Collecting students' degree of comprehension with mobile phones

It is important for teachers to know how well students understand course content. It is possible for teachers to collect such data with a web interface in computer-equipped classrooms, but this is difficult for teachers in traditional classrooms. Mobile phones with Internet capability are very popular among students in Japan, so we implemented a classroom support system to collect students' degree of comprehension of course content using mobile phones. We devised this system to offer better ease of use for both students and teachers. Teachers who use this system can prepare a questionnaire with a web interface and edit the contents and structure very comfortably. The system uses the unique subscriber ID of mobile phones assigned by the communication vendor. After the lecture, teachers can get the summarized and detailed results of the questionnaire through a web interface. Teachers can now get feedback on student comprehension of lectures and use this information to improve future lectures. We are using this system in several classrooms. In this paper, we share our system design, user interface, and our experiences implementing this system in our classrooms.