Assessing the Effectiveness of Tablet PC’s in a Higher Education Environment
Featured Speakers: Joseph G. Tront, PhD, Deborah Olsen, PhD, Virginia Tech.
To continue to improve pedagogical practices across the curriculum, in the fall of 2006 the Virginia Tech College of Engineering began the deployment of a mobile technology-based teaching/learning environment by requiring that all incoming students own individual tablet PCs. We also began to train the faculty on the use of this new technology including schooling them on new pedagogical practices that, when followed, generally lead to improved learning. These practices include: 1) providing more vibrant, process focused, and interesting classroom presentations as facilitated by the new technology, 2) the delivery of highly interactive lectures wherein students use tablets to dynamically engage in classroom activities that are an integral part of the lecture, 3) improved multi-faceted note-taking activities by students, 4) collaborative exercises that teach teamwork concepts and encourage full participation in discussion and design activities.
Now in the second year of the deployment, the improved pedagogical practices are making their way into the sophomore courses where they are being tuned to support the variety of topical disciplines in engineering. Throughout the deployment process we have been developing assessment instruments to measure the effectiveness of the use of the technology and of the implementation of the new pedagogical practices. This talk will provide some background on the deployment program, but will primarily focus on the assessment tools developed for the deployment and the results obtained in the first three semesters of use of the technology. We will provide the audience with feedback we have received from the faculty and students as they began to implement the use of the technology. The talk will describe the initial impacts the program has had on: student study and classroom habits, efforts by faculty to revitalize their teaching techniques, responses to collaborative exercises, and the results other aspects of technology-based practices that are meant to improve learning.
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