JISC

Students are being encouraged to go wireless in lectures, using the University of Hull’s Wireless Interactive Lecture Demonstrator (WILD) to interact with their subject.

Dr Darren Mundy and his colleagues at the University’s Scarborough School of Arts and New Media are developing a range of cutting-edge software to encourage students to be more involved during lectures - even choosing what they want to learn about.

Using funds from JISC, Dr Mundy has developed WILD Thing, which allows students to interact in real time while their lecturer delivers a lesson through PowerPoint. This latest tool means students can annotate lecture slides and answer questions or ask them, while the lecture is actually being delivered, using their mobile phones or other wireless devices such as laptops.

David Flanders, JISC rapid innovation programme manager, explained: “What’s really exciting about the JISC rapid innovation projects, including WILD thing, is that the tools they are producing not only have the ability to change the lives of teachers, researchers and students, but also their potential use by people in business, government and even in the home.  These tools are giving us glimpses of the future for how technology can continue to enrich our lives.”

Dr Mundy and his colleagues have also developed a series of ‘Choose Your Own Lecture’ presentations funded through the Higher Education Academy, allowing students to select what they will learn during a teaching session.

Dr Mundy said: “We are trying to challenge the traditional methods of ‘chalk and talk’ where a lecturer delivers a lecture and the students just listen and take notes. These new methods mean the student becomes a ‘pro-sumer’- they are not only consuming information but producing it as well.

“We have already done a test run with our students and they really like being able to interact as the lecture is actually being delivered. It also offers anonymity within the lecture, so if someone is usually quite shy about putting up their hand and asking a question in front of a lot of people, now they can do so via the internet. We are always looking for ways to involve those students who would never usually participate, so this technology is really useful,” he added.

WILD Thing will be further tested in lectures this academic year and the results published next summer, after which Dr Mundy hopes it will be rolled out for use by lecturers anywhere in the country, as part of JISC’s rapid innovation programme software catalogue.

Find out more about the WILD thing project.

Photos of Dr Darren Mundy courtesy of Mike Park, University of Hull.