Initial Proposal

Proposal The Clicker comprises of two components – the student response unit and the TurningPoint software (http://clickers.ntu.edu.sg/getting.htm). The former is a small hand held device that has 12 buttons; most buttons have 2 modes – numbers and alphabets (figure on left). It also has a small light to indicate feedback. This TurningPoint software when used in conjunction with ResponseCard® student response unit, create a wireless student response and voting system that enables educators, trainers and presenters to develop and administer real-time assessments of student participants from within Microsoft PowerPoint. This is a new implementation amongst the freshmen in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and selected courses which aim to enable rapid feedback, increase in-class participation, enable faster data collection and assessment of students, and enable efficient record and updating of student attendance and to enhance class interaction in general. Currently, Clickers are mainly used for collecting student responses to real-time MCQ quizzes and in-class MCQ questions. They are individualized as they are tagged to the user (student)’s unique matriculation numbers. After a response is sent, the colour and frequency of blinking light on the device changes and increases respectively. The number of responses displayed on the Microsoft Powerpoint slide increases as a result. Responses can only be made when ‘polling is open’; there is a countdown timer to indicate time constraints to the users. Instructions for use: 1. Press and release the "GO" button. 2. While the light is flashing red & green, enter the 2 digit channel code. (i.e., channel 1=01, channel 21=21). 3. After the second digit is entered, press and release the "GO" button. 4. A steady green light should appear. If not, repeat steps 1 to 3. 1.

Problem. Our project’s high-level goal is to enhance interactivity of the User Interface (UI) and low-level goal is to solve the current usability problems associated with it. We are focusing on the student’s usage of the device instead of the instructor. At present, the clickers merely enhance the instructor’s collection of student responses and feedback. We feel that an interactive classroom should involve two-way interaction. Thus, we seek to enhance student’s active participation and providence of feedback to the instructor via the UI. As the target users – NTU student population has a reputation of being shy to speak up in class, enabling them to use the UI to signal to the instructor in order to post a question regarding a particular slide or offer feedback, can increase their in-class participation. Furthermore, the current assessment system for in-class participation is based on subjective judgment and the instructor’s memory, the UI can be

used for the logging and tallying of student participation. This implementation can reduce errors in memory and judgment. Participation and quiz results should be available to student users via Edventure – the student portal. Our project also seeks to solve usability problems with regard to the usage of the clickers. According to the instruction and documentation of Clickers, they should display a steady green light when activated and a blinking yellow light when a response is sent. However, users are unsure whether their responses are sent or what response is being sent as there is lack of distinction between the two system states and no feedback to the user regarding their chosen response. This leads to fear and frustration in the user as their responses are crucial to their class assessment thus leading to users sending multiple responses. The TurningPoint software displayed on the Powerpoint slide only displays changes to number of responses collected but does not indicate whose response was collected. 2.

Solution. The system’s current state only allows instructor’s questions (IQ) to the students. In order to enhance student participation, UI should allow students to post questions [?] and participate in the lecture (P). TurningPoint can be modified to keep polling open for the whole lecture where by students can ‘click’ using buttons for [?] or P at different slides during the lecture. These participation numbers can be shown at the top of each slide, thus providing feedback to both the instructor and the students about the number of student enquiries regarding a particular topic in the lecture. The instructor can then base on these numbers provide further clarification during or after the lecture without disrupting the lecture. As clickers are already tagged with the students’ unique matriculation numbers, on top of quiz results, students can also view their participation scores (class standing) via Edventure. This will inevitably motivate students to participate more in class, thus improving overall in-class participation. The effectiveness of the UIs depends on their usability. To improve UI’s feedback, the light signal should be sufficiently distinct. Before a response is sent, the UI may emit a blinking green light to indicate that the system is ready. After ‘clicking’, the UI may emit a steady unblinking blue light (distinct from other system states). Furthermore, to provide feedback about the response sent, we suggest adding a small display screen on the device that can display short messages regarding response sent i.e. response ‘1’ sent. This will enable users to double check their responses and resend a response if errors are made. In addition, TurningPoint can display feedback about whose response was not collected when the system does its countdown to end of polling to serve as a reminder to users who forget to send their responses or whose responses were not recorded.

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Group members. Lim Zhen Ling Samantha Tan Siu Yan Jerena