The Wireless Interactive Lecture Demonstrator project (WILD Thing for short)
Jinfo Blog

By Darren Mundy

Abstract

Getting students engaged and involved in the learning process is a challenge for any lecturer so the WILD Thing provides an interesting solution. It allows lecturers to embed dynamic content directly into a PowerPoint slide, and students to use mobile devices to comment or ask questions during the lecture. Despite the risk of students sending abusive comments, this system has great potential.

Item

An interaction system designed to facilitate the accumulation of audience response to delivered presentations through mobile technologies in situ.  The WILD Thing provides mechanisms to encourage active learning, with the potential to increase audience engagement and to provide the deliverer with tools to measure audience understanding.

Introduction

The WILD Thing is a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded Rapid Innovation project from the University of Hull (http://wildthing.sanm.hull.ac.uk/, http://wildtool.blogspot.com/).  The aim of the project was essentially to enable students in the lecture room environment to interact through mobile devices with a lecturer's slide content, in similar ways to proprietary 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' type clicker technology.  The initial idea was to automate the process of recording answers to questions posed by lecturers and to facilitate the aggregation of questions posed by students at the end of a particular session.  The thought was that we could integrate dynamic web content directly into presentational material, eg a PowerPoint presentation. Students could interact with this material using mobile devices and then the interaction (eg a series of textual responses from students) could be displayed either in real-time or when selected.  The point of this is that encouraging active learning in the lecture room can lead to greater student engagement and involvement in the learning process.

Figure 1. WILD - The Idea

History

Projects investigating wireless technologies in the classroom have their roots in literature since the 1960s, with early projects focusing on non computer-based hardware response systems designed to record click responses.  As technology and computing have moved on, the linkage of hardware response systems and computer software has resulted in proprietary packages designed to link hardware devices with a visualisation of classroom response to questions posed by the lecturer in session.  Recently organisations such as the University of Strathclyde⁽¹⁾ have integrated such technologies into custom-built lecture rooms to encourage a move to more active ways of teaching and learning.

There are technologies and systems for in-class response outside of traditional hardware response systems such as the LectureLab⁽²⁾ project from the University of Mannheim.  This project consists of software installed on student mobile devices which enables a variety of in class functions from quizzes through hand-raising to the provision of online feedback.  The Classtalk⁽³⁾, ClassInHand (http://classinhand.wfu.edu/) and Classroom 2000⁽⁴⁾ projects are other such projects.  The project which most closely relates to the WILD Thing is the mInteract⁽⁵⁾ project from the University of Technology Sydney.  This is a system which encourages students in the classroom to interact with activities provided by the lecturer on screen.  The interaction is facilitated through mobile technology (in a lot of the cases using the student's own mobile phones) with a web browser being all students need to interact with the mInteract system.

The WILD Thing - Version 1

The WILD Thing was initially developed in 2006/7 as a Java application which would take a PowerPoint HTML-formatted presentation and integrate PHP-controlled interactive slides directly into the content.  Students using wireless devices (everything from a laptop to a mobile phone) could then interact with the dynamic content and their responses would appear on screen.  Obviously a Java-based system manipulating HTML slides had its weaknesses, most notably the ability to be accepted as a tool for use across academics, let alone across individuals from other fields.

Figure 2. System architecture (Version 1) - Wild Tool is Java based

The technology was trialled fairly successfully⁽⁶⁾ in a couple of undergraduate modules with students generally making encouraging noises regarding its potential to encourage participation and engagement with content.

The Wild Thing - Version 2

For Version 2 of the tool we went back to the drawing board to deliver a tool which was ultimately more usable in and across practices.  JISC funding in 2009/10 enabled the redevelopment and transformation of the application into a web-based system which, through a Microsoft plug-in in PowerPoint, enabled lecturers to insert dynamic content directly into a slide.  In addition, the dynamic content was embedded directly into a *.ppt file so there was no need to use HTML versions of slides.



Figure 3. System architecture (Version 2)



Figure 4. Operation in practice

We have trialled the software in a peer observation session focused on pitching a Game Design.  All students were provided with an iPod Touch and asked to comment textually through the Wild Thing system on the presented projects.  On first thought we believed that at the beginning of the presentations there would be a substantial amount of comments, but by the end perhaps the novelty of the system may have worn off.  However, in reality, students continued to use the system throughout and got far more feedback and comments on their presented system than would normally be the case in such a time-limited activity.  From student feedback similar to Version 1 of the system, the students seemed positive about the potential for the system's use in a classroom environment.


Issues in Practice

There are a number of potential issues with full-text response and activity systems such as the WILD Thing.  For example, the potential for students to send insulting or abusive language directly to the screen, to bully or textually attack other audience members or to try to hack the system on which the material is based.  However, in practice systems such as these can be used in a controlled manner where lecturers have the confidence that such abuses of discipline will not occur.


The Unexpected bonus

The development work on the Wild Thing has resulted in the construction of an Open Source PowerPoint Add-In which can be used to integrate any web page directly into a delivered presentation.  Fundamentally this means there is no need in the lecture room environment to switch between delivered slides and a web browser.  The web page can be navigated within the slide and can even enable the delivery of web-based applications, eg a Flash-based page.  This is ultimately usable across sectors.


What Next?

The new prototype system will be trialled in the 2010/11 academic year in a number of academic contexts.  We will also work on expanding the range of activities presently offered by the system and make improvements to its user interface.


Acknowledgments

The funding for the initial prototype work was gained from an 'institutional innovations in learning and teaching' award scheme. The follow on work has attracted funding from the UK's Joint information Systems Committee (JISC) under their 2009 Rapid Innovations scheme.


References

⁽¹⁾ JISC. (2006). Designing Spaces for Effective Learning, JISC Publications

⁽²⁾ Abowd, G.D. (1999). Classroom2000: An experiment with the instrumentation of a living educational environment. IBM Systems Journal, 38 (4), 508-530

⁽³⁾ Dufresne, R.J., Gerace, W. J., Leonard, W. J., Mestre, J. P. And Wenk L. (1996). Classtalk: A classroom communication system for active learning. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, volume 7, 3 - 47.

⁽⁴⁾ Kopf, S., Scheele, N., Winschel, L., Effelsberg, W. (2005). Improving activity and motivation of students with innovative teaching and learning technologies. Proceedings of the Methods and Technologies for Learning conference, Palermo, Italy, 551-556

⁽⁵⁾ Litchfield, A, Raban, R., Dyson, L.E., Leigh, E and Taylor, J. (2009). Using students' devices and a no-to-low cost online tool to support interactive experiential mLearning. Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Riga, Latvia. 674-678

⁽⁶⁾ Mundy, D.P, Stephens, D and Dykes, K. 'Facilitating Low Cost Interaction in the Classroom Through Standard Mobile Devices', World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Toronto, Canada, June 2010

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