The Use of a Digital Question Board to Engage "Vulnerable Students" in Large Lecture Classes

• In Event: Instructional Technology SIG Poster Session 2: Instructional Technology in Higher Education and Corporate Settings

Abstract

Many large lecture classes witness a lack of engagement and student-initiated questioning. To deal with this problem, this study created a digital question board (DQB) for students to freely pose questions, provide and receive feedback using mobile technology. A mixed-method study with a quasi-experiment with 245 college students was conducted to examine its effectiveness with a coding scheme illustrating patterns of student questioning. Results indicated that the use of DQB benefited students’ cognitive and emotional engagement. Browsing DQB enabled students to assess their own understanding. Students asked mostly on-task learning questions in DQB. Enriched responses facilitated the co-construction of knowledge. The anonymous feature of DQB allowed vulnerable students to post lower-level questions without fear of being wrong or embarrassment.

Authors

• Lili Zhang, Syracuse University

• Jiaming Cheng, Liaoning Normal University

• Jing Lei, Syracuse University

• Qiu Wang, Syracuse University

• Fuyi Yang, East China Normal University