Largecollege class sizes make it difficult for students to connect to teachers. As a result, students often disengagethemselves, effectively wasting both their time and their instructor’s. This disconnect is a source of frustrationfor students and instructors alike. Studentswho are trying to keep up with material may feel that the professor is moving tooquickly, but they do not know if they are the only person with thisdifficulty. Professors may not know ifstudents are confused, or if they are not paying attention because they haven’tprepared adequately for the class. noddIN tries to address these problems by giving students a feedback mechanism.
Some candidate interface sketches
noddIN consists of three main views: The student feedback view, the graph view and the questions view. The student feedback view allows students to check in with the professor whenever he or she feels the need to. Whenever a student feels confused, he or she can press the appropriate button on the interface, and this information will be sent to the graph that will likely be placed unobtrusively near the professor. If the professor sees a spike in confused people, for example, he or she can choose to slow down or ask the class if they have specific questions. Alternately, the professor can "check in" with the class and ask them to record their level of comfort before moving on.
Because different classrooms may be using this application, noddIN offers a way to choose channels so that different classes' signals do not interfere.
Channel is changed by scrolling number buttons.
The graph view allows students to see how their peers are feeling. This is useful because a student may want to ask a very basic question, but feel intimidated. If he or she knows that a relatively small portion of the class understands the topic, the question may actually benefit the class as a whole.
Graph view. Hopefully, the graphing algorithm can take into account frequent griefers who are not contributing anything useful
Students also have the option of asking questions. They can vote on others' questions if they think that the question is a particularly good one, or if they have the same question. This can be used for teachers' reference, or the instructor can spend a portion of class time answering questions. These questions can be cross-posted to Piazza or similar services for students, TAs and professors to answer after class is over.
Design Report: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzEdhmr7zosvaktZekpGQWhraTg
