USING DYKNOW VISION SOFTWARE AND PEN-ENABLED COMPUTERS TO INCREASE CLASS PARTICIPATION Scott M. Thede DePauw University sthede@depauw.edu 1. ABSTRACT One problem when teaching is the tendency for students to lose focus during classroom meetings, particularly lectures. This paper describes a technique (using pen-based technology and a special software system) that can keep students attention during class, as well as help them learn by allowing them to apply their knowledge sooner after learning it than in a conventional classroom. 2. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND CONTEXT There are many disciplines that require a significant amount of material to be transmitted from teacher to student, as opposed to other disciplines where information can be teased out during in-class discussions and the like. In these information-transfer heavy disciplines (such as computer science, chemistry, and just about any other area of science), it can be difficult to keep students attention in the classroom. Without some care and careful preparation, class meetings can become nothing but hour-long lectures. I teach computer science, and have constantly struggled with my own tendencies to lecture to my students instead of helping my students to learn. When I began my teaching career as a graduate student at Purdue University, I was the instructor for a senior-level artificial intelligence course. I worked hard on teaching that course, and my approach was to use PowerPoint slides in nearly every course meeting. Needless to say, the students were almost always quiet, simply absorbing the material I was telling them (or perhaps they were simply bored to tears). When I began teaching at DePauw, I realized after about one week that preparing PowerPoint slides for all three of my classes was not going to work I simply did not have enough time. So, I began using the whiteboard to present material. I prepared course notes for myself each day notes about what I wanted to cover for that day, with some examples included. This teaching method was better than my first attempt, with a bit more spontaneity, but it still consisted of at least 90% lecture by me. When I realized that the lecture-heavy classes were not helping my students to learn as well as they could be, I decided to try using worksheets. The concept of a worksheet, at least in my classes, was a sheet of practice problems over a topic or topics that I had been covering recently in class. The way that I used them in my class meetings was to lecture for around an hour (this could span two course meetings), then distribute the worksheets and have the students work on the practice problems, which covered the material upon which I had just lectured. The students could work alone or in groups, and we went over the problems after most of the students had completed them.
This approach worked reasonably well for me. It became clear to me that students learn best when they are not listening to me all the time. In fact, it was apparent that I could accomplish even better things in the classroom if I could somehow shorten the period between presenting material and having the students reinforce it with practice. Ideally, I would spend 5-10 minutes presenting a single topic, and then ask one or two questions about that topic as practice problems to the class. If I could do this, I feel that my classroom and course would improve for many reasons: The students would have the opportunity to learn in many different ways. They would learn by hearing me discuss the topic, by applying their knowledge to the practice problem, by discussing the problem with other students, and possibly by teaching other students who may not understand the problem as well as they do. The students get immediate feedback about how well they understand the topic. I cannot tell you how many times I have presented some topic to a class, and then asked them if they had any questions. Of course, they all indicate that they clearly understand everything that I just said, and thus we are all shocked when most of them bomb the material on the next test, quiz or homework. Asking them a question about the topic immediately after presenting it, and forcing them to actually apply their knowledge to answer it, gives them the chance to realize that they don t understand the material. It also gives them the opportunity to ask questions in a more one-on-one session with me while working on the problem. The teacher gets immediate feedback about how well the class as a whole understands the topic. This is vital to efficient usage of classroom time. If I present a topic, ask a practice question about it, and everyone gets the correct answer quickly, then they clearly understand that topic, and perhaps I can increase my speed in presenting the next set of topics or skip ahead to a more challenging practice problem. On the other hand, if no one can answer the practice question, then clearly they do not understand the topic and I can spend more time covering it, perhaps asking more questions than I anticipated. Unfortunately, the logistics of teaching a class like this with worksheets can be difficult. The act of passing out the worksheet and having students break up into groups takes classroom time, as does getting the students back together for presentation of the next topic. Preparing that many worksheets also takes time as well as paper. What I needed was a way to seamlessly integrate the practice problems with my lecture presentation material, so that no time is lost in switching modes in the class. 3. SOLUTION EMPLOYED 3.1 The DyKnow Vision System What I found was the DyKnow Vision system using pen-enabled monitors or tablet PCs. For those who are unfamiliar with the DyKnow Vision software product, it is what I would call an electronic black-board and note-taking system, but it actually does so much more. Each person in the classroom (the teacher and each student) is equipped with a computer. The system is usable with non-pen-enabled computers, but its full power is available when each participant is using some sort of pen-enabled device a tablet PC or a computer with a pen-based input device. At its simplest, DyKnow Vision allows collaboration between participants in the classroom. The teacher begins by starting a session, and each student joins the session. The session consists of a notebook (one for each participant) that will eventually contain panels
imagine a PowerPoint presentation beginning initially with no slides. The teacher can add new panels to the notebook at any time, either blank or containing pre-prepared material. The collaborative feature begins with the fact that almost anything that the teacher puts on a panel (either pre-prepared or added during class) is immediately broadcast to all the student notebooks as well. Thus, students are freed from the need to be human copy machines, and instead of spending their time copying down everything the instructor writes, they can spend some time thinking about what the instructor is saying. Additionally, the students can make their own annotations on their own notebooks. Each participant s notebook is separate from all others, and students can add whatever they wish to their notebooks. So, not only is the content from the instructor provided to the students, but they can annotate the material on their own. Thus, each student leaves class with an electronic notebook of their own, containing the material provided plus their own annotations. There are many more features of the DyKnow Vision system 1 I will discuss one more that is relevant to my claim that it allows collaboration in the classroom. The transfer of information is not just one-way from teacher to student. Students may submit panels to the teacher, and the teacher can display the panels to everyone in the class, or even add the panels to the notebook, thus transmitting the material for inclusion in every student s notebook. 3.2 My Classroom Now So, how does DyKnow Vision help my classroom? Well, it allows me to have the ideal classroom I described in section 2. I prepare a DyKnow Vision notebook ahead of time, integrating practice problems with lecture material in the notebook. I can now cover material for a short period of time, then present the students with a suitable practice problem over that material. The students work on the practice problem directly in their notebooks while I circulate amongst them, answering their questions. Then, after the problem is over, students can submit their solutions so we can (as a class) discuss them, then we move on to new material. I mentioned in section 3.1 that using a pen-enabled device is not required for the use of DyKnow Vision. However, it is quite useful, and lends a lot of power to the student in their annotation of notes and answering practice problems. I would like to demonstrate some of the utility of a pen-enabled device in this process. The first image is a panel from my notebook for teaching linked lists in our intro-level computer science class. The details of linked lists are not important here, but hopefully we can clearly see the utility of the pen in this example. This is a practice problem, and the box 1 See www.dyknow.com for more information about the system.
