iRespond: iPhone/iPad/iPod touch as interactive personal response system

个人反应系统正迅速成为许多大学化学课程中不可或缺的形成性评估工具。 通过使用此类设备，学生可以深入了解教师认为重要的技能，同时教师可以收集有关学生掌握这些技能的情况的反馈。 然而，在化学等图形密集型学科中，它们的使用受到当前设备提供的输入选项的严重限制。 通常很难将图形和结构创建任务提炼成可以用短数字串或多项选择来回答的问题。 iRespond 系统正在解决这一关键的形成性评估需求。 使用 Apple iPad、iPhone 和 iPod Touch 的创新触摸界面，学生可以用手指作为输入设备来绘制图表和结构，以回答教师提出的问题。 与传统的个人响应系统类似，答案会被整理并以图形方式显示给教师，教师可以根据需要修改指令。 正在开发的这套工具具有广泛的吸引力，因为教师努力通过扩大向学生提出的问题类型来提高学生对化学的理解。 iRespond 的问题创建系统为用户提供了一种创建问题的便捷方法，这些问题经过定制，以满足学生的需求，而在线存储库则为用户提供了对其他人开发的问题的不断扩大的信息交换所的访问权限。由于这种固有的灵活性，iRespond 可以轻松地应用于其他科学、工程或数学课程。

Personal response systems are quickly becoming indispensable formative assessment tools in many college-level chemistry courses. By using such devices, students are provided with invaluable insights into the skills perceived by the instructor as important, while concurrently, the instructor can gather feedback as to how well students have mastered those skills. In graphically intensive subjects such as chemistry, however, their use is severely limited by the input options afforded by current devices. It is often difficult to distill graphing and structure creation tasks into questions that can be answered with short strings of numbers or via multiple choice. The iRespond system is addressing this critical formative assessment need. Using the innovative touch interface of Apple's iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, students are drawing graphs and structures using their fingers as input devices in response to questions provided by the instructor. Similar to traditional personal response systems, the answers are being collated and displayed graphically for the instructor who can modify instruction as needed. The suite of tools being developed has broad appeal as instructors strive to improve their students' understanding of chemistry by expanding the types of questions they can ask of their students. iRespond's question creation system is providing users with a convenient method of creating questions that have been custom-tailored to meet the needs of their students and the online repository is providing users access to an ever-expanding clearinghouse of questions developed by others. Because of this inherent flexibility, iRespond can easily be adapted for use in other science, engineering, or mathematics courses.