1. The Role of Tablet PC in Education
Ananda Gunawardena
Associate teaching Professor
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Merrimack College
05/18/05

2. Talk Outline Introduction Challenges
Use of tablet as a classroom teaching tool
Student view of tablet PC
Tablet Advantage
Lessons learned from pilots
Q & A
Merrimack College
05/18/05

3. Introduction History of Tablet Computing Makers of Tablets
HP, Acer, Toshiba, Motion Computing etc..
Microsoft Commitment
Hardware
Software advances
HP Tablets TC1000, TC1100 and TC4200
TC 1100
TC 4200
Merrimack College
05/18/05

4. Tablet PC Hardware HP Hardware used in CMU and other tablet studies
Distinct advantages
Student behavior changes
Current HP model tc1100
Standard features:10.4-inch screen,3.1 lbs, 1.1Ghz,256MB DDR, bg wireless
Most tablets have Wacom digitizer, pressure sensitive sketching
Merrimack College
05/18/05

5. Challenges
Merrimack College
05/18/05

6. Microsoft Tablet PC Focus Group 04
Many questions need to be answered. Among them are:
What are the ultimate outcomes for computing education?
How does the Tablet PC change the interaction between teacher and student, and how will this impact classroom pedagogy?
How does this new type of interaction affect course content and the computing curriculum?
Are these new pedagogies and strategies applicable to other disciplines?
What are the differences between classes in which only the teacher uses a Tablet PC and classes in which all of the students also use one?
Are there replicable strategies, tools, and techniques that can scale across large numbers of teachers and students?
Merrimack College
05/18/05

7. Problem Statements
Value of Ink and Mobility. We need to establish that software based on digital ink is sufficiently compelling in education to enable wide spread adoption. We must show that ink and mobility provide significant value both to students and to instructors. It is also important to show the technology adoption path—how individual adopters gain value, and then how networking effect when there is broad adoption.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

8. Problem Statements
Research Agenda. Basic note taking and presentation programs have already been successfully deployed. But, there is interesting research to be done that will promote wider deployment by enabling the use of digital ink in the next generation of education software. We need to reexamine in the context of the Tablet PC the good academic research that was conducted in the last 20 years on pen-based computing and collaborative programs. The availability of the Tablet PC platform finally makes it possible to apply this research to actual learning environments and to obtain real assessment data.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

9. Problem Statements
Enabling Technology. Soon, wireless networking will become widely available and easy to use. The price of Tablet PCs will continue to decline—making the price differential between a Tablet PC and a laptop relatively small. Or, adding a digitizer to a laptop will be a low cost option (much the same as adding a network card). The tighter integration of Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition with the Windows operating system is a step in this direction. When more user software becomes available, the demand for and ubiquity of Tablet PCs will increase—producing a snowball effect much like that seen in the early days of PCs.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

10. Long Range Vision
Mobility in Education vision: How does widespread use of mobile devices such as Tablet PCs, in and out of the classroom, impact classroom interaction and pedagogy and positively change the way students and teachers interact?
Merrimack College
05/18/05

11. Long Range Vision
Digital Ink Communication vision: What role does digital ink play in educational software? How is it superior to chalkboard “ink”? Will students’ ability to “produce and share” ink in the classroom positively effect the learning environment? How does it change the way both teachers and students engage in the learning process? Obviously, we believe Tablet PCs (and other pen-based devices) will influence these processes in significant ways.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

12. Teacher Advantages Dynamic Documents – Electronic Books
(CMU, Hope College)
Dynamic Documents – Learning Communities (CMU)
Classroom Presentation ( UW)
Accessibility (LiveNotes UC - Berkeley)
Electronic Classrooms (classroom 2000 Georgia Tech)
Lecture Capture (ActiveCampus project – UCSD)
Merrimack College
05/18/05

13. Teacher Advantages Collaborative Applications Paper Grading
NotePals (Richard Davis, UC Berkeley and James Landay, Univ of Washington)
ReMarkable Texts (Andy VanDam, Brown)
Paper Grading
DUPLEX (Jeff Popyack, Drexel University
Merrimack College
05/18/05

