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Bensky, Tom - CSU Quiz: An In-Class Instant Student Feedback System - Page 5
Exchanges: The On-line Journal of Teaching and Learning in the CSU
Computer Equipment and Software
The computers the students use to click in their answers can be just about anything. I needed a portable system because our classrooms are wired for the Internet but are not designed for any permanent computer setup. As shown in Figure 3, my computers are assembled onto a cart that I can easily wheel into any of my classrooms. All I must do is wheel in the computers, plug in the power and Internet cables, and turn on the computers. The computers do nothing except immediately run the Netscape browser when turned on, and I set the Netscape startup page to point directly to the day's quiz.
For my setup, I salvaged two 486-class computers and installed the Linux operating system onto each. I found the Linux operating system ideal because it runs wells on older machines [2]. Windows would work fine also; to take the quiz, the students just need a computer connected to the Internet and equipped with a Web browser.
I would recommend at least one computer system per ten students. To save time and prevent lines from forming in front of computers, I usually break the students up into groups, and only have one person from each group actually click in the group members' individual answers.
Figure 3: An example of a portable test system: two old computers that are set up to run Netscape.
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