Role of ICT Enabled Teaching
Practices for Improved
Learning
Vinayak Naik, Pushpendra Singh,
Amarjeet Singh
IIIT-Delhi
February 12, 2011
How do we define ICT enabled
teaching?
What different modules together
constitute effective teaching?
We will talk about how we
used technologies to aid in
some of these modules!
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Satisfy so called “digital natives” or “net generation”
Due to their upbringing and experiences with technology,
today’s students have particular learning preferences or styles that
differ from earlier generations
Use the tools to make
the dissemination and
learning more interesting
and engaging
Most importantly,
make our life easier! :)
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Share some of our experiences with use of following technologies
Audio recording of lectures
Class blogs
Wiki for project updates
Google code for assignment submission
Detecting plagiarism
SMS Channel for feedback and announcements
Animations to aid visualization
Course website/Course management system
Coordination using google docs
Used across different classes - Systems Management (1st Semester,
class size - 100); Computer Networks (4th Semester, class size - 60),
Mobile Computing (5th Semester, class size - 40), Embedded Systems
(6th Semester, class size - 20)
Use a simple pocket voice recorder
Very positive feedback from students since they
can go back and listen
I was apprehensive in the beginning - who
wants to listen to me after the forced lecture is
over! :)
A good feedback for me to see how I managed
today’s class
Allows me to quantify the improvement over
time
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QuickTime™ and a
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Free to host - blogger, wordpress, …
Idea: provide a forum for discussion amongst students to promote
peer-to-peer learning
Initial effort but very low maintenance afterwards
Students may copy paste, use slangs, grammatical errors
Create a draft blog as a model for students to follow
Create a policy around copy paste
Motivating students to participate
Initially may come from having some weight in overall evaluation
Once the utility is established, it establishes a feedback
A resource that can grow with each year
I also made them write about personal lab experiences
Get them attracted towards the habit of writing
Easy to install on any server
Mandated students to create a wiki page for their
project
Update history is maintained by the tool: Easy to
track update time
Initial effort in getting it started, low maintenance
afterwards
Good exposure to students on how to create a
wiki page
Easy coordination amongst students in the same
group
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decompressor
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Very easy to setup online code repository
Easy to track progress as the student works on the code
Not possible to setup individual permissions - Each student will
have access to other students’ code
In my case, I do not mind them copy as long as they can
explain the code
In-built wiki - project code can be committed and a wiki page can
be maintained
No maintenance
Tools meant for documents are not accurate for detecting
plagiarism in code
Moss is a good online tool but it is has its disadvantages
In addition to Moss, we are using SVN log files to deter and
detect plagiarism
Student is supposed to create a SVN repository and commit
code in it
Code that is copied instantaneously can be detected
SVN logs can be manipulated but it is a non-trivial effort
There are false positives and false negatives
Alternate communication channel with the class
Privacy issues of collecting individual phone numbers
Technology not stable for adding large number of subscribers
Not very effective for announcements
Setup a SMS server (open source) and connected a GSM modem
Students could send an encoded SMS to give feedback on
each lecture - script to compile the messages to create a
summary and send over email automatically
Need to be a bit technology savvy to setup the complete solution
Got regular feedback in the beginning from a few students but it
died down eventually - I have to be blamed!
Working on setting up IVR for announcements and feedback this
semester
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Java applets to show underlying concepts
◦ Already available resource
◦ Feedback suggests that it is very useful in understanding the
concept
◦ Students demand more of them
 Assignment to develop similar applets :)
Attention level suddenly increases close to 100%
Planning to have similar resources for other courses
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Course Management Systems
◦ Moodle: open-source, free.
 Set up at University/Department level
◦ Allows
◦ Easy distribution of course resources
◦ Submitting course assignments
 Deadlines are fixed – late submissions can be disabled
Course Website
◦ Can be set up by an individual
◦ Requires minimal knowledge of computers e.g. Google pages
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Given the scale, scheduling is getting tougher
Current version of doodle.com schedules one meeting for multiple
participants, we need multiple meetings for multiple participants
Use Google spreadsheet to reduce load
Instructor decides all possible timeslots
Students on first-come-first-serve basis pick slots (could be
done using a paper on a notice board as well but online is more
convenient)
No back-n-forth sending of emails
As it follows first-come-first-serve policy from students’ point
of view there is no consideration for students’ constraints, but
then scheduling is a hard problem
A word of caution: Lots of new technologies around
Can be overwhelming for the instructor
Can be overwhelming for the students
A few new technologies can be an easy way to impress students
that you are up to date with what is happening around :)
Those which are easy to setup and maintain are worth trying to test
whether they work for you
Others can be given as a summer internship project to be setup
by the students themselves and used in teaching a course in Fall
semester