Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups

from the International Conference on Information Systems 2012.
Research-in-Progress, Nominated for the Best Paper Award

Speaker: Philipp Herrmann

Transcript

1. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 1
   Designing a Web-Based Application to Support
   Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups
   Joint work by:
   Dennis Kundisch, Philipp Herrmann, Michael Whittaker, Marc Beutner, Gregor Fels,
   Johannes Magenheim, Wolfgang Reinhardt, Michael Sievers, Andrea Zoyke
   University of Paderborn
   Research-in-Progress, Nominated for the Best Paper Award
   International Conference on Information Systems 2012
   

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2. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 2
   Motivation
   “Physicists and physics educators have realized that many students learn very
   little physics from traditional lectures.”
   (Crouch et al. 2001)
   §  Students develop complex reasoning skills most efficiently when they actively
   participate in the subject matter
   §  Large increase in number of enrolled students in courses
   §  Challenge: foster active participation in very large groups
   §  Solution: Peer instruction as a teaching-/learning method
   Research Idea:
   Implementation and evaluation of Peer Instruction in very large groups
   

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3. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 3
   Peer Instruction – Learning Through Interaction (II)
   Until today Peer instruction is only seldom used and mainly implemented in
   smaller courses
   

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4. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 4
   Challenges for the Implementation of Peer Instruction in
   Very Large Groups
   A variety of issues remain for Peer Instruction not to be implemented more widely
   §  Teacher-centered challenges
   §  Student-centered challenges
   §  Technological challenges
   §  Clicker administration effort
   §  Exclusive use
   §  Scalability
   §  Costs
   §  Installation and configuration
   §  (No direct access to the system)
   Develop a scalable, web-based, cost-efficient and user-friendly Peer
   Instruction application for students and instructors to address technological
   challenges and implement and evaluate Peer Instruction in large groups
   

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5. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 5
   Development Goals
   §  Web-based application (JavaScript, CSS, HTML…)
   §  Frontend: Support as many web-enabled devices as possible
   §  Backend: high performance and scalability
   §  more 1,000 responses per second
   §  Instantly push questions to devices
   §  Timer synchronization
   §  Neither native applications, nor multi-platform application
   §  No download necessary – just URL or QR code
   §  Free to use
   §  Full access to the system
   

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6. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 6
   Frontend of the Prototype
   User Access
   pingo.upb.de
   

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7. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 7
   First (Technical) Evaluation of the Artifact
   Technology Acceptance Model
   §  Approximately 700 survey participants in two surveys
   §  Empirical result: Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness predict
   behavioral intention to use our artifact
   System Usability Scale (SUS)
   §  Aggregated SUS-score of 72.5 out of 100 indicates a good usability
   1st survey 2nd survey
   Perceived Ease of use 6.31 6.51
   Perceived Usefulness 5.02 5.42
   Behavioral Intention to Use 5.80 6.15
   Evaluation results and feedback from course participants indicate that our
   solution is an useful artifact for implementing and evaluating Peer Instruction
   in large groups
   

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8. Designing a Web-Based Application to Support Peer Instruction for Very Large Groups 8
   Ongoing and Future Research
   Based on the developed artifact we plan to
   §  Evaluate the effectiveness of Peer Instruction in very large groups
   §  Evaluate how design decisions of the artifact affect the efficiency
   of Peer Instruction
   §  Evaluate peer discussions in large groups
   §  Evaluate different question types
   Thank you very much for you attention!
   

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