Research Summary: Characterizing Questioning Patterns and Student Engagement Through Contextual Analysis of Real-Time Classroom Interactions

This research explores a novel approach to analyzing real-time classroom polling data, moving beyond simple correctness scores to contextualize responses within lecture transcripts. The study aims to determine how a poll's instructional function and its answer can be understood by integrating it with the broader lecture content, thereby characterizing questioning patterns and student engagement.

Why it matters

Understanding the nuanced function of real-time polling in educational settings can significantly improve pedagogical strategies and the effectiveness of instructional delivery. This approach allows for a deeper analysis of student-teacher interactions and engagement, moving beyond superficial metrics to derive actionable insights for curriculum design and teaching methodologies.

Key insights

• Traditional real-time classroom polling data is often interpreted narrowly, focusing on correctness or participation numbers.
• The instructional function of a poll, especially for formats like True/False, can vary significantly (e.g., testing recall, checking comprehension, directing attention) even with the same format.
• The study proposes to determine a poll's answer and instructional function by cross-referencing it with its lecture transcript.
• Research questions include identifying cognitive levels from Bloom's Taxonomy and instructional-function clusters within the corpus, and examining the relationship between student engagement and answering correctly.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38907