FOK, Wilton (Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong) http://citers2012.cite.hku.hk/en/paper_543.htm

1. Application of smartphone and
tablet PC for interactive class
- iClass
Dr. Wilton Fok
e-Learning Technology Development Laboratory
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
The University of Hong Kong

2. Agenda
• Market overview
• Introduction of iClass
• Demonstration
• Application examples

3. Trend on Apps
E-Books and Educations are on top of the list

4. Growth rate of educational
applications

5. Trend on devices

6. Trend on devices
• Phone or Tablet?

7. Trend on OS

8. Agenda
• Market overview
• Introduction of iClass
• Demonstration
• Application examples

9. iClass Mobile

10. Video introduction

11. Component of iClass mobile

12. Features of iClass mobile
• Support multimedia contents
• Support Peer review
• Various formats for presenting the feedbacks
– E.g. pie chart, bar chart, tag cloud, to meet different pedagogy
demand.
• Integrate with Facebook for knowledge exchange and
sharing
• Support 2D Barcode
– For sharing knowledge on lecture notes for quick access to the right
session and download the right image from the server.
• Location base service
– ease the selection of the near-by courses

13. Function of iClass Mobile

14. Application: Sharing ideas by
drawing

15. Application: Sharing ideas by drawing

16. Application: Sharing ideas by Keywords

17. Application: Sharing ideas by Keywords

18. Application: Sharing ideas by Keywords
• Teacher can also Get image from Lecturer
pre-load a
Worksheet /
template for
students to work
on

19. Application: Peer review/ in-course
assessment

20. Application: Peer review/ in-course
assessment

21. Share in Facebook
• Students’ works can be shared with their
peer through Facebook

22. Enhancement for efficiency – 2D barcode
• The 2D Barcode
code on the notes Notes
can link iClass Session 2.5.2
Mobile directly to
the right session
and download the Image32.jpg Session 2.5.2
right template
 more efficient
and effective.

23. Agenda
• Market overview
• Introduction of iClass
• Demonstration
• Application examples

24. Agenda
• Market overview
• Introduction of iClass
• Demonstration
• Application examples

25. Application examples: in HKU
• Applied in
– Faculty of Engineering
– Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
– Kadoorie Institute
– Faculty of Dentistry

26. Application example
In the Engineering summer courses
• Students are required to design and build a solar water
distiller

27. Application example
In the Engineering summer courses
• In the debrief session, students are required to draw their design on
an iPad and share their design with others – “Show and tell”

28. HKU Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
STAT8017 Data Mining
Ask student to draw a neutral network
Student draw their works
Download image
from lecturer
Share and
comment

29. Students’ feedbacks:
The feature that it
shows the More
percentage and interaction
feedback is
attractive
More
interaction
Innovative
Interactive Motivation to
participate

30. Students’ feedbacks:
More screens
would be good Timer should be
bigger and
clearer
The information
screen can be
larger
It is better if it can
show that I have
press the button or
not

31. Using iClass in M.Sc.
Environmental Management
Dr. Jacqueline Lam
• iClass was used in ENVM 7016
Environmental Policy”
– provides students with the basic
understanding of the relationship between
technology, society and the environment.

32. Activity 1:
Visualise ideas by drawing
• Students were asked to share their views,
on how new environmental technologies
can solve some highly complex and
interrelated environmental challenges in
connection with climate change.
• The visualization and rating features
significantly shorten the feedback loops.
• Collective learning and consensus-
building have been enhanced as a result.

33. Visualise ideas by drawing
• The visualization function can visualise all
creative ideas on individual iPad and the
lecture screen
4-5 students
formed a group to
discuss how the
climate change
challenge can be
tackled
technologically.

34. Visualise ideas by drawing
• They were asked to draw pictures to express
their ideas.
• With its visualizing function, students could:
– express their group ideas quickly visually,
– engage in debates and discussion, and
– provide instantaneous feedback to other groups’
findings, through real-time transfer of all group
findings back to the lecture screen (see Figure 10-3).

35. Visualise ideas by drawing
• A wide range of climate change technological
solutions was put forward by different groups of
students:
– renewable energy technologies
– carbon capture and sequestration
– individual innovation such as generation of biofuels
– systemic and integrated innovation…etc

36. Peer Review
• Enables students to easily vote for the
solutions that they think are the best.
– E.g. The highest rating suggested that an
integrated green energy and transport
system, in combination with more sustainable
living, will offer the needed strategy to combat
the climate change problem.

37. Peer Review
• The rating ensures that the most or least
supported options can be easily identified.
• Further investigation into why one option is
preferred over the others can be followed up
subsequently.

