Deploying Tablet PCs in an Engineering Education Environment

Session T3G

Deploying Tablet PCs in an Engineering Education Environment Joseph Tront, Glenda Scales, Deborah Olsen Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 {jgtront, gscales, dolsen}@vt.edu

Jane Prey Microsoft Research Corp.

Abstract - Tablet PCs are one of the newest innovations in the computing and communications world and have the potential for significantly improving the way in which faculty members teach and the many different processes and mechanisms involved in student learning. After much discussion and experimentation, the Virginia Tech College of Engineering decided to require that all incoming freshmen own their own tablet PC starting in the Fall of 2006. This paper describes the process by which the College arrived at this decision as well as the expected benefits of this initiative. We also discuss the various processes involved in implementing the requirement program including faculty and staff training, development of the necessary support infrastructure, establishment of working relationships with hardware and software vendors needed to support this pioneering venture, and the assessment activities that will take place to measure the effectiveness of the overall process and its demonstrable changes in the way in which faculty teach and students learn. Mechanisms for scaling and adopting the processes used here at Virginia Tech will be suggested to the audience. INTRODUCTION Faculty in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech continually challenge themselves to find new ways to improve the teaching/learning environment in order that engineering students are provided with the best opportunities to succeed in their academic endeavors [1,2]. As part of the continuous improvement process, faculty members regularly investigate how improved communication and computing technologies can be used to support desirable pedagogical practices across the college. In the fall of 2006, the College of Engineering became the first and largest public college of engineering to require all 1,400 incoming freshmen to own a Tablet PC. After several years of extensive research, the team of early adopters felt that the use of Tablet PC technology would facilitate more active participation in the classroom, increase the level of creativity in all aspects of the curriculum, enhance collaboration both inside and outside the classroom, and improve students’ ability to assimilate and recall information. The primary rationale behind the requirement program is to

use the technology to support pedagogical directions and not just to introduce a new piece of technology just for the sake of having a new interesting computer to play with. After almost a full academic year in use by the first cohort of students, the Tablet PCs have had a significant initial impact on the learning environment. Taking advantage of the portability and unique digital inking capabilities of the Tablet PC, faculty lead implementers have begun to make their lectures more interactive, strongly encouraging participation in the classroom. No longer tied to a lectern by paper notes or a laptop computer, faculty members use their Tablet PCs and the rich communications network to share presentation documents in real-time and engage with students in a teaching dialogue. Using the pen stylus and digitizing capabilities of the tablet screen, faculty members guide students through the countless diagrams, drawings and equations that are integral to the study of engineering. They get students involved by challenging them to actively participate in problem solving exercises and then project anonymous student sample solutions for the rest of the class to discuss and critique. This method truly facilitates participation by all students in the classroom, even those who are normally too retiring to either vocalize a response, or to ask a question in class. A variety of software is used in this tablet PC deployment. Students are currently benefiting by using software like Microsoft OneNote to take hand written notes in class and share diagrams and notes with fellow students. The expectation is that active note-taking will lead to better recollection and improved understanding of course material [3]. The other basic premise we are working from is that students who actively participate in classroom activities learn better [4]. Classroom Presenter [5], Dyknow and WriteOn [6] are being used to assist faculty in enhancing their lectures and allowing them to more dynamically present materials, demonstrate dynamic situations, annotate simulations, and manage classroom activity. The level of notetaking and active learning are two of the learning outcomes measures that will be examined as part of the assessment operations. The implementation of a Tablet PCs is a multi-faceted endeavor that required cooperation and participation from many constituencies across the college and university. In addition to college and university participation, the college has

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Session T3G partnered with Microsoft Research and Fujitsu Computers and formed the Premier Alliance. The goals of the alliance are to support measuring the effectiveness of the Tablet PC requirement program and to build and disseminate a model for others who might also like to enter into a similarly innovative program. This paper describes some of the details of the initial phases of this requirement program. BACKGROUND The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in engineering and computer science. The college’s 7,700 undergraduate and graduate students housed in 13 degree granting departments benefit from a combination of innovative, hands-on courses and stateof-the-art research centers and laboratories. The College of Engineering is also renowned for its cutting-edge integration of technology and curriculum. In 1984, the college was the first public institution in the U.S. to require entering engineering freshmen to own a personal computer. By 1996 the computer requirement had been up scaled to the so-called multimedia computer which at the time boasted advanced features including a CD ROM reader, a high resolution graphics system and a sound card – all features we take for granted in today’s computers. In 2002, the college moved to a laptop requirement and many of its academic buildings were outfitted with a unique wireless communication system that now allows students to connect to the high-speed Internet from any location on campus. Laptops technology was selected so that students could perform computing operations in a totally mobile environment. The move paid off as evidenced by the way in which students ubiquitously use notebooks in their everyday learning styles and lifestyles. Now the college is once again on the technology forefront, becoming the first and largest public college of engineering to require all incoming freshmen to own a computationally powerful and well-connected Tablet PCs. To provide the ability to continually measure the impact of Tablet PCs on the learning environment, this initiative was designed as an iterative multi-year project with implementation of new functionality followed by assessment of its value to faculty and students. Each year the implementation team reviews and revises existing practices and introduces new practices and assessment. Committed to a multi-faceted approach to implementation, the Tablet PC initiative is a unique collaborative effort between faculty and administrators from the College of Engineering as well as faculty from the School of Education and the Office of Learning Technology. The Tablet initiative has developed in multiple dimensions including: institutional commitment and corporate partnerships; faculty support and development; improved teaching practices and student products incorporating the new technology; and, an assessment plan to measure teaching and learning. In order for the requirement program to receive full buyin, several constituencies were consultant to obtain their input on the decision processes. These included of course the

faculty and students who are the most immediate stakeholders. Two College of Engineering standing committees involved in the decision process, the Student Technology Council and the Faculty Technology Advisory Committee, spent over a year discussing the results presented by early adopters of the technology. These two committees concerned themselves with identifying the expected benefits of moving to this new technology. Pitfalls of the technology were also discussed along with ways to overcome perceived difficulties. At the next level, other stakeholders consulted included alumni and members of departmental industrial advisory boards. These groups gave strong indication that students should have the best technology available to them for use in their learning environment. They did caution that the use of technology must be effective and have demonstrable positive effects on student learning. After demonstrating Tablet PCs to these groups and explaining the expected benefits, these stakeholders endorsed the Tablet PC requirement program. Additional buy-in was obtained from the university administration who would provide some of the infrastructure necessary for the program to be successful. Infrastructure needs come in the form of improvements in the broad communication network, an increase in the technology training available to faculty, and the resources necessary to equip the faculty with Tablet PCs from which they can teach. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE CHOICE Choice of the appropriate hardware and software for the requirement program is a difficult issue. One source of difficulty is the timing of the selection process. Decisions on the minimum hardware and software requirements must be made around the early April timeframe in order for the information to be transmitted to incoming students for the following Fall. Judicious decision making depends on the ability to be briefed on hardware that is expected to be delivered in the June through August timeframe and to work with vendors that can actually deliver on the products promised six months earlier. There is not a lot of room for error since having a vendor delay production of a product by a month can be disastrous to incoming students. For the Fall of 2006, the hardware requirement is listed in Table I. This is the minimum computer system that the College felt would be able to run the required software at a reasonable speed and would serve the student general needs. History has shown us that 60% of the students will exceed the minimum requirement when they purchase their systems and this statistic was again borne out in 2006 for the Tablet PC requirement. Upscale machines may include more memory, faster processors, additional displays, etc. Students are notified that as they choose majors and are accepted into departments, hardware upgrades may be necessary due to the increased computing capabilities required in some departments. The minimum software requirement is shown in Table II. This requirement is the baseline software package and students are notified that there is likely to be additional


