USING

MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Using Mobile Device in University Classroom
Lu Jiang
University of San Francisco

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Maybe one of the biggest challenges instructors face in the current college classroom is
the struggle of designing effective presentation that capture and maintain students attention in
the classroom. The use of Classroom Response Systems (a.k.a. CRS or Clicker) has grown in
popularity in universities and has been shown to increase student attendance, engagement, and
learning in the classroom. However, the adoption of CRS requires installation by the University
and purchasing by the students. Thus, the faculties at the University of San Francisco decide to
explore the use of mobile technology as CRS through Poll Everywhere and Socrative. The
purpose of this report is to investigate the impact of implementing polling software on student
engagement in higher education.
The Result of Previous Research
Anyone who has spent time in the classroom knows that todays college students are a
generation that communicated primarily through their mobile devices, more specifically through
the use of text messaging. According to the Pew Center, 93% of 18-29-year-olds in the US own a
smartphone. In addition, the Pew Center (2015) found that 80% of college students talk with
their friends by text daily.
Bring Your Own Device
Bring your own device (BYOD) refers to technology models when students bring a
personally owned device to school for the purpose of learning. A personally owned device is any
technology device brought into the school and owned by a student (or the students family), staff
or guests (Alberta Education, 2012). Many districts and schools around the country have made
the decision to implement BYOD initiatives (Jimison, 2012) or, more recently, Bring Your Own
Technology (BYOT) movements.

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

21st century skills are cited by authors as a justification for the BYOD. These authors see
the mobile devices are part of 21st century skills and are useful that a growing number of
schools, such as New Jerseys New Milford High School (NMHS), let students use their phones,
recognizing that even the simplest such gadget can be a tool for communication, calculation,
photography, videography, and calculations (Watters, 2013). A BYOD model, when combined
with a right pedagogy and when used responsibly, offers significant benefits to the learning.
Learning becomes easier to achieve, as it is more collaborative. Students can integrate the
device into their daily lives (Clifford, 2012).
Clickers in the Classroom
Clickers have been used and studied in many different disciplines - business &
accounting, chemistry, engineering, health sciences, physics, and many others (Kappers, 2014).
Clickers are interactive handheld devices that, when used in the classroom, can provide realtime, formative assessment.
According to Osterman (2007), clickers change the traditional lectures and students are
more engaged in the classroom learning process. Students reported that clickers were easy to use
and feel like playing a video game. The best attribute about clickers is that they can track
attendance; provide immediately feedback and assessment to both the instructor and the students
(Kenwright, 2009). However, some challenges are also highlighted within the research. The
drawbacks about clickers are that learning the technology can be time-consuming and the high
cost of the equipment. These challenges can be easily addressed through the Bring Your Own
Device (BYOD) movement.
The Potential of Current Technologies
Poll Everywhere

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Poll Everywhere is a cloud-computing software that allows the students to vote on

teacher-generated polls through text messaging, smartphones or laptop computers
(www.polleverywhere.com). This software has capabilities similar to clickers. There are two
types of questions that can be deployed in the classroom: multiple choice or open text. Teachers
can easily generate polls to be deployed individually or as a series of questions. Although Poll
Everywhere works with PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi, it required the presentation to be
created in one of those other platforms (Kobe & DeSantis, 2014). Professor must embed a
hyperlink into their lecture slides to access the Poll Everyone website for their polls and then
return to their slides. According to Gubbiyapps et al., Poll Everywhere can also employ in a
Flipped Classroom to make teaching-learning activities more interesting, engaging, collaborative
and interactive.
Socrative
Socrative takes on transforming smartphones into Classroom Response Systems (CRS).
Different types of polls such as multiple choices, true or false, and open response can be quickly
deployed in the classroom. Contrast to Poll Everywhere, the Socrative system provides a control
dashboard for teachers (www.socrative.com). Teachers can also create multi-questions quizzes
that are stored in the dashboard and can be deployed to a class at any point. The Socrative system
is reliable and easy to use and feedback from students is positive. Specifically, 65% of students
strongly agreed that the use of Socrative increased interaction during lectures. 35% strongly
agreed that the use of the system highlighted gaps in their knowledge (Dervan, 2014).
Currently, managing mobile devices use in the classroom is one potential concern for
many schools (Kulowiec, 2014). However, when mobile devices use is applied with a specific

