Ask the Audience." - Increase Interactivity. Increase Learning?

Quintin Cutts

University of Glasgow

Date and time: 11.30am-12.30pm, Friday 28th May, 2004

Venue: 10.11.04

Chair: Margaret Hamilton

Abstract:

Educational theory suggests that students learn more effectively when they are actively engaged in a dialogue with the instructor and other students. This engagement is rarely possible in traditional lectures, still a primary delivery mechanism in most university courses, because students are either unable or unwilling to speak out.

Various mechanisms have been used in lectures to improve the level of response to questions set by the lecturer. This talk is concerned with one of these mechanisms - an electronic voting system enabling students to answer multiple choice questions during a lecture and have the results displayed immediately, much like Ask The Audience in the TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Voting systems are becoming increasingly prevalent, now included in the E-armoury of many publishers.

Despite increasing availability of the systems, there is little information on best practice on using them and limited research on their effectiveness educationally.

This talk will cover:

• Experiences of developing and rolling out such technology at the University of Glasgow over the last three years, including how lecturers have used them, what pedagogical problems have been addressed, and the evidence that their use has been beneficial. This represents the largest use of voting systems in a UK university.
• Novel uses of the system being developed at Glasgow, based on in-house software developments that extend the potential of the off-the-shelf systems.
• An educational rationale for using electronic voting systems in lectures.
• A research investigation carried out at Glasgow on whether the level and quality of a student's voting is associated with their performance

The talk is designed around the use of a voting system, which I will bring with me, so the audience should get a feel firsthand for the technology.

Any queries beforehand - mail quintin@dcs.gla.ac.uk

About the speaker:

Quintin Cutts is currently on sabbatical leave from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, working with the Computing Education Research Group at Monash University with the Biomedical Multimedia Unit at Melbourne University. Currently, his main research focus is the improvement of traditional face-to-face teaching environments, using technology where appropriate. In Glasgow, he has been involved in the roll-out of 2 major education initiatives in the last few years: increasing interactivity in lectures and tutorials using voting handsets; and the development of a peer-assisted learning (PAL) programme. He is a computer scientist by training, having gained his PhD in 1992 from the University of St Andrews in Scotland in the area of persistent programming languages, and is a lecturer in the Department of Computing Science in Glasgow.

Seminars are free and open to the general public. No booking is necessary.

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