Signal Processing and Machine Learning using the Reflections Echolocation App
Studies show that students taught with the use of technology gained knowledge and developed a more positive attitude towards the subject’s content when compared to students taught by a traditional method.
In response to this trend, mobile applications (apps) are being developed to customize the learning experiences of students. In order to test this idea, a lecture was given in Clarkson University's Signals
and Systems class where students were asked to take a pre and post quiz. The post quiz was administered after students had received the lecture and gone through several exercises. The exercises were performed on mobile
Android devices and were designed to reinforce the concepts taught in the lecture. The bar graph below depicts the performance of the students and their improvement after receiving the lecture.
Students were asked to make an assessment of the effectiveness on learning for the lecture and Reflections App. Their responses were to three statements,
in which they answered on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree):
1. The lecture was helpful in teaching the aforementioned concepts
2. The exercises were helpful in reinforcing the concepts from the lecture.
3. The Reflections app was useful, and easy to use.
Their responses were recorded and represented by the pie charts below:
As can be seen from the graphs, students found the lecture coupled with the exercises to be an effective learning tool. This indicates that using mobile devices
in the classroom may be an effective way to improve learning inside the classroom. These figures, as well as a full analsysis of the methods and results can be found
in the paper published at the International Conference on Acoustics,
Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2017.