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

learning goal, student engagement is increased and students can demonstrate a clear
understanding of why and how their devices can be appropriately used.
The Logistic of Current Practices
The polling software can be a powerful tool engages students in course material during
class. Dr. Sonja Martin Poole is an Assistant Professor with the Marketing School of
Management at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Poole helps students think critically about
how they make the marketing decision in real world situation. She has been looking for a great
way to engage with the students because a lot of the lecture materials are straight knowledge
information. It was difficult for her to get creative in the classroom. I interviewed her and
observed her marketing research class that integrates a variety of media and technologies.
Observing one lesson provides a limited view of the classroom situation. The classroom
held in Malloy Hall LL6 a multimedia presentation classroom provides a lecture equipped with
a Mac computer, also includes wireless Internet access and cable for instructors who prefer to
use their own laptops for presentations. The class consists of 30 senior students who bring their
own devices such as laptops or smartphones. Dr. Poole chose to integrate Poll Everywhere to
encourage students to engage in course materials and important concepts, and help them prepare
for quizzes and exams.
Dr. Poole posted her questions on Keynote slides in front of the class to begin her
marketing research class, and then had her students respond by texting responses via their
smartphones or laptops. Students were comfortable to use their phones or laptops the mobile
devices and answered the questions anonymously. Based on the observation, only four students
in the class used laptops, and the rest of the students used smartphones. Using Poll Everywhere,
Dr. Poole displayed her questions and the entire class watched as responses were displayed on

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

the screen in front of them. Dr. Poole also used Poll Everywhere at the end of the lecture to
evaluate what student have learned over the course of the lectures. Before Dr. Poole displayed
the answers on the screen, she provided support by walking around the classroom and making
sure students were able to maneuver themselves. By the end of the class, she answered and
explained the answers for each question. After the class, Dr. Poole uploaded the poll result to a
learning management system such as Canvas, to tracked and analyzed the student response data
and assessment result.
Teachers may have a daily struggle engaging the few outliers in each classroom. Dr.
Poole described her bewilderment when a student that she had tried for couple weeks to reach
pulled out their phone to reply to the poll. The results are anonymous, which creates a
comfortable situation for students. In the class, every student who had a device responded to
every poll. Dr. Pooles motivation is about Attracting students attention and getting them to
focus early in the class, and students have responded positively through engagement and
connection with her lessons.
Every class encounters the material in a different way. The poll questions employed to
simply break-up the lecture, which helps Dr. Poole to slow down her teaching. During those
natural pauses in the session, as a lot of students answering the questions online, Dr. Poole could
walk around and chat with the students who do not know the answers. As the class went on, she
had the students create polls if they finished the answer quickly. Not only was a great motivator,
but it also provided the students a chance to give explanations.
Good lectures are stimulating, engaging and enjoyable. Good teacher draw together
components of the curriculum, establish a suitable environment and integrate assessment tasks so
that appropriate study behaviors are encouraged and learning results (Biggs, 2003). Dr. Poole

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

adds assessment questions at the end of the lectures help students to check if they have
understood the material. Students who get them wrong now know what they need to work on it.
On the other hand, if the performance is worse than the lecture likes, Dr. Poole can address the
questions for her next lectures. During the observation, I noticed that Dr. Poole created an openended poll that allowed students to put anything on the board with complete anonymity. Students
were encouraged to ask questions with the poll. Dr. Poole told the students to watch to see if
others are having trouble with the same problems. Some students physically moved the similar
questions. Dr. Poole considered this feature reduced the amount of times I had to explain the
same procedure, and it is a powerful review tool.
During the interview, Dr. Poole pointed out that Poll Everywhere is easy to set up and no
need to have formal training before using it. She is comfortable learning by doing and as she
goes along discovering aspects of the product. It only took about 10 minutes per class to create
multiple choice and open-ended pools. Once she has a problem with advanced use, she will
simply look for the Poll Everywhere user guide or Google for troubleshooting. There is no
overhead for the organizer, and the texted responses carry no charge.
When students are using technology such as mobile device as a tool for communication,
they are in an active role rather than the passive role of recipient of information transmitted by a
teacher. Mobile use allows more students to be actively thinking about information and making
choices than is typical in teacher-led lessons. Research (Rooney, 2011) has shown that students
learn more when they are actively collaborating and cooperating with their peers and teachers.
Besides, creating interactive lectures with Classroom Response Systems (CRS) improve student
attention (94%), enhance learning (91%), and influence student interest and participation (67%).
The outcomes for CRS include the following:

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Formative Assessment: The poll answers provide real-time information about student
learning. Students can use this feedback to monitor their own learning.

Summative Assessment: Students can response homework questions and submit their
answers via the Poll Everywhere at the start of class.

Discussion Warm-up: Students have time to think about the question and commit to an
answer, which increase students motivation and discussion participation.

Contingent Teaching: The poll results determine what students understand and what they
do not understand.

Peer Instruction: Students can discuss the question with their neighbor. This activity
engages a large number of students in discussion about course material.

Save Costs: Poll Everywhere allows students to respond using the web-based response
where platform on smartphones. It is easy and cost-effective to connect the remote
classroom to a central presentation for remote polling applications.
Overall, observing and interviewing a professor who integrates technology in the

classroom is an excellent way of becoming aware of instructional procedures and management in

the classroom.

USING MOBILE DEVICE IN UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

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