Sarah Honeychurch

Craig Brown

Niall Barr

Vicki Dale

Learning Technology Unit

Quintin Cutts

Computing Science

Have we got your attention? Making sure your

students engage in lectures

Intro to session and structure

• YACRS login

• Uses of EVS

• At U of G

• At UCL

• Peer Instruction

• Group Discussion

• Feedback and course evaluation

YACRS

•(Yet Another Classroom Response System)

•Niall Barr

•Niall.Barr@glasgow.ac.uk

YACRS login

http://learn.gla.ac.uk/yacrs/join.php?sessionID=34

A question

• R0 for Ebola (the average number of new infections from

each patient) is approximately 4. Given this, if a vaccine

became available, what proportion of the population

would need to be vaccinated to prevent new outbreaks

spreading?

A : 25%

B : 50%

C : 75%

D : 90%

E : 95%

F : 99%

Click happy

Expected

Not much thought about questions or

answers

Are we awake?

Are we listening?

(to click or not to click?)

7 years

IR - boxes, lots of cables and up a ladder

in a French Lecture

RF – flat batteries, software issues and

this is the expert

BYOD and the joy of University wireless

Some students don’t vote

Some students make a game of it

Some students forget to pick up a handset

or don’t manage to successfully turn it on

Some students vote for the wrong answer

to get the lecturer to go back over a topic

even if they think they know the right

answer but are not 100% sure

Good way to get immediate feedback

about students understanding

Can be used to structure tutorial

Can be used to start discussion

Anonymous

Keeps focus

Helps us think about our teaching

Peer learning

Easy way to capture data

Allows you to better explain questions

Students normally already experienced

with the technology

Good for quantitative but not qualitative

Mixed results with text feedback

Keeps focus (mostly but keep it short)

Easy to export data for analysis

Encourage small group discussion

Collective group feedback

Peer evaluation

Peer learning

Structure and content reflect specific

learning goals

Think about them

What’s your goal?Explain to students (everything)Not too simple or hard questionsNot too many questionsStart with a practice questionActually use the feedback as you get it and discuss it with your studentsGet your students discussing with each other

It takes time to prepare

It takes time to get it right

Be prepared to make changes during

You will loose lecture time – don’t try to

cram it all in!

Don’t panic if it goes wrong

Have a plan B

Plan how to distribute handsets

Peer learning

Instant feedback

Confidence based voting

Rethink how we teach especially large

group

Use to emphasize an important concept

Mazur: Peer Instruction

• First question: How to teach, not what. (Design before

content).

• Instruction is easier than assimilation: Teacher as

information transfer – teacher as facilitator of information

assimilation. (2007, 2009)

• Lecture: “the transfer of the lecturer’s notes to the

students’ notes without passing through the minds of

either”.

• If lecture notes are available beforehand, how to make

use of the ‘spare’ time?

If a heavy truck and a small car collide, which exerts more

force:

a) The truck

b) The car

c) They are both the same

d) There is no force

“Professor Mazur, how should I answer these questions?

According to what you taught us, or by the way I think about

these things?”Images from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/American_truck.JPG;

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/KIF_0001_reg.JPG

Mazur: Conventional & Conceptual Qs

Mazur: Conventional & Conceptual Qs

• Newton’s third law: For every action there is an equal

and opposite re-action.

• Obvious?“…all students can recite Newton’s third law and most of them can

apply it in numerical problems. A little probing, however, quickly

shows that many students do not understand the law. Halloun and

Hestenes provide many examples in which students are asked to

compare the forces exerted by different objects on one another.

When asked, for instance, to compare the forces in a collision

between a heavy truck and a light car, many students firmly believe

the heavy truck exerts a larger force.” Mazur (2007)

• Conventional v conceptual questions

(“plug and chug” v ConcepTests)

• “the sage on the stage” v “the guide on the side”

Mazur: Peer Instruction

• Pre class reading

• In class: go into depth “semi-socratically” (question, not give answers)

• ConcepTest:

• Question

• 1.5 mins silence

• Answer with “clickers”

• Turn to neighbour and justify response

• Revised answer with “clickers”

• Lecturer gives explanation (at ~53.54 in video)

• Students who have the right answer convince others better than Prof

Mazur could.

• The better you know something, the harder it is to teach (you forget

the conceptual difficulties of new learners)

• Active engagement

• Better understanding → better problem solving

• Good problem solving =/= indicate understanding

Mazur: Results

Mazur (2007)

YACRS – tales from the front line

Quintin Cutts

Overwhelmingly successful…!!!!!

