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Interactive Lectures:

Effective teaching and learning in mass meetings with wireless networks

Anja Wesselsa,*, Stefan Friesa, Holger Horzb, Nicolai Scheelec, Wolfgang Effelsbergc

aDepartment of Educational Science (Pedagogical Psychology), University of

Mannheim, Kaiserring 14-16, 68131 Mannheim, Germany

bDepartment of Developmental & Educational Psychology, University of Greifswald,

Franz-Mehring-Str. 47, 17487 Greifswald, Germany

cDepartment of Computer Science IV, University of Mannheim, L 15,16, 68161

Mannheim, Germany

Abstract

Lectures have severe instructional shortcomings. Especially a lack of interactivity has to be noticed. To overcome these problems, the scenario of the interactive lecture is introduced. In this scenario, students and lecturer interact through the use of mobile computers in a wireless network. In an experimental study, 44 students participated in interactive and in conventional lecture meetings. A quiz service was implemented on mobile computers allowing a posting of questions, an evaluation of the students’ answers and a graphical presentation of the results. The participants evaluated the interactive condition better and reported higher levels of attention, activity and perceived learning success. Objective measures indicated a tendency toward better learning results in the interactive condition. Keywords: Lecture, Ubiquitous Computing, Interactivity, Blended Learning

* Corresponding author. Tel: +49-621-181-3573, fax: +49-621-181-2206.

E-mail address: wessels@uni-mannheim.de (A. Wessels)

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1 Introduction

The last decade has seen tremendous efforts to further integrate the use of new media

in higher education (Dutton & Loader, 2002). Universities and governments spent large

amounts of money in order to build a sufficient infrastructure, to develop multi-media-based

learning materials, and to equip students with the necessary computers. For example, the

German government offered in 2002 and 2003 German universities to participate in a

spending program worth 200 millions euros solely for the development of multi-media-based

learning material. Another example are the 16 international projects in the field of learning

with new technologies, which are financed by the European Union in 2004 (CORDIS, 2004)

These efforts were motivated by the aim of improving quality and effectiveness of university

teaching by introducing multimedia elements on a larger scale. Officials believed in

educational media leading to more appropriate teaching since these media allow for a better

adjustment to individual learning needs. Such adaptivity should result in higher learning rates

and a more effective use of learning time.

But regardless of all efforts, the various multimedia projects hardly led to a

modernization of universities. This is particularly true when looking at a classic instructional

scenario: the lecture. Despite their obvious instructional shortcomings, lectures are still an

important and common way of teaching students in higher educational. Evidently, teachers

have learned to use presentation media for their lectures. However, its basic structure with

solely the teacher presenting, what has to be learned, and the student trying to acquire the

presented content has not been modified at all. The main disadvantage of lectures is a lack of

interactivity between teacher and students. In conventional lectures a teacher presents new

information to the learners without getting any information on whether students can follow

and how they evaluate the lecture. Considering modern learning theories, describing learning

as an active process (e.g. Ernest, 1995; Jonassen, 1994; Honebein, 1996; Wilson & Cole,

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1991), the instructional shortcomings become even more obvious. Interactivity represents an

opportunity for the learner to take hand in shaping the informational, communicational and

learning process rather than remaining a passive recipient. Researches and teachers believe–

well grounded in empirical results–that an active involvement of the learners in the learning

process has a great impact upon successful learning (Ramsden, 1992).

Directly connected with the problem of low interactivity is the fact that conventional

lectures provide only limited opportunities for implementing adaptivity of instruction by the

lecturer. Adaptivity represents an essential way to improve the learning process. The

underlying rationale is to adapt explanations to the learners’ current state of knowledge. This

should result in greater efficiency and efficacy of instruction. Empirical findings reveal the

effects of diverse learning-centered measures upon learning success. For example, tuning the

learning content to the interests or goals of the learners will affect their learning success

positively (Bligh, 1998; Sass, 1989). Another promising way for a higher learning success is

to optimize the instructions for learners on the basis of learners’ foreknowledge and gradually

developing learning success (Vos, 1997a, 1997b). However, during the lecture the instructor

has almost no opportunities to adapt the content and/or the ways of teaching to the learner’s

cognitive state, since adaptivity has as a prerequisite a valid estimation of the learners’ actual

state of knowlewdge.

Another problem of lectures consists in the fact of this teaching-learning scenario

requiring a continuous attention of learners. Already in 1953, Bloom showed learners’

decreasing attention to be responsible for the small effort on knowledge acquisition in

lectures. Learnes simply become absent-minded after a certain amount of time (Bloom, 1953).

