peer’s responses
to the questions being displayed or asked. A portable receiver is connected to
the laptop which records the response and stores. The software running on the
laptop provides the real-time view of the responses in form of graphs to the
instructor. Student Response System makes the learning environment interactive
and enjoyable for the peers and helps the instructor by providing immediate
feedback.
Can I leverage this technology for my data collection?
After doing some research about
this technology, I realized using this I can get the genuine responses from the
peers in easiest and inexpensive way. To understand the technology, I read more
articles and found that to use this technology each peer would require their
own clickers to record responses and designing clicker based question requires
a thorough understanding of the technology. This became my new challenge and I
started to figure out ways to overcome this.
Can I use a Mobile application as Clicker?
My interest in technologies and
readings articles on new technology helped me to overcome this challenge. These
days’ smartphones have become the new platform for all the technical needs and
every individual carries a smartphone. I realized using mobile application as a
clicker I would incur no cost to conduct this survey since every peer can use
their mobile phones to record responses. As I am a computer science student and
love programming, I programmed a mobile application and a web server. The web
server was used by me to project the questions on screen and the mobile
application was used by the peers to answer the question. I worked out with my
Professor and conducted this survey in every lecture of the Professor in the
first 5 minutes.
How can it be useful for teaching and learning?
Interaction and participation in classroom are
important for effective learning to take place. When students interact and
participate they tend to think more and in this way their thinking ability
increases. Using the Student Response System an instructor can make learning
more effective and enjoyable for the students. It facilitates class discussion
without chaos, encourage peer instruction, the instructor collects data and
assess students in real-time, Offer pre-exam reviews and quizzes etc. Thus
running a class like a game show makes it more interactive and enjoyable for
the students.
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ReplyDeleteHi Ravikant,
ReplyDeleteIts a pretty interesting idea to introduce clickers in classrooms, which would encourage great participation in the classroom, but what I think is we tend to see more of YES or NO kind of answers or might be multiple choices, but the genuine and real interaction exist when students express there opinions at least in few words.So, I would suggest a clicker with an additional option to express rather than just selecting from options, if the student want to express his/her views on something, they would click and speak upon precisely, which would make the learning environment more interesting.
Overall it's a good idea to use clicker with mobile application.
Hi Ravi Kanth
ReplyDeletei have went through your post, yeah smart phones became the platform for all the needs like in education and technical fields too.I support your idea introducing clicker in classrooms for student response system and that would help in interaction between student and lecturer as a game play.