Smartphone + Teaching: Delivery of an Undergraduate Surveying Course Using Rain Classroom

Abstract

Traditional teaching methods using a blackboard, PowerPoint presentations and resources available through the Internet still play a leading role in university education. The popularity of smartphones and the use of We-Media and other information communication technologies have introduced the possibility of new teaching methods. This new technology combined with a constant endeavor at institutions of higher education to find more efficient teaching and learning tools brings us to a new teaching mode named "smartphone+". This represents an integration of traditional teaching tools and smartphones and can be realized using currently-available smartphone-based APPs. A practical application of the smartphone+ teaching mode has been implemented using the Rain Classroom APP in a surveying course for undergraduates majoring in Geomatics at Lanzhou Jiaotong University. The experiment has shown that the Rain Classroom-based smartphone+ teaching mode is an efficient method of conveying subject matter and is a valuable supplement to traditional teaching modes. It has a number of advantages over traditional teaching methods including online quizzes and tests, real time assessments, fast interaction, before-class preview and after-class online assessments.