Siegel, Siegel, Capretta, Jones, and Berkovitz (1963) found the decreasing mental

performance of pupils to be correlated with the information retained from a lecture. Activity

changes must take place to obtain and maintain the attention within a lecture (e.g., a change

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between presentation and discussion phase). Continuous changing of teaching methods in

order to achieve higher attention in lectures has been variously described (e.g., Weld, 2002).

However, in lectures such activity changes mostly are not intended and if so, such lecture

elements depend exclusively on the ability of the lecturer (Ramsden, 1992).

Despite all these shortcomings lectures are not to be excluded from higher education

since they also have some advantages in comparison to other teaching methods. The

economic aspect is especially important. Only in lectures a single teacher can impart

knowledge at the same time to a relatively large number of students. Besides, lectures are a

flexible method with respect to their thematic and organizational integration. They can easily

be adapted to a certain topic area or different timetables. And finally, with respect to certain

aspects of knowledge acquisition lectures are superior to other teaching methods. For

example, McKeachie and Kulik (1975) compared lecture and discussion method. The lecture

was the superior method to examine facts, but not to support transfer and independent

thinking. Taken together, there are practical and empirical reasons to improve lectures.

Such an optimization has to enhance the interactivity and the adaptivity within

lectures. This can be achieved by using modern information technologies. Wireless local area

networks (WLAN) allow for such an improvement. In the following, we describe a scenario

in which WLAN and mobile computers are used to solve the typical problems of lectures.

Since the interactivity implemented in the scenario represents the central differentiating

feature to the conventional lecture, we call the scenario interactive lecture.

2 The scenario of an Interactive Lecture

2.1 The structure of Interactive Lectures

Wireless networks use radio waves instead of wires as transmission medium. Most

WLANs eventually connect into a wired network to obtain access to the Internet. Within a

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wireless network several (mobile) computers are interconnected by radio. Thus, wireless data

exchange is possible. PC-cards which support the wireless transmission also allow an access

to the network services outside stationary computer pools (mobile internet access) within the

read of access points (for further information see Tanenbaum, 1996, or Lopez-Hernandez &

Santamaria, 2001).

Despite its availability in many universities WLAN technology is hardly used in

instructional scenarios today. However, the use of WLANs proves particularly suitable for

redesigning the conventional lecture scenario: With WLANs–if appropriate services are

present–a bidirectional synchronous communication of one person with many persons is

possible. Deviating from the conventional lecture in such a structure not only one out of many

can answer the question asked by the lecturer, but all can communicate at the same time.

Thus, through wireless networks a lecturer can for example get answers to questions (suitable

response formats presumed) of all students, give a feedback to all of them and consider the

results in his/her further procedure.

In interactive lectures all students must be equipped with handheld computers or

notebooks using several wireless learning devices to interact. The basic software system to

run the interactive lecture is designed as a typical client/server application. As the central part

of the architecture, the server provides fundamental functionality (e.g. connection

management, user management and service management). Tools provide the specific services,

which are visible and executable for the users. They are programmed as independent modules

being loaded by the server at start-up time. The clients for the students use the WLAN to

connect to the server. They are designed as a single homogeneous software tool capable of

operating all services being available in a particular scenario. By using an interface

programme it is possible to connect a server to other external applications or to a server

running at a remote lecture hall. Figure 1 shows the server architecture of interactive lectures.

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===Insert figure 1 around here.===

2.2 WLAN-based services for Interactive Lectures

In the following, we give an overview about the different WLAN-supported

synchronous services being develloped for implementing interactive lectures (for more

information see Scheele, Mauve, Effelsberg, Wessels, & Fries, 2002).

Call-in. The call-in service allows students to enter a question or remark into the

mobile device and send it to the lecturer. The lecturer sees the question and can decide if,

when and how to answer it. In extension of this feature the lecturer can create an archive of

interesting questions and possible answers (i.e. FAQ list for the lecture). Of course this

service also supports simple “virtual handraising” as is needed for very large lectures or in

teleteaching environments.

Evaluation/ feedback. This service enables the students to provide condensed feedback

to the lecturer at any time, thus allowing for a continuous (online-)assessment and evaluation.

The lecturer is continuously informed about this feedback by means of bar graphs. To use this

service, the lecturer sets up several categories; typical categories are actual motivational states

of the students, speed, or difficulty of the lecture. Students express their opinion about the

category by adjusting a slider on the screen.

