UAE Educational IT Challenge

Enhancing Class Room Interaction with Tablet PC’s

Project Description: The goal of this project is to enhance the classroom interaction using Tablet PC based software Classroom Presenter and Adaptive Book.

About Tablet PC’s

Tablet PC is a fully functioning PC running Windows XP Professional operating system - Tablet PC Edition. It will run all existing windows applications, but on top of this has greatly enhanced functionality.

Some Examples of the Use of Tablet PC in Education:

Using Journal Notes Writer (part of the standard tablet PC software package)

	Use the graph paper template to draw graphs which can easy be rubbed out and modified without the need to start again.
	Print a diagram to the background. Labels can be added in handwriting.
	In class exams, quizzes and projects. These can be downloaded in any format, printed to the Journal and then completed in ‘digital ink’. They can also be marked in a different color ‘digital ink’.
	Correcting Text. Words can easily be rubbed out and corrected in a different color ‘digital ink’.
	Handwritten notes can be taken during a lesson and then converted to typed text for presentation in a word processor at a later time.
	Matching exercises. Link words or diagrams in two columns by drawing arrows.

As a substitute for an interactive whiteboard.

Annotating teaching notes and distributing them electronically.

Instant access to the Internet via built-in wireless connectivity.

Highly portable learning devices which can easily be transported home and extend learning out of school hours.

To improve handwriting. The handwriting recognition is excellent and for most children if the computer does not recognize their handwriting, they improve it.

To improve concentration. The students tend to focus in on to the tablet in an intense way. This mitigates against sharing work with their peers but does help concentration.

To improve motivation.

Brainstorming/Mind Mapping.

In addition to enhanced features stated above, Tablet PC platform provides a unique opportunity to create discipline specific “magic paper” applications. For example, a student can draw a physical system on “physics magic paper”, animate and see how the system behaves according to the Newtonian laws of Physics [1]. Another potential application is a tool where students can draw a flow chart and ask the system to automatically generate source code. PRAGMA Group [2] at CMU and many others [3] are studying the potential applications of Tablet PC in education.

About Adaptive Book

Adaptive Book [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab] with its research base at CMU, is an interactive application designed to enhance student learning experience. Adaptive Book[AB] has a code base in C# and runs under Microsoft .net environment. AB is a thin client program developed by TextCentric [4] that can import any structured content (eg textbook) packaged created according to IMS/SCORM standards[5]. The content is then displayed based on a table of content (TOC) with multiple navigation and search capabilities. Furthermore, AB tool set allows students to create markups (using highlighted sections, ink annotations, sticky notes, web/file links), label, and share them with others. Each markup is labeled with metadata for quick search and find. Furthermore, markups generated as a response to a specific assignment can be compared to a reference or expert markup to understand learning gaps.

Adaptive Book Pilots

AB had been piloted at many institutions including CMU, San Jose State University, Ohio University and Ellis School among many others. In addition, AB commercial version is used by thousands of college students [http://admin.wadsworth.com/resource_uploads/static_resources/0534409156/1052/]

Adaptive Book projects are cited in media [http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_332353.html ] as well as in Industry websites [http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/SJSU_hp_G.pdf ]

Adaptive Book Research Findings

The goal of the Adaptive Book project is to create an easy to use environment for content interaction, collaboration, content archival and analysis. AB has a research base at Carnegie Mellon University in Human Computer Interaction(usability) and Data Mining (adaptability). Based on history of user interactions, AB presents the best markup or content cluster as a result of a query. At Ellis and CMU pilots, student markups were compared to expert markups to understand learning gaps. In 64% of the cases, AB analysis tools correctly predicted the students with learning difficulties. More data is available from AB website at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab

About Presenter

Classroom Presenter is a distributed presentation system design for the Tablet PC by University of Washington in collaboration with Microsoft research. As a distributed system, the synchronized versions of the presentation are shared across multiple machines. The Tablet PC is used as the presentation device because of the high quality ink that it provides. A basic goal of Classroom Presenter is to provide an integration of computer generated slides and ink in a manner that allows instructors flexibility in delivery and interaction with the audience. Classroom Presenter has been used in a range of scenarios including distance education and in-class instruction. In the distance scenarios the instructor has lectured from a tablet pc which was connected to computer in the remote room which displayed the slides and writing. In the in-class usage, the instructor uses a tablet pc which is connected to another machine which is driving the data projector. In the future, we will develop greater facilities for interacting with student devices in the classroom.

