An Experiment toward Establishing Communication from Audience to Lecturer

Many techniques, audio and video, are available for projecting a lecturer's performance to a large audience, but techniques for feedback from audience to lecturer are almost totally lacking. The return communication link, if available, would be an important factor in the performances of lecturer and audience, hence in the educational process. An experiment using 30 students for a semester is described. Each student had a pair of push-buttons at his seat, and could answer either "red" or "black." Answers were then "frozen" and totals displayed. After discussion the instructor inserted the correct answer. The circuit then "graded" each student's answer and recorded the score in a count-register, which accumulated each student's score throughout the semester. The electrical problems were easily ironed out; the psychological effects were more complicated and interesting. Frequent scoring at unexpected times produced too much tension and interfered with rapport. Scoring during a few minutes at one end of the period and use of the machine at other times for information only without registration of scores seemed to be satisfactory. Typical student reaction, "Does this mean we have to know our lesson every day?"