Quiz. This service constitutes the most important feature of an interactive lecture. It

allows an online posting of test items, an immediate (online-) evaluation of the students’

answers and a graphical presentation of the results both to the teacher and the students. Before

using the service the teacher prepares a small number of questions (e.g. multiple choice

questions) as a quiz. At the appropriate moments during the lecture, the quiz is uploaded via

the wireless link to the students’ mobile computers in the lecture hall. Students have to mark

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the answer(s) on their screens and send them back to the server. The server evaluates the

answers online and presents an overview to the teacher. This overview might be projected on

the lecture screen in order to allow everyone to see the results. Furthermore, the server can

also send individual feedback to every student, providing him/her with criterial information

about his/her performance. Figure 2 shows examples of the implementation of the quiz

service.

===Insert figure 2 around here.===

The setting allows the lecturer to comment directly upon the responses and interpret

results. If a question has been answered incorrectly by a critical amount of participants, the

instructor can choose among various ways to react: He/she can provide a new explanation of

the content or refer students to external sources (cf. expert literature).

Apart from the just described synchronous tools the interactive lecture also

compromises asynchronous tools such as messaging, forum and chat. These tools function

analog to their classical implementations; hence no further explication about the

implementation details is given here (see Scheele et al., 2002).

2.3 Advantages of Interactive Lectures

The scenario just described has several advantages in comparison to conventional

lectures. These advantages become obvious by analyzing interactive lecture from the

perspective of well-known instructional models. In most instructional models (e.g. Gagné,

Briggs, & Wagner, 1992 Merrill, 1991; Reigeluth, 1983) the diagnosis of the learner’s

knowledge status by the teacher is one central element of the instructional process, which

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enables an adaptive teaching behavior for an improvement of the learning process. From such

an instructional point of view, the interactive items are important for several reasons.

The interactivity should lead to a greater motivation (Moore, 2000) and deeper

knowledge elaboration of the learner (Anderson, 2000; Kommers, Jonassen, & Mayes, 1992).

From the point of view of the achievement motivation theory, the availability of performance

feedback is a necessary prerequisite for achievement-motivated behavior (Heckhausen,

Schmalt, & Schneider, 1985). Besides, the interactive items lead to activity changes, such that

the attention of the students will be maintained longer and students will behave less passively

(Fletcher, Hawley, & Piele, 1990; Simpson, 1994). Furthermore, it allows lecturers to adapt

their behavior. The lecturer receives a direct feedback over the learning success already

achieved and can react with an appropriate adjustment. For example, if the lecturer finds out

that only few students understood the contents just presented, he/she can repeat parts

and/dwell into problematic details causing the lack of understanding. Such a behavior is

especially neccessary in order to prevent later topics not being understood due to a missing

apprehension of the topics presented before.

Apart from these advantages concerning the learning process an additional advantages

of the interactive scenario should be mentioned. A general problem with the evaluation of

teaching meetings is the relative long answering cycle. Usually, the lecturer receives an

acknowledgement only after the end of the lecture time. Here the use of mobile computers can

help. For example, the last three minutes of a lecture might be used to fill in a evaluation

questionnaire presented on the mobile computer. Thus, within an interactive lecture an

immediate acknowledgement over the current lesson can be received.

In summary, in interactive lectures learner-centered instruction can be realized.

Learners can communicate with the lecturer, give him/her feedback and thus have

possibilities to actively influence the teaching. Such active involvement should have a large

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effect on successful learning, because it should promote students’ attention and motivation.

Therefore their knowledge acquisition through deeper knowledge elaboration processes

should be fostered (Anderson, 2000; Weinert, 1999). In the following a first empirical test of

the acceptance and effectiveness of interactive lectures is presented.

3 Experimental investigation of the Interactive Lecture scenario

3.1 Method

Participants. Altogether, 44 students participated in the investigation. Nine of the

participants were female. 38 of the subjects were studying economical informatics, while the

remaining six students came from technical computer science, mathematics and computer

science. The mean age of the participants was 23.57 years with a range from 21 to 35. The

mean number of semesters of the students was 6.52 with a range of 5 to 24. All participants

were attending the regular lecture “multimedia technology” held in English, which is unusual

in Germany and a reason for the rather low number of participating students.

