Work

Tablet Computers Used For Teaching And Real Time Assessment Of Conceptual Understanding Of Engineering Students

Year: 2020

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: The use of interactive teaching techniques has progressed dramatically with the advent of new technologies.This progress can be divided into two main categories.One is content enhancement while the other is feedback on student understanding.The latter is an important thrust of ABET in improving engineering education.Instantaneous assessment closes the feedback loop, associated with improving teaching, with the shortest time constant.An important such technology, increasingly common nationwide, is the use of infrared transmitters used by the students to answer multiple-choice questions.The answers are computer-tabulated and displayed via projector to the class as a histogram, providing valuable formative assessment data to both students and instructors.Although the use of this technology is pedagogically sound, one shortcoming, particularly in engineering education, is the necessity of questions in the multiple-choice format.Students have a propensity to guess an answer from the menu given, thereby injecting noise into the feedback loop.This format also makes it more difficult to pose open-ended questions and those that require higher order thinking.We use mobile technology to explore beyond the collection and tabulation of simple multiplechoice data, to that which includes equations, graphs, and short answers.Furthermore, we combine this technology with technological innovations in the content enhancement category, perhaps best illustrated by the development of applets.The number of available applets continues to increase while the conceptual level is diverse, typically covering high school to advanced undergraduate courses in science and engineering.These content-rich applets are appropriate in both the laboratory and classroom settings.This combination of student-directed content enhancement and real-time feedback allows more meaningful active learning and a novel, sophisticated level of classroom communication.Instructors receive real-time feedback to questions that probe misconceptions and comprehension, reinforce main concepts and problem-solving strategies, and encourage higherlevel thinking skills.This feedback, particularly written responses, increases student metacognition and guides the instructor in addressing student misconceptions.

Source: IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting (LEOS)

DOI: 10.18260/1-2--14821

Authors: Susan Kowalski, Luke Campagnola, Frank Kowalski

Institution: Colorado School of Mines

Language: English

Topic: Innovative Teaching Methods

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Colorado School of Mines