CyberInteractor ‐ a teaching and research tool

An original computer‐based tool, dubbed CyberInteractor, is described. CyberInteractor is designed to facilitate immediate student feedback to an instructor and to other students in a classroom setting or via the World Wide Web. Feedback is saved in a database for educational research purposes. Students view a question that can include pictures, diagrams, a movie or sound clip, random numbers, and calculations involving the random numbers. After responding, they receive feedback showing how other students in the same class have responded. Newsgroups enable students to explain their reasoning. Instructors can give pre‐tests and post‐tests, and collect the answers and student discussions in files that can be analyzed later, thus facilitating the collection and processing of data from large numbers of students.