In Thailand students are habitually silent and do not ask questions, because they do not want to let the teacher look like they haven't done their job in teaching the 'right' things the 'right' way, save face. I'm thinking of using technology that helps overcome this situation.
Some universities have introduced ARS to help students contact the lecturer during presentation via smartphone/tablet. Students can vote for performance (too fast, too slow) and ask specific questions, which might otherwise disturb the flow of presentation for fellow students.
What are your feelings, experiences, and ideas about this? Do you use this kind of gadget, or would you use it if it were available at your institution? As a teacher or as a student?
Michael,
I think there is a big issue that you have highlighted that technology cannot overcome, and is the students passive role in teaching. I am very open to the flow of questions during my classes and I think technology would get in the way of interaction with the professor. If a student catches me with a question that I do not know, I applaud them and tell them that is what I want, and I will find the answer for them. It makes it interesting for me and I know that they too have been reasoning about the class(it also expands my appreciation for the subject).
Please do share your experience in the future with us, I for one would like to see other experiences like George's and hopefully yours to see if I change my mind.
@Jane, amazing to see how easy-to-make things help you get feedback from shy students. It might be a bit more difficult to generate questions by using CapturIng, though.
@Arturo, I fully agree with your views on the teacher/student relationship in class. We teachers have a great opportunity to learn from students' reactions, misconceptions and other feedback. Sometimes we rush too fast through the materials, sometimes we stroll too slow. I'm thinking of an app (most people at university have a smartphone nowadays) that sends feedback to the lecturer's phone guiding them through class regarding pace and problems.
I would also welcome any comments and experiences by colleagues, what works and what does not.
Hi, I teach a class called the thousand faces of Internet, adressed to undergraduate students of any program. I have 80 to 100 students in the class and I encourage the invited speakers and the students (who have to present a project at the end of the course) to use responds cards (clickers). It has worked very well but you have to choose interesting and not obvious questions...they like to see the distribution of the classe answers and they feel free to give their opinion in an annonymous way (we discuss issues such as ciberbulling, facebook, security concern, copyright respect...but also guess questions such as : who has more followers on twitter...choices go between soccer players, politicians, etc.)
Well, @Devendar, I very much appreciate your suggestions and I invite you to the world of Thai education. Please, find a couple of students who are willing to interact with you as a teacher.
I don't mind you having been frank but as a response let me say that one teacher (even two or three) cannot change the culture of students. Please, be aware that shyness and submissiveness is very common among students here. I would not ask this question facing Western students, only if they were showing up in great numbers, when you cannot remember the names.
BTW. In seminars that's not a problem. We teachers can make them ask and respond.
@Devendar, thank you for your encouragement. To respond to your questions:
1. In the past, schools in Thailand (the former Siam) were temple schools; in fact, many of those old schools are nowadays modernized and integrated in the public school system. The former teachers were monks, which are still highly respected, and this respect has been transferred to all of the teachers today. In Thai society, respect is also shown by younger people to older people. Young listen to old and usually follow instructions and advice without much interaction or questioning.
2. If a teacher gets a question that they cannot answer, it might embarrass them. Making other people lose face is something that all Thais avoid as much as possible; that is part of the culture.
Unfortunately, both 1. and 2. do not lead to creative feedback, where people work together in positive criticism.
Yes, they are.
We have used them for years, and Sebastian Thrum's Artificial Intelligence MOOC (late 2012) used a software version of them for over 150,000 students - very successfully.
Do they give you rich conversations? No. But they give you formative feedback (for student and lecturer), and can be used in more creative ways.
@Roy, could you elaborate a bit more, in which creative ways ARS can be used?
BTW. 150,000 students? Wow!
@ Michael, learning / problem solving strategies, to start with.
If you are lecturing about a specific problem, you might ask students to choose between a few strategies to answer it, then work through the strategies, and see which one works best - this is very easy to do in mathematics, for instance. This could still work with 150,000 students!
Or, if you use systems that allow for text input, you can ask student to describe the strategy they would suggest - this is particularly useful if you ask them to discuss possible strategies in groups of 3 (or so) and input a single suggestion for their group. This would be restricted by the class size - but you can do this with 150 or so, by pointing to a particular group or two, and asking them to input their suggestions.
@Unaisi, I can understand your problems so easily teaching not far away here in Thailand. Let's keep in touch for experiences with ARS in daily struggles for feedback.
Dear Michael
I recommend reading this paper : Student response systems: a cure for lecturalgia?
The most frequent cause of lecturalgia (painful lecture) is students’ inability to maintain attention . In order to address this problem many universities have turned to the student response system (SRS) to facilitate student interaction. The most frequently reported benefits of a SRS are that students perceive lectures to be more interactive, engaging, and enjoyable.
The results of this study indicate that the use of a student response system in combi- nation with appropriate pedagogical practices may indeed represent a cure for lecturalgia by increasing student engagement and helping maintain student attention.
Student response systems: a cure for lecturalgia?
Tracy Johnson, Amy Meckelborg
Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada [email protected] [email protected]
Recently, I have learned about Socrative, an SRS based on smartphones. It's free and easy to use. There are two apps actually, one for teachers and one for the students. You can find more information on Youtube (link below) and on their website (just google that one).
https://www.youtube.com/user/SocrativeVideos
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