Project Description:
University of Maryland teachers and TAs, especially ones with classes of hundreds of students, are witnessing low student engagement: students are not showing up to class, and when they do, they rarely participate– for example, they do not raise their hand to ask or answer a question. We have created EngageCS, a robust, secure, and user-friendly website for teachers to track and analyze student engagement, measured by attendance and participation. To take attendance with maximum accuracy, EngageCS has students share their device location to prove their attendance. This location sharing is optional, and present students can notify their instructor to manually log their attendance. To record participation, students report their name or an assigned ID after asking or answering a question. Our system then aggregates and visualizes this engagement data alongside course curriculum and grade data, to help instructors make informed decisions on how to lead their class. For example, through our data analytics page, they can observe which topics had the most questions or absences, and appropriately review them to prevent poor class performance. We have demoed EngageCS in several classes for our client, a UMD instructor, and provided this valuable data to help his class succeed.
