This article is from The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com)

A Professor Uses Cell Phones in Class to Check Students' Comprehension

By Scott Carlson

While he's lecturing, William F. Junkin likes to keep tabs on his students: What do they know? What do they really understand? But he's not keen about calling on a student and putting him or her on the spot. "If I ask a question in class, all the students stop thinking and turn to watch the student squirm," says Mr. Junkin, a physics professor at Erskine College, in South Carolina. "If they give a bad answer because they're under pressure, then they've been embarrassed, they'll hate me, and they're not going to learn any physics. It's a lose-lose situation."

So Mr. Junkin, who is also the college's dean of learning and technology, developed his own computer program that allows him to send out a question from a laptop at the front of the room to the whole class. Using oversized cell phones -- those with personal-digital-assistant features -- his students pick up the question and choose or scribble out their best answer with tiny styluses.

After a few moments, when the answers come back to Mr. Junkin's laptop, he knows who understands the day's topic and who doesn't, and he gets an instant sense of how he should alter his lesson plan before he continues the lecture. "The students stay involved this way," he says. "When that glaze settles over their eyes at about 20 minutes into class,

I toss out one of these questions and the whole attitude of the class changes." He says that showing his class the scores helps demonstrate to some of the students that they aren't the only ones who don't understand a concept; those students are then more likely to ask questions.

Mr. Junkin says he "stole the idea from lots and lots of people," and cites as an example physics classes at Harvard University, where students answer questions using multiple-choice response pads hooked up to desks.

Mr. Junkin wanted a similar device that would allow students to offer feedback other than simply A, B, C, or D. He developed his Web-based program, called Beyond Question, in 1994 for use with laptop computers. But the laptops had limitations: Students had to buy or borrow an expensive computer, and Mr. Junkin could use the program only in classrooms that had been wired.

"So when I learned that it could be used with cell phones," Mr. Junkin says. "I approached the cell-phone companies and said, Have I got a deal for you." Under that deal, the college would get the use of free cell phones, and the cell-phone companies would get an opportunity to cultivate young customers.

A local Sprint PCS provider has taken the college up on the offer, and has set up a temporary cell-phone tower on the campus. Mr. Junkin says the company will loan personal-digital-assistant phones to about 200 students this fall; it already lent out a few dozen this spring to test the system.

Craig Kinley, a director of engineering and network operations for Sprint, won't offer financial details about the deal, but he says that the phones retail for about $400. He says that his company will monitor the students' cell-phone use over the next year to determine whether the venture is worthwhile.

It's been worthwhile for Jaime Pace, a junior majoring in biochemistry. She has used Beyond Question both on laptops and on the phones, and she prefers the phones because they offer a bunch of features in a small package and allow her to connect faster, from anywhere on campus.

More importantly, the program boosted her learning experience in class. "It really helped the communication between professor and student," she says. "It greatly enhanced my learning. I know that if I don't understand something in class, I don't want to be singled out in front of all my classmates and have to sit there and struggle with a question."