nuKIT – an Interactive Communication Tool via Smartphone Technologies

The number of internet-ready mobile devices is steadily increasing. Today these devices are particularly well accepted among young people who build the main part of the audience in universitary courses. Using smart devices offers a great possibility to increase student-teacher interactions. In this paper, we present an e-learning tool called nuKIT (networked university KIT) which provides interfaces to smartphones and the web for establishing several types of interactions between a lecturer and the students. The tool offers students the possibility to give feedback regarding the presentation speed and to ask questions. As well, the lecturer can pose questions to the students. nuKIT is a lightweight tool which is particularly well-suited for use in academic courses, but also in related scenarios. We illustrate the technological background of nuKIT, give implementation and usage recommendations and present an evaluation of the tool originating from data collected in three courses at KIT. Introduction Recently, e-learning is becoming more and more popular especially for “brick and mortar” universities and in higher education (Shivetts 2011, Rovai 2004). However, the usage of e-learning techniques can lead to complex and severe tasks which result in faculty members avoiding the usage of e-learning. Thus, an e-learning tool has to be systematically designed (Garrison 2004). Such an e-learning tool can be used to overcome the lack of communication and interactivity between teacher and audience in academic courses. According to Ramsden (1992), communication and interactivity in teaching is important for the students’ understanding and learning process and overcomes the uni-directional teaching with passive students. However, especially in large courses, many reasons can be found that counteract the verbal communication. Some students may be too shy to ask questions or participate in the lecture; other students are kept from participation due to spatial distance from the lecturer, background noise or monotony of the lecturer’s presentation which may cause inattention, passiveness and decreased motivation. Such courses are especially known to affect students’ grades negatively when exceeding a threshold of about 100 students per class (Bandiera 2010b). The growth of modern universities in number and size in the last decade due to a world-wide increase in enrollment numbers (Bandiera 2010a) heightens this problem. An e-learning approach increasing the interaction and communication in academic classes and improving the individual learner support would counteract these negative effects on large courses. In this paper we present the e-learning tool nuKIT program collection (networked university KIT) which is lightweight software for establishing communication between lecturer and students during the lecture. This software is platform-independent and relies on the usage of mobile devices on the student side. As new technologies are typically common among young people about 30% of Germans own a smartphone-, considering people under thirty this number increases to 50% (Bitkom 2012) such approaches seem particularly promising for academic classes. On the student side, the software includes the possibility to ask textual questions in an anonymous way (if desired) and to give feedback regarding the presentation speed. On the lecturer side, the lecturer has the option to pose questions to the students that they can answer during the lecture or within a predefined time period. These questions can be set up with single or multiple choice answers or to be answered using free text. The nuKIT program collection itself consists of three major parts; the lecturer tools, the student interfaces and the server architecture which is responsible for the communication management. The lecturer tools are independent from the projection system the lecturer chooses. Therefore, the lecturer can easily add the nuKIT tools to his actual presentation materials without changing anything. The student interface can either be accessed by the usage of an app or by a web application. Nevertheless, the independence from a special system or hardware can be assured. As almost all students carry a smartphone, they can easily post questions during the lecture and evaluate the lecturer regarding the presentation speed. Moreover, the nuKIT tools can serve as a tool for a query independent of time and place. The nuKIT tools in their current version have been applied so far in three different computer science courses during the current lecture period with the target audience varying from 40 to 500 students, cf. Sec. “Preliminary Evaluation”. The evaluation indicates that by this rather simple communication tool, which does not require any heavy-weight e-learning technologies and is independent from special hardor software, the interaction in the courses has improved significantly. Related work As the lack of interaction in large courses is a widespread problem and new technologies such as smartphones are typically common among young people, such approaches seem particularly promising for academic classes. In the last years there have been a number of publications proposing tools and strategies regarding the use of new media in large courses (Bonn 2003, Scheele 2005, Schön 2012a, 2012b, Pfeiffer 2012). Tools whose focus is to improve the interaction in lectures, vary greatly in the software they are based-on and related to, the hardware they use and the functionality they provide. Some of them only consider a specific part of the different interaction opportunities such as surveys or quizzes, feedback issues or are restricted to unidirectional communication. Moreover, many tools are often linked to a specific learning platform or require a particular mobile device like clicker systems which make them expensive, complicated in handling and can lead to a heavyweight communication tool. These aspects can lead to limited usage, time consuming preparation and complicate behavior. Bonn et al. (2003) describe the NUKATH tools (notebook university Karlsruhe (TH)), which have been the predecessor of the here described nuKIT program collection. The NUKATH tools comprise the multiple choice questions, the student questioning and the voting. The specific