Even critics of massive open online courses, better known as MOOCs, shouldn’t deny the value of the student data those courses generate [1].
Teachers can only gather insights into how engaged students really are with the material and how well they’re understanding it if they’re using a platform designed specifically to capture that data, Gigaom reports. MOOCs do this very well, and now University of Michigan meteorology professor Perry Samson (who also co-founded Weather Underground [2]) has developed software to let his peers in lecture halls do the same.
The platform is called LectureTools [3], and it has some obvious benefits around helping ensure students engage with a course more than is naturally possible in a room full of 250 people.
While class is in session, LectureTools lets professors quiz students using a variety of different formats, lets students submit questions and note when a slide confuses them, and even lets professors teach the course remotely if need be.
At any time of day, during an afternoon lecture or at 3:00 in the morning, students can access the slides and other course materials and type notes, draw diagrams and generally engage with the material as they wish.
Read more [4]