Students at work with tablets What is the focus of your investigation? This project set out to examine the potential of new Tablet PC technology for the enhancement of the student learning experience in an engineering capstone design course. Student design teams were provided with Tablet PCs with the requirement that they use their tablets as electronic design notebooks to replace their conventional hardcopy design notebooks. Students were also encouraged to use the tablets in their other courses.

Sample page from shared e-design notebook What resources / references have you found helpful? [1] Wu, C. (2006) Take a Tablet, ASEE Prism, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 42-45. [2] Slocum, A.H. and Willoughby, P.J. (2005) The MIT iCampus RobotWorld Project: The Peer Review Process and Tablet PC Experiences, 1st Ann. CDIO Conf., Kingston, Ontario, July 7 to 8.

Sample result from student survey What results have emerged? The following specific benefits were observed: - better recording of design discussions, decisions and changes during team meetings - more engineering analysis as the design evolved during the course of the term - better recording and sharing of minutes for meetings and communications A formal participant survey was conducted at the end of the course and the key results can be summarized as follows: 1) Majority of students 'strongly agreed' that the Tablet PC based electronic design notebook is more effective than a hardcopy design notebook 2) All students would be willing to pay a premium for a Tablet PC if they were in the market for a new computer, with the premium ranging from $125 to $500 (on a $1,500 computer) 3) Students were 'neutral' on the question of whether a Tablet PC accelerates idea generation and design analysis during team brainstorming 4) It was unanimous that the students 'strongly agreed' or 'agreed' that a Tablet PC encourages students to sketch, to both capture and share design ideas 5) It was almost unanimous that the students 'strongly agreed' or 'agreed' that a Tablet PC promotes better record keeping , for the team design notebook In the sixth question, the students were asked to comment on the manner in which the tablets should be used during the next offering of the courses. The students supported the scenario where the tablets were assigned on a team basis (every member with a tablet). They felt that handing out the tablets on an individual basis would significantly degrade their effectiveness

What was your approach and/or what evidence have you gathered? Four teams of four students each were provided with tablets with the requirement that they use the tablets as a shared design notebook, as well as use their wireless capability to communicate ideas and brainstorm during face to face team meetings. Feedback from students and supervisors was gathered via surveys and direct discussion.

Sample FEA result with translated notes, page taken from an e-design notebook

Application of tablet to ergonomics assigment, page taken from e-design notebook Examples of student work Three examples of student work are given. The first example is a sample page from a shared e-design notebook shared by four students, where each student was identified by a colour. The second example from a student's notebook gives an FEA result where the student appended notes from a meeting. The third example is shows how the tablet PC was used to highlight the ergonomic capacity of a chair.