Below is a link to a project proposal on tracking student participation in large classes at the University of California, Berkeley. The application is intended to provide an easy, efficient manner in which to track the participation and discussion contribution of students in classes of 50 or more. The authors were not satisfied with commercial student response systems (such as eInstruction) that requires each student to purchase a remote control and register that remote control online. Their application provides key services not entirely provided by other applications: students are allowed to give essay-type responses; student responses can be graded on quality; the centralized application input process involves only the instructor; the input process is simple and may be completed numerous times during a given class discussion; instructors are given the freedom to choose whether a student’s response is worthy of grade points, regardless of when that student enters the classroom. An interesting alternative to commercial systems available.
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs160/fa05/projects/Participation.pdf
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2 comments:
This looks like an interesting project. What I like is the ability for "larger answers". From what I have read on I-clickers, students are basically given a multiple choice qiuz and they select one. This program will allow for more free thought answers which can be graded by the instructor. One drawback would be a time delay. The answers submitted via the I-clickers could be used to modify the current lecture.
Ken
I wonder if participation is really a good thing to encourage in classes that are of this size (the proposal is talking about class sizes in the 100s). If class participation is really seen as valuable, perhaps the school should consider having one large-lecture meeting and smaller sections where devices like these might be more effective.
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