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Seamus McLoone1, Christine Kelly1, Conor Brennan2
1Dept. of Electronic Engineering, Maynooth University, Ireland
2Dublin City University, Ireland
The use of student response systems, such as Clickers, is slowly becoming more commonplace in the classroom today. The research literature clearly documents how such systems offer many pedagogical benefits ranging from improved student learning to better classroom interaction. However, to date, these systems only allow for limited input capabilities, whereby students can only input a numerical, and in some instances, a textual response. Hence, mathematical equations, circuit diagrams, sinusoidal responses, cross-sectional diagrams, etc. are all beyond the capabilities of existing SRSs.
This lack of freeform input is a significant drawback for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines where equations, circuits and diagrams are important aspects of the student learning experience. For example, consider the solving of an algebraic equation, the designing of a circuit, the sketching of a mathematical function, presenting the forces of a moving object on a free body diagram, the minimisation of a Boolean function using Karnaugh Maps, sketching the root locus of a control system, etc. The list of such examples is endless and it is very important that students of STEM disciplines, in particular, can carry out such fundamental processes and methodology. In order to capture the real-time feedback of the students’ grasp of this information it is necessary for a SRS to facilitate freeform input.
Here, we propose and present a novel multi-platform smart device-based student response system, called UniDoodle, that allows for a more generic and flexible input. This system consists of a student application that allows for freeform input, through sketching capabilities, a lecturer application that allows easy viewing of multiple sketch-based responses and a cloud-based service for co-ordinating between these two applications. In essence, students can now respond to a question posed by the lecturer using sketches and, hence, mathematical equations, circuit diagrams, graphs, etc. are all possible on the UniDoodle system. In addition, the lecturer can now gain a richer and more useful insight to the students’ understanding of the relevant material. This new system currently operates on any device that has an ios (ipads, iphones) or Android (smart phones and tablets) operating system.
Finally, we evaluate the UniDoodle system on a first year Engineering Mathematics module. Details of the UniDoodle system, the evaluation process and the feedback obtained will be presented in the final paper.