Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Mallek Kanan - Winston Salem State University
This presentation details research that I performed on mobile application development, as a part of Winston-Salem State University’s Targeted Infusion Award 1332531. Our goal is to develop a mobile response system (MRS) software environment to help students solve interactive problems in their mobile devices while improving their class engagement and problem solving skills. As part of this project, we developed MRS software that 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 for faculty to share immediately in the class. My research focuses on one of such interactive exercise application, known as Prim’s algorithm, where the client side was developed in Android and the server side that grades the students answers and generate statistics has been developed in Java. Prim’s algorithm is a method to find the minimum spanning tree of a weighted, connected graph. In this mobile App, a student is presented with a graph where nodes and weights of the edges are populated as application parameters. The student then works through this multi-step exercise, where each step requires her to manipulate a table identifying the current parent of a node and the distance from the parent followed by a selection of next node to be included in the tree. The steps (and corresponding screens) repeat until all nodes are included in the minimum spanning tree. The App allows students going back and forth of these steps in case they want to change their selections before finally submitting their answers. The server side of the application then collects all student submissions, grade them according to associated rubric and by comparing the student made sequence of steps with the correct sequence of steps, and finally produce grading and student interaction statistics. The App also leverage the opportunity to offer students more individualized feedback while they are working through the exercise. There will be demonstration of MRS software environment and the Prim’s Algorithm App during the presentation. In conclusion, this App allows students to practice their concept and skills while increasing their class engagement and allow instructors to have real-time evidence of students’ comprehension of lecture materials.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF, HBCU-UP. Award number: 1332531
Faculty Advisor: Debzani Deb,