Laptops in the Classroom

Content outline:

1. What do teachers have against laptops in the classroom?
2. What have been the usual responses to these points?
3. ”How having the right hardware and software combined with evidence from research may strengthen the case for allowing "laptops" in the classroom?

What do teachers have against laptops in the classroom?

There is evidence that learners are less engaged and more easily distracted when they have laptops in the classroom.  They surf the web, visit social networking sites, get notifications and alerts and tend not to focus on the teacher in the front of the class (Ravizza et al).  In addition, their screens can distract other students sitting around them (Sana et al).  The teachers who cannot see what is on their screens wonder if the student is looking up information related to the class or engaged in irrelevant activities.   To some, the vertical screens may appear to act as barriers in small learning groups.  There is also the debate about typing vs. handwriting, with a recent study showing that taking handwritten notes leads to better recall compared to typing (Mueller and Oppenheimer).

What have been the usual responses to counter these points?

Educators who encourage students to bring their laptops and mobile devices to class suggest that if they (the educators) prepare for this and design their lessons appropriately, the students would be engaged in the learning process and not go off surfing the web.  They recommend creating exercises or using specific tools that require the students to use their devices in a meaningful manner that would enhance their learning (Erping et al). If in spite of this, the students do misuse their devices, the problem is the learners', and they would probably not learn even if they did not have laptops and smartphones in the classroom.

But how does one counter the arguments against the vertical screen causing a distraction and being a barrier and that typing leads to poor recall?  This is where the appropriate hardware and software can solve the problem.

A number of devices like the Surface Pro, iPad Pro, HP Spectre etc allow the screen to be pushed flat and to take handwritten notes with digital ink using a stylus. Software like OneNote allows collation and organization of all kinds of files (Word processing, PDFs, videos, slide decks etc) in a digital system that resembles the 3 ring binders from high school.  These files can be annotated using a stylus, searched (including the handwritten portions), automatically saved and updated, stored online and accessed on multiple devices including smartphones.  Combine this with apps like PomoDone which allow blocking of specific sites like Facebook or Twitter or Gmail during class and I believe we have a very convincing case for allowing these devices in the classroom.

So how can a teacher leverage the presence of such convertible 2-in-1 laptops and OneNote in the classroom?  What can they try with their lectures and slides to convince them allowing and even encouraging the use of these tools in the classroom can actually help their learners?

There are a whole host of tools to help teach and learn in the classroom like audience response systems, gamification software etc. In addition, you can employ techniques like think-pair-share and flipped classrooms to enhance the learning process and engagement without introducing laptops in the classroom. But what if you want to just take some baby steps, pilot something quickly and easily before redesigning your lesson plans?

If the teacher already has a slide deck then they can provide the slides ahead of time to the students so they can download and "print" them to OneNote.

Skeletal (Partial) vs. full handouts

So how do handouts work?  Won't having the handout ahead of class reduce motivation to attend class?  Will they be even more inattentive since they have all the information already?
The answer to these questions lies in the study that showed that when learners are provided handouts with only skeletal notes instead of fully detailed notes, they have a better recall (Prabhu et al; and Russell et al).  The students fill in the gaps in the skeletal notes as they listen to the "lecture" (Yes, yes, ideally the good teacher should not be lecturing).  The students given skeletal notes have better recall of the information learned in class than those given full detailed notes. This option will require the teacher to create 2 versions of their slide deck - one with just the skeletal format for handouts ahead of class and one for presentation during class.

Active note-taking

If the teacher does not want to make the effort to create these 2 versions, they can still use their full handouts but then they need to encourage their students to take active notes in class.  It has been shown that when students create their own questions about the content, write self-explanations to answer those questions and summarize what they learned, they retain information better than when they just highlight and underline (Dunlosky et al).  One well-known format of active note-taking is Cornell notes, and there is mixed evidence of its ability to enhance test performance.





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Incorporating Web 2.0 tools in a Workshop on Web 2.0 tools for lifelong learning

Recently I organized a workshop for 1st year medical students on using Web 2.0 tools for lifelong learning.

Some educators have assumed that medical students are digital natives or early digital immigrants and thus just because of the year of their birth have an innate understanding of the Web and Web 2.0 tools.  This is an assumption that people are now questioning.

People currently in their 30s to 60's straddle the Web era having spent a significant portion of their "cognitive" lives prior to 1990.  They experienced "traditional education" and are in the unique position of understanding Social Media by activating their prior knowledge.

As I set about planning this workshop I had several questions:

• How could I gauge the students' prior experiences with these tools? (begin without assumptions of the students experience and understanding due to being early digital immigrants)
• How could I get them engaged in this topic?
• I did not want to use a traditional lecture format to help them understand Web 2.0 education tools.  How could I incorporate actual Web 2.0 use into the education experience?

