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| The Classroom Communicator is a system designed to increase the level of interaction and feedback between student and lecturer in the classroom. Typically, a lecturer spends most of the class time presenting |  Original image from Pace University |
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material while allowing some time for answering questions. Frequently, students have questions while the lecturer is presenting. Many of these questions are not answered because the student:
One aspect of the Classroom Communicator is to facilitate the question and answering session. While the lecturer is presenting, students can enter their questions into the system (possibly anonymously). When the lecturer reaches a reasonable break in material, he or she may retrieve a "frequently asked questions (FAQ)" report generated by the Classroom Communicator software. Using this FAQ report, the lecturer can answer those questions most essential to student understanding. If there is not enough time to answer all questions during class, the lecturer or possibly an assistant can answer the remaining questions and post all answers to the class web site. In addition to facilitating the question and answer session, the Classroom Communicator would give lecturers a real-time quantitative measure of how well students understand the material presented. For example, a lecturer could incorporate “mini-quizzes” into his/her lecture. The quizzes could be a series of multiple choice questions loaded in the system before class. After presenting a particular topic, the lecturer could, at the press of a button, display a question on the students' units. If most students answer correctly, the lecturer may feel comfortable to proceed to the next topic. If most students answer incorrectly, the lecturer may want to spend more time on the current topic. In effect, the lecturer will be able to manage class time and address the needs of the students in real-time. |
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