Design and procedure. Within the regular lecture on “Multimedia Technology” (a

course regularly offered by the fifth author) two WLAN-supported meetings were compared

with two conventional topic-same lectures. Two chapters from this lecture (each covering one

meeting) were chosen and material for implementing the quiz-service in these chapters was

prepared. The chosen chapters were “operating system support” and “automatic content

analysis”. Since the scenario was new to all participants and teachers the implementation of

the interactive lecture was restricted to the quiz service. An implementation of the other

services might have resulted in an overload of the unexpericienced participants, resulting in

an underestimation of the potentials of the scenario.

The participating students were divided into two groups. Each of the two groups

worked once with the quiz service (interactive lecture) and once without (conventional

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lecture). In every meeting only one group of students was present. Therefore, every chapter

had to be presented twice (once as an interactive lecture and once as a conventional lecture).

In the meetings implementing the interactive lecture scenario Notebook PCs were

supplied to the students. At three points in time of the lecture (after approx. 25 and 45 minutes

and at the end of the meeting) the quiz-service was used. Two to four multiple choice

questions of the actual contents were sent to the students’ computers. The users had five

minutes time to select solutions from four response alternatives (cf. figure 2). After the

students had answered the questions and had sent them back on the computer of the lecturer,

the results of the quiz round were presented graphically on the instructor’s whiteboard to all

users (cf. figure 2). In the control condition students were given the opportunity to ask

questions on three comparable points in time.

Instruments. The measurement of the relevant variables was conducted through

subjective judgments in form of questionnaires and through application of tests. Since our

hypotheses focus on acceptance and learning our main measures were as follows:

After each meeting the users judged the lecture just heard by 13 items on the basis of

four-level ratings (0 (non appropriate) to 3 (appropriate)) in a paper pencil procedure. These

items included both evaluation and motivational aspects like level of attention during the

lecture. Typical items were “the today’s lecture was interesting” or “I followed today’s lecture

particularly attentively”. Similarily, the acceptance of the quiz service was evaluated on the

basis of nine four graded items (0-3). A typical an item was “the quiz service facilitated

learning today’s contents”. The students answered these questions after the end of each

lecture meeting.

On the basis of a pre-post-measurement, the success in learning–separate according to

the respective topic–was captured. Therefore, a knowledge test for each topic was developed

by a computer science expert. Each knowledge test contained altogether eight questions, four

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of which were multiple choice items (each with four response alternatives and a single

solution), and four questions were open-ended items. The subjects filled in the knowledge

questions immediately before the beginning of each meeting and immediately after the end of

the lecture.

3.2 Results

Acceptance. Table 1 gives the results with respect to the acceptance of the different

scenarios.

===Insert table 1 around here.===

As evident from the table, the WLAN-supported meetings were evaluated very well

and were clearly superior in their acceptance to the conventional lecture. The first topic was

evaluated somewhat better thand the second topic. For both lectures, an analysis of variance

revealed highly significant results in favor of the interactive lecture. Estimates of effect-sizes

range from η²=.384 to η²=.440 (topic 1: F(1,39)=30.617, p<.001, η²=.440; topic 2:

F(1,32)=19.959, p<.001, η²=.384).

Regarding the single items of the questionnaire, the students’ approvals are

significantly higher for all items. Most notably, the students experienced the interactive

lecture as more varied, felt more actively included and as being more attentive. Besides, they

estimated their success in learning as being higher.

The additional questionnaire tapping the evaluation of the quizzes shows a high

acceptance by the participating students. A mean value of 19.94 (SD: 3.96) is close to the

maximum value of 24 and well above the theoretical mean of 12. The participants perceived

the quiz service as facilitating and enhancing their learning.

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Learning increase. In figure 3 the results for the pre- and posttest of the knowledge

test are shown.

==Insert figure 3 around here.===

Independently of the method (conventional or interactive condition) learning occurred

in all meetings (p<.001). This learning increase was somewhat smaller for the second topic. In

comparing the two conditions, a small, not significant effect favoring the interactive lecture

was found for the first week (F(1,40)=3.509, p<.068, η²=.081). However, for the second topic

no differences were found (F(1,36)=.255, p<.617, η²=.007).

4 Discussion

Conventional lectures face fundamental instructional problems: Lack of interactivity

and the resulting lack of adaptivity are their most prominent instructional shortcomings.

Taking into account their frequent use in higher education and their advantages over other

instructional formats with respect economic efficiency the need for optimization of lectures

becomes obvious. In this paper we introduced the scenario of an interactive lecture. In this

scenario students are equipped with mobile computers allowing them to communicate with

the lecturer over a wireless net. Within this setting, several services enable interactivity

between lecturer and students. These services allow for a “1-to-n-to-1” communication. A

call-in service makes it possible to students to send questions and remarks to the teacher. An

Evaluation and Feedback service allows the students to give information about their current

perception of the lecture. Finally a Quiz service enables the teacher to work in short test of the

students’ apprehension of the contents being taught. The interplay of these different services

should result in an optimization of the lecture scenario by allowing more interactivity between

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students and teacher as well as by permitting the teacher to adapt his/her instructions to the

actual apprehension of the students.

