Confused in Class? There's an App for that
understoodit.com
understoodit.com
How long is this around? Two years. Works.
He uses his iPad to present his slides wirelessly to our beamer and a student voluntarily manages the polls and when enough people haven't understood a topic, the student hits a button and the slide updates the graph, then the Prof focuses on that topic a little more.
That sounds more complicated than it is, it's dead easy and flawless, despite the fact that our Prof is an iDiot or iNerd, hehe :) He's just a huuge fan of everything Apple.
It challenges everyone to cooperate, thankfully it's anonymous, so we can fool around too, but the Prof notices that :D
In my eyes, the skill to built this is really low compared to the other stuff we've done, but it's a nice tool. Unfortunately most Prof just don't fucking care and go-on with their one-man-show.
PS: Our Prof uses the stats and data generated to create the exam also ;)
I have had the opportunity to experiment with something like a voting system. The teacher mixed his lecture with some (multiple choice) questions the students can answer via the voting system. This created a far more dynamic lecture with instant feedback on the answers provided. Maybe a feature you want to consider? Because with the smartphones and tablet these days you eliminate the need for an extra device (like we were experimenting with).
Besides this all, the site looks broken here (Fx 12.0, Vista) because the CSS is not loaded. IE8 in Vista is also messy (with a loaded CSS file).
I'm using a web font from font deck and it seems to be slow loading which blocks the rest of the page from loading...
-there's already an app for getting feedback if you don't understand... it's called RAISING YOUR HAND!!!!!11!
-are you going to add a "distractometer" to log how many times people are distracted by using and checking the app?
Ok, now that that's done. I would actually lose the "o-meter" phrasing and have the app simply say "Confused" and "Understand". In fact, you could even lose the "understand" interaction. I doubt people will be hitting a button all the time every time they "understand" something during a lecture. Just have one button for confusion.
Is there a way to post feedback (anonymously) at the end of a lecture?
Radical piviot: you know what this model of instant feedback would be good for? Occupy Wall Street and general assemblies.
I'm hoping to add a feature for leaving feedback at the end of a lecture, great idea!
Also great idea on the Occupy Wall Street idea!
Overwhelming majority of students are deathly afraid of looking like an idiot by raising their hand. It happens everywhere, not just large classrooms.
I think this is a great idea.
This app would be a tremendous help not just to my classes (I've been here a long while, and know how to read the signs of confusion & check understanding), but also to the classes of newbies in Korea.
New teachers here sometimes go for months naively asking students "do you understand this stuff" and believing it to be true.
If Koreans could vote on this anonymously, I think they would actually do that at every opportunity.
Wish I had that for my calc lectures...
This is far better. There will always be a couple people that are not following. If the professor is getting 90% "I understood" responses, he can simply mention that anyone with questions on that topic is free to meet them after class, while the rest of the time can be spent on topics where there is a lower rate of understanding.
That having been said, I had a few questions/concerns:
- How would it work when there were specific gaps? It might be helpful if comments could be included to the instructor when the rating is provided. That would allow the teacher to reinforce those particular topics.
- How would you guarantee participation? If, for example, only people that don't understand the topic speak up, wouldn't that skew the data presented to the teacher?
Participation is a much trickier issue. In the classes that I tested in about 40 - 60% of the students actually used it. I was thinking of weighting the confusion 'votes' based on 'active' users.
I'm hoping that through feedback form professors I'll be able to add features that make it more worth while for students.
I think it would be awesome if you can generalize the idea for online lectures also (coursera, khan academy, udacity, etc). Since videos are not real time, letting students hit "confused" for certain segment of an online video will let the developers splice in a better explanation for bad parts of a video or even let them a/b test two different versions of a segment of the same video.
And also, instead of a confused button, maybe allow them to optionally elaborate on the source of their confusion? A potential solution for online videos is via timed comments (similar to how soundcloud does it, except maybe with interval of confusions instead http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1143-soundcloud-expands-the-a...)
Thinking freely here:
Could you produce a report for the school's administration of each professor's confused/understood ratio?
As gee-totes suggested, a messaging system would close the feedback loop nicely.
Is there a means of authenticating students? If this tool became a means of evaluation, it would be open to gaming by cagey professors.
Anyway, nice work, good video, great idea!
Great suggestion, producing a report is a great idea. I could even use the confusion data to predict exam test scores.
If students are going to be evaluating their teachers (providing richer feedback than confused/understood), then you're correct there will have to be authentication for students.
For authentication, I'd make it so that when the professor each session, the class is given a random 4-5 digit code. That way the students would have to be in class to get the code and participate.
You may also want to think about adding the ability for the instructor to add different buttons, not just "understood / confused". You could then have class polls, or group questions to see how many people are paying attention.
This should all be able to be controlled from the instructor dashboard.
okay class, we just went over big-O. here is an algorithm... what do you think the big-O of this is: O(n), O(n^2), etc...
Nothing that you'd have to keep track of the answers for longer than the length of the class.
Plus, if you added logins, that would just make it that much more of a setup / hassle to get classes going.
That said, this is a great idea. This is the kind of real-time feedback that I would love to have access to. Many of my students would rather fail than put their hand up and ask for help. Something like this would really help them out.
I like the idea of the code to authenticate students. I guess you'd have to watch out for selection effects in all of this too... an interesting challenge!
That would probably make professors (especially non-tenured professors) either terrified of making use of the app, or terrified of tackling complicated subject matter. Even if administrator's announce they aren't going to use the data to decide salary or tenure issues, good luck getting the professors to believe it.
Feedback that helps professors improve is great. Yet another administrative metric that warps people's behaviors, not so much.
I hear what you're saying about avoiding complicated subject matter - that's an interesting effect I hadn't considered.
That being said: I was the victim of several "bad" profs in university. Thing is I don't think they were "bad" - I just don't think they knew that they weren't "good" and even if they had, wouldn't have had any idea how move from bad to good.
I see this app as one part of a larger equation around designing systems that produce quality education. A complete suite would include tools for professors, administration, and students.
I would specifically say something like "nothing to download or install!".
This was being used before the smartphone, so imagine similar products exist. However your metrics look meaningful.
It isn't web-based, and IIRC they offer/sell a voting widget to TV producers that can be given to audience members to vote with.
Worthy of a "web 2.0/iOS" disruption me thinks...
P.S. Well done OP, that's a great concept and nicely (MVP?) executed.