Wireless Notebooks as Means for Fostering Active Learning in Higher Education

1. Wireless Notebooks as Means for Fostering Active Learning in Higher Education Miri Barak The Department of Education in Technology and Science, Technion Chais-Conference2006

2. Many thanks to: • d'Arbeloff Fund • Prof. Lerman, Director of CECI • Dr. Judson Harward

3. PIVoT, the Physics Interactive Video Tutor The Masters' Voices™ project -Ford Motor Company's TEAL-Technology Enabled Active Learning Project 1.00 –Studio-classes Active learning at MIT

4. Active learning By the beginning of the 20th century, active learning was widely promoted among progressive educators like John Dewey (1924). Active learning environments encourage students to be engage in solving problems, sharing ideas, giving feedback, and teaching each other(Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, 1998; Towns and Grant, 1997). Active learning puts the responsibilityof organizing the learning in the hands of the learners (Keyser, 2000; Niemi, 2002).

5. Wireless laptops in education • Benefits: • Increasing students’ motivationand collaboration, • Strengthening connections between disciplines, • Improving students’ problem solving skills, and • Promoting academic achievement. • (Barak, Lipson, & Lerman, 2006, Mackinnon & Vibert, 2002; Siegle & Foster, 2002).

6. However, The characteristics of the laptop users might limit or even reverse academic performance(Grace-Martin & Gay, 2001). Although the use of portable computers had a positive effect on students’ science achievement, it did not have a positive effect on achievement for English and Mathematics (Gardner, Morrison, Jarman, Reilly & McNally, 1994).

7. Active learning Wireless laptops Project-1.00 Studio-classes Short lectures [10-15 min] Short exercise [10-15 min]

8. Wireless laptops in the studio-classes • an easy and convenient hands-on computing experience in a large lecture hall setting, • enabling immediate implementation of new programming concepts or procedures taught in class, • providing an immediate feedback from both the IDE program and the instructors. Enabled the implementation of the studio format in a large lecture hall setting by enabling the integration of lectures, tutorials, and laboratories.

9. Research goal Investigate the effect of studio-based instruction on undergraduates’ learning outcomes and conceptual understanding Research Population 171 students(Nfall=73, Nspring=98) Introduction to Computers and Engineering Problem Solving

10. Research instruments 1. Pre-testinvestigate students’ prior knowledge in programming. 2. Problem sets - investigate students’ ability to solve programming problems. 3. Quiz and finalexamination(post-test) - investigated students’ learning outcomes. Academic Index - MIT entrance scores. Students’ attendance - classes participation.

11. Hake’s normalized gain equation (Hake, 1998) Students’ learning outcomes: Establishing their relative improvement

12. Factors that may predict students’ ‘relative improvement’

13. N=171 Relative improvement <g> Academic index High (N=95) Intermediate (N=76) Studio-class attendance Students’ class attendance and their relative improvement by academic index 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 0 20 40 60 80 100

14. Students’ conceptual understanding Conceptual questions required students to explain a phenomenon and provide examples or strategies to support their answer. Quiz: What is round-off error? Please give one example that demonstrates its significance. Exam: There are situations or specific sets of data that can make an efficient algorithm or data structure give atypically inefficient or incorrect performance. Please describe at least two examples and strategies to remedy the problem in both cases.

15. ANOVA of students’ conceptual question scores, by studio-class attendance

16. High attendance High attendance students presented complex, in-depth, and thorough answers Low attendance

17. High attendance Multiplicity – diverse ways for representing knowledge

18. Summary Studio-based instruction supports the four domains of pedagogy: Cognitive – students are offered an array of content and information sources; Operative – students are encouraged to use laptops and the IDE program for composing lines of code; Affective – the large number of instructors provide support and enhance positive attitudes; Social – the informal environment promotes interactions among students and instructors. Laptops should be employed in class only for directed purposes

19. It is not the technology but how we choose to use it! International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation (IJMLO) www.inderscience.com/ijmlo מירי ברק bmiriam@technion.ac.il