In this position paper we are presenting the recent progress in developing our audience response system, SMILE, whose aim is to bring more interactivity into academic lectures. Development started in December 2010 with a programming task force of undergraduate Computing Science students. The constant integration of students as developers is a main concept of SMILE. A first prototype included a multiple-choice quiz module and a slider-based real-time feedback module. The client runs as a native Android-smartphone/tablet app or as a JavaScript web-browser application on any platform. In the winter semester 2011/2012 we have been applying the prototype permanently in a first year Computing Science lecture with approx. 90 attending students. This has been accompanied by a formative evaluation in cooperation with learning psychologists. Final results of the evaluation will be subject to a later publication later. Here we are sharing first tendencies already observable and details of the conception and the ongoing development phases.
[1]
William G. Griswold,et al.
The Activeclass Project: Experiments in Encouraging Classroom Participation
,
2003,
CSCL.
[2]
Wolfgang Effelsberg,et al.
The Interactive Lecture: Teaching and Learning Technologies for Large Classrooms
,
2005
.
[3]
Richard J. Anderson,et al.
Promoting Interaction in Large Classes with Computer-Mediated Feedback
,
2003,
CSCL.
[4]
Alexander Pohl,et al.
Assessing Backstage—A backchannel for collaborative learning in large classes
,
2011,
2011 14th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning.