Enhancing Learning with Laptops in the Classroom pt1

Thanks to Diane Pike who dropped “Enhancing Learning with Laptops in the Classroom” (ISBN: 0-7879-8049-8) into my campus mail box. It’s making its way around the Academic LFCs. I’m reading some of the articles pertaining to the Natural Sciences.

First, I don’t think a laptop U is the right direction for a small institution like Augsburg. Student Computing has noted that something in the realm of 80% or more of the incoming students have computers, with more and more being laptops. Requiring the students to get another laptop meeting the institution’s requirements (assuming theirs does not) is bad way to start the relationship.

That being said, the examples in the book don’t require student laptops. They are applicable to departmental laptops (i.e. Biology, Chemistry, and hopefully Physics) or to computer labs. With computer labs, a space that is configured in a multi-use layout like Foss 22B or the Honors Lab seem best. A traditional classroom row layout would hinder the group activities. The major activity categories — student data collection, student assessment, student self-assessment and student research — all sound like active learning / inquiry-based learning which I think suit the learning styles of the Net Generation.

Here’s a summary of the first article:

• Teaching Statistics by Taking Advantage of the Laptop’s Ubiquity: The faculty member likes to create communities of learning and found laptops help achieve that goal. He also subscribes a bit to just-in-time teaching and likes to have student input drive the daily sessions with the syllabus being the road map for the course. Oh, he also likes peer-based learning. Basically, he’s a good fit for this model.
  He used discussion boards in their CMS very effectively to support all 3 of the characteristics I just noted. Apparently he used paper-based questions on the readings before — what a nightmare! He also used pre-class online quizzes on the readings to help students practice and to provide him with guidance as to what to do that day. I like this strategy a lot. However, creating the quizzes can be time-consuming the first time. But once you have a quiz bank setup, updating the questions is easy.
  His example activity of understanding a variable and computing expected value and variance speak more to an approach of having the students actively work through the concepts in class with real data. This is just what Math students could do with Mathematica in a Calculus lab, and often do at Augsburg.
  An interesting side note, he noted the desire for the CMS to have a rating system for the student posts. Hhhmm, moodle does that. 🙂

Indiana U students Phish for Test subjects

From the Wired Campus Blog (this one has had some good stuff!), 2 Indiana University grad students did a research study on privacy and the public sphere. Using public information, they sent customized emails to students that appeared to be from their friends directing them to a website which required authentication. Once there they authenticated with their IU logins — oops!

I find this so informative/educational for people. We always try to tell our faculty, staff, and students don’t believe the From and don’t click on web links in emails (especially if you’re not expecting them!). I was amazed to read that the students did go through their IRB — Human Subjects Committee — process. People just trust email too much.

moodle.org running moodle 1.5

I’m making my way through the changes you can see on moodle.org now that it has been upgraded to moodle 1.5. Here are some highlights

• Unread posts : on the course page each forum lists the number of unread posts, in each forum each discussion lists the number of unread posts in it, users can turn off the tracking of unread posts too
• Journals replaced with online assignments : The assignment module is now plug-in based to allow for future growth. You can see screenshots here of the online assignment. It looks great and the grading got a whole lot easier.

Both look like winners. I hope 1.5 is ready for fall. It’s definitely the release suitable for the campus.

180 articles on blogs in education

You can find over 180 articles and essays about blogs in education at http://kairosnews.org/blogbib . I think they’ve been well-established as useful teaching tools but if anyone needs some justification, you’ll probably find what you need.

Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog has some good items

Catching up on my RSS feeds today, I found these gems:

• MIT Students write a computer program to generate a fake jargon paper because they were sick of getting emails from the conference. Well, their paper was accepted!
• Campus listserves at UPenn are getting a bit out of control. Though our campus communication procedure is more tight now, I think it makes things students get seem more important. If they’re not buried in junk emails the important registrar or financial aid message will get noticed and read, in my opinion.

The Wired Campus blog has had some really good items. It’s worth subscribing to via RSS!