Tablets for students
Synopsis
Tania van den Ancker, senior lecturer in Chemistry, uses Camtasia and tablet PCs with her students.
Project or enhancement
Tania uses Camtasia (ie, screen capture software) combined with a tablet PC for her tutorials. She uses the ‘pen' to write directly on the screen, and this appears simultaneously on screen in the class. It can be used for highlighting or circling aspects of a slide, for example, and for writing out calculations in class together, plotting graphs, etc. She also includes photographs of class demonstrations. The advantage of this, says Tania, is that it's interactive, rather than a passive listening experience. The tutorials and lectures are recorded and can be accessed through the USQStudyDesk at any time if the student wants to go over the tutorial or lecture again. Previously, Tania was using a combination of Breeze (ie recorded PowerPoint) presentations with PDF files and printouts – all of which was laborious and time-consuming (although Tania does still make PDF files available for students to print prior to lectures).
Target audience
Initially this was a trial aimed at the off-campus students, but Tania has found that it's just as popular with the on-campus students. She uses Camtasia and the tablet PC with her students on CHE 2120 (Chemistry II). This course has about 50 on-campus and about 10 off-campus students, and she intends to use these technologies with her other classes next year.
Learning goals/objectives
Tania wanted to provide an in-class experience for the off-campus students. Although she'd been using Breeze, she found it a bit dull and passive, and she wanted to introduce an element of interactivity. Because her subject is mathematically based, the processes of thinking a problem through and the stages of the development of answers are very important, and Tania needed something that would allow students to see the maths processes and see the chemistry actually happening.
Who did/does what?
Birgit gave Tania a lesson on how to use the equipment, and Tania has continued the process on her own. She says it didn't take long to get the hang of using the tools themselves, although learning to write on the screen with the pen correctly and legibly was a skill that took a little while to master.
Results
There have been a couple of technical hitches, including one computer crash, but over all, Tania is more than pleased with these technologies, and indicative early feedback suggests that students are finding them very useful. In particular, Tania has found that students express a preference for Camtasia over Breeze presentations. Although she says it might not be suitable for every subject, she finds that in a subject like hers where there is a lot of board work, Camtasia is an excellent tool because, unlike writing on a board (which risks losing students' attention as they struggle to take notes and copy from the board), Camtasia allows students to pay attention to what is being said and demonstrated, knowing they can come back to a recording if they miss something in their notes.
Problems and advice for others
Tania advises breaking down the recorded classes into 30-45 minute recorded sessions and she's found it takes a bit of time to do this and to learn to judge the best point at which to do it. But she deliberately doesn't delete from the recording anything that happens in the actual class. If something goes wrong, it's included in the video; if someone interrupts by walking into the class late, it's included in the video, and so on. The reasons for this were originally to do with editing times, but feedback Tania has received shows that the students like these moments on the video, because they give them a real feel for the on-campus experience of actually being there, and a sense of being included in the learning community.
General recommendations
Tania would like to see better microphones made available in lecture rooms for recording onto the tablet PCs, and to see the tablet PCs themselves available to everyone in every lecture room.