Geoff develops 'an app-le for the teacher'

Award-winning senior teaching fellow Geoff Rubner is developing just that with his Investing in Success funding – a Smartphone friendly mechanism of giving instant feedback to lecturers even as they teach and to the students so keen to know how they are doing.

 

The technology works rather like ‘ask the audience’ in the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? TV programme. Lecturers ask a multiple choice question partway through a lecture and the students respond, previously using hand-held devices – or 'clickers' – to send their answer to specialist software running on the lecturer's laptop.

 

If a lot of answers come back wrong, the lecturer knows he has to alter his lecture to redress that. It also means students are not embarrassed to put their hands up and be seen to get the answer wrong.

 

Geoff’s mbclick system replaces a clicker with the mobile device students already own – their mobile phone. It is designed so that students can also get individual feedback on their answer: if it was wrong, why, and what study notes to revisit…or well done if they get it right, with links to further information if needed. For the teacher, no specialist software is necessary as it all works through the web. It also works with Microsoft PowerPoint. 

 

Geoff – who won a Teaching Excellence Award in 2011 and is from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering – adds: “Some institutions give clickers to their students. At Manchester lecturers often have to 'book out' hundreds of them, cart them to the lecture theatre and then collect them in again at the end, taking time away from the lecture. Alternatively clickers are loaned out in advance to students, who sometimes forget to bring them to class! One thing they don't often forget however is their mobile phone.”

 

Geoff was inspired when he realised in small tutorials of six students he could “look them in the eye” and see if they knew the answer, then quickly give them feedback.

 

“I wanted to translate that into a lecture theatre,” he recalls, “to improve their experience of lectures and to get more value from them, ultimately helping them become better learners and critical thinkers. As a teacher, mbclick is a tool at our disposal, but it’s potentially a powerful tool that people seem to like.” 

 

Geoff hopes to complete the development of mbclick by providing apps so that students can store the entire session on their phone, able to revisit whenever they wish, by summer 2013. He is also looking for collaborators on pedagogical studies.

 

In the meantime mbclick has been licensed by the University of Glasgow and the Universidad Del Norte in Colombia and is looking for more early adopters through UMI3.

 

Did you receive funding from the Investing in Success initiative?  If so, share your story with us by emailing uninews@manchester.ac.uk.