Jacob Somervell Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University
Enhancing Classroom Interaction through Peripheral Displays
Classroom participation is
a key element in the learning process. Both the educators and students feel a
sense of accomplishment and understanding when there is good interaction
between the student and teacher. When students ask questions and make
observations about the material, the teacher gains an understanding of what the
class is absorbing and what they are missing, thereby allowing him/her to tweak
the presentation/lecture to address concerns. And, by having their questions
addressed in class, other students benefit from the discussion. Other forms of
interaction include verbal pop quizzes, polls or votes, and open-ended
discussions. Unfortunately, most
students do not ask questions in class and are typically reluctant to
participate. There is a plethora of reasons why they don't ask questions, the
most common being fear and embarrassment.
And even though asking questions
generally enhances learning, there are negative aspects to it. First, it is
interrupting to the teacher. He or she may be trying to make a difficult point
and an interruption could ruin the fluid presentation of the idea and create
more confusion than the question clears. Secondly, questions are often asked
after the topic has been completed. This arises from the fact that it takes
some time to absorb new information and students need to process the new ideas
before questions can be asked. So it may be anywhere from a few seconds to
several minutes before a question is asked on a specific topic. Usually the
discussion has moved on to a different topic within this time.
So the idea is to have students ask
more questions and participate during class, while at the same time avoiding
interrupting the teacher. This seems like two opposing goals but if there is a
viable compromise then everybody benefits and the opportunity for deeper,
better learning emerges. Solving this
problem will greatly enhance the learning that takes place in a typical
classroom.
The goal of this research involves developing and testing a system to allow enhanced communication between students and teachers during the lecture, without being overly interrupting. An initial plan was to use anonymous communication through electronic submission. Students would submit questions and comments by typing them on their desktop computer (or handheld), while they are in class listening to the lecture. The content would then appear on the teacher’s display. If the teacher determined that it would be beneficial to address the question at that time, he or she could do so. If he/she wanted to postpone answering the question, that would be acceptable as well. This idea opens up several design and presentation issues.
At a high level, we encounter issues of input and display. What tools do we need to create the system and what hardware do we need to implement it? Immediate thoughts turn towards networked handheld computers for input and a single screen display where the teacher can easily view the questions. This in turn leads to other lower level questions: How large should the display be? Where should the display be located? Should the students be allowed to view the questions posed by other students? Answering these questions leads to even lower level questions like presentation medium (do we use graphics, text, animation, etc). This research is intended to answer these questions, starting at the lowest levels and working up to a fully operational system.
There is an extensive project at the University of Georgia that incorporates computation in everyday use. The system they developed, formerly known as the Classroom 2000 project, is now encompassed within a larger project, Future Computing Environments. Classroom 2000 was aimed at facilitating the capture of complete lectures at the university level [1]. The project was a step in introducing ubiquitous computing to the classroom environment. This work focuses on capturing whole events for future reuse. Our approach is different in that we want to enhance communication at the time of the interaction, increasing student participation and thereby creating richer opportunity for learning.
There are a few studies in the field of information visualization and awareness that address issues pertaining to presentation medium and information updating in dual-task situations. Maglio et al. studied the effects of update mechanism on information awareness [5]. They found that for information tickers, discrete scrolling is most effective for understanding information and remembering it while working on editing tasks. Discrete scrolling is when the text to be displayed moves in from the side of the display and pauses briefly in the center then moves on to the other side. This technique is most effective when compared to continuous scrolling and serial presentation. In a similar experiment, McCrickard et al. compared displays that employed animation [4]. They found that the standard scrolling ticker was best for information assimilation and remembrance as opposed to using fade or blast devices while performing a simple browsing task. Czerwinski et al. studied the interruptive effects of instant messaging on search tasks [2,3]. They found that an important factor in interruption is when the interruption occurs within another task. Basically the most harmful interruptions occur while one is in the middle of another task, as opposed to before beginning a new task or when transitioning between tasks. All of the above results are useful in guiding the design of the proposed system.
