Take Out Your Cell Phones - Class is Starting

Abstract

Traditionally, cell phones have been considered disruptive to classroom learning. Two years ago, a survey of students in a large first year design course indicated that 88% of students possessed cell phones in the classroom. Instead of trying to enforce acell phone ban, and fight a losing battle, we decided to use the cell phones to our pedagogical advantage. Previously, student interaction in the classroom was a challenge, due to a large class of students in a singlelecture theater. A primary issue was the inability of all except a few students with booming voices to ask questions. Informed primarily by a student design team (from the very course being discussed), we implemented a simple and inexpensive system that allowed students to use their cell phones in the classroom to send questions via Short Message Service (SMS), commonly referred to as “text messages”, to the instructor at the front of the classroom This system has been piloted through its first year of full implementation. Quantitative data on the usage of the system, student and instructor impressions of the system, and future work will be discussed.