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YACRS (Yet Another Classroom Response System
1. Have we got your attention? Making sure your
students engage in lectures
Sarah Honeychurch
Craig Brown
Niall Barr
Vicki Dale
Learning Technology Unit
Quintin Cutts
Computing Science
2. Intro to session and structure
• YACRS login
• Uses of EVS
• At U of G
• At UCL
• Peer Instruction
• Group Discussion
• Feedback and course evaluation
3. YACRS
•(Yet Another Classroom Response System)
•Niall Barr
•Niall.Barr@glasgow.ac.uk
5. A question
• R0 for Ebola (the average number of new infections from
each patient) is approximately 4. Given this, if a vaccine
became available, what proportion of the population
would need to be vaccinated to prevent new outbreaks
spreading?
A : 25%
B : 50%
C : 75%
D : 90%
E : 95%
F : 99%
6. Click happy
Expected
Not much thought about questions or
answers
Are we awake?
Are we listening?
(to click or not to click?)
7. 7 years
IR - boxes, lots of cables and up a ladder
in a French Lecture
RF – flat batteries, software issues and
this is the expert
BYOD and the joy of University wireless
8. Some students don’t vote
Some students make a game of it
Some students forget to pick up a handset
or don’t manage to successfully turn it on
Some students vote for the wrong answer
to get the lecturer to go back over a topic
even if they think they know the right
answer but are not 100% sure
9. Good way to get immediate feedback
about students understanding
Can be used to structure tutorial
Can be used to start discussion
Anonymous
Keeps focus
Helps us think about our teaching
Peer learning
10. Easy way to capture data
Allows you to better explain questions
Students normally already experienced
with the technology
Good for quantitative but not qualitative
Mixed results with text feedback
Keeps focus (mostly but keep it short)
Easy to export data for analysis
11. Encourage small group discussion
Collective group feedback
Peer evaluation
Peer learning
13. What’s your goal?
Explain to students (everything)
Not too simple or hard questions
Not too many questions
Start with a practice question
Actually use the feedback as you get it and
discuss it with your students
Get your students discussing with each
other
14. It takes time to prepare
It takes time to get it right
Be prepared to make changes during
You will loose lecture time – don’t try to
cram it all in!
Don’t panic if it goes wrong
Have a plan B
Plan how to distribute handsets
15. Peer learning
Instant feedback
Confidence based voting
Rethink how we teach especially large
group
Use to emphasize an important concept
16. Mazur: Peer Instruction
• First question: How to teach, not what. (Design before
content).
• Instruction is easier than assimilation: Teacher as
information transfer – teacher as facilitator of information
assimilation. (2007, 2009)
• Lecture: “the transfer of the lecturer’s notes to the
students’ notes without passing through the minds of
either”.
• If lecture notes are available beforehand, how to make
use of the ‘spare’ time?
17. Mazur: Conventional & Conceptual Qs
If a heavy truck and a small car collide, which exerts more
force:
a) The truck
b) The car
c) They are both the same
d) There is no force
“Professor Mazur, how should I answer these questions?
According to what you taught us, or by the way I think about
these things?”
Images from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/American_truck.JPG;
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/KIF_0001_reg.JPG
18. Mazur: Conventional & Conceptual Qs
• Newton’s third law: For every action there is an equal
and opposite re-action.
• Obvious?
“…all students can recite Newton’s third law and most of them can
apply it in numerical problems. A little probing, however, quickly
shows that many students do not understand the law. Halloun and
Hestenes provide many examples in which students are asked to
compare the forces exerted by different objects on one another.
When asked, for instance, to compare the forces in a collision
between a heavy truck and a light car, many students firmly believe
the heavy truck exerts a larger force.” Mazur (2007)
• Conventional v conceptual questions
(“plug and chug” v ConcepTests)
• “the sage on the stage” v “the guide on the side”
19. Mazur: Peer Instruction
• Pre class reading
• In class: go into depth “semi-socratically” (question, not give answers)
• ConcepTest:
• Question
• 1.5 mins silence
• Answer with “clickers”
• Turn to neighbour and justify response
• Revised answer with “clickers”
• Lecturer gives explanation (at ~53.54 in video)
• Students who have the right answer convince others better than Prof
Mazur could.
