John Fons works with students Anne Lindstrom and Jodi Honea while taking the tablets and software for a test drive. "I have only begun to scratch the surface of the tablet's role in class and the more I learn, the more excited I am about future projects".... John Fons "If I register in your class next semester, do I get to use the tablet computers again?"... Question from a student near the completion of their first semester physics course.

Rationale Our main objective for the collective project is to prepare a mobile ink-based technology infrastructure on our campus to support student work in science and technology courses. Because of the heavy reliance on symbolic notation, visualization and imagery for concept-buiding, and for design work, we are often frustrated with standard desktop communication tools designed for text-editing and business applications. The mobility aspect of the project facilitates student-student and student-instructor communication in both lecture and lab settings and the ink technology makes this communication easier.

Implementation (pedagogy) Our courses have been delivered via a mix of traditional lectures combined with problem-solving, question-answer, and small group work. In the sciences our teaching technology needs have been largely met with standard out-of-the-box presentation technology, but we've been thrilled to be adapting that technology to incorporate ink-based sketching, sharing within the classroom, and 3D images. The courses that have been mainly affected are chemistry, physics, mathematics, and art/design. Our ideal delivery mode involves support of those traditional classroom techniques (which have worked well), but extend the classroom experience to include doing what we cannot do with our current technology. Some of the additional experiences we can add are: ink- and annotation capabilities are fully supportable with a Tablet PC. in a much faster alternative to "going to the board" the instructor can capture student notes/responses on images shared in the room and can discuss student work. students can ALL manipulate 3D images to see features they wish to see rather than be satisfied with the manipulations of their instructor on the screen in the front. students and faculty can data-share faster with improved in-class computer communication, enabling us to do labs that we could not do easily (or at all) before. students and faculty can save their annotations to the course instruction and play them back later. students and faculty can share these playbacks with each other. we've added chemistry and physics labs with the tablets since the enhanced mobility they offer is a real strength. Our instructional technology support team is very small and demands are their time are already huge, so the faculty, together with the tech support team helping us with networking and other issues, have largely been doing the implementation and design on our own. It's been especially difficult to run tests for systems and installs. While we were bringin our Tablet PC project online, our tech team was also bringing up our first campus-wide wireless network. The Tablet PC project helped to make our campus competitive to win a national competition for that wireless network. We're learning how to help our students navigate the TWO different networks on campus. Some very helpful resources for us have been: Educause Learning Initiative at http://www.educause.edu/eli (and in particular, their document on mobile technology in higher ed: http://www.educause.edu/MobileLearning/5527) Classroom Presenter Website (for interactive ink-enabled classroom communication) http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/ Center for Technology in Learning: http://ctl.sri.com/index.jsp HP's monthly Technology for Teaching web seminars.

Implementation (technology) The tablet PCs have been very complimentary to our recent HEWAC grant which allowed for wireless access anywhere on campus. The faculty, staff and students have be using the tablet PCs for note taking, report writing, and database development. Lectures have become much more interactive with the inclusion of instant polling and real-time file-sharing software. The mobile technology has allowed for the development of science experiments that are no longer restricted to the laboratory including chemistry experiments measuring arsenic at local parks and physics experiments performed in stairwells, hallways, and parking lots. While some old problems such as policies lagging practice and limited campus technical support still remain, other problems including bandwidth limitations and student training appear to have been recently seen improvements. During the spring of 2005, a non-majors introductory chemistry course used ChemSketch for sketching, symbolic notation and molecular visualization during lecture and discussion sections. This spring semester, the Silicon Chalk classroom recording software will be replaced with Classroom Presenter, freeware from the University of Washington, for many of the same teaching tools in the chemistry and physics courses. The tablets have played an important roll in the laboratory setting as they gather and analyze sensor data using Vernier's LoggerPro and Pasco's DataStudio.

Quick Facts Departments: Chemistry, Physics, Math, and Art Courses Impacted: nine Chemistry, four Physics, one Astronomy course, one Math, and one Art course. # Students Impacted: approximately 240 # Faculty Involved: six This project is funded in part by 2004 and 2005 HP Technology for Teaching grants.

Impact on Student Learning Previously, minimum expectations of students were simply to attend and participate in class, ask questions in and out of class, turn in homework and perform and write reports for labs. While we offered lectures that are engaging and dynamic, much of the learning was still in the form of passing information from instructor to student. With the inclusion of the tablets, we expect that the students will become much more active learners with improved student-student and student-instructor interaction. Students will be strongly encouraged to become increasingly responsible for their own learning and understanding of the material. Our intent is to develop additional group projects and free-form laboratory exercises which require more student input then they or we are used to. During our experience with the tablets, we have run into a number of logistical and technology based hurtles. So far we have been able to overcome many of them and our use of the tablets has become smoother with each successive semester. Since the inclusion of the tablets into the classroom was to improve student learning our main goal has to be focused on them. Engaging students through the addition of new projects and assignments utilizing the tablets would be one indicator of success. Regular interviewing and surveying of students' reactions to the new form of instruction will give us good feedback as to if the tablets are an improvement or hindrance to their education. Improvements for next semester's classes have been based on past experiences, new information and student feedback.

Impact on Teaching We have realized goals in using the tablets for data collection and analysis, proof-of-concept for other science faculty and the establishment of mobile technology support infrastructure at our campus. Future goals and outcomes include successful integration into additional disciplines and development of new laboratory exercises. Additionally, we hope to introduce new student activities for in-class group work utilizing the tablets and lectures and discussions. One outcome would be the formation of stronger and more frequent student-student and student-instructor interaction then is currently possible.

Contact Us Kim Kostka [email protected] (608) 758-6532 Co-PI John Fons [email protected] (608) 758 - 6557

References & Publications Some very helpful resources for us have been: Please visit the Educause Learning Initiative at http://www.educause.edu/eli (and in particular, their document on mobile technology in higher ed: http://www.educause.edu/MobileLearning/5527) For helpful links and monographs for technology in the classroom, the Center for Technology in Learning: http://ctl.sri.com/index.jsp We've found the HP monthly Technology for Teachingweb seminars to be very helpful. The real-time file sharing and editing, Classroom Presenter, can be downloaded from the University of Washington's web site: http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/

This project supported in part by an HP Technology for Teaching grant.