Context

• L1 class in Computational Thinking– 90 students, intending & non-intending CS Hons– Students need to be working to develop their skills throughout

the course• not 'getting' a week's work for a weaker student could well mean

failure• getting regular feedback on progress is therefore very important

• Faithful Peer Instruction implementation– Assigned seating in lecture theatre, groups of 3

• according to self-report on previous experience

– Pre-reading / activity prior to every class session– 2-hr sessions– Quiz at start of every session – 3-4 Qs on pre-work– Series of Peer Instruction questions

YACRS experience

• Did a test in the first lecture session– 3 test questions– supported by Craig– took ages to get as many people on as possible

• crucial to showing that we really cared about them being 'on'

• Used in anger from then on– Craig or Niall in the next 2-3 sessions– Valuable to help students with getting logged on– 7 lectures – 105 questions

• Using web interface, categorise questions after lecture as Quiz or PI– System automatically tallies output– This is important, since Quiz and PI questions are worth 10% of the course– Can chase up non-responders and those doing poorly

• Although this is the hardest to do – to find time in a busy term• Looking at exactly what is required to do this will really help• Ad-hoc Excel tampering isn't going to work – not if we want to prod students weekly…

Peculiar setup

• Use a PDF of my Powerpoint on an iPad– Local WiFi connection to my laptop, which projects iPad screen– Can write on the slides– Put clean and inked versions of slides onto Moodle after lecture

• Use two-display format from laptop– keep the graph window on my local laptop– I can see this straight after the question ends, to decide what step to

take next– Can drag into second, projected, display if I want to show the students

the vote

• But YACRS has the flexibility to allow anyone to use pretty much any display setup they want

All in all…

• A huge thanks to Niall and Craig

• And to Kerr for allowing Niall to work on this!

• Please do contact me if you have questions:

– Quintin.Cutts@glasgow.ac.uk

Making lectures more

interactive using LectureTools

Outcomes of a pilot study (at UCL) in 2013

Vicki Dale, Jane Britton & Matt Whyndham

For University of Glasgow LTU lunchtime

workshop, 21/10/14

Rationale for using LectureTools

• To make classroom-based teaching more interactive in

a project management course

• To explore the functionality of LectureTools

The Dashboard (Teacher view)

Student View

Publish Results

Written Answer Responses

Pilot study evaluation methods

• Observation of a 1-hour lecture

• Students

– Anonymised questionnaire

– Comments (benefits and limitations)

– Focus group

• Interviews with educators

Results of pilot evaluation

• 17 students participated

• Observation

– Range of devices used

• Some limitations with mobile devices

– Good signposting throughout by lecturer

– Students using LectureTools to take/highlight notes

– MCQs – no difficulties observed

– Drag and drop problematic on mobile devices

– Text responses – took longer, opportunity for distraction

http://www.flickr.com/photos/

rightee/2703215957/

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Would be a welcome addition to lectures

Made note-taking easier

Helped me engage with the topic

Was easy to use

Made the lecture more interesting

Stimulated my thinking about the subject

Enabled me to measure my understanding of thesubject

Stimulated discussion in the classroom

Helped me to prepare for the APMP exam

Made the topic interesting for me

Distracted me from my learning

Stronglyagree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Stronglydisagree

LectureTools …

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Interactivity encourages engagement and concentration

Easy to use

‘Cool’ or ‘great’

Note-taking feature was good

Helpful, improves teaching and learning

Can flag areas of concern

Like the drawing tool

Potential to enhance distance learning

Texting the answers a good feature

Opportunity to ask questions

Quizzes

It is practical

Perceived benefits

0 1 2 3 4 5

Distraction

[Open] Questions take too much time to answer

Drag and drop difficult

Texting answers problematic

Concerns about large class size

Worried about missing content in lecture

Worried about misspelled answers being displayed in front ofpeers

Dislike staring at the screen

Technical glitches

Not all students have laptops or mobile devices

Activities initially hidden

Perceived limitations

Student focus group

Recognised benefit to learning

Appreciated ability to ask Qs

during the lecture

(Initial) resistance to typing notes

in LTs

Not suitable for drawing diagrams

Open questions significantly

slowed session

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myutb/6355417549/

Interviews with staff

Able to ascertain what students were thinking

Able to provide feedback on student answers

Some UI issues

Underestimated time needed to create presentation

Unable to monitor dashboard during live teaching

Unable to download slides

Changed the class dynamics

Students with different devices had different experiences

Reluctant to use with a larger class

Conclusion: Recommend more trials before wider roll-out

Overall findings

• Successful proof of concept

– Supported interactivity and engagement

• Some technical issues, especially mobile devices and

classroom wifi

• Need to better understand impact on teaching and learning

approaches

• Full report at: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1402478/

• Glasgow contact: Steven Jack, IT Services

References

Mazur, E. (2009). Confessions of a converted lecturer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI

Mazur, E (2007) Confessions of a converted lecturer

http://hans.math.upenn.edu/~pemantle/active-papers/Mazurpubs_605.pdf

Mazur, E. (1997) Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ)