Developing a NFC-equipped smart classroom: Effects on attitudes toward computer science

• We developed a smart classroom system that utilizes near field communication (NFC).
• This study evaluated the effect on students’ attitude toward computer science education.
• The real-time feedback function could be beneficial especially for Asian students.
• The system demonstrated significant positive impacts on students’ learning attitudes.

This study describes a smart classroom system that integrates near field communication (NFC) technology to automate attendance management, locate students, and provide real-time student feedback. The proposed system’s attendance management feature can conserve time and reduce paper-work because students use their NFC-enabled smartphones or NFC smart cards to register their attendance automatically. Also, the system’s student-positioning feature is particularly useful for teaching large classes because teachers typically experience difficulties in both recognizing students and familiarizing themselves with their students’ learning progress. In addition, the real-time feedback function could be beneficial especially for Asian students because they are usually reluctant to express their opinions during class. This study also evaluates the proposed system’s effect on students’ attitude toward science education by applying relevant theories. Our case study of a computer science course shows that the attitudes of students toward computer science generally improved following the implementation of the proposed system. Because more than half of the measures from the aspects of learning computer science at school and importance of computer science are positive and significant, this indicates that students find computer science more interesting, expecting, exciting, beneficial, helpful, and appealing after the using the proposed system.