College strikes a high-tech deal
with Microsoft and Thomson Learning
Tablet PCs and digital course materials will make paper and pen
obsolete — and improve student learning — thanks to support of
IT grants
 |
| This
fall, thanks to U.Va.’s
groundbreaking partnership with
Microsoft and Thomson Learning, Tablet PCs like the one shown
here will give students access to extra tools and resources,
integrated with instructional materials, to help them learn
complex subject matter more effectively. |
By Kathleen D. Valenzi
Next fall, 400 biochemistry, psychology and statistics students
in the College
of Arts & Sciences will come to class without their customary notebooks,
pens and highlighters.
Instead,
they will be toting Tablet PCs in their backpacks, thanks to
a groundbreaking collaboration
between Microsoft Corp., Thomson Learning and U.Va. The Tablet
PCs will be loaded with Microsoft
computing software and with Thomson digital course content, the combination
of which is expected
to improve student understanding and retention of subject matter, potentially
increase faculty productivity based
on an easier integration of technology into instruction, and give each
of the collaborators a better understanding of how digital course materials
and instructional tools can be
designed effectively.
For the uninitiated, Tablet PCs are the next generation in
a long line of notebook-sized personal computers. These
fully functional computers use the
Microsoft Windows
XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, which offers new capabilities that
let you create, store and transmit handwritten notes and voice input. The
handwritten
notes and voice input can also be converted into text for use in other
applications.
In addition, the Tablet PCs used at U.Va. will be loaded
with Microsoft OneNote software and with Thomson-developed
digital learning applications.
Students
can use OneNote and the Tablet PC’s stylus to draw, make notes or doodle directly
on whatever page happens to be on the computer screen, be it a blank sheet of “paper,” or
an animated model of a chemical reaction that has been embedded in a PowerPoint
slide.
Tablet
PC keeps injured student’s
studies on track
Last summer, after Catherine Neale injured her right
wrist for the third time in six years — this time while
surfing in South Carolina — she resisted visiting
the doctor. She hoped it was just a sprain, perhaps dreading
how another surgery might affect her second year of studies
at U.Va.
She wasn’t that lucky. In October, she underwent
an operation that left her dominant wrist out of commission
for six weeks and of limited use for another three months.
A decade ago, such a predicament might have meant a
major setback in Neale’s studies. How could a history and
American studies major survive academically without being
able to take notes, type papers and write exams?
Then, during a visit to her physical therapist, she
saw him using a Tablet PC. He showed her how it worked — particularly,
how it could translate her left-handed scrawl and even
her voice into neatly typed text. She bought one from Cavalier
Computers, and it soon became her constant companion.
The Tablet enabled her to take notes left-handed,
and dictate papers and even her final exams (which
her
professors allowed
her to take outside of class). She became instantly
more popular with her friends, who found that she
could e-mail
them legible notes from classes they missed.
Plus, “the combination of the internal wireless card
and the well-connected campus allow me to access the Internet
just about anywhere on Grounds,” including all of
her classrooms, she said.
The Tablet has become indispensable. “Even though my
hand is now essentially healed, I don’t use anything
else for a computer,” Neale said. “I toss my
Tablet into my backpack, and it comes with me to class
every day.” — Dan Heuchert |
According to chemistry professor Charles M. Grisham, chief
technology officer for the College, this handwriting
feature is especially important
because
research has shown that students who write notes and sketch diagrams
by hand actually
learn better. “Over
the last 20 to 30 years of using computing technology, we’ve gotten
away from using our hands to record information,” Grisham said. “And
yet, there’s something about the way the hand and mind work together that
allows students to internalize difficult information better when they record
it in their own handwriting.”
Tablet PCs will allow students to access online exercises
and simulations in the classroom and to embed things — for example, statistical models — into
their lecture notes. With the PCs, students will also be able to collaborate
with each other and with their instructors during class and afterwards, in real
time, from both wired and wireless environments anywhere on or off Grounds.
Won’t this technology tempt students to surf the Web and instant message
one another during class? “Yes, and that’s a good thing. I hope to
encourage it,” Grisham said. “I want my students to look up something
on the Web that may be relevant, or use IM to ask each other for help and tutor
each other as the class is going on.”
Edward L. Ayers, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and an early adapter
of instructional technologies in his courses on the Civil War, is especially
excited by the potential inherent in this collaboration.
“One
of the things I’ve been interested in doing as dean
is [to] make the College known as a real innovator in the use
of information technology in higher
education,” Ayers said. “While
we’ve built all kinds of great IT tools in the library
for disseminating information, we haven’t tried to see
what we can do in the classroom before now. These Tablet PCs
offer a new kind of tool that is well suited for classroom
use.” The pilot project, which begins this fall, may get an earlier
preview, Grisham said. Once a Tablet PC supplier is selected,
the collaborators
hope to test
drive the computers in a biochemistry course being taught this
summer by biology professor Reginald H. Garrett. The PCs
will be loaded
with an online
media
package developed by Thomson to accompany a textbook co-written
by
Garrett and Grisham. The media package includes hundreds of
text figures and tables, and animations and topic-specific
PowerPoint
presentations. In the fall, Grisham will use the same media package in his
biochemistry class, while other Thomson-developed course
materials and Tablet
PCs will be used
by students in associate professor Jeffrey J. Holt’s statistics course and
in professor Dennis R. Proffitt’s cognitive psychology course.
Microsoft
and Thomson are bearing the cost of the project, which will
last at least two
semesters, Ayers said. In the long-term, he added, the
library of digital course material
will be expanded to include the College’s
humanities courses. |
