A Mouse on Each Desk: A Method for Supporting Unison Response during Remote Teaching

We introduce a real-time, remote education system that uses Single-Display Groupware in a classroom to support students to participate actively while sitting at their desks. The interaction design is based on the literature and an observation made of rural Chinese classrooms: the importance of unison response. Based on this, we designed a set of techniques for the students to interact with the teacher. We conducted a pilot study using the system with its intended users and found that the students easily learned to use the unison response feature and that the teacher appropriated the techniques so as to increase the student’s awareness of her attention. Author Keywords Remote collaboration, distance learning, rural computing, developing regions, education, single-display groupware. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: Use