Enhancing Distributed Learning Environments With Tablet Pc Technology And Software

The ability to gather and distribute knowledge effectively is at the heart of a healthy society. This paradigm has not escaped the educational realm as distance education programs have been established in many universities. Distance education programs are not intended to replace traditional face-to-face classroom instruction, but rather to expand the accessibility of knowledge to students where face-to-face instruction is not always possible or feasible. As universities expand geographically to other parts of the country and establish partnerships with institutions worldwide, it is clear that an effective design for creating distributed learning environments (i.e., distance education) must be established. Distributed learning (DL) environments are at the heart of much of the course instruction at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT). Currently, Georgia Tech Savannah (GTS) provides engineering education to students who are physically located at four different universities. One of the primary initiatives at GTS is to develop a blueprint for building a campus that utilizes computer-based technology to enhance the effectiveness of education in synchronous DL environments (i.e., live classroom instruction transmitted to remote sites). This paper describes how Tablet PCs installed with Dyknow Vision software are being used in classrooms at GTS to improve student learning in a distributed learning environment. The Tablet PC is an attractive technology for use in synchronous distributed learning environments because of its mobility, and its ability to not only serve as an effective note taking device but also as a high-resolution course content viewing device. In this project, the instructor and students are given a Tablet PC to use during the semester, and surveys are administered to evaluate student attitudes about the use of Tablet PC technology as a means of receiving, processing, and learning course material. This paper discusses results from several distributed learning courses that were offered in the Spring and Fall semesters of 2007 to assess student attitudes on the use of Tablet PC technology. The work presented here provides useful insight into evaluating student learning experiences in distributed education in order to build effective synchronous DL environments. Introduction and Motivation A core goal of education is to deliver new concepts and ideas with the intent of promoting active learning and retention. At the heart of this information exchange is the interaction among instructors and students. Some of the most common activities of a traditional classroom include the presentation of written or electronic material, student note-taking and/or asking questions, and insightful problems and exercises posed by the instructor to promote student involvement in their learning process. These elements form the heart of most instruction and educational research has shown that each of these activities should be done with the intent to promote active and life-long learning 1 . P ge 13539.2 Distributed Learning (DL) environments seek to implement established educational paradigms for effective student instruction into a unique classroom structure where the instructor and students may not be present in the same physical learning environment. Despite the technology that is available to deliver video and audio streams to remote classrooms, DL environments are still challenged in the area of promoting active learning and meaningful instructor-student and student-student interactions during a class session. Traditional DL classrooms suffer from several challenges in creating effective learning environments, and most of them center on two main issues: 1) poor delivery of lecture material and 2) constraints on creating in-class material for participant interaction and student assessment. The delivery of lecture content is largely dependent on the quality of equipment and protocols that are in place, and this issue is not directly addressed in this paper. However, the reality is that poor video resolution in delivering class material to a distant classroom can be particularly damaging to a students’ ability to clearly view and follow the lecture. Regarding instructorstudent and student-student interaction, the remote separation of traditional DL classrooms largely limits all in-class interaction and responses to purely verbal interaction. Additionally, any in-class assessments (e.g., practice problems, exams, etc.) must be prepared in enough advance time to be sent to each remote site for the lecture period it is to be used. Completed assignments must then be collected and sent to the instructor after class via mail, email, or fax. This process limits the options for instructors who frequently use in-class activities and assessments to promote active learning. The motivation of this paper is to investigate Tablet PC technology and software to improve the delivery of lecture material in a DL course as well as reduce some of the constraints on the instructors and students in creating effective learning experiences. Tablet PC Technology and DL environments Digital inking technology has added a remarkably useful input modality for instructors who rely on electronic delivery of lectures. In addition to the traditional mouse/keyboard input, digital ink allows appropriately configured computers to treat their screens as electronic whiteboards. The use of digital ink in the classroom is not entirely new as electronic whiteboards 2 and other forms of digital ink have been available for a number of years. Digital ink technology has provided flexibility to instructors in creating lecture content before, during, and after class. It has also been shown that digital ink may be used to create annotations on prepared lecture content as a substitute for physical gestures to highlight context and meaning during lecture 3, 4 . Several software programs, such as Classroom Presenter 5 and Dyknow 6, 7 emphasize the use of digital ink for integrating student and professor input during and after class. There have been a number of interesting studies investigating the uses of digital ink for promoting sound educational practices 8-22 . However, while digital inking technology is a wonderful benefit for traditional classrooms, it is absolutely essential for building effective distributed learning environments where much of the lecture delivery is electronic and computer dependent. In this spirit, an attractive technology for distributed learning environments is the Tablet PC 23 . Tablet PCs function in much the same way as traditional laptops with the added functionality of providing the user digital ink as an input P ge 13539.3 modality for content creation directly on the Tablet screen. Tablet PCs are of particular interest in DL environments because of their mobility. Instructors and students may carry a Tablet PC to any learning environment and take advantage of a digital ink input modality. With the support of HP and Microsoft, Tablet PCs are currently being evaluated for use in engineering courses at GTS. For this project, two remote sites have been equipped with Tablet PCs so the instructor and each student have a access to a Tablet PC during the lecture. To facilitate shared content between the instructor and students, the Dyknow 6 software program has been installed on all Tablet PCs. Dyknow software provides an Internet medium through which learning material can be freely exchanged between the instructor and students directly from the instructors Tablet PC to each student Tablet PC. Any learning material the instructor desires to present through Dyknow is presented directly on the Tablet PC screen of the student in an uncompressed format thereby solving any issues with pixel resolution and unclear presentations. Also, any student can create content on their Tablet PC and send it to the instructor Tablet PC for evaluation. The combination of the digital ink capabilities of the Tablet PC and the shared learning space created by the Dyknow software serve as the foundation for the DL environment that is evaluated in this paper. Using Dyknow in Distance Learning Two of the primary challenges in implementing DL courses involve constraints on lecture delivery and the creation of learning material designed for in-class student interaction and assessment. A related problem with electronic lecture delivery is that most traditional DL environments are only capable of sending a single video stream. In other words, while lecturing, either the lecture material being presented or video of the instructor may be broadcast to the remote site but not both. In this scenario, students at remote sites are subjected to nearly an entire lecture where they stare at lecture notes projected on a screen with no view of the instructor. Informal discussion with students has revealed the obvious fact that this type of interaction is far from ideal and has contributed to a generally negative attitude of instructors and students about DL environments. While newer protocols such as H.239 are helping to alleviate this problem, the vast majority of current DL environments at the sites associated with GTS are equipped with single video streams However, with Dyknow, the lecture material for the class is transmitted directly from the instructor Tablet PC to the student Tablet PC, which frees the single video stream to be used entirely for transmitting video of the instructor to the remote sites. Now students may view the lecture on their Tablet PCs while watching the instructor projected at the front of the class. Additionally, the direct transmission of the lecture content from instructor to student Tablet PC greatly improves the presentation of the material and resolves issues with poor video resolution that normally exist. Aside from aiding in the transmission of lecture content, the Tablet PC/Dyknow combination also allows for instructors to create “hybrid slides” w