Monday, October 12, 2009

A “TEACHER’S DASHBOARD” FOR A HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA CLASS

"Networked Tablet PCs have great potential in classroom settings, including use in small group in-class problem-solving activities. It is possible to obtain substantial amounts of data about student activity during a lesson: what they referred to, notes taken and erased, bursts and lulls of activity.


The raw data is necessarily low level: time-stamped pen strokes, deletions, navigation to and from pages, and such. This data can be used, among other ways, to enable a teacher to monitor learning activities as they happen in real-time.


We call the display of student activity the teacher’s dashboard. We describe the use of a dashboard in several sections of a high school algebra class.


We found that the teacher came increasingly to rely on this display to see how the students were progressing, and the students felt they were getting more timely feedback.


We discuss the challenges in making dashboards that can work in a variety of classroom settings."


Kamin, S., et al. Abstract. A “TEACHER’S DASHBOARD” FOR A HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA CLASS. (Captured October 12, 2009, 7:00 AM.)