Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Mallek Kanan - Winston Salem State University
Mobile response system (MRS) is a software environment that helps students solve interactive problems in their mobile devices. MRS software allows the faculty to dynamically prompt the students with multi-step interactive exercises synchronized with the lecture material in their mobile devices, gather student answers, assess them immediately and generate grading statistics and summarization to share immediately in the class. This research focused on one such interactive exercise application (app), called the ‘Interactive Multiple Choice Application’. The app facilitates faculty to conduct multiple choice quizzes with different interactive features. The design approach for this application is to present the typical multiple choice format in an entirely new and innovative fashion. For decades multiple choice questions were delivered with a list of choices from which the student has to select the best answer. Even with Clickers and with other mobile-based styles, the traditional approach is flawed in ways that makes it easier for students to cheat. A student can simply look at another student’s test paper and copy his or her answers. Another flaw is how disengaged students feel when taking these multiple choice questions. This is because faculty can’t provide any way to provide hints with the answers or resend the answer back to the students for discussions. With the ‘Interactive Multiple Choice Application’; we hope to enhance the engagement of students by providing an interactive approach to multiple choice quizzes. In this application, a student is presented with a question with a series of 4-6 ‘cards’, marked with alphabetic symbols. These cards simulate the multiple choice bubbles, presented in a scrollable card stock design. However, each card contains a hint that provides the student with a tip or clarification on every answer choice. Faculty has the choice to combine hints and answer choices in several different ways to check student’s critical thinking skills. Also, the cards can have high intensity colors for visually impaired students. Once all students have submitted answers; MRS facilitates grading the answers using the associated rubric and then produce grading and student interaction statistics. Faculty also have the option to resend the same question back to the students for discussions. In that case, the app will show student’s last answer already selected and then student can change that and resubmit it back to the faculty. Along with single choice selection, the app also supports multiple-answer selection depending on how the faculty designs the question. The app can also leverage the opportunity to offer students more individualized feedback while they are working through the exercise. This semester, the app is being used in a sophomore level Chemistry class to examine its usability and effectiveness. Based on the data gathered, in the future we will be extending the app even further that will provide students with an interactive approach for test taking and allows instructors to have real-time evidence of students’ comprehension of lecture materials.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF HBCU-UP grant # 1332531
Faculty Advisor: Mohammad Muztaba Fuad, fuadmo@wssu.edu
Role: The presentation will be on an application that I developed that is part of our system that we call the Mobile Response System. I developed pretty much the majority of the application that I will be presenting. I received help from my mentor about issues that I was facing during the development and received tips on how to solve them or how better present the application.