Capstone Project

Most of Jacksonville State University’s classrooms are still the old fashion type of class that is strictly lecture. This type of learning is not maximizing the students ability to learn because in the 21st century everything in life is starting to become technology based. Strictly lecture classes bore students and every college student now would rather use technology during class than to sit through the regular cookie cutter lecture style class. For the Capstone Project Austin Parker and I focused on the issue of how to integrate technology into the classroom.

In our research we found clickers, Faronics Insight, and Top Hat Monocle. We found that many Universities have already began integrating technology into the classroom recently. Most of these Universities have done so through the use of clickers. Clickers look like small TV remotes with rows and columns of letters. Clickers are used in class by students to answer questions asked by a professor aloud. Then the results are compiled and are available to the professor as stats. This is the only thing that clickers can do and they’re limited to multiple choice questions & only one at a time. Several well-known universities have used clickers. They found that clickers do help students at these universities and even professors like the clicker usage because it engages students more, but they are not the solution to the problem.

The solution to this problem has two parts to help fully ensure that every classroom is fully equipped to use technology to its full potential to impact learning, both equipment and software. With our solution every classroom will need to be equipped with a class set of Apple Ipad Minis (16gb WiFi only) for in class use only and one mounted projector that allows both student and professor to share something they’re working on. Now that every classroom will be equipped for its full technological learning ability we have to be sure that the most beneficial software and systems are installed for use. The best software that we found is Top Hat Monocle and Faronics Insight.

The first software I am going to explain about is Top Hat Monocle. Top Hat Monocle is a classroom response system that's completely web based and is equipped with many features that benefit the student & the professor both inside and out of the classroom. It conducts polls or quizzes where the answers are multiple choice, numeric, or short answer and you can watch the live results come in on any WiFi connected device. This software also runs interactive demonstrations that students can do on any mobile device connected to the internet in class or at home for practice before doing their work. Professors can choose from the library of demos or create a new one from scratch. It also administers open ended questions to students and watch as they discuss amongst themselves in a forum like thread. The teacher can also can give participation points if they want. For the teacher's station it has a file share that can upload and share important documents with students such as class notes and project instructions. All answers submitted by a student are automatically graded and uploaded into the Top Hat Monocle Gradebook which is set up to easily export all data to any spreadsheet. Top Hat Monocle’s unique system of tools and features enable the class set of Ipads to be anything from a live in class poll with results feeding live directly to the professor or a interactive open ended question forum that can stimulate learning and allow students to collaborate to establish an answer in an orderly fashion. Another large benefit of Top Hat Monocle is that the software is web based meaning there is no installation and students & teachers can use any device out of class to access course materials.

Our other recommended software is Faronics Insight. This is a software designed to put the professor back in control of the technology equipped classroom through a main tech console that is controlled by the professor. The tech console has features that allows it to be more easy keeping an entire class of students being allowed to use technology freely on task and learning as intended. The tech console of this software gives the teacher the ability to control to both lock and unlock either specific websites or block the whole internet in general, randomly rotate through the students computers to make sure that they are on task at anytime, privately chat with students, and share & broadcast what they are doing on their screen with the entire class or from the projector. It also allows the students to broadcast their screens as well as the teacher does, but the teacher has to approve it. The tech console sounds like it is going to be something big, fancy, and expensive but it is not. It is all on the teacher's own computer.

We came to a conclusion that we think through our two part solution we feel like students will become more engaged in class which will help lead students to have a better understanding of material. This solution has benefits for both the professor and student. We feel like this will allow professors who have been resistant to integrate technology to do so now easily now because they will have more security of knowing that they will have as much control over their class while using technology. As well as keeping students more involved in the classroom and hopefully help them enjoy being in class more.

This is our power point.

This is the handout.