Teaching for the future with QANDR

Dutch technology SME Noterik's user engagement tool QANDR is being used successfully at MODUL University Vienna to innovate in this semester's Bachelor course on New Media and E-Business Applications. Every week two MU assistant professors, Dr Lyndon Nixon and Dr Irem Önder, are using QANDR in parallel to engage two separate groups in a playful manner, each with around 60 students, by querying them with polls on technology trends for business, asking them to position pointers on illustrations like the Gartner Hype Cycle, or collecting in real time student suggestions using an onscreen Word Cloud. The students make use of their mobile phones, tablets, or laptops to be presented with calls for interaction and respond to them, with results shown real-time on the presentation screen.

“Using QANDR in the lectures has enabled me to more easily engage the students with the material they are learning about, ensuring all participants can be involved in a joint activity and initiating interesting discussions inside the group. Something which previously proved very difficult in a lecture size of 50-60 students.” says Dr. Lyndon Nixon, Assistant Professor New Media Technology at MU.

As a result, the New Media students have the unique opportunity in this semester to make use of and test a new media tool, since QANDR applies the latest Web technologies to enable live control over content in a presentation, which is effectively a set of Web pages. The lecturer also can control their presentation from their mobile phone, pointing, zooming and switching between slides easily using QANDR's remote control interface. It acts as an effective demonstration of how technology can change every aspect of our daily lives, and an example of how technologies are changing the environment businesses operate in and how businesses can successfully evolve to e-businesses, appropriately making use of the latest trends and tools in areas such as social Web, mobile or video.

MODUL University is proud to be pioneering a new approach to university lectures, with the goal to more deeply engage students in the course materials and encourage reflection and discussion. QANDR is a software tool in beta where MODUL is providing valuable insights into its usage in a real world scenario. We look forward together to the new media future of university teaching!

Photo: Dr Lyndon Nixon using QANDR in the lecture, with students positioning their pointers along Gartners Hype Cycle for new technologies.