A Natural UI for Polling Students in a Classroom

One of the biggest challenges facing teachers in a classroom is to gauge whether students are keeping up with the lesson. This challenge is especially acute in distance-education programs, because of the physical separation between students and teachers. This project delivers a new, low-cost technique for instantly polling students in the classroom. The approach enables teachers to ask a multiple-choice question to the class. Students respond by holding up a sheet of paper, which has a printed code, similar to a QR code, which encodes their answers, as well as their student IDs. A webcam automatically recognizes the response and using computer vision technology aggregates the responses for immediate evaluation by the teacher. Initial trials in schools in Bangalore, India show the system is as accurate as a written test, as fast as a show of hands, and is at least 10 times cheaper than alternative electronic solutions.