38. iClass for consensus building
• To combat climate change problem, stakeholder
engagement and consensus-building are needed to build
trust and derive the most commonly agreeable solutions
to enhance policy effectiveness and legitimacy.
• The capacity to discuss and build consensus constitutes
is essential in this course, which can be accelerated by
the iClass

39. iClass for consensus building
• Consensus building by Keywords
• Students were asked to input their non-technical solutions to climate
change in the form of keywords.
– A wide range of policy options were provided:
• ranging from laws and regulations
• emission targets,
• caps and charges,
• incentive-based policies such as subsidies, and
• economic policies such as carbon taxation

40. Statistics of the ideas
• The rating feature displayed what most of the groups considered:
– the most effective (economic - tax and subsidies) and
– the least effective (voluntary – education or planning) policy options.
• The preferences were presented in bar chart, pie chart, tag cloud, or
list view displays
Before regrouping

41. Grouping ideas
• The lecturer then further adjusted the keyword grouping
• The generalization of individual, diverse opinions, and
the identification of mainstream opinions to facilitate
consensus-building, can be made possible.
After re-grouping

42. Conclusions
• iClass system creates a facilitating learning
environment to stimulate idea generation,
sharing, refinement and consolidation.
– 1. students are able to explain their ideas and
concepts visually through drawings and keywords.

43. Conclusions
– 2. the technology allows students to provide real-time,
instantaneous feedback to ideas posed by other
groups of students.
– It speeds up the process of knowledge sharing and
facilitates debates and discussion among students as
well as the lecturers (see Figure 10-4).

44. Conclusion
• 3. the interactive, engaging and collective learning
process sharpens the students’ critical thinking and
strengthens their capabilities to understand and
appreciate the views of others.

45. Conclusion
• Through the process, further refinement of ideas and
consensus-building can be made possible.
• Such process is particularly important for handling highly
complex and interdisciplinary environmental issues as
many different types of innovative solutions to solving a
complex environmental problem can be generated
through the collective inputs of different groups of
students.

46. HKU Faculty of Dentistry:
Course: Metal-Ceramic Systems
Class exercise: Matching the causes and
problems
Pre-defined
Worksheet
Download
image from
lecturer

47. HKU Faculty of Dentistry:
Students do that matching exercise

48. HKU Faculty of Dentistry:
Share their works on the screen

49. Using iClass in Dentistry
Dr. James Tsoi
• Journal-based Learning (JBL) is one of the learning
modes in the MSc course
• Traditional JBL
– Students are expected to read and study some prescribed
journal articles on specific topics, and discuss among
themselves along with the facilitation provided by knowledgeable
and experienced facilitators during the tutorial lessons.

50. Using iClass in Dentistry
• Various journal articles may
have various arguments,
views and discussion points
– students may not have enough
knowledge to justify which one
is correct
– facilitator becomes very
important to assist in the
justification and help to direct a
right way for discussion.
• Two interactive objects:
– Student-to-student (SS) and
– Facilitator-to-student (FS).

51. iClass for Tutorials
– Students size: < 10;
– Journal articles:
• pre-selected from facilitator and each student is
distributed with 2 different journal articles to read
before the lessons;
– All students are equipped with iPhone/iPad
with iClass apps.

52. Using Keywords to share views
• Let students to input and express their views on present
questions
• After submission, the facilitator can group the similar
opinion and start the discussion.

53. Grouping ideas
• Grouping function
– gather the journal articles’ information
together (contributed from the students) and
the facilitator is grouping the information.
• During the grouping, the facilitator keeps
the mind-exchanging with the students
(FS interaction)
– E.g. to illustrate why the points are being
grouped.

54. Grouping ideas
• After that, various grouped keywords are
being discussed among the students
group (SS interaction).
• Merits of the ‘Keywords’ function
– a mind-mapping tool,
– coined facilitator and students mind, knowledge and
information together.
– FS interaction becomes much more obvious
– Students are also allowed to explain/defence their
‘Keywords’, so SS interaction is clearer among
students

55. Drawing
• Facilitator pre-loaded some pictures (with
errors ) from some journal articles
• Students are required to identify the ‘problems’
of the pictures
•Students can draw on
the pictures to point
out the problems
•Upload it to the
server.

56. Peer review
• Peer review
– Then, all students can review others’ pictures
according to facilitator’s instruction.

57. Comparing with traditional learning
– Such an error identification exercise is an
homework, with unidirectional FS interaction
– With the aid of iClass, SS and FS can be
done in parallel.
– FS or SF is synchronic interaction at this
case.

58. Comments by Dr. Tsoi
• iClass is a powerful and useful teaching tool in dental
subjects.
• Although facilitator may need some extra time to prepare
the materials and well-equipped so as to interact with the
students, this is worthwhile and beneficial to both parties.
• More investigation should be stressed not only on the
apps functions, but the pedagogy of the apps teaching,
the integration to curriculum, and the adaptability to the
students and teachers.

59. Q&A