Abstract:

Due to time constraints, it’s often not possible for the lecturer to interact directly with the students during the lecture. Furthermore, many students find it difficult or embarrassing to ask questions in class; which reduces the level of student-teacher interaction even further.

Because of the lack of feedback during class, it’s difficult for the lecturer to assess how many of the students actually follow and understand the subjects being taught. Conversely, from the students’ perspective, their understanding of the material is rarely put to the test during class – such tests usually take the form of written assignments and exercises which are corrected and returned weeks later. In other words, neither the teacher nor the students have a good “real-time” indicator of learning effect.

Again, because of time constraints, the students are rarely given time to discuss and interact with each other during class. If a student finds it hard to understand what’s being taught in class, it is therefore difficult to gauge whether he or she is the only one who doesn’t follow the proceedings.

The online Student Response System II (SRS) for handheld devices is an online, upgraded service that provides a just-in-time training and learning methods. Instructors get instant feedback on how well the students are paying attention to a training session, while students get instant feedback on their understanding of key concepts. The main objective of the SRS is to address these issues; in particular:

- Break the monotony of a lecture and allow the students to actively take part in the lecture
- Increase teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction
- Give both teacher and students “real-time” feedback on learning effect

The SRS provides new pedagogical methods that enhance interactive and dynamic teaching models by enhancing communication and instructional feedback loops. Collected data is immediately available to the trainer, both in a qualitative and quantitative way, allowing the trainer to understand if the learning outcomes of the trainees are in line with the overall training objectives. SRS supports multiple-choice questions and tagging of multimedia material. Teachers samples extensive data regarding their students' knowledge that is otherwise hard to obtain. Based on this information, it’s possible for trainers to make decisions on the fly during the course and use this feedback to adjust their ongoing training session, aiming at the trainee’s full achievement of the learning objectives/competencies. The SRS II prototype has been extensively tested, and the research results show that correctly used peer learning methods introduce several advantages:

1) Increases the level of participation of the trainees
2) Significant higher engagement, it become fun to attend courses
3) Results in increased motivation, both for trainees and trainers
4) It’s user-friendly for both teachers, instructors and students, making it very easy and fast to publish and operate quizzes or assignments within seconds, and to collect the results immediately

SRS increases the flexibility within on-site training. It’s possible to use it to start discussions, as support tool for group discussion, or for immediate evaluation purposes of on going training evaluation, trainers evaluation, impact of training evaluation, trainees learning outcomes, etc. The article report experiences and tips for using SRS ithat directly benefits both the students and the teacher

Keywords:

Student response system, mobile technology, mobile learning.