Session T3G software required specific to their major once they are selected into a department. UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY ALLIANCE To increase the likelihood of success of the Tablet PC requirement program, The College of Engineering sought industrial partners to participate in the research aspects of the Tablet PC deployment. After careful discussions with several possible industry collaborators, Fujitsu Computer Systems and Microsoft Research were selected as “Premier Alliance Partners”. The Premier Alliance between Virginia Tech, Microsoft and Fujitsu allows the college of engineering to examine several important educational research questions as they relate to the use of Tablet PCs in higher education in general and more specifically to engineering education. Item Platform OS Processor Memory Hard Disk Video Card Optical Drive Input/Output Wireless Ethernet Modem Warranty

Detail Convertible Tablet PC Windows XP for Tablet 2005 Pentium Core Duo 1.83 GHz or Single core 2.0 GHz 1 GB 80 GB 64 MB discrete (128 MB shared) DVD/CD-RW USB 2.0 802.11 b/g 10/100/1000 56 Kbs 3 Years with accidental damage

Table I Minimum hardware requirement. Minimum Software Requirement Matlab Autodesk Student Community (ASC) Adobe Acrobat Professional Microsoft Campus Agreement including: OS upgrades Office Professional One Note Project Visio Table II minimum software requirement. The results from this research will provide a model for large scale deployment of tablet technology in higher education. Currently, there are no publicly available fully documented programmatic implementations with completed educational research on such a large scale. The diffusion of our innovations will be a key measure of the success of this alliance.

TYPICAL TABLET USE Tablet PC technology provides many advantage over traditional notebook technologies. The pen computing stylus and digital ink functionality of the Tablet PC helps instructors introduce students to the countless diagrams, drawings and equations that are integral to engineering study. To encourage participation, instructors will ask students to get involved, completing the drawing of a design or solving a problem on their Tablet PC. The instructor can then transform the classroom into a virtual design studio environment and project both correctly and incorrectly completed diagrams for class discussion and critique. This method has been proven to be a powerful teaching tool and is only possible in the engineering learning environment due to the power of the Tablet PC. The pen computing capabilities have also proven to allow engineering faculty to be more efficient in their copious use of engineering drawings and impromptu sketches in class. Instructors create diagrams in advance of the lecture and use them as a guide that only they can see during the lectures. Instead of drawing a diagram from memory, the instructor will use the pen stylus to trace the existing drawing, while for students it appears that the instructor is creating the drawing from scratch. Because instructors no longer have to commit these diagrams to memory, they are able to concentrate their time on developing more interaction during the lectures. On the other side of the lectern, students are using Tablet PCs and tools like Microsoft OneNote to take notes during the class. Because the notes are in electronic form versus written by-hand in a spiral notebook, students are able to search and organize information more easily. OneNote searches directly on student handwriting by converting handwriting to text after which specific search strings are located anywhere in the electronic notebook. This feature is very powerful for us ein after class stuying. Tablet PC technology and the use of applications like DYKnow, Classroom Presenter, WriteOn and Microsoft OneNote have been fundamental to this project. Tools such as these facilitate three very important educational practices which generally lead to increased learning outcomes. The practices are improved notetaking and note recall, active classroom participation, and collaborative learning experiences. BENEFITS While the Tablet PC project is still in its infancy, faculty members are already seeing improvements in the classroom environment. Students have been transformed from passive note takers to more active and engaged participants. Students are encouraged to ask the ‘what if’ questions that are so important in engineering education and more readily explore those questions with the Tablet PC-equipped professor in realtime. The portability and flexibility of the Tablet PC is enabling and encouraging students to enthusiastically participate in the learning process, which is fundamental to the active learning style we are trying to encourage. Gone is the barrier between instructor and student created by distracting


