A Q&A Learning System Using Consumer Communication Tools For Personal Interactive Communication

Multimedia teaching materials and networks providing various kinds of digital information are expected to improve the efficiency in various kinds of learning. Interactive communication between instructors and individual students is thus becoming more important, particularly in classes with a large number of students, because such classes typically have less communication and looser relationships. Ordinary Q&A systems are composed of very simple buttons fixed on desks, and their functions can not be easily extended. More intelligent teaching systems composed of desk-top computers and keyboards connected by a local area network (LAN) are high-cost and lack flexibility because of their fixed wiring. For low-cost installation and flexible application, wireless communication is needed, and each student terminal should have a micro-computer, a small liquid crystal display (LCD), and an input device. We have developed a wireless instructional system composed of simple intelligent terminals. This system supports personal interactive communication (PIC) between the instructor and each student during lectures. As shown in Table 1, the PIC system handles student registration, interactive Q&A, and the monitoring of each student's class participation. The instructor's terminal first maps the student IDS to the terminal IDS, allowing the instructor to identify the students present. When the instructor asks a question, the students input their answers. The student terminals then transmit their data to the instructor's terminal, which can show the instructor an individual's answer or a summary of all the answers. Additionally, by monitoring the activity at each student's terminal, the computer can advise the instructor when a student would like to ask a question or if the student is losing interest. The advantages of this system are several: (1) students can respond to instructor's questions without suffering psychological stress; (2) teaching efficiency is greatly