14. Learner Advantages Document Creation Digital Documents
study notes, term papers, and problem sets. Much of this work is collaborative and informal
Digital Documents
archiving, retrieval, analysis, sharing, and conversion to other formats
Ink-Based Document Creation
oneNote, Journal
Sketch-Based Prototyping
quick way of capturing, communicating and refining ideas
Ink Understanding.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

15. Research Challenges Pen-Centric UI What is a Natural UI?
Systems and Network Issues
Domain-Specific Ink Applications
Other Forms of Digital Ink
work on Tabletop groupware is being done (M. Ringel Morris, Stanford)
Merrimack College
05/18/05

16. Tablet PC Pilots Lessons Learned
Merrimack College
05/18/05

17. CMU Tablet PC Pilot Sites
San Jose State University
Business School
The Ellis School
Eighth Grade Geometry
Mt Lebanon High School
Organic Chemistry and Physics
CMU
Computer Science
Grove City College
Large deployment of HP tablets
Merrimack College
05/18/05

18. Use of Tablet as a Teaching Tool
Main Advantages
Use of ink to make class more interactive
Use power point slides with open ended slides
Slow down the pace of the lecture
Convert any document into a windows journal and annotate
Portability
Wireless Advantage
Remote desktop
Merrimack College
05/18/05

19. Use of Tablet as a Teaching Tool
Smart Board vs Tablet
Powerpoint
Can directly annotate
Save (careful here), make extra copies
Windows Journal
Annotate the documents
View multiple pages at a time
Save as annotated document as a pdf (some problems)
Keep the document to less than 10 pages
Demos
CMS
Merrimack College
05/18/05

20. Instructor Comments
“I used it for classroom presentations, primarily using PowerPoint slides, but sometimes taking Word documents, web pages and / or source code, converting them to journal format and marking them up... I then ed these marked up documents to the students for their future reference... “
Merrimack College
05/18/05

21. Instructor Comments
“We had worksheet-style homework assignments, originally web-documents or Word documents that the students converted to journal format and marked up with their answers... They then sent their responses to me via attachments... I opened them on my tablet and marked up their answers, ing the corrected documents back... (I thought this was the most interesting thing I did...) “
Merrimack College
05/18/05

22. Instructor Comments
“I learned too late the value of creating markups of the text and my slides to be distributed to the students as part of the course presentation... What is tricky is getting the students to do a set of mark-ups first, and not just waiting for the instructor's sets... What seemed to work was having the students submit their markups, and then I sent them my set... “
Merrimack College
05/18/05

23. Note Taking 50%-60% took notes in class Note taking is beneficial
Writing is better than typing
Higher participation when open slides are provided
30%-40% referred to instructors annotated notes after class
Most found them to be useful studying for exams
Students reminded me when postings were delayed
Some can annotate so you can almost follow the sequence of annotations
Any annotated slide is better than nothing, however, it is good to be clean if you are planning to save annotations
Merrimack College
05/18/05

24. Student Perceptions
      What are the major advantages (if any) of a Table PC over a regular laptop?
A.    Can annotate professor’s notes directly on the computer.
B.     If you had courses that required a lot of note taking then it might be more useful.
C.    Lighter than a regular laptop – more likely to carry it around
D.    Better battery life
Merrimack College
05/18/05

25. Student Perceptions
       In terms of being a student, did the Tablet make anything easier to do? Did it facilitate your learning in any way?
A.     One found it easier to read on the screen because the position of the screen could be manipulated.
B.     A person reported that her courses had a lot of reading material that was available online, she said it saved her a lot of time and effort to be able to read on the machine rather than have to print everything out.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

26. Student Perceptions
   Did it change the way you participated in class or how you studied?
- Depends on the instructor
- If instructor provided adequate notes well integrated with the homework assignments, Most students did not take notes in class
What about the note taking or drawing capability – is this useful to your learning or work? How many used the tablet feature in CS class or other classes
A.    No one used this feature beyond the initial classes. One tried to use it in math class but it was too much work so he went back to taking notes on paper.
B.     Wasn’t easy (was cumbersome) to integrate drawing with typing
Merrimack College
05/18/05

