Abstract:

LeMon (Lecture Monitoring, [1]) is a tool which implements the idea of classroom response systems (CRS [2]) using student’s own smartphones or tablets. Beside this, it extends the question possibilities by multiple choice, enumeration and free text questions. At the EDULearn15, the results of a practical usage of this tool have been presented [3].

In the last two years, the tool has been mainly used for repetition questions at the beginning of a course. The advantages of the tool can be summarized in the following points:
• Most of the students have given a very positive feedback about the tool and the usage of it.
• Based on an evaluation of exam results, a significant performance increase has been observed for the very good and good students.
• The students themselves have proposed and successfully implemented another use case for the tool: the usage of it for the exam preparation.

However, the use of LeMon has also confirmed that especially weaker students do not yet benefit from the use of a CRS. The main reasons are:
• A lack of self-criticism and a lack of self-assessment competence of the weaker students cause that they are not able to compare their own answers with a sample solution and to reflect their own knowledge and derive necessary measures therefrom.
• A lack of self-diagnosis of the weaker students: Actually, the regularly usage of the tool during a class even strengthened their impression of having prepared the exam.
• Due to difficulties to verbalize and to deal with issues that are not multiple-choice questions, the weaker students often do not submit their responses via the tool, hence they often miss the chance of a meaningful discussion of the questions.

This paper shows the measurements introduced in order to improve this situation. Especially, the following aspects will be discussed in the final version of this paper:
• Development of self-assessment measures which help the weaker students
o to recognize the own errors in a constructive way,
o to recognize the causes of the own errors, and
o to be able to reformulate the own responses, when they have some verbalization problems.
• Possibility to carry out long-term analyzes of the student’s responses by the teachers:
o Classification of the course topics in the categories: "non-understandable", "difficult" and "easy to understand". On this basis, the teacher should be able to better adapt his course to the audience’s needs with deepening examples, additional exercises and tutorials.
o Classification of the students who require more additional care during the course. This makes possible a demand-driven mentoring of the students.
• Introduction of a diagnostic module: With its help, students should be enabled to plan, to watch and to evaluate their own learning process. Based on the responses of students, the diagnostic module proposes some additional exercises, examples and tutorials.

References:
[1] B. Doersam, LeMon - Lecture Monitoring using student’s own devices. Proceedings of the EDULearn 14, Barcelona, 2014.
[2] D. Duncan und E. Mazur, Clickers in the classroom. How to enhance science teaching using classroom response systems, San Francisco: Pearson Education, 2005.
[3] B. Doersam, Best Practices Using Student's Own Devices in Higher Education. Proceedings of the EDULearn 15, Barcelona, 2015.

Keywords:

Classroom response systems, smart devices.