Teachers’ Diagnostic Support System (TDSS) : A Socio-Technical Approach Addressing Diversity in the Classroom

Abstract

Dealing with individual differences in the classroom challenges vocational teachers in their daily work. These challenges even start before demanding decisions on instructional strategies and methods have to be made. In order to provide individualized or differentiated forms of instruction, teachers face the problem of assessing student’s individual characteristics (learning needs and prerequisites) and situational states (learning experiences and learning progress). In order to support teachers in gathering and processing complex diagnostic information during class, we have developed a client-server based software prototype running on mobile devices: the Teachers' Diagnostic Support System (TDSS). The poster presentation delineates implications for system requirements drawn from a literature review, describes the implemented system functions, and reports first results of a usability study. As an outlook, the presentation outlines how our system may assist teachers’ daily tasks of diagnosing student learning and taking appropriate instructional measures.