| Title: | Dr. | | Name: | Wilton W.T. Fok/ Vincent Tam |
| Academic Position: | Teaching staff |
| Name of Institution: | The University of Hong Kong |
| Country: | |
| Discipline: | Engineering |
| Department/School: | |
| Course title: | ELEC2804 Engineering Economics and Finance |
| Course code: | |
| Class size: | 21-40 |
| Course Year: | Year2/Year 3/ M.Sc. |
| Assessment Title: | Assessment by Mobile Quiz Platform |
| Assessment Type: | Formative |
| Time allowed for assessment: | 30 minutes during the normal lecture hours |
| Target: | |
| Learning outcomes of the assessment practice: | Case Study:
Traditional in-class assessment uses paper-based test to assess students on their understanding of the lecture. Lecturers distributed question papers to students for them to answer and then collect and mark the papers. The process is non real-time, one-way and inefficient. In 2007, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering developed a Mobile Quiz Platform to facilitate in-class assessment. Students can use their PDA or gaming device such as the PSP or NDS to answer a set of quizzes sent from the server.
Strengths:
The answers can be marked immediately and their results can be shown on a scoreboard in real-time. The students’ answers can also be analyzed by showing various charts so that lecturer can know more about the level of understanding common mistake of the class. Through showing the real-time results on the scoreboard, a boring quiz assessment can be turned into an existing quiz competition among the students. It was observed that students were positively motivated and highly involved in the competition
This assessment tool has been deployed in some courses offered by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, including a Special Study Module for the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. Feedbacks from the students who tried this assessment tools were very positive. Over 80% of the feedbacks agreed that this mobile learning tool is effective in teaching and learning.
Weaknesses:
Although this assessment is interesting and effective, it involves some extra resources. Besides the initial investments on the mobile devices and the system, which is just once off, a more substantial cost to operate this system is the logistics and preparation works. Technical staff are required to assist a teacher to operate the system, including configuring the software and recharging the batteries. Extra manpower is also required for the registration and inspection of the mobile devices before and after they are loaned to students.
Future Work:
In order to avoid the logistics problems, a fixed classroom response system is being developed. It is targeted that a user-friendly, readily available and free-of-administration system could be implemented in major classrooms so that real-time in-class assessment can be feasible in the future.
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| Key features and principles of the assessment practice: | |
| What are the best things about this assessment method? | |
| What are the challenges in implementing this assessment method? | |
| What do your students think about this assessment method? (Any evaluation?) | |
| Plans for changes/developments in future (if any): | |
| Attachment: | |
| Creation date: | 2010-02-12 15:26:16 |