Session T3G keyboard typing noise that was present when students were using laptops in class. In addition, because instructors can quickly make their annotated presentations, written notes and diagrams from class sessions available online, students are able to fully immerse themselves in the lecture, instead of frantically trying to copy notes without comprehension. Faculty members who teach general engineering principles to first year students believe that Tablet PCs are enabling both students and faculty to be more creative. In a field that is dedicated to finding creative solutions to problems, that is no small accomplishment. In addition, because they are using a convertible Tablet PC, students can also use a keyboard like a standard notebook computer when needed, making it an ideal solution for all of their computing needs. The introduction of Tablet PCs has been such a success at the freshman level that the next phase of the project is to work closely with faculty from discipline specific departments to integrate the use of Tablet PCs into upper level courses. By introducing students to Tablet PC technology in their first year, the college is also providing students with industry leading technology experience not matched at many other educational institutions. This puts the student in a position to seek a technology-oriented position for summer employment, which gives the student an advantage over others. Educational institutions around the world are grappling with how to truly create an engaging learning environment. At the same time, students are looking for educational institutions that can capture their interest and provide them with the information and technology skills they need to thrive in an increasingly competitive workforce. While the use of technology in higher education is widespread, the use of Tablet PC technology is still in its infancy. By exploring and demonstrating the benefits that Tablet PC technology can have on a learning environment, the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is paving the way for other educational institutions to improve their learning environments through the innovative use of technology. Faculty members at the College of Engineering have presented their research and deployment findings at education and industry conferences and have been interviewed in leading industry publications in an attempt to inform fellow educational leaders about their experiences, providing valuable insight and lessons learned to those organizations endeavoring to implement similar improvements. DIFFICULTIES Being at the technology forefront, the team faced a number of technology challenges. One of the biggest challenges the team faced was implementing a wireless infrastructure that would work in a lecture hall setting. As wireless (802.11) network interfaces become a commodity item on laptops and other portable/mobile devices, there has been an increased interest in utilizing this technology in a classroom setting. This lecturer/student collaboration is especially valuable in large lecture halls where there is less opportunity for individualized attention and presents difficulties in keeping students focused on the lecture. While

802.11 wireless networks are reliable with small numbers of users, providing an efficient network in high client density settings is a major concern. All users in any given space are required to share the limited bandwidth available in that location, which results in degraded service and high latency. These problems quickly lead to student frustration and ultimately to the abandonment of the instructional application. While adding additional 802.11 equipment can provide relief, after a certain point the additional equipment becomes a detriment, adding radio interference to the space. Radio interference leads to wireless connections being dropped and excessive data retransmissions. A collaboration between the College of Engineering and VT Communication network services has performed several live tests using a class of up to 250 wireless clients (and several free pizza giveaways). Accessibility to a class of this size placing extreme demands on the wireless network was a valuable measurement situation that would be extremely difficult to simulate in a lab setting. During the semester, various wireless technologies and techniques were tested and evaluated. Dynamic radio management capabilities, client load balancing techniques and wireless access point placement were all considered and tested. Based on these results, parameters and techniques were defined to optimize the wireless network in a large classroom environment that can be extrapolated to other classrooms. ANECDOTAL RESULTS After almost a full academic year in use, the Tablet PCs have been integrated into the learning environment. Faculty and students use Tablet PCs on a daily basis, inside and outside the classroom. Instructors use Tablet PCs to make their lectures more interactive and encourage participation in the classroom. The pen computing stylus and digital ink functionality of the Tablet PC has proven invaluable in helping instructors introduce students to the countless diagrams, drawings and equations that are integral to the study of engineering. To encourage participation, instructors challenge students to get involved, completing the drawing of a design or solving a problem on their Tablet PC. The instructor can then anonymously project both correctly and incorrectly completed diagrams and use the diagrams as powerful, real-time teaching tools. Students are using Tablet PCs and tools like Microsoft OneNote to take notes during the class. Because the notes are in electronic form versus written by hand in a spiral notebook, students are able to search and organize information more easily and effectively. The use of Tablet PCs has transformed classrooms into active learning environments. Student/instructor interaction, student participation and student creativity have all improved since the introduction of Tablet PC technology. Through the support of Microsoft and Fujitsu in the form of the VT Premier Alliance, the college has been able to gather research evidence on the effective use of the Tablet PC and will be able to share this information with the broader education community.


