No More Chalk on My Fingers; No More Ink on My Nose
Nancy G. Moose
Dakota State University
Madison, SD 57042
Abstract: The move to requiring all freshman and sophomore students to lease a Gateway tablet M275 and to require a change in the general education curriculum to make use of the tablet was well as the migration to WebCT provided faculty at Dakota State University the chance to once again look at their courses and to determine how to implement those changes to improve student learning. Because DSU faculty often been able to move forward with new technology, the challenge was not out of the ordinary and most of us have happily adapted and discovered that this new tablet technology and wireless atmosphere has been a positive change. We’re still working on assessing the impact, but the preliminary reaction has been optimistic.
In 1984 Dakota State University underwent a dramatic mission change: to incorporate the use of technology into all aspects of the curriculum. Over the years, DSU has embraced that mission and has delved into technology across the curriculum. On-line courses and programs have been developed; digital networks to provide classes at a distance have been implemented; workshops in using technology, in teaching technology, in teaching with technology have been presented; and a zeal for looking ahead for new ways to use technology to enhance teaching and curriculum continues to grow.
As part of that zeal, Dakota State University implemented what we call the Wireless Mobile Computing Initiative (WMCI) which mandates that all freshmen and sophomores lease a Gateway M275 tablet computer: a laptop with handwriting recognition software, voice recognition software, and a conventional keyboard and touch pad. The initiative also included that all general education courses would implement the M275 tablet (also called a “clam shell”) appropriately. Because some general education courses have students other than freshmen and sophomores, the library rents tablets to those who may need one for a particular course. To date Dakota State has over 1100 tablets being used by faculty and being leased to students on this campus of about 1500 students.
To increase the effectiveness of the tablet, the university has installed wireless access to the Internet across the campus. Classroom buildings, the student union, the library, the campus greens all have wireless access. Students can access the Internet while in any classroom or while eating lunch or while sitting out on the lawn. Any place on campus can easily be transformed into a computer lab. To minimize problems with security, only DSU students, faculty and staff have such access.
In the classroom, “air projectors” have been installed which can be accessed by both students and instructors. In my English class, I have the luxury of carrying my tablet around the room if I need the information on it or if I am demonstrating something in particular. If I find that a student has information on his or her screen that might help the rest of the class, I can easily have that student connect to the air projector and project his/her screen for the rest of the class to view. With the Microsoft OneNote program, students can, with a little planning, be invited to all work on the same document at the same time with the document and their insertions projected onto the screen. This option works well in a student editing and revision project.
To understand the ways in which a tablet can be used in class, a short description of the M275 is necessary. The tablet opens just like any typical laptop and can be used in exactly the same way as any laptop. However, the screen portion of the M275 can swivel 180 degrees and lie flat on the keyboard with the screen open to the user. A stylus that looks and feels like an ordinary pen is used to “write” on the screen. The stylus can also be used as a mouse. Microsoft programs have inking ability as does Windows Journal, so students have the option of using the keyboard or the stylus or both when they take notes or write comments. Besides the inking capabilities, the tablet has a microphone built in so that students can record audio files, and instructors can include voice comments on student work.
As well as implementing the M275 tablets, the university migrated to WebCT for its on-line delivery programs. Any and all classes with an on-line delivery component are expected to make use of WebCT. Since nearly every course at DSU has some aspect of the course delivered with technology (tablet or otherwise), WebCT is widely used across the campus, both the physical campus and the virtual campus.
Combining the tablet and WebCT has worked very well. Because of the quiz function in WebCT and because all the students have a tablet, giving on-line tests has become far easier. Also, the student presentation area in WebCT provides a space for students to submit drafts of papers, drafts that they can access and continue to work on and revise, while allowing the teacher to more easily monitor student work while it is in process. The discussion area provides an avenue for students to exchange ideas both in and out of class. Because all classes use WebCT, students don’t have to learn how to use the software, only the particular guidelines established by the various instructors.
