Development and Preliminary Evaluation of an Interactive System to Support CAD Teaching

Abstract

It has been a goal for many researchers to make education more enjoyable, attractive and effective through the use of multimedia technology [1]. Achieving this goal requires rich interactive communication between students and tutors and a clear understanding of the educational environment. Despite the availability of wide range of commercial systems that can support multimedia within the classroom there remains a gap for an innovative system that can provide a blended approach to providing support for live teaching sessions. This paper introduces Surrey Connect, a bespoke system, designed to enhance the teaching and learning experience in large classroom settings. It provides lecture recording with selective replay, implicit and explicit responses and multiple tutors support. In addition to its interactive user interface, Surrey Connect acts an early warning system by monitoring learners' in-class behaviour, presenting it in an interactive dashboard to the tutor and suggesting interventions in the light of rule-based programmable knowledge. The system has been tested in a real classroom environment of Computer Aided Design course with more than 150 students and received over 60% positive feedback from the students.