Mobile Clickers: Humanizing Student Conceptual Understanding and Class Participation through the CloudClassRoom (CCR)

Mercredi 16 décembre 2015 à 10h
Amphithéâtre Alex Weill, Faculté de Droit (1 place d'Athènes - 67000 Strasbourg)

Chun-Yen Chang Ph. D.
Graduate Institute of Science Education
National Taiwan Normal University Chair Professor
Mobile Clickers: Humanizing Student Conceptual Understanding and Class Participation through the CloudClassRoom (CCR)
Director of Science Education Center
Professor of Graduate Institute of Science Education & Department of Earth Sciences
E-mail: changcy@ntnu.edu.tw
Web: http://changcy.com

Talk video

Abstract

We have developed CloudClassRoom (CCR), a mobile version of clickers, to facilitate classroom participation. CCR is written in HTML 5.0 and works on every Internet-capable device and does not require any additional software or plug-ins installations. Once students connect their own mobile devices to CCR, they can respond to the teacher’s questions instantly and anonymously. CCR then automatically aggregates students’ responses, providing the teacher with information about how well students currently understand the presented learning material. Advanced features, include open-ended question format, multimedia presentation, instant group formation, and teacher-student role swapping. These features are equipped in CCR to support instructional methods that are otherwise difficult to implement in conventional classrooms. To date, approximately 800 teacher accounts have been registered in CCR. More than 3000 classrooms have been established on CCR. Over 20000 classroom activities have been conducted by using CCR. Eight different language versions of CCR have been released, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Swedish. We will continue to develop CCR to make classroom more interactive and conduct research to evaluate the impact of CCR on student learning.

In order to explore the impacts of CCR on student learning, a CCR-integrated activity has been designed for high-school physics classes. In this activity, students are provided with portable air hockey tables to explore friction, motion, and force. Students collaboratively use tablets to record and analyze hockey motions, and generate evidence to verify their ideas. CCR is employed to reveal students’ pre-conceptions, fuse discussion among students, and track students’ learning progress. A pilot study of CCR was conducted in 2015. Twenty-one high-school students (11th grade) voluntarily participated in the aforementioned activity after school. Students’ learning outcomes were quite promising, suggesting that the CCR-integrated activity is beneficial to improve conceptual understanding. Most recently, an artificial-intelligence based function has been developed to categorize students' free responses to open-ended questions. We are also in the progress of incorporating smart clothes, collaborated with Paris 8 University, into CCR learning activities in the near future, which will also be presented in this talk..

Biography

Prof. Chun-Yen Chang, is a science education scholar in Taiwan. Currently, Chang serves as National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) Chair Professor, director of Science Education Center (NTNU), as well as a Professor of the Graduate Institute of Science Education and the Department of Earth Sciences. From August 2013 to February 2014, Chang has been to Paris 8 University (France) for 6-month research, funded by National Science Council (NSC) Short-term Abroad Research Program. This research attempts to explore the usability and feasibility of how innovative e—technologies can be implemented in science classrooms. In the past two years, Dr. Chang has also been a Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Paris 8 University, and the Taipei Medical University.

References

• Chien, Y. T., Lee. Y. H., Li, T. Y. & Chang, C. Y. (2015). Examining the effects of displaying clicker voting results on high school students’ voting behaviors, discussion processes, and learning outcomes. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 11 (5), 1089-1104. (SSCI)
• Chien, Y. T., Chang, C. Y., Lee, Y. H., Li, T. Y. & Ohno, E. (2015, July). Investigating how students use voting results aggregated by clickers to participate in peer discussion. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference of Science Educators and Teachers (ISET 2015), Bangkok, Thailand. This paper won the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award.
• Chien, Y. T., & Chang, C. Y. (in press). Supporting socio-scientific argumentation in the classroom through automatic group formation based on students’ real-time responses. In M. S. Khine (Ed.), Science education in East Asia: Pedagogical innovations and research-informed practices. Springer.