The implementation of WebCT by the campus was driven by the idea that amount of paper used at Dakota State University could be greatly reduced. Those of us teaching composition classes initially set out to develop at least writing assignment that would be completely paperless. Because of the tablets and WebCT, that was no problem at all and virtually all papers, complete with the revisions and various drafts, are completely electronic. In the past, we were nearly paperless, but many faculty (and I am one of them) prefer to write comments on the papers rather than insert typed comments on papers handed in for a grade. Because of the M275 tablet and WebCT, students submit their papers to the assignment drop box. The papers can then be downloaded and saved to the instructor’s M275 and later retrieved and graded using the stylus to write comments—or using the microphone to note audio comments. The major difficulty with the audio comments is that the size of the file is quite large and can take a long time to upload to the student. However, that is not the case with the inked comments.
This past summer I made a great use of the tablet technology in two on-line courses that I taught even though none of my distance students had tablets. In the past, I had often printed the students’ papers, written my comments on them, and then had a student assistant type those comments into the student documents and return them electronically—very time consuming for the student assistant, but much easier for me. The M275 inking features make it possible for me to actually “write” on the students’ papers, save them, and send them back to the students. So long as the students had Windows 98 or greater, they could open their files and read the inked comments, whether they had tablets or not.
The tablet’s inking features work for other things besides grading: in writing classes, students may be asked to do brainstorming by writing a topic in the middle of a blank sheet of paper along with ideas connected to the topic, similar to the following:
In a study skills class, students were asked to outline their chapters by using concept maps rather than the standard outline form. Some students used text boxes but most students used the stylus because it was fast and easy.
Classes which have all freshman and sophomore students lend themselves easily to any assignment that requires the use of the tablet or the inking functions. Unfortunately, not every class has been like that, especially upper level courses. However, because so many of the junior and senior students chose to opt-in with the M275 tablet, about half the students in nearly all of my upper level classes have a tablet. Consequently, I’ve been able to pair students together and provide the opportunity to not only participate in cooperative learning, but to also make use of the technology available to us.
For example, ENGL 307 Principles of Grammar is a class that made good use of the inking capabilities of the tablet. In that class students often diagram sentences. Diagramming can be done at the board, but the tablet allows all students to work on their sentences and when all are finished, the images can be projected onto the screen with the air projector one by one, with no waiting to get space on the white board, no scrambling to find enough markers, no erasing of the finished sentence, no worry about writing large enough for the whole class to see since the tablet allows the image to be easily enlarged. A sample diagrammed sentence might look like the following:
While such a diagram can be done with the keyboard and the drawing tools, it’s a faster and more flexible option to use the stylus. More importantly, students are less frustrated when they use the inking alternative for this kind of work. The different colors of ink can also help in this kind of situation as well. This semester, the inking function is ideal for writing sentences using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in my linguistics class. Again, it can be done using the keyboard and inserting symbols but that’s extremely tedious and time consuming.
Like any technology, the tablet has its drawbacks. Because students have access to the Internet all the time, it’s far easier for them to get on-line to chat, surf the web, and e-mail their friends—whether they are in class or not. Some students have wall paper on their desktops that others might find offensive. Since the laptops are leased, asking students choose non-offensive backgrounds for state-owned property has not really been much of a problem. However, we’ve had to be a bit more creative in keeping student attention during class. By having the students use their laptops in tablet form with the screen lying flat, the instructor can more easily monitor student activity. Because the instructor can carry his/her own laptop around the room, it becomes a simple matter to walk around the room and check whatever work the students may be doing. Most instructors make it a point to give the students a purpose for using the tablet that will preclude them from having time to focus on anything other than class work—a purpose that will help them learn course content, the primary goal in any class.
Now that we’re into our second semester with the tablet and wireless technology, most of us here at DSU have become comfortable and basically competent in using both to enhance our teaching, without just using technology simply for the sake of technology. The Wireless Mobile Computing Initiative has turned out to work even better than the proponents thought and far better than the nay-sayers believed!
Nancy G. Moose, Ed.D
Director of Writing
Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences
Dakota State University
Madison, SD 57042
http://homepages.dsu.edu/moosen