student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part B: Building Leadership Capacity - BUS: School of Economics, Finance & Marketing ART Report
that large lectures are increasingly resulting in student disengagement as
students are not challenged to think and participate (Cooper and Robinson,
2000). The first crucial step in raising students’ awareness of their own learning
involves providing them with fast, accurate and individual feedback about
their learning engagement in context (Meyer and Shanahan, 2004, p.446).
First Semester 2008:
An ‘audience response system’ trial using mobile phone technology was
incorporated into two of the three lecture times held each week: one daytime
class primarily consisting of full time students and one evening class with
mainly part time students. Mobile phone technology was chosen over the
conventional ‘clicker’ technology as the literature indicated that there were
issues related to students remembering to bring their clickers to class as well
as the burden of the additional cost of purchasing a clicker. Mobile phones,
on the other hand, are ubiquitous amongst students and the access cost
was estimated to be minimal (between 10 cents and $1 per class),
depending on the package the students had with their mobile provider.
Participation in this trial was voluntary and commenced in week four of the
semester. Prior to the lecture in which this initiative was launched, students
were required to pre-register their phone by logging on to a website after
which they were sent an activation link and a bookmark to record the site
location in their telephone web browser.
Once students were registered, the process worked as follows. After explaining
a key concept in the lecture, the lecturer showed a slide with a multiple choice
question designed to test students’ deep understanding of the concept. For
example, at the conclusion of a discussion relating to consumer behaviour
and product strategy, the following question would be shown:
Consumers buy Panadol tablets because they relieve their headaches faster
than other headache tablets. What the consumer is really buying is called
__________ :
a. actual product
b. core benefit
c. augmented product
d. convenience
e. customer motivation
Students were able to access a website via their mobile phones and enter their
response to the question within the couple of minutes allowed for during the
lecture. The lecturer was then able to display the results i.e. the number of
students that selected each option, and then inform students of the correct
answer while explaining the rationale.
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