Initial experimentation has
addressed using auxiliary displays as communication mechanisms. It is anticipated that the teacher’s display
will be an auxiliary display, which is only used periodically. Ascertaining the
usefulness of auxiliary displays for recognizing and understanding information
is an important first step. Building
off of McCrickard’s previous work, a series of experiments was conducted to
determine design guidelines for auxiliary displays. The first experiment extended the McCrickard experiment to
include multiple displays. We wanted to
ascertain the effects of introducing multiple auxiliary tasks on a simple
browsing task. We found that increasing
the number of auxiliary tasks did not decrease performance on the browsing
task, but there was an indication that subjects chose to ignore the extra
auxiliary tasks [6]. This could impact
the applicability of the proposed system.
A separate experiment was conducted to determine the effects of
information density on perceptual tasks.
We found that locating single items and recognizing patterns were both
accomplished more easily with low-density displays, telling us that in
designing information displays, try to use as little information as possible to
convey the meaning [7].
Current research addresses the issue of presentation. We are planning on testing whether graphical or textual representations of the same information provide advantages in terms of recognizing changes in information. For the planned experiment we plan on having subjects perform simple browsing tasks and at the same time monitor a simple display for specific information events. The display will either use text or a bar graph to depict a simulated load monitor. Specific questions about when the load spikes or changes direction (from increasing to decreasing) will be asked and we hope to determine if text or graphics will be better for this specific task. We expect to use these findings to guide the design of the presentation tool within our notification system.
There are several open issues within this research plan. At the lower levels there are issues with presentation of information. Testing needs to be done to determine the most effective methods for presenting specific types of information, in order to maximize assimilation. Display design needs to be experimentally evaluated to determine best screen positioning, size, and type. The system interface needs to be designed and evaluated for performance and usability. Research of the current literature will be necessary to determine interface design guidelines. At a higher level, the input and output devices need to be chosen and tested. The implementation of the system needs to be completed and tested. There are issues of overall applicability and extensibility. Each of which must be addressed during the course of the research.
I am in the first stages of the Ph. D. program at Virginia Tech. I have completed my Master’s Degree and have passed the Qualifying Exam. The Preliminary Exam is scheduled for November of 2002. For more information on the Ph. D. program at Virginia Tech please visit the following web page: http://www.cs.vt.edu/~gpc/phd.html
By attending the Doctoral Consortium, I hope to receive ideas from my peers on directions to take with the general idea behind the described research. At this point I am in the early stages of developing my topic, and input from others who have gone through the process will be helpful. Pointers on how to narrow the topic down to make the completion of the goals feasible are being actively sought. In addition, presenting my ideas will help me solidify them and help me locate potential trouble spots.
2.
Czerwinski,
M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). “Instant Messaging and Interruption:
Influence of Task Type on Performance.” In Proceedings of the Annual
Conference of the Computer Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the
Ergonomics Society of Australia (OzCHI 2000), December 2000.
3.
Czerwinski,
M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). “Instant Messaging: Effects of
Relevance and Time,” In S. Turner, P. Turner (Eds), People and Computers
XIV: Proceedings of HCI 2000, Vol. 2, British Computer Society, p. 71-76.
4.
McCrickard,
D. S., J. T. Stasko, & R. Catrambone. "Evaluating Animation as a
Mechanism for Maintaining Peripheral Awareness." In IFIP Conference on
Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2001), June 2001.
5.
Maglio,
P. P. & C. S. Campbell. “Tradeoffs in displaying peripheral information.”
In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2000), April 2000.
6.
Somervell,
J., Srinivasan R., Vasnaik, O., & Woods, K. “Measuring Distraction and
Awareness Caused by Graphical and Textual Displays in the Periphery.” In Proceedings
of the 39th Annual ACM Southeast Conference, Athens, GA. March 16-17, 2001.
7. Somervell, J., McCrickard, D. S., North, C., & Shukla, M. “An Evaluation of Information Visualization in Attention Limited Environments.” Submitted to ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2002).