design approach and original communication process within the client-server-architecture is described. It lacks the access through an app-technology. Scheele et al. (2005) present a communication tool called WIL/MA (Wireless Interactive Learning at the University of Mannheim) based on a client-server-architecture for usage in the lecture. It offers a quiz, feedback and a call-in tool for student questions. The server software is based on Java which means the students may only use a java-capable end-device with the client architecture. The software is designed to be used in the lecture only. The mobile quiz introduced by Schön et al. (2012a, 2012b) is based on the usage of students’ mobile devices. Within this approach, a quiz is created with the learning platform ILIAS and is then forwarded to the students’ mobile devices by dynamically creating Quick Response Codes (QR). Goals of nuKIT nuKIT is a collection of tools based on a simple smartphone app or a web application on the student side, to be used in academic courses as a communication platform between student and teacher during a lecture. The idea and basic design principles originated from the communication tool NUKATH (Notebook University Karlsruhe (TH)) which was developed at the University of Karlsruhe in 2003 (Bonn 2003). Although having been used regularly and unmodified for almost 10 years in the same courses at the University of Karlsruhe and the KIT, the NUKATH platform received little interest on the student side until about 2011. Apparently due to an increased availability of mobile devices such as smart phones, laptops, or tablets in the classroom, the platform achieved a major revival in 2011. This led to a lot of online communication between students and teachers during lectures, and, in addition, to a new interest in the platform by different teachers of different courses; it also pointed out several drawbacks of the original platform. The most important ones were a lack of interfaces with new technologies such as mobile apps, and a too specific design approach making it complicated to adapt the platform to different courses and to the various requirements of different teachers. Therefore, nuKIT has been developed as an upgrade from the old platform -in particulara mobile app-based communication tool on the student side, and enhancing several technical aspects of the platform such as security, stability and usability. Altogether, the development of nuKIT was driven by the following goals: 1. Provide a lightweight communication tool for within-lecture use which is easy to manage on the student side requiring no further equipment than a common mobile phone. 2. Provide a generic platform which is not bounded to a specific learning platform but which can be ported to different platforms and easily adapted to different courses which can take place in parallel. 3. Provide a stable and secure platform that is intuitive to set up and use. 4. Offer the students the possibility to ask and answer questions during lectures in an anonymous way. 5. Provide a tool which can be combined with arbitrary lecture presentation systems. 6. Provide lecturers with student feedback regarding the presentation speed. 7. Provide the lecturer with an easy-to-use functionality to ask single choice, multiple choice or free text questions in class which can be prepared before lecture for getting immediate response. 8. Provide a method to conduct surveys or tests in predefined time periods outside of lectures. Structure of nuKIT The nuKIT program collection can be divided into three major parts, (1) the tools on the lecturer side, (2) the interfaces on the student side, and (3) the server-side programs for the communication management. In this section, an overview of the lecturer and the student sides is given, cf. Figure 1. The server side is described in detail in Sec. “Implementation of nuKIT”. The overall nuKIT structure is partially derived from the former NUKATH tools. The main structural changes in comparison to the NUKATH tools include the creation of the Student App and a password-secured access both on the student and the lecturer side. Furthermore, additions such as parallelization of the questioning process and the password structure have been added. Detailed information regarding the original basic structure of NUKATH is given in (Bonn 2003). Since that paper was written in German, we summarize again in the following the basic structure of NUKATH as well as the additions made for nuKIT. Figure 1 Structure of nuKIT. Right side: layout of the lecturer side consisting of the nuKIT-Manager for creating courses, the Student Interaction Tool and the Lecturer Query Tool. Left side: layout of the Student side with several students using the Web Application or the App. The communication structure is illustrated by arrows. Lecturer Side: As shown in Figure 1-right side, the lecturer side contains three major parts that are implemented as separate programs: (1) the nuKIT-Manager (nM), (2) the Student Interaction Tool (SIT) and (3) the Lecturer Query Tool (LQT). The nM is the administrative program of the nuKIT collection, and is particularly required for setting up new courses or altering existing courses in the system. The set-up process includes the selection of a lecturer password (Password) and a student password (Password). These passwords administer the access to a specific course in nuKIT for lecturers and students, respectively. Password grants access to the SIT and the LQT. Password grants access to the Student App and the Web Application respectively (cf. Sec. “Student Side”). The SIT and the LQT are communication tools which are used during a lecture and provide the fundamental functionality of nuKIT. At startup, they initiate the download of corresponding data from the database, e.g. predefined questions. The SIT, as a lecturer client user interface, visualizes two types of student communications: (1) When students ask questions over the platform, these are stored in a queue managed by the SIT, and the lecturer is informed about new questions using a visual aid. There, an unobtrusive visualization is chosen, making it acceptable (to all teachers using the tools so far) that the client shows a notification about all questions asked during a lecture in real time. (2) Students’ feedback regarding the lecturer’s