27. Student Perceptions
What are the disadvantages of a Tablet PC compared to a laptop?
A. The pen is poorly designed.
a. It is too sensitive
b.  Too hard to click
c. Not user friendly
B.     Keyboard is too small – often hit more than one key
C.    The monitor is badly designed
a. The monitor is too small
b. The monitor wobbles (in the up position) when you try to write on it
D.    Lack of a CD player
E.    The one potential advantage – converting handwritten notes to text – didn’t work. The conversion was very inaccurate.
Merrimack College
05/18/05

28. Student Perceptions
How would you redesign the tablet or what features would you have to make it a more useful machine (what would it have to have or do for you to use it as your primary machine?
A.    Redesign Screen (all students)
a. Needs to be bigger
b.      Eyestrain trying to read the monitor
c. Need a locking mechanism so it won’t wobble when you write on it
d.      Screen isn’t well protected
e. Better way to switch from writing to keyboard
B.     Bigger keyboard (all students)
a. The “nub” is too close to the “B”. Would often hit “B” in error
b.      Click vs. space – keyboard too compact
C.    Much better pen (majority of students)
a. Improve the interface
b.      Better erase function
D.    Improved text conversion
E.     More attractive (“it is not a nice looking machine”)
Merrimack College
05/18/05

29. Tablet Advantage
Mobility and Ink
Merrimack College
05/18/05

30. Mobility Easy to carry Connectivity
Many students reported carrying Tablet to Classes
Field Experiments (UC Monterry)
Connectivity
Anytime, anywhere
Merrimack College
05/18/05

31. Specialized Software Classroom Presenter (UW)
Physics Illustrator (MIT)
Early work into what’s possible with Tablet
3D Journal (Cornell)
3d sketching and manipulation
Adaptive Book (CMU)
Textbook content and markup management system
Pragma (CMU)
Development of generic set of sketch recognizers
Merrimack College
05/18/05

32. Classroom Presenter Developed at University of Washington
goal of the classroom presenter project has been to support the integration of student devices with the instructional materials
students use tablet pcs and contribute work for the instructor to use in classwide discussion
bigger impact in the classroom than anticipated, and the ability for the students to use digital ink on the Tablet PC greatly expands what is possible
Runs under MS Conference XP
Merrimack College
05/18/05

33. Physics Illustrator (MIT)
Merrimack College
05/18/05

34. 3D Journal (Cornell)
Merrimack College
05/18/05

35. Adaptive Book
Merrimack College
05/18/05

36. User Reaction to Hardware
Many tablets do not have optical drives (weight/convenience)
Users able to use pen; most choose to use keyboard
Many users find digital ink somewhat inconvenient
Battery life in some models needs improvement
Merrimack College
05/18/05

37. Tablet PC Software Runs all Windows XP software
Lack of specialized applications causes users to use tablet as if it were a laptop
True potential for software unknown, software must be domain specific
Building specialized applications requires flexible recognizer
Merrimack College
05/18/05

38. Microsoft Recognizer
Microsoft implemented recognizer, works great for numbers, letters
Merrimack College
05/18/05

39. General Recognizer
Ability to dynamically recognize sketches on the tablet pc is a difficult problem
One of the approaches to the problem is using Discrete Fourier Transforms
Merrimack College
05/18/05

40. Recognizer Application
An example application which would take user input as a sketch
of a data structures, such as a linked list, and generate code
Application
Recognizer
Points
Bayesian
Algorithm
DFT
Recognizer Output
Customizable
Panel DB
Merrimack College
05/18/05

41. Lessons Learned from Pilots
Despite all the advantages of tablet PC, still a long way to go- hardware and software improvements
Students like the device, but don’t (yet) see the need to spend extra $400-$500 for a tablet PC
Students love the portability and wireless access
Better battery life (at least 8 hrs) and power saving options (apple)
Great teaching tool – annotate and archive lectures – go back to them anytime
Merrimack College
05/18/05

42. Tablet Stories/Resources
Merrimack College
05/18/05