• The better you know something, the harder it is to teach (you forget
the conceptual difficulties of new learners)
• Active engagement
• Better understanding → better problem solving
• Good problem solving =/= indicate understanding
23. Context
• L1 class in Computational Thinking
– 90 students, intending & non-intending CS Hons
– Students need to be working to develop their skills throughout
the course
• not 'getting' a week's work for a weaker student could well mean
failure
• getting regular feedback on progress is therefore very important
• Faithful Peer Instruction implementation
– Assigned seating in lecture theatre, groups of 3
• according to self-report on previous experience
– Pre-reading / activity prior to every class session
– 2-hr sessions
– Quiz at start of every session – 3-4 Qs on pre-work
– Series of Peer Instruction questions
24. YACRS experience
• Did a test in the first lecture session
– 3 test questions
– supported by Craig
– took ages to get as many people on as possible
• crucial to showing that we really cared about them being 'on'
• Used in anger from then on
– Craig or Niall in the next 2-3 sessions
– Valuable to help students with getting logged on
– 7 lectures – 105 questions
• Using web interface, categorise questions after lecture as Quiz or PI
– System automatically tallies output
– This is important, since Quiz and PI questions are worth 10% of the course
– Can chase up non-responders and those doing poorly
• Although this is the hardest to do – to find time in a busy term
• Looking at exactly what is required to do this will really help
• Ad-hoc Excel tampering isn't going to work – not if we want to prod students weekly…
25. Peculiar setup
• Use a PDF of my Powerpoint on an iPad
– Local WiFi connection to my laptop, which projects iPad screen
– Can write on the slides
– Put clean and inked versions of slides onto Moodle after lecture
• Use two-display format from laptop
– keep the graph window on my local laptop
– I can see this straight after the question ends, to decide what step to
take next
– Can drag into second, projected, display if I want to show the students
the vote
• But YACRS has the flexibility to allow anyone to use pretty much any
display setup they want
26. All in all…
• A huge thanks to Niall and Craig
• And to Kerr for allowing Niall to work on this!
• Please do contact me if you have questions:
– Quintin.Cutts@glasgow.ac.uk
27. Making lectures more
interactive using LectureTools
Outcomes of a pilot study (at UCL) in 2013
Vicki Dale, Jane Britton & Matt Whyndham
For University of Glasgow LTU lunchtime
workshop, 21/10/14
28. Rationale for using LectureTools
• To make classroom-based teaching more interactive in
a project management course
• To explore the functionality of LectureTools
33. Pilot study evaluation methods
• Observation of a 1-hour lecture
• Students
– Anonymised questionnaire
– Comments (benefits and limitations)
– Focus group
• Interviews with educators
34. Results of pilot evaluation
• 17 students participated
• Observation
– Range of devices used
• Some limitations with mobile devices
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
rightee/2703215957/
– Good signposting throughout by lecturer
– Students using LectureTools to take/highlight notes
– MCQs – no difficulties observed
– Drag and drop problematic on mobile devices
– Text responses – took longer, opportunity for distraction
35. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Would be a welcome addition to lectures
Made note-taking easier
Helped me engage with the topic
Was easy to use
Made the lecture more interesting
Stimulated my thinking about the subject
Enabled me to measure my understanding of the
subject
Stimulated discussion in the classroom
Helped me to prepare for the APMP exam
Made the topic interesting for me
Distracted me from my learning
Strongly
agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
LectureTools …
36. Perceived benefits
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Interactivity encourages engagement and concentration
Easy to use
‘Cool’ or ‘great’
Note-taking feature was good
Helpful, improves teaching and learning
Can flag areas of concern
Like the drawing tool
Potential to enhance distance learning
Texting the answers a good feature
Opportunity to ask questions
Quizzes
It is practical
37. 0 1 2 3 4 5
Perceived limitations
Distraction
[Open] Questions take too much time to answer
Drag and drop difficult
Texting answers problematic
Concerns about large class size
Worried about missing content in lecture
Worried about misspelled answers being displayed in front of
peers
Dislike staring at the screen
Technical glitches
Not all students have laptops or mobile devices
Activities initially hidden
38. Student focus group
Recognised benefit to learning
Appreciated ability to ask Qs
during the lecture
(Initial) resistance to typing notes
in LTs
Not suitable for drawing diagrams
Open questions significantly
slowed session
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myutb/6355417549/
39. Interviews with staff
Able to ascertain what students were thinking
Able to provide feedback on student answers
Some UI issues
Underestimated time needed to create presentation
Unable to monitor dashboard during live teaching
Unable to download slides
Changed the class dynamics
Students with different devices had different experiences
Reluctant to use with a larger class
Conclusion: Recommend more trials before wider roll-out
40. Overall findings
• Successful proof of concept
– Supported interactivity and engagement
• Some technical issues, especially mobile devices and
classroom wifi
• Need to better understand impact on teaching and learning
approaches
• Full report at: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1402478/
• Glasgow contact: Steven Jack, IT Services
41. References
Mazur, E. (2009). Confessions of a converted lecturer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI
Mazur, E (2007) Confessions of a converted lecturer
http://hans.math.upenn.edu/~pemantle/active-papers/Mazurpubs_605.pdf
Mazur, E. (1997) Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ)