This is how I set up the workshop:

Preparation:

1. Asked the class to create Google and Twitter accounts (could create an account that they could delete later if they did not want to share their real accounts with class).
2. Created a spreadsheet on our internal Sharepoint site for students to enter their names, Google account and Twitter handles
3. Invited the class to Google+ and put them all in one Circle.
4. Asked the students to include me in one of their Circles so they could see my post.
5. Asked students to follow each other on Twitter.  They did not have to follow everyone but maybe the colleagues from their PBL small groups.
6. Asked the students to go to Google Reader and subscribe to PLOS  One Alerts (http://www.plosone.org/article/feed).
7. Click on the drop down next to PLOS One Alerts and click on "More like this" and choose Science Current issue.
   I could also have asked them to do the following but did not think of this then:
8. In the search box type Google and Memory and see the results show the article we were discussing on Google+
9. Read any article they liked from the 2 feeds and send to Twitter.  

Pre-Workshop Activities:

1. Posted the Science article on how use of Google has changed the way we remember on Google+.  I limited this to the circle of students.  No one outside the Circle could see their comments.  Also disabled re-sharing of the post to keep the conversation private.
2. Put some guiding questions under the link to the article:
1. When you read information on the Internet/Web do you
   Remember the information or
   Remember how to find it or
   Both orNeither? 
2. How does this apply to how you study and learn medicine?
3. Asked the class to comment on the article and these questions.
4. I checked back and added comments to students' responses

At the Workshop:

1. This was a 2-hour session.  I planned to spend the time covering
1. Concept of Information Overload
2. Need to use Web 2.0 tools to create filters
3. Transactive and external memory
4. Use of Google Reader and Diigo as examples of creating a Web 2.0 external memory system
5. Define Social Media and types of SoMe
6. Community of Inquiry model (Randy Garrison et al)
7. Social Constructivism (Vygotsky) and how it relates to Social Media
2. What we actually did:
1. Audience response to gauge use of FB, Twitter, Google+ (could have used PollEverywhere.com but just went with our clickers)
2. ARS to see how many had tried the Google Reader exercise
3. Discussion on these 2 topics
4. Discussion on formal and informal learning and need to become life long learners
5. Demonstration of Google Reader and how I use it, including sharing articles and commenting on them with residents and students.
6. Demonstration of Diigo - especially the ability to highlight bookmarked pages and to take notes.
7. Ask them to log into Twitter and post what they thought about the use of Google Reader and Diigo using a specific hashtag
8. Break - I started Twitter Fountain and projected the posts with the hashtags on the screen.  As students came back into the classroom, they were able to see what everyone else had posted about what they had learned.
9. Reviewed the discussion on the post on Google+ on the Science article.
10. Examples of Twitter case discussions, Twitter journal clubs, Google Hangout
11. Discussion and close
3. What did I learn?
1. Awareness of Feed readers and social bookmarking tools was very low.
2. These were very enthusiastically received by the students.  A number of twitter posts were about how they planned to start using these.
3. Students felt use of Social Networks in education was more appropriate for later stages of their training when they were more scattered and in less formal settings e.g. during practice, during clinical rotations etc.

PowerPoint Bulleted List Theorem

Most of us associate PowerPoint with lectures in large darked halls with many slides of bulleted lists accompanied by a droning voice.  So what is wrong with the bulleted lists in PowerPoint?  I was preparing to conduct a workshop on PowerPoint and Education and found some theoretical basis for why we should not use bulleted lists when presenting.  As you see, I do use them freely in documents.
[This is presented as a theorem just to make it interesting.  It is just my very simplistic interpretation of work done by many people and better presented elsewhere - see references at bottom.  Readers should refer to the Atkinson,Mayer reference below for an excellent and more detailed description of these concepts.  My hope here it to get readers interested both the cognitive theories related to this topic and the practical applications of these.]

Compare this:

A bulleted list in PowerPoint

To This:

Statement:
Using Bulleted lists while narrating during presentations is detrimental to students' learning.

Axioms:

• Working memory (formerly called short-term memory)
• Processes incoming data/information
• Connects it with existing knowledge/wisdom
• Encodes it into long-term memory
• Working memory has limited capacity to process information
• It has 2 separate channels 
• Verbal/auditory input
• Visual input
• Each channel has a limited processing capacity
• Text is processed by both visual and verbal channels (you know now where this is going right?)
• Meaningful learning requires substantial amount of cognitive processing in both channels 
• Select and pay attention to incoming data
• Organize the data
• Integrate it with prior knowledge

Argument:

Information presented in a manner that overloads the processing power of the Working Memory makes learning difficult.

Bulleted lists which are multiple concepts presented as text are processed by both the visual and verbal channels.

When you start talking around these lists, the words you speak are processed by the verbal channel.

The audience struggles 

• to correlate the text on the screen with the words you speak
• to grasp which bullet you are talking about
• to decide whether to just read the slide or listen to you talking

This struggle is not germane to getting a deeper understanding of the presented material.  