An experimental investigation of the interactive lecture scenario was carried out. Two

WLAN-supported meetings within a lecture were compared with two conventional meetings

addressing the same topics. With respect to the original scenario only the quiz-service was

implemented. This restriction of the original scenario was implemented in order to prevent an

overload for the inexperienced users, thus resulting in an underestimation of its potentials.

In comparison to the conventional meetings the acceptance of the interactive meetings

was very well, although also the conventional meeting got evaluated on an above average

level. Furthermore the acceptance of the quiz service was very good. With respect to learning

differing results were found. First of all the students saw themselves as having learned more

in the interactive setting. Concerning objective measures of knowledge there was a tendency

favoring the interactive lecture for the first topic but no differences were found for the second

topic. Considering the explorative character of our study results can be interpreted

optimistically: Students accept the scenario and there is no deterioration in learning but rather

a tendency of improvement. Thus, further investment in the implementation of interactive

lectures on a broader scale seems indicated.

The current study has some weaknesses needing to be addressed. First of all the

problem of generalizability must be considered out of three reasons: (1) Not only that the

small sample made it difficult to validate effects but more importantly a problem of scaling

must be discussed. Conventional lectures are typically attended by one hundred or more

students. In order to evaluate the potentials of interactive lectures, one would need to

implement the scenario in such large scale lectures. But there is reason to be optimistic about

the results, since especially in a setting were students are almost disappearing because of the

masses surrounding them the power of services like the call-in or the quiz should prevail. (2)

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As mentioned, the sample in our study was highly selective. Since the lecture was read in

English, which is most uncommon at German universities, it must be assumed that only

motivated and capable students were participating. In order to enhance the generalizability

one would like to sample more heterogeneous participants and to not only implement the

scenario with computer science students. (3) Finally one would like to implement the scenario

not just in single meetings but rather along complete courses. Effects of newness, that can be

discussed as an alternative explanation for the high acceptance of the scenario among the

participating students would be excluded by such studies.

Furthermore, the scenario of interactive lecture has some inherent problems. The most

important is the resulting complexity for the teacher. The demands are clearly increased in

comparison to the conventional lecture, since the teacher needs - apart from giving his/her

presentation - to monitor the different services. In future implementations of the scenario

additional tools will guide the lecturer’s attention (e.g. an automatic reminder for starting a

quiz round) or existing tools will have a reduced visual and informational complexity, so

lecturers are in a better position to handle them.

Despite the just sketched restrictions for interpretations we take the first results as

highlighting the potentials of the use of WLANs for changing lectures in higher education

essentially. Nowadays, it is still necessary to equip the students with corresponding hardware

in order to realize the scenario. However, the distribution of mobile computers (PocketPCs)

will increase rapidly in the next years. Thus in the future, the problem of appropiate

equipement of students will no longer exist. In the long run, the availability of the sketched

scenario will increase.

Lectures will remain an integral part of higher education. Thus, an enrichment of this

dominant teaching method around interactive and adaptive elements might result in a

persistent optimization of higher education. Using technology for the execution of interactive

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lectures is possible in all disciplines as long as the respective knowledge contents are

mediated in lecture methods. Particularly in mass meetings, WLANs are–from our point of

view–a good possibility to include the students actively into the learning process. In the long

run a scenario like the interactive lecture might be a step towards the modernization of higher

education being sought by officials when starting large scale investment programs in multi-

media based learning.

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Table 1: Acceptance of the different meetings implementing interactive and conventional

lectures.

Interactive lecture

Conventional lecture

M SD M SD

Topic 1 33.27 5.71 24.46 4.39

Topic 2 30.00 5.82 20.86 5.95

Note. M = mean, SD = standard deviation; Range: 0-39.

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Figure captions

Figure 1. The server architecture of the Interactive Lecture.

Figure 2. The quiz service: Examples of questions presented on the students’ screen (upper

part) and their assessment presented to all (lower part).

Figure 3. Learning increase in the respective lecture (separated according to topic).

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Topic 1

Pretest Posttest

Know

ledg

e Te

st

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8conventionalinteractive

Topic 2

Pretest Posttest

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