Session T3G Students and faculty have both benefited from the use of Tablet PCs. Instructors use Tablet PCs to make their lectures more interactive and encourage participation in the classroom. A number of instructors are taking advantage of the portability of Tablet PCs and, using a wireless projector connection, walk around the classroom with their Tablet PCs, interacting with students. While instructors display slide presentations as they did with their notebook computers, the ability to add notes and drawings or simple arrows and circles to emphasize a point has greatly increased the level of student attention in the classroom. One professor of Engineering Education at the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech sums up his experience in using the tablet PC in classroom work by saying: “I can’t emphasize enough the advantage of having the ability to mark on the screen when delivering a presentation or a demonstration. It’s an exponential improvement in terms of how the students receive the information and changes the dynamic of the classroom incredibly.” Students use Tablet PCs and tools like Microsoft OneNote to take notes during the class. Because the notes are in electronic form, students are able to search and organize information more easily. Students are also using the Tablet PCs to collaborate with one another and work on group projects, collaborating on group sketches and sharing diagrams and notes with individual mark ups. Typical student comments are positive as in the comment from a freshman engineering student: “Using the Tablet PC and Microsoft OneNote is the easiest way to take notes and write papers. When I write papers for English, I just bring my Tablet PC to class, open up Microsoft Word and have my peers edit in red right on the document.” Another freshman engineering student indicates: “With the Tablet PC, I have become a much more organized and effective note taker.” Although these are but a few of the anecdotal comments received from students and faculty, the majority of the survey response comments are generally similarly positive. This is not to say there are not difficulties. A small percentage of the respondents have indicated specific difficulties with either the tablet or with the network infrastructure. These negative comments are being addressed and corrected for the next wave of incoming students in the fall of ’07. ASSESSMENT The assessment process is built around a core set of measures which are modified slightly each year to explore how different pedagogical uses of the Tablet PC affect key student outcomes. Each semester students respond to three surveys. A student learning strategies instrument was adapted from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The MSLQ is well documented and has been effectively used in various educational settings [7]. The adapted MSLQ is used in a pre/post test design to measure changes in learning strategies using the Tablet from the beginning to the end of each semester. Mid-semester, a utilization questionnaire measuring the frequency and nature of technology use is completed. A subset of questions were also added from the national ECAR study to help determine how students’ self

reports about the Tablet PC compare to other Engineering students nationally. Additionally, faculty response to the Tablet PC will be assessed using a survey measure administered longitudinally to a sample of engineering faculty on the Tech campus. The survey was developed from extant teaching measures in the literature and addresses not only faculty’s use of instructional technology but also their more general teaching practices and pedagogical beliefs. Responses at the end of the first, second, and third years of the project will enable us to determine if faculty’s philosophy and practice change over time and, in particular, if they become more attuned to active learning and the need to promote student engagement in their teaching. Finally, as the assessment program stabilizes and ramps up in the second year and other measures have been developed and tested we will, in addition, administer a performance measure to students to determine as directly as possible the impact of Tablet use on how students organize and think about course materials, collaborate with other students and participate in class Outcome: Data collected and analyzed so far has focused on the impact on student notetaking and whether they use metacognitive strategies and critical thinking skills in individual studying and notetaking. Future data will focus on classroom interaction and student collaboration. Results have confirmed the value of the Tablet PC to collegiate instruction, but have also raised some technical and instructional issues related to its use. Preliminary data from the modified MSLQ was analyzed to determine the validity of the instrument used to measure student learning outcomes. The data suggests the assessment tool accurately measures the learning strategies of rehearsal and elaboration, organization, and collaboration with the three subscales showing alpha levels between 0.7 and 0.8. Currently the instrument is under further analysis using a multidimensional approach. Using the MSLQ data we were able to paint a picture of the learning strategies and technology use of an incoming freshman engineering student and assess student changes after a semester in the program. In September, 2006, 61% of freshman engineering students reported they did not have access to computers in their high school classes; by midsemester nearly all students reported using their Tablet on a daily basis. The pretest results show students report using organization to learn ( x = 2.50 ) significantly less than rehearsal and elaboration ( x = 3.52) . By the end of the first semester students reported using rehearsal and elaboration to study (ex. “ I use my notes to memorize key words”) significantly less than in high school (t=5.258, p