Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Tablet PC’s in Classroom and Distance Education Richard Anderson Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Washington

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Educational Technology …in the winter of 1813 & '14 … I attended a mathematical school kept in Boston…On entering his room, we were struck at the appearance of an ample Black Board suspended on the wall, with lumps of chalk on a ledge below, and cloths hanging at either side. I had never heard of such a thing before. [Samuel J. May, 1855]

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office UW Educational Technology and CS Education Projects Professional Masters’ Program Tutored Video Instruction Program Microsoft Research Distributed Classroom Project ConferenceXP Classroom Presenter

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office ConferenceXP Internet based distributed classroom UW Professional Masters Program Classes between UW and Microsoft since 1997 Used ConferenceXP Spring 2002 and Spring 2003

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Spring 2002 Experience Microsoft Faculty Summit Talk

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Spring 2002 Exprience

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office What we hoped to achieve Increased interaction between sites Ability of remote students to interact with the instructor Ability of instructor to engage remote students Student interaction across sites No degradation of experience of local students No System Administrator

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office What we hoped to achieve Increased interaction between sites Ability of remote students to interact with the instructor Ability of instructor to engage remote students Student interaction across sites No degradation of experience of local students No System Administrator

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office What went wrong Technology and systems failures High cost of interruptions Loss of trust Room configuration issues Lack of control of lecture room Production quality

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Spring 2003 Experience Microsoft Faculty Summit Talk

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office In 2003… Applied resources to the problem Improved classroom equipment (>$75k) Better Audio & Video Equipment Better room logistics (lighting, layout) Direct control over both classrooms More people at University of Washington Improved software Classroom Presenter with Tablet PCs Updated to ConferenceXP RP 2.3

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Classroom Presenter Initial problem Develop a distributed presentation space for use in a distance learning class Later Many of the same issues / challenges in large lecture classroom

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Background studies Studied UW CSE PMP Interviews, Surveys, Observations Greatest pain in distance course Presentation environment “PowerPoint is a pain for the same reason it’s a pain in a non-distance course, the slides impose a rigid structure on the lecture and make it more difficult to adjust to the interactions that occur during it.” “PowerPoint sucks the life out of a class.”

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Important features Wireless Integration of High Quality Ink and Slides Multiple views “Performance UI”

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Large lecture classes Challenges Maintaining attention Communication Feedback from students Flexibility in presentation materials Conducting activities in class

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Classroom Deployments Since summer 2002, it has been used in about 25 CSE courses Intro programming courses to masters’ courses Used at UVa and University of San Diego starting spring 2003.

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Results Observation, instructor comments, some system logging Positive reception from instructors Sustained use of writing through full term Wide range of use Highlighting / Attention Derivations Recording comments Diagrams

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Positive reception from instructors and students Positive comments and repeat use by instructors Student surveys Student comparison vs. PowerPoint lessno changemore Attention to lecture 4%39%57% Understanding of lecture 2%52%46%

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Instructor innovations and suggestions Taking tablet to the audience Elaborate preparation of instructor notes on second deck of slides Improved navigation (flyout from thumbnails) Collective brainstorming

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Inking Study In progress Careful study of recorded lectures to look at instructors use of ink Comparison of the class taught with and without ink Preliminary results A substantial amount of inking is ephemeral Simplicity of UI is critical Unexpected usage patterns

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Classroom Feedback System Student feedback does not scale Encourage participation Ease of expression If the method does scale, how does the instructor make sense of it

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Design choices Low attention requirements Embed in context of the slide Slides are the mediating artifact Fixed feedback Avoid having to compose questions Instructor control of feedback Example, More Information, Got It Slow Down, Question, Explain, Cool Topic

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Experiment Roughly 12 students given laptops to use in class 2 week deployment in CSE weeks no intervention 2 weeks Tablet PC 2 weeks Tablet PC + feedback system Extensive observations, logging, surveys, interviews

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Results Mixed results Classroom culture not what we had expected Instructor goals different than expected Interactions did increase Pre CFS 2.4 (spoken) episodes per class With CFS 2.6 (spoken) episodes per class 14.8 (feedback) episodes per class 5.0 (feedback – "Got it") episodes per class

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Student inking support Instructor broadcast slide Student inks slide and submits to instructor Instructor selects slides for public display Classroom Exercise Scenario

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Trace the path of Hurricane Isabel

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Five day forecast (9-15)

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Goals of class exercises Participation Discussion Active learning Student contribution and involvement Interaction Spontaneity

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Structured Interaction Presentations Assume students have wireless devices Build interactive activities into lecture Computer support to overcome logistical barriers

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Why Computer Support? Facilitate execution Unify design Enforce polices

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Why Structure? Attain broader participation and more input Achieve specific goals Spread cognitive effort over planning time Mediate classroom activity Share activities across instructors and across terms

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Example: America Before Columbus [Cross and Angelo] 1. How many people lived in North America in 1491? 2. How many years had they been there by 1491? 3. What significant achievements had they made in that time?

Your Impressions of America Before Columbus 1. About how many people lived in North America in 1491? 2. About how many years had they been on this continent by 1491? 3. What significant achievements had they made in that time?

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office 1. About how many people lived in North America in 1491? 2. About how many years had they been on this continent by 1491? 3. What significant achievements had they made in that time? Your Impressions of America Before Columbus % completed

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office How many people? FromTo4002,500, ,000100,0001,000,00010,000,000

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office “Solving” Natural Language Problem: handling free text responses in class is impractical Solution: “distributed student computation” allows rapid, in-class turnaround can be pedagogically sound

Significant Achievements Get together with your neighbor and: rate the significance of each achievement note if an achievement repeats an earlier one

Significant Achievements Get together with your neighbor and: rate the significance of each achievement note if an achievement repeats an earlier one

Significant achievements

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office Acknowledgements Microsoft Research Jay Beavers, Chris Moffatt, Todd Needham, Randy Hinrichs University of Washington Steve Wolfman, Tammy VanDeGrift, Ken Yasuhara, Crystal Hoyer, Jonathan Su, Shengli Zhou, Ian Li Other Universities Ruth Anderson (UVa), Beth Simon (USD)

Sept 18, 2003Naval Oceanographic Office For more information