Thanks to this new web service, lecturers can interact with students in order to assess if they have correctly understood and assimilated the content of lessons. A means to stimulate and to “make everyone move at the same pace”.
How to insure that the information taught has been correctly assimilated by the students? For the lecturer, there is never a straight forward answer. Between those who are shy, those who don’t want to show that they don’t understand, those who wrongly think they already have the right answer and those who simply don’t care, you can end up with a real loss in terms of knowledge transfer. This acknowledgement did not elude a young ITECH professor, Sébastien Braconnot: “being a school alumni, I’m also fully aware of this fact and I seek to find solutions in order to address the issue”. It’s for precisely this reason that he has taken an interest innovative numerical teaching formats in order to avoid the more traditional ones. Once he became a lecturer and had to build his own lessons and choose teaching methods, he took an interest in Klaxoon and its interactive animation meeting “box”. This new numerical concept is quite savvy: as the box generates its own wifi network, you can immediately connect to the web service wherever you are and are completely free to organise interactive work sessions. Thanks to a “magnifying” system which transforms any screen into a work support, the device is completely interactive. Anyone can then share and exchange information to his or her liking straight from their smartphone or computer: display a presentation, participate in an exercise, answer a quizz, give an opinion.
A means to move forward together
For Sébastien Braconnot, the concept is a precious interactive tool for a professor in regards to his students: “at any moment during my lesson I can interact with the students in order to see if they have understood all the topics. I can canvass the class by organising a quiz, by asking a particular student a question, by launching a vote and directly obtaining an answer. Thanks to real time information, I can immediately see if the classroom is following the lesson, if someone is finding it difficult to understand and, in that case, which subjects need to be seen in more detail.” This feedback is important for him: “it not only allows you to define the content, but also the rhythm of teaching to allow everyone to advance at the same pace.” The tool is interesting as it permits to get feedback at any moment, including those following the session online. Klaxoon is a means to stimulate the student: instead of suffering the lesson, he intervenes, interacts, exchanges ideas, gives remarks and ideas that lead to a debate. The tool allows the student to dig through his or her knowledge since they can go through the content of the lessons that were created previously. Sébastien Braconnot is thinking of using the concept in regards to a new lesson on sealant: “thanks to a Brainstorming functionality of the Box, I will be able to put together my lesson with the help of the students. Thanks to the “cloud” (containing quizzes, polls, photos,…) displayed on the “virtual wall”, he will be able to assess their knowledge and put together a lesson adapted to their expectations. Besides Mr Braconnot (Klaxoon reference person), 2 other school lecturers are experimenting with this new teaching approach at the start of the term: Mathieu la Rochette and Sébastien Mehlen.
23 November 2016