presentation speed is visualized constantly during a lecture by showing a small feedback chart in the same visualization window as the students’ questions. The SIT can be displayed, beside the set-up mode, as an unobtrusive presentation mode which guarantees a transparent feedback system. The LQT is intended to initiate in-class communication by the lecturer by presenting questions to the students that are supposed to be answered immediately and discussed afterwards. For this purpose, the lecturer creates single choice, multiple choice or free text questions, usually before the course takes place, and publishes them during the corresponding course. The questions are stored in a server-side database as part of the course data of a specific course. Therefore, a lecturer can use his/her pre-generated questions from different computers or different lecturers can use the same questions when they teach the same course. During a lecture, the questions can be chosen and displayed on the lecturer’s computer as well as on the student clients (cf. Sec. “Student Side”) where the students can answer them. The LQT gathers all responses from the students and presents the results from the survey visually in a chart (in the non-free text cases). These graphs can be published to the students and uploaded to the student clients. Another application of the LQT is the usage outside the classroom, for example between lectures during a semester. There, the LQT can be configured to publish a set of questions (survey) at a certain arbitrary time, and to give the students a chance to answer the questions for a predefined time interval. After closing the survey, the teacher can analyze the questions and, for example, give feedback to the students during the subsequent lecture. While this is a rather straight-forward application of the survey functionality with regard to the LQT, the tool can be used in a flexible way to perform various types of surveys. For example, a survey may last for a whole semester allowing the students to comment on general “time-less” course-topics. Another application is a “virtual consultation-hour” where students can answer questions such as “How can I help you?” in a free-text way by posing their teacher course-related questions without having to actually visit his/her consultation-hour. Student Side: The corresponding application on the student side (cf. Figure 1-left side) consists of two different client user interfaces which offer basically the same functionality. There is an Android App that can be downloaded from the Google play store (an iPhone App is currently being developed), and a web application that can be accessed by simply visiting the corresponding website (http://46.137.181.121:10080/nukit). Before being able to use the student client, the students have to select a course and log-on using the Password. The student client accepts an arbitrary user name meaning that the students can act in an anonymous way. The course is online while a lecture tool (at least one of them) is online and logged on to the corresponding course. Therefore, the questioning and feedback process is only available if this has been initiated by the lecturer. The student interface is divided into three parts: (1) feedback vote, (2) question vote and (3) query. The feedback vote offers the possibility to evaluate a lecturer’s presentation speed on a three-level scale: “slower”, “faster” and “alright”. When a vote is given, it is forwarded to the SIT of the lecturer where it is displayed in real time. Therefore, students can give the lecturer in a simple and anonymous way feedback regarding the presentation speed. If a question arises during a lecture, a student can use the question vote to send a textual question which is also redirected to the lecturer in real time. The third functionality of the student client is activated by the lecturer-side LQT when he/she sets up questions to be answered. The students can answer the questions with a single or multiple click or by a textual answer depending on the kind of question, using standard visual elements provided by the Android architecture and the HTML structure respectively. The answers are sent to the server database and forwarded to the lecturer’s LQT where they are graphically displayed. The according results can be published to allow the students direct access via the student client user interface. The number of students using the tools simultaneously is not limited meaning that large courses can use the platform without hesitation (of course, an appropriate internet connection has to be available in the classroom). To allow for a lecturer-side analysis of the communication with students and for scientific analysis of the usage statistics of nuKIT (as performed for this paper), all communications between teachers and students are logged and stored in the database in an anonymous fashion to protect data privacy for all involved parties. Implementation of nuKIT This section describes the implementation of the nuKIT program collection, which comprises the lecturer tools (nM, SIT and LQT), the student tools (Android app and web application) and the server implementation (Web service and database). nuKIT is realized as a client/server architecture as shown in Figure 2. The server application and the lecturer tools are using Microsoft’s .NET Framework and are programmed in C#. For the Web Frontend Microsoft’s ASP.NET framework is used and for the web server the Internet Information Server (IIS) from Microsoft. To enable empirical evaluations a MySQL Server hosting a MySQL database has been integrated. The communication between the clients and the server uses a SOAP web service based on HTTP and XML. The nuKIT Android application is programmed as a native Android application in Java. In the following, the diverse parts of the architecture which are shown in Figure 2 are explained in more detail following the server/client architecture. Server: The Server application coordinates the clients and fulfills the Business Logic. It is responsible for all created courses and manages questions and votes corresponding to each course. Each course has a pre-defined standard duration in which the lecture is marked as active and students can log-in. A lecture is set active when the lecturer logs-in to at least one feature of the lecturer tools. To