p-HInT: A Lecture Support System for Improving Large-scale Lectures with Mobile Game Terminals

Abstract

We have developed an interactive education environment called “p-HInT”. A purpose of the p-HInT is improvement of speech style lectures with 200 or more attendees at non-computer classrooms. The most feature of p-HInT is usage of mobile game terminal NINTENDO DS^(R) with Opera browser. Each attendee brings a DS to a lecture. After the attendee log-ins p-HInT system through DS, a teacher can see an attendees' list with sit-down positions. In addition, after the teacher does tests through DS, the teacher can immediately see results of the tests. By using p-HInT system with DSs, because teachers can quickly grasp attendees' understanding levels, the teachers can improve then and there the lecture according to the attendees' understanding levels. In developing p-HInT system, we have novel approaches for assigning access points and tuning access points, reducing communication traffic, and managing session information of clients. As a result of adapting lectures to our regular curriculum, we confirmed that results of essaytype tests in lectures using p-HInT are better than those in normal lectures(by t-test, siginificant level 5% ). Moreover, lecture styles have been improved because of decreasing private talking of students, miscellaneous tasks. In addition, we confirmed that students feel more familiar with a teacher by using a student voice function of the p-HInT even if the number of students is 200 or more.