Barry and I met Joe whilst we were at WIPTE in the states, and it is good to be seeing him again. On the way to the conference this morning, we were walking up the main drive to Monash Uni, and a taxi pulled over – Joe stuck his head out and asked if we knew where to go, but we didn’t. But either did he or his Taxi driver, so he bailed out and walked with us. Fortunately I had downloaded a map of Monash to my Tablet, so whilst we walked I very geekily opened it up, found where were going, and we got to the venue no problems at all. As we arrived, Barry quipped “We wouldn’t of got here today with out a Tablet”!
Anyway, I digress, onto the talk!
Joe mentioned the current world economy and offered the idea that increasing access and quality of education is a major issue that needs to be addressed to improve the economy.
teaching style paper to get – Applications, Reliability and Validity of the Index of Learning Styles – Felder, RM & Spurlin, J.
Students say they are active learners (64%) – they want interaction, collaboration. However faculty are 65% non-active – reflective teachers. They want to lecture; deliver, not interact. also found that 82% students are visual learners, however most teaching is not done with visual in mind – most is verbal/textual. So we need to do things with more active, more visual activities. This is where and why the Virginia Tech Tablet program came from.
When the program started, there was a pedagogical purpose:
- At the start
- Access – any time use (dorms)
- Writing (typing) papers
- in 1996:
- multimedia – images, sounds, video, visualisation
- in 2002
- Notebook/laptop was required
- This meant anyPLACE anytime
- Infrastructure upgrade needed
- in 2006
- Tablets required
- This was to increase engagement inside and outside the classrooms (Joe referenced defence department studies that showed this to be beneficial – these studies are done in a rigorous way and setting)
- To support pedagogical directions (its up to the teacher to DO the pedagogical and engagement)
- The Tablet PC ended up being a catalyst for the change and updating of teaching
Virgina Tech found that there were improved pedagogical practice
- Dynamic presentations (step one for teachers)
- Convert your current practice and update to leverage the capability and electronic ink capabilities
- Students can have the information more easily. But you need to plan for the students to interact with this info and compile/complete/work with this information
- Active participation (step two for teachers)
- Multichoice
- write and draw submissions to the teacher – both anonymously and named… displayed for staff?
- Note-taking (more for students than staff, but facilitated by staff)
- Audio recording in OneNote – replay when hover over inked notes
- Collaboration (more difficult for staff, they are used to a quiet classrooms where students get information)
- It is important that teachers leave that mindset at the door and like and enjoy the commotion and interaction that is collaboration – but this is what students want and need!
All of these are process focussed
Physical structures that we MUST use mean we have to adapt to those environments in a digital sense…
Joe has found that students find OneNote to be more natural than other techniques. Its a lot easier to to search and recall information. They find comprehensive with the notes. We need to teach students how to find the notes they have taken! Synchronised voice recording is very powerful for students during the review phase of their learning.
The Expected outcomes for students:
- Collaboration
- Cooperation
Improvements in teacher efficiency
- Electronic grading
- PDF annotator/word
- Staff found it easier and faster to collect, mark, and return the papers
- There is a tool built at virginia tech called write on – this allows a transparent layer to be used over any computer media software anything! This allows writing over it, and also a punch over. This also captures and exports the whole thing to a video.
Tablet PC with constructivism
| Tablet PC function | New opportunities |
| Electronic notes | active elaboration, integration of concepts, organizations |
| On line collaboration | teamwork, goal setting, tactics and strategies, monitoring |
| Multi-representational modes | textual, symbolic, special, textual representation, comprehension, tactics and strategies, divergent thinking |
| Interactive classroom presentation | |
| Ready access to the internet | |
| GET THE REST FROM THE PHOTO |
Training program
- Staff
Have a faculty development institute – training results in the new technology - not only hardware
- assessment training
- pedagogical training
- Training by vendors
- When new things happen the vendors come in
- Faculty Study Groups
- Lunch meeting groups
- Students
- Student technology council
- freshman tablet PC group
- Provide training for staff
- SWAT
Tablet positives in class
- Resulted in more rapid feedback from the instructor
- Helped students review materials
- Helped students illustrate points made in class with visuals or other materials
- helps make the class more interactive
- helped gather background information on course material courses
Joe gave a couple of website:
www.engineeringpathway.org – tablet PC Community
http://filebox.ece.vt.edu/~jgtront/tabletpc/ – Joe’s webpage
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