SmartCRS

SmartCRS is a peer-to-peer class room response system (CRS) utilizing the WebRTC protocol. It enables lecturers to ask questions to a broad number of students and having their answers visualized in real-time. Additionally, the students can ask questions. Whether the lecturer is notified of a student comment depends on the notification settings. These settings define how many up-votes a student comment requires until a notification for the lecturer is fired.

Only a small number of students is asking questions during a lecture. Stowell et al. found that 66% of the students don’t ask any questions. 17% of the students are responsible for 89% of the questions asked. One of the most often reported reasons why most students don't ask questions is the fear of being regarded as less intelligent by peer students.

A CRS can help a lecturer to get a better idea of how well the students are able to follow the lecture. If there are a larger number of wrong student answers, the lecturer can use this information to actively ask back what is unclear. With SmartCRS students can also ask questions. By allowing other students to up-vote a student question, the lecturer gets a better understanding of how many other students are stuck with the same question. SmartCRS is one of the few CRS that allow the students to ask questions to the lecturer.

CSG student thesis-developed SmartCRS, a peer-to-peer class room response system (CRS) utilizing WebRTC (github repository). The tool can be accessed here, for the student and for the lecturer here.