Development And Initial Experience With A Laptop Based Student Assessment System To Enhance Classroom Instruction

New principles of learning and instruction highlight the need to engage students in thoughtful use of knowledge. However, engaging individual engineering students in large classrooms simultaneously can be challenging. Classroom communication systems (CCS) encourage students to apply conceptual ideas during class, by allowing them to respond to questions using hand-held devices. A real time aggregate of their responses reported to the instructor and/or the class can provide valuable feedback to both to the instructor. The VaNTH (Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Texas, Harvard/MIT) Engineering Research Center for educational technologies has experimented with commercial versions of these systems with great success. However, such systems generally support only multiple-choice questions, and usually require proprietary hardware and software. We have developed a browser-based solution, the VaNTH Student Assessment System (VSAS), to provide richer modes of questioning and better utilize our existing technical infrastructure. VSAS allows for multiple choice, short answer, and essay responses to questions during class by using student’s wireless laptops as input devices. Free-text response capability may increase learning potential because students need to rely more on generating knowledge and less on routine recall of memorized information. Moreover, the system lends itself very well to implementation in models of challenge-based learning that include phases of generating ideas and revisiting initial intuition after instruction. Finally, VSAS compliments the engineering school’s initiative to embed the use of technology with classroom instruction through wireless network infrastructure and laptop computers to all students. This paper presents several examples illustrating the value added by using the short answer and essay features of VSAS. These cases highlight the instructional potential of question asking, benefits of immediate responses during in class instruction, and potential of tracking students’ progress.