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article review: using podcasts and tablet pcs in computer science
posted Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Kurtz et al., (2007) in ACMSE March 2007, pg 484-489.
I'm going to focus on the tablet PC aspect as the use of tablet pcs in higher education is the topic of under discussion at the WEET-HE meeting this afternoon (West of England e-Learning Teams in HE).
The authors report on a programme which had been re-structured. They replaced the didatic lectures with video podcasts which the student need to watch before attending the small group problem solving classes.
In these problem classes the students were divided into groups of 4. Each group had a tablet pc. These were connected to the wireless network, and they used classroom presenter and microsoft onenote to share and work collaboratively.
A method commonly adopted in the face to face sessions was for the lecturer to provide a presentational slide which included some leading questions. The the groups would need to discuss and annotate these slides (using the pen option with tablet pc). After which they then shared these with the lecturer. The lecturer would then select one to discuss in more length as a context for further discussions.
They also used onenote in a very interesting way - I don't know enough about onenote to see if this is really obvious. It sounds like it was used as a wiki. They all shared a document, where each group was assigned a page or group of pages. Then they'd create and annotate diagrams and sketches on the tablet pc and share within this one document.
They would also use Camtasia on the tablet pc's for when the students worked through the solutions. This would capture the visuals and the audio. This was then made available to all students as a set of podcasts.
They suggested that overall the use of tablet pcs to help facilitate a shift to collaborative problem solving was a great help. Infact, they have now doubled the number so studnets can work in pairs.
A few thoughts I had while reading this included;
yes, I like the idea. I think it would work really well in most disciplines. I'd like to bring this approach into some of the one of workshops that we run. I'd imagine that it would be very liberating. For instance, there is no reason why we'd need to be in pc labs. However, I wonder just how easy it is to master the tablet pc in pen mode so that this apporach would be effective. This is opposed to getting stuck on a technology barrier.
Also, I'm not sure that this would scale particularly well. Therefore, it would be very interesting to see how it works when students work in pairs as opposed to groups of 4. I'm thinking that so much learning will be going on within the gropups that reducing the size might dilute the learning experience. Also, this ey is a lot more material that has to be managed by the lecturer and students. Perhaps this is a case when "fewer is better".
They make reference to another article which looks interesting;
B. Simon, R. Anderson, C. Hoyer, J.Su, Preliminary expereinces with a tablet pc based system to support active learning in computer science courses, ITICSE 2004, pp 213-217.
I'm going to focus on the tablet PC aspect as the use of tablet pcs in higher education is the topic of under discussion at the WEET-HE meeting this afternoon (West of England e-Learning Teams in HE).
The authors report on a programme which had been re-structured. They replaced the didatic lectures with video podcasts which the student need to watch before attending the small group problem solving classes.
In these problem classes the students were divided into groups of 4. Each group had a tablet pc. These were connected to the wireless network, and they used classroom presenter and microsoft onenote to share and work collaboratively.
A method commonly adopted in the face to face sessions was for the lecturer to provide a presentational slide which included some leading questions. The the groups would need to discuss and annotate these slides (using the pen option with tablet pc). After which they then shared these with the lecturer. The lecturer would then select one to discuss in more length as a context for further discussions.
They also used onenote in a very interesting way - I don't know enough about onenote to see if this is really obvious. It sounds like it was used as a wiki. They all shared a document, where each group was assigned a page or group of pages. Then they'd create and annotate diagrams and sketches on the tablet pc and share within this one document.
They would also use Camtasia on the tablet pc's for when the students worked through the solutions. This would capture the visuals and the audio. This was then made available to all students as a set of podcasts.
They suggested that overall the use of tablet pcs to help facilitate a shift to collaborative problem solving was a great help. Infact, they have now doubled the number so studnets can work in pairs.
A few thoughts I had while reading this included;
yes, I like the idea. I think it would work really well in most disciplines. I'd like to bring this approach into some of the one of workshops that we run. I'd imagine that it would be very liberating. For instance, there is no reason why we'd need to be in pc labs. However, I wonder just how easy it is to master the tablet pc in pen mode so that this apporach would be effective. This is opposed to getting stuck on a technology barrier.
Also, I'm not sure that this would scale particularly well. Therefore, it would be very interesting to see how it works when students work in pairs as opposed to groups of 4. I'm thinking that so much learning will be going on within the gropups that reducing the size might dilute the learning experience. Also, this ey is a lot more material that has to be managed by the lecturer and students. Perhaps this is a case when "fewer is better".
They make reference to another article which looks interesting;
B. Simon, R. Anderson, C. Hoyer, J.Su, Preliminary expereinces with a tablet pc based system to support active learning in computer science courses, ITICSE 2004, pp 213-217.
please leave comments (1)
1. Andrew Link left...
Tuesday, 1 July 2008 1:12 pm :: http://www.selinks.com/
I still don't understand the purpose of using podcasts. I can't watch those
stupid programs on TV and why should I have in my computer or iPod for
example.