Smart Mobile-Device Augmented Teaching

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Smart Mobile-Device Augmented Teaching

• Dave Elliman
• University of Nottingham

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Lecture theatres are becoming bigger
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Why bigger?
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And emptier!
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Why emptier?

• Groups are too big for effective interaction (mug
  and jug model)
• Groups become sparse and far away!
• Lectures are an unfamiliar learning style for
  todays students (Widening participation?)
• Lectures are perceived as boring and ineffective
  by many students
• PowerPoint

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Lack of interaction is a big factor

• Too many (Gibbs and Feldman showed this)
• Too far away (10m some kind of limit)
• Not listening (Research in USA)

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Solutions

• Monitor attendance (can double students numbers)
• Invoke some technological solution to interaction
• Can be done from the back of large theatre
• Can be done by those who are shy
• Can be done without distraction from listening
• A hand-help zapper 0 -gt 9 for understandingyes
  no - fed back to lecturer

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Commercial solutions exist

• Interactive presenter
• Uharil found 80 of medical students found this
  improved their learning and attention in lectures
• This and similar devices being used increasingly
  at conferences
• Difficulties
• Too expensive.
• Keeping all those units from being stolen
• Keeping them all charged
• Impractical for us at Nottingham

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Idea 1 Build our own zappers

• Hard wired logic
• Works department want ridiculous amount of cash
  to do it
• People are moving to radio anyway
• Infra-red
• Requires line of sight
• Standard emitters on the margin with the large
  theatres
• People are moving to radio anyway
• Same problems re theft and batteries.

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Idea Use the students own SMARTPHONES
Only one student had one
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Use Bluetooth

• I spent a long time on this solution.
• It required a client program to run in each phone
• All the phones are different help!
• Only 30 of them had Bluetooth phones in any case

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Use SMS to host phone and then Bluetooth

• I spent a lot of time on this and could
  communicate to Windows XP from my Nokia phone
  using WMA Wireless Messaging API
• Incoming SMS messages are not transmitted with a
  port number and go straight into the inbox. I
  could not intercept them

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Use SMS to host phone and use a USB cable to the
computer

• Everybody had a phone that could send SMS
• Nokia PC-Suite added the inbox to Internet
  Explorer
• But Where was this directory very hard to find
  as folder tree hidden and system attributes
• C\Documents and Settings\dge\Phone Browser\Nokia
  6280\Messages\Inbox
• Fire Task nokiaSync at 20 second intervals
• Read folder and note changes
• Display results
• A simple solution and it worked for all students!

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A simple protocol

• 0 Dont get it at all
• 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• 9 I understand perfectly
• In context of a quiz a multiple choice value
• Q Please explain that again
• N Andy Pandy

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The result
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Practical Considerations

• Should feedback screen be seen by everybody or
  just the lecturer?
• At start tell everyone to put phone number of
  host phone in their contacts
• Tell them to set their phones (and the host) to
  silent mode and preferably not to accept incoming
  calls
• In practice messages sent with 4 key presses and
  students can do it blindfold
• Cost nobody seemed worried about the cost per
  message. Could be made free by using a receiver
  pays number which forwards to the host phone
• Should it be anonymous?
• Phones pre-registered with School at reception
  (eliminates N messages and malicious
  interference)
• Attendance string requested (eliminates
  interaction with those still in bed)

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Was the project a success?
?
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Any Questions?