By Adrian Roellin QuestionSMS is a Classroom Response System developed by NUS. It can be used to obtain real-time feedback from the students, be it in form of short informal polls or allowing students to ask questions anonymously. After a quick live demonstration, I will show how I use this tool to improve interaction with students during my lectures.

1. Using SMS to increase interaction with
students during lectures
Who? Adrian R¨llin
o
From? Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, NUS
When? BuzzEd, 5th January 2012

2. questionSMS
What is questionSMS?
How does it work?
How do I use it?
Why do I use it?

3. questionSMS
What is questionSMS?
How does it work?
How do I use it?
Why do I use it?
Some - Assistant Professor
background - Class size from 80-200
- 3rd and 4th year students
- Maths and Stats students are not very interactive

4. What is questionSMS?
.

5. What is questionSMS?
.
In class, answers are anonymous.

6. What is questionSMS?
.

7. What is questionSMS?
.

8. How does it work?
Let’s do it! - Free Text Question
- Multiple Choice Poll

9. How do I use it?
- One qSMS question “General questions” is always
open with a standard code (via iPad)
- Polls for quizes to test the students intuition
- Polls for quizes to test the material at the end of a
lecture
- Polls to ask general questions about the lecture
(e.g. “too fast”, “just right”, “too slow”)

10. Why do I use it?
Some reasons - Increases interaction, more questions
I use qSMS - Allows for immediate feedback (c.f. raising hands)
- Changes style and pace from time to time
- Very easy to use, may actually reduce the workload
- It’s developed at NUS and my feedback does not end
up in the dust bin

11. Why do I use it?
Some points - Feedback is not representative!
to think about - Depends on the class whether it’s fun to use
- Needs a critical mass to work, otherwise it’s not really
anonymous
- The reception can be bad in some of the lecture
theatres (e.g. LT21)

12. Thanks for listening!