Using Inksurvey with Pen-enabled Mobile Devices for Real-time Formative Assessment I: Applications in Diverse Educational Enviroments

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of InkSurvey, a free web-based tool, with pen-enabled mobile devices across various educational settings to facilitate real-time formative assessment and improve teaching and learning outcomes.

Contribution

It demonstrates the broad applicability of InkSurvey with diverse devices and environments, highlighting its potential to enhance formative assessment in education.

Findings

Effective real-time feedback from student responses

Successful implementation across multiple subjects and educational levels

Reduced barriers due to affordable pen-enabled devices

Abstract

InkSurvey is free, web-based software designed to facilitate the collection of real-time formative assessment. Using this tool, the instructor can embed formative assessment in the instruction process by posing an open-format question. Students equipped with pen-enabled mobile devices (tablet PCs, iPads, Android devices including some smartphones) are then actively engaged in their learning as they use digital ink to draw, sketch, or graph their responses. When the instructor receives these responses instantaneously, it provides insights into student thinking and what the students do and do not know. Subsequent instruction can then repair and refine student understanding in a very timely manner. Although this pedagogical tool is appealing because of its broad theoretical foundations, the cost of pen-enabled mobile technology was until recently a significant barrier to widely implementing this teaching model. However, less expensive tablets, iPads, and Android devices are now filling the market (and student backpacks) and greatly lowering that barrier. To illustrate the wide applicability of this use of technology, we report a series of seven vignettes featuring instructors of diverse subjects (mathematics, food chemistry, physics, biology, and chemical engineering), with students using diverse pen-enabled mobile devices (tablet PCs, iPads, and Android 4.0 tablets), in diverse educational environments (K-12, community college, publicly-funded engineering university, private university, graduate school), in two countries (United States and Mexico). In a companion paper, each instructor also shares some data, insights, and/or conclusions from their experiences regarding the effectiveness of this tool.