containing the 27 and the arrows connecting it to the others are meant to be drawn by the students (they are not included in the original notebook each student adds it on their own). As you can see, the pen is quite useful in answering this practice problem. The next screen shot shows the utility of the pen to both the student and the instructor. This is a quiz that I gave my students (using DyKnow Vision). The student (I have blacked out the name of the student for privacy reasons) chose to use the pen to answer the questions on the quiz, as you can see in the screen shot (the student answers are within the gray boxes, as well as some scratch work outside them). Many students view the DyKnow Vision notebooks as an extension of pen and paper, and this screenshot should illustrate that it is easy for them to do so. This quiz also demonstrates the utility of the pen to the instructor. In class, the students submit their quiz panels to me, and I can then mark them outside of class with the pen, including notations as needed, and return the graded panels electronically to the student. In this example, the =O(n 2 ) was added by me, as well as the checkmarks and the grade at the top. Finally, one more screen shot shows the ability of the pen to improve the instructor s ability to prepare course material. This slide is not from a course I am teaching this semester, but from a theory of computation taught during last semester. The pen allows me to write complicated formulas and symbols very easily, in such a way that they are easily transmitted to the students when the panel is loaded into their notebook. I find the pen indispensable when creating notebooks, particularly for topics heavy on diagrams, mathematical formulas, or images. The students find it very useful to annotate diagrams as well as text.
4. EVALUATION During the fall semester of 2005, a survey was administered to students in two classes regarding the use of DyKnow Vision software and pen-based input devices in class. Seventeen students responded (out of nineteen) to the survey, and the results are discussed here. The first question asked, Assuming you were taking another computer science course next semester, would you like that course to be taught using DyKnow Vision? The student responses were: Response Absolutely not Prefer not Don t care Prefer yes Absolutely yes Number 0 0 0 9 8 Percentage 0% 0% 0% 52.9% 47.1% The second question asked, Do you prefer to use the pen when taking notes using DyKnow Vision, or do you prefer to use the keyboard/mouse? The student responses were: Response Almost always use keyboard Prefer to use keyboard No preference Prefer to use pen Almost always use pen Number 0 5 7 3 2 Percentage 0% 29.4% 41.1% 17.6% 11.8% The third question asked if their response to the second question depended on the type of material being presented. The general consensus was that the method of note-taking depends greatly on the type of material being presented. Obviously, if graphical note-taking was required (drawing a picture or annotating a diagram), most students use the pen. If taking notes on general material, though, some students preferred the keyboard, citing that they could type their notes faster than writing by hand. Some specific comments include: I can fit more text on the slide if I type notes versus handwriting them. I can also type faster than I can write with the pen. The pen is really good for drawing pictures, though. If just copying down note [the] keyboard is faster, but [the] pen is great for drawing diagrams, charts, etc. If I have to do a lot of writing, such as a paragraph, I will probably type. If it is just a small amount of writing, I will use the pen. It seems clear that the students make use of all the input technology available to them. The pen is definitely a useful tool in the classroom, particularly when using a collaborative notetaking tool like DyKnow Vision. Emulating the traditional note-taking technique of pen and paper makes the technology more integrated into the classroom. The pen-based input devices allow students to focus on learning and not on dealing with technology. Anecdotally, I have used DyKnow Vision in classrooms without the pen-based technology, and the student response to the system was markedly more apathetic than that of students using the pen-based systems. In closing, I am thankful for DyKnow Vision software and DePauw s commitment to providing pen-enabled computers, which allows me to pursue my vision of the perfect classroom. I feel that this combination has allowed me to present material the way that I have always wanted, and that the students learning in class has dramatically improved. The use of technology has not made me teach differently, but allows me to teach the way I have always wanted to but could not without it.