Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
answers. The answers then are instantly transmitted to the host computer operated by the
teacher. A program will collect and summarize the answers and present the aggregated
result to the teacher using a chart or graphic.
Both teachers and students welcomed the use of CRS. The engagement is bi-directional. The
teacher can continuously assess the level of student understanding or mis-understanding.
They can then give targeted clarifications or adjust the course material or pace to address the
problems arisen. At the same time, the students can quickly apply the knowledge they just
learned and answer the questions without raising hands, which can be intimidating to
many. Since the answers are transmitted anonymously, the students will be free from the
fear of peer pressure and public embarrassment.
However, still more features are desired for the Clickers. One major drawback of the current
Clickers is its dependence on multi-choice or true/false questions (Siau et al, 2006). The
teachers make up generally three or four possible wrong answers and mix them with the
right one. As a legacy from the early computer-based standardized test, it is easy to grade.
However, multi-choice or true/false questions are not the best or the only assessing tools.
The number of choices is limited; the result can be skewed by test-taking techniques; and the
teachers cannot directly know what the mistakes the students make from the answers.
Meanwhile, since the students can only choose from a limited list of options, their
creativities are often ignored or discouraged. In any subject, there are always multiple
solutions to a question, especially an open-ended question. In Science, Technology,
Engineering, Art & Mathematics (STEAM) and many other fields, we often encourage
students to focus on problem-solving progress instead of the final answer. Unfortunately,
the multi-choice questions provide no room for the students to derive their own answers. It
would be great if we can have a better tool that will encourage open-ended questions and
promote problem-solving skills.
One attempt of improvement over clicker is to use touch sensitive tablets (Berque et al, 2004)
or touch screen tablets. A touch sensitive tablet digitizes the strokes of the stylus on its
surface and send the data stream to the host computer. However, due to the seperation of
writing and displaying, the use of this kind device is unnatural and did not gain wide
acceptance in the classrooms.
The touch screen pads include Tablet PCs (Koile & Singer, 2006; Willis & Miertschin, 2004;
Zurn & Frolik, 2004) or iPad and its competitors (we denote them as xPads). A user can
write on the touch screen of the tablet with a stylus or a finger. Then the hardware and
software will convert the writing to either the text or graphics, and then display them back
on the screen. Once networked together, tablets can be a great tool for a teacher to get
instant feedback from the students. The feedback will not be limited to multiple choices, but
on every part of the knowledge assessment that can be conducted with a regular paper test.
However, there are still several major drawbacks of these touch screen tablets. First is its
cost. For example, the price of a tablet PC starts from $1k and costs much more with rugged
design. xPads are generally more affordable, but still costs hundred dollars each. The prices
can easily rule out most classroom use, especially when they are under the stress of young
students at their active years. Second is the different platforms of the tablet devices in the
market. It is able to recommend but difficult to require all the students using the same
