Work in Progress: Development of an Android-based Student Mobile Application for the AIChE Concept Warehouse

Incorporating user feedback to continually improve educational innovations is imperative for the adoption and sustained use of those innovations. We report on the development of a usersuggested improvement to the AIChE Concept Warehouse: incorporation of an Android operating system based Student Mobile Application. Our intent is to share what we have learned through our improvement process, such that other innovators can benefit from the lessons learned through our experience. The AIChE Concept Warehouse was developed with the goal of fostering a community of learning within chemical engineering. The Concept Warehouse’s cyber-enabled database infrastructure is designed to promote concept-based instruction through the use of concept questions in core curriculum courses like Material/Energy Balances, Thermodynamics, Transport Phenomena, Kinetics and Reactor Design, and Materials Science. Concept questions, both as Concept Inventories and as ConcepTests, are available to help lower the barrier of using conceptbased instruction and assessment. This instruction and these assessments can be used to promote and evaluate student learning in real-time. The instructor can then adjust the pace of lecture in response to student understanding, spending more time on more difficult concepts. This tool also allows for reflective assessments such as the “muddiest point.” A Student Mobile Application is being developed to make it easier for students to submit answers and written explanations to these assessments using mobile devices. Previously, students could input their answers to conceptual questions using clickers, smartphones, and laptops. However, input via smartphones was cumbersome because it depended on a student’s web browser and the full size web page. The improved student interface will facilitate student participation by making it easier for them to submit responses via smartphone. Once the application is developed, we will conduct initial usability testing with students who have been using the previous web-based options for answer submissions. In order to assess the usability, usage statistics from student responses to usability surveys will be collected. Survey responses will be used to identify student likes and dislikes and compare the different available options for answer submission. Results from usage statistics will be used to improve the design of the application. Introduction Both engineering educators and industry professionals express a need for students to have the ability to apply their knowledge to new and challenging problems1. Traditional lecture-based courses in science and engineering, however, encourage and promote rote memorization over the conceptual understanding needed to apply knowledge in new situations2,3. Instructors need to place greater emphasis on conceptual understanding and utilize concept-based learning in their classrooms. P ge 24387.2 The AIChE Concept Warehouse was designed to lower one of the biggest barriers that prevents instructors from using concept-based instruction: access to high quality concept questions. Construction of good concept questions is often difficult and time-intensive4. The Concept Warehouse alleviates this barrier by giving instructors access to a variety of concept questions in the core chemical engineering curriculum along with providing a variety of ways to utilize these questions in their courses. Instructors can either assign these questions as homework or use them in class as part of active learning pedagogies (e.g. peer instruction). If using concept questions in class, the instructor can have students respond using their clickers, laptops, or smartphones and receive a distribution of student responses in real time. This is useful for determining student understanding of new topics and whether students hold misconceptions about new course content. Currently, use of the Concept Warehouse on a smartphone is cumbersome and inconvenient for students. The web pages are not optimized for use on mobile devices, and students must resize pages in order to read and input text. Navigation menus also are not touch-friendly. The AIChE Concept Warehouse Student Application for Android-based devices seeks to improve the student user experience with touch-friendly navigation and optimization for small screens. In this paper, we present a description of the current status and available features of the student application. We also provide a detailed description of the design and development process to provide a reference for future design processes. Finally, we report on future plans and activities for the student application. Related Work Applications for mobile devices have been used as learning aids before. Pikme, an iPhone specific application, was developed to help the instructor manage student class lists to learn student names, randomly select students to participate in class discussion, and rate these solicited student responses5. The application can then store these ratings to aid the professor in grading student participation. Overall student and instructor feedback was positive: use of the application in class led to increased student motivation, improved engagement, increased overall participation, and more balanced feedback. Students felt that random selection through the use of Pikme was fair and provided good motivation to prepare outside of class. Some students reported an increased willingness to volunteer regardless of the random selection tool. Another application, made for iPads specifically, was developed to aid instructors in the rubricbased grading of assignments and presentations. Called evaluA+, the application allows instructors to create a rubric, import student assignments, and then view the rubric and assignment simultaneously in both online and offline modes6. The instructor is also able to share the rubric with students as they work on their assignments. There is also a presentation mode where an instructor can use a rubric to grade a student as he or she gives an oral presentation. Pikme and evaluA+ are examples of mobile applications designed to aid the instructor in the classroom. Mobile applications have also been developed with the intent of providing formative assessment of student understanding in real-time. InkSurvey is a free, web-based software that collects student responses to open format questions. Students “ink” their responses through use of pen-enabled Android devices, iPads, iPhones, and/or tablet PCs7. The instructor can pose questions during lecture, and students can respond with words, drawings, graphs, or equations P ge 24387.3 through InkSurvey. Creating these responses gives students an opportunity to interact with the subject material and increases student metacognition. The instructor, in return, gains a real-time window into what students are thinking and can address misconceptions and further questions. Mobile applications like InkSurvey help promote active learning by encouraging students to reflect on subject material and explain concepts in their own words. Studies of more than 5,000 science and engineering students have found that active learning methods double conceptual learning gains8 and give way to a 25% higher pass rate9 than traditional lecture. Active learning methods, like peer instruction, help place greater emphasis on concept-based instruction. Though traditional engineering courses often reward rote learning2,3, a lack of conceptual understanding can inhibit a student’s ability to solve new problems because of the inability to use new knowledge in new situations10. Concept-based Instruction and Peer Instruction The AIChE Concept Warehouse, along with the student mobile application, is designed to make it easier for instructors to implement concept-based instruction and use of concept questions in class. Concept questions can be difficult to create and are perceived as time-consuming to use, deterring many instructors from adapting a more concept-based approach to instruction4, 11, 12. The AIChE Concept Warehouse is a database-driven website that gives instructors access to approximately 2000 questions related to the core chemical engineering curriculum. The tool also gives instructors the infrastructure to write and share their own questions as well as assign these to students either in class or as homework. Students can then use their laptops, clickers, or cell phones to answer these concept questions in class. The Concept Warehouse then records student answers and presents an answer distribution to the instructor, who can use this as formative assessment to determine how well students grasp new material. Students have a variety of options when it comes to submitting their answers to concept questions posed in class, as the Concept Warehouse accepts answers from clickers, laptops, and cell phones. Many higher education institutions have chosen to adopt clickers into their curriculums. This technology is not without its own set of disadvantages, however. Clicker limitations include difficulty in assessing students’ ability to answer more open-ended questions involving higher level thinking13, distortion of student responses by only providing a set menu of possibilities, and the inability to simulate job-like environments14. Clickers are not compatible with one of the Concept Warehouse’s more powerful features – short answer written explanations. Instructors can choose to ask students to include a written explanation of their answer selection to multiple-choice concept questions. While laptops support students writing explanations to justify their answers, some students have also reported the inconvenience of carrying their laptops from class to class15. This leaves mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as the tool of choice. The goal of the the AIChE Concept Warehouse Student Application is to provide an improved student experience. Currently, web pages are slow to load on mobile dev