prevent the system from being flooded by the clients, a list of all IP addresses of users who have participated is temporarily saved. This list is cleared after a predefined time which can be adjusted in the manager tool. The courses with all attributes are saved in an XML file. Figure 2 Client/Server architecture of nuKIT. The different parts of nuKIT are displayed and the whole communication is illustrated with arrows. An interface providing the functionality of the server application is provided by a SOAP Web Service. SOAP is a lightweight protocol which exchanges structured information in a distributed, decentralized environment. The HTTP protocol is used to encapsulate the SOAP protocol. This has the advantage that HTTP is routed through the internet and it is usually not blocked by firewalls. Such a protocol fits our requirements very well because of the necessity of communication between different kinds of systems like the Android application programmed in Java and the web service and lecturer tools implemented in C#. The third big part on the server side is the MySQL Database, using the MySQL Server. The Data Layer interconnects the MySQL Database to the business logic and provides all necessary data to the business logic. As mentioned above, all communication between the tools and the server application is logged to the database. Additionally, all questions created with the LQT are saved in the database. This has the advantage, that every lecturer can create a different question catalog for each course and can access his/her question catalog from different devices. Client: The nuKIT Manager is the administrative client which manages lecturers’ courses. This includes the creation and deletion of courses, changing the passwords for lecturer and students, requesting new passwords in the case that the lecturer forgot his password and modifying some course-specific settings. A status bar which shows the result of an executed action has been implemented. The web service URL is saved in an XML file as an encrypted string, using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). This has the advantage that it is only possible to change the web service address via the nuKIT Manager but it is not possible to figure out the current web service by examining the XML configuration file. Creating a new course requires providing information about the course as the name, the lecturer’s email address, and the two passwords. The name of the course has to be unique as it is used as a primary key on the server side. Deleting courses or changing settings requires the current lecturer password to prevent from manipulation by others. If a lecturer forgets his password, he can request a new password for the selected course. This triggers the server to create an email with a new random password which immediately replaces the old password. This email is sent to the lecturer’s stated email address. The SIT displays the student speed votes and their questions in real-time. The votes are visualized as a bar chart where each bar is representing the votes of one speed category. Additionally, the absolute number of votes for each category is shown. New student questions are indicated by a button which turns yellow in the instant the question arrives. To achieve real-time behavior without slowing down the responsiveness of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the communication actions are running in a separate thread which regularly queries the server for new questions and votes. Clicking the button in the SIT which indicates an unanswered student questions displays the first question asked. Additionally, the number of subsequent questions is shown. The lecturer can choose between answering the questionwhich removes the question from the queue-, and putting off the answering, which shifts the question to the end of the queue. If there are more questions in the queue, the lecturer can show all questions at once. By highlighting different questions, the lecturer is able to answer multiple questions at once. Notifications about the success or failure of the mentioned actions are shown in a status bar. Posing questions to the students is realized with the LQT. To pose a question an entry of the question catalog can be chosen. By clicking the “publish question” button, the question is sent to the server where it gets associated with the course. The answers to a question are by default not published to the student clients but can be published manually. The answer statistics are visualized as a bar chart. The updating of the answering statistics is done in a separate thread, due to process speed reasons. The web service URL can be set in the same way as with the nuKIT Manager and SIT. Due to the restriction that currently only one question is allowed to be set simultaneously, the realization of surveys consisting of multiple questions is under progress. Surveys can be created with the questions from the question catalog and can be started immediately, but also by setting a starting and ending point. The nuKIT App for Android is the implementation of the student part of the nuKIT program collection. It supports every Android version since Android 2.1 which covers almost all of today’s active Android devices. Google introduced a new window feature called Action Bar with Android 3.0, which is recommended to use within Android applications. To provide a consistent user experience for Android devices before version 3.0, the open-source library ActionBarSherlock had to be used to provide the action bar also for devices before 3.0. Figure 3 shows the architecture of the nuKIT App. The app consists of seven Activities which represent the features of the app. An Activity is an element which builds-up a screen for the interaction of the user and provides a GUI which is described in XML. The most important Activities are described in the following. In the Business Logic Layer the data processing is executed. This comprises in particular the preparation of the received data from the SOAP web service for displaying within the Activities, but also the handling of the lifecycle of the Activities and changing the Activities. The Data Layer provides the data which is processed by the Business Logic. For communication with the web server, a SOAP web service client has been implemented.