[http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/]

The Study

The use of Tablet PC at CMU-Q significantly enhanced the student experience. We usedTablet PC’s in 15-211, a required course for all computer science majors. In this study we used the Tablet PC as a classroom teaching and discussion tool [Presenter] as well as a student online textbook and collaborative tool[Adaptive Book]. All lectures were delivered using Tablet PC and students were able to download and review PowerPoint lecture notes before coming to class. In class, students are able to annotate and personalize their PowerPoint lecture based on classroom presentation. Presenter software was used to have in-class discussions on various topics where students were able to annotate and display their ideas to the rest of the class, without leaving their seats. Presenter software, a joint project between Microsoft and University of Washington, has been used by at least 100 universities in US.

Major part of the study involved the use of Adaptive Book software that allows students to download the online textbook, annotate and share their annotations with other students and instructor. Students were able to search the book, and find relevant information for their studies. Each assignment in this course required students to create a markup to support their answers. A markup consists of highlighted sections, ink annotations, web and file links has proven to be an accurate indication of their understanding of the material relevant to the assignment. Designed based on HCI research at CMU, AB has a user friendly interface that encourages students to record their interactions online. These interactions can be labeled as public, private or group for various access authorizations. 15-211 is a challenging course (often called the gatekeeper course in CS) that requires students to master advanced data structures and algorithms concepts and applies them to their programming assignments. This is often a very difficult task for students with just two semesters of programming. There seems to be a big gap between student understanding of concepts and their application. One of the major advantages of the Tablet PC is its ability to allow students to express their thoughts as sketches, share and discuss them with others. Although course management systems such as Blackboard provide discussion forums, they lack the interactive tools necessary to make discussions more effective. Adaptive Book with its interactive tool set and collaborative ink sketch pad allows students to discuss concepts and applications before coding the program. Each assignment in this course will require students to create markups to support their ideas, share and discuss them with others. We believe students benefited greatly, since they had a clear visual understanding of program modularity, required classes and their interactions. Furthermore, students created and discussed these markups in the context of textbook material. For example, student were able to highlight a textbook section and link that to an ink sketch that further clarifies the text discussion. These markups were labeled and stored in a searchable database. Each markup can be retrieved, modified and save for group discussions. We also created a collaborative network of students from CMU’s Pittsburgh and Qatar campuses, who can share and discuss their annotations.

Benefits to CMU- Qatar Students

We believed using innovative technologies such as Tablet PC’s and Adaptive Book will significantly enhanced the interactive nature of the courses delivered at CMU-Q. Tablet PC and Adaptive Book provided the perfect environment for collaboration among CMU-Q students and students who are taking the same course at other universities, especially at CMU. Adaptive Book Markup Repository provided access to interactive markups created by students from all over the world. Furthermore, CMU-Q students had access to many electronic books in computer science through the AB system. Major publishers such as Addison Wesley, Key Press, O’Reilley, Thompson/Brooks Cole and Wiley have already ported some of their text books into Adaptive Book and we expect that Qatar students will benefit greatly by having access to a larger collection of interactive textbooks online.

Project Evaluation

An important part of this project was the assessment component. We measured the effectiveness of Tablet PC hardware, Adaptive Book and Presenter software, and new pedagogical approaches employed in this course. We used a survey designed by CMU’s Eberly Center for Teaching and Learning [6] to measure the student attitude towards tablet PC’s and associated software tools such as Adaptive Book and Presenter and how they will affect learning at CMU-Q campus. Each online discussion was tracked to understand concepts that need further clarification. Using Adaptive Book markup analysis tools, we compared student markups to an expert or reference markup. Markup comparison is done based on various text and image mining techniques. In previous pilots, we have been able to accurately identify students who are having trouble with the assignment.