Increasing interactivity in blended classrooms through a cutting-edge mobile learning system

Chinese classrooms, whether on school grounds or online, have long suffered from a lack of interactivity. Many online classes simply provide recorded lectures to which students listen after downloading. This format only reinforces the negative effects of passive non-participatory learning. At the e-Learning Lab of Shanghai Jiaotong University researchers and developers actively seek technologic interventions that can greatly increase interactivity in blended classes. They developed a cutting-edge mobile learning system that can deliver live broadcast of real-time classroom teaching to online students with mobile devices. Their system allows students to customise means of contentreception, based on when and where the students are tuning in to the broadcast. The system also supports short text messaging and instant polls. Through these venues, students can ask questions and make suggestions in real time, and the instructor can address them immediately. Here we describe this system in detail, and also report results from a test implementation of the system with a blended classroom of 1000 students (250 campus and 750 online).