Kizzle Application

Undergraduate #245
Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Education

Perewari Pere - Lincoln University of PA
Co-Author(s): Richard Igbiriki, Lincoln University of PA

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With the understanding of bridging instructor-student relationship and making sure comprehension is not just for some specific students, Kizzle comes into the frame to offer much help in how instructors reach out to students. It is built around the course content of a particular class. The contents are uploaded by the instructor and a test is generated for the class. This is a practice test which surrounds topics covered and based on the analytics of the answers, the instructor would be able to tell how much of the class understands which topic, and which students needs more time and reach-out to understand. The Kizzle environment provides students with real-time questions from course materials. The questions are updated weekly with new contents extracted from the material currently being covered, which is supplied by the professor in the app, thereby engaging the student directly with what is happening in the class. To keep the interest on the student, Kizzle is built with categories based on number of correct answers. The students would move through levels by answering questions correctly. In engaging the student, the app first gives the student study tools for practice, or extra practice, and then generates a report of the student performance for the professor to view. With these reports the instructor can track student’s progress and see that a particular student has spent a lot of time on the app, trying hard to master the material, but is struggling with a particular concept, giving the instructor a chance to reach out and offer help with a knowledge of what the challenge could possibly be. The instructor can also identify topics that a large majority of the class are struggling with, and can review them again. This helps the instructor understand their class better. The course material in the database will be completely customizable by the instructor, both in terms of the mix of questions asked and the topics covered in a particular week. Then a report will be generated to show student comprehension of lectures and what materials need more emphasis. Thus it improves the general class understanding.
How it is Built (iOS): Database: Create database, create database user, and add the user to the database. This way, only students with access information can access the app. Connect App to Database: Launch phpMyAdmin, create a database table, and insert data into the table. PHP Web Service: Returns MySQL database result into app. The PHP service is created, and the PHP file is uploaded to the server. In Spring 2017, Kizzle will be tested for only a selected few classes. Development will continue to add more features where it can self-generate tests questions based on materials uploaded for the week. This will be completed in its second year. In its third year it will be able to generate a whole course based on developments on each course over a period of time. This will be for each class, whether beginners level or advanced level.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation

Faculty Advisor: Bo Sun, bsun@lincoln.edu

Role: I built the user interface of the application and developed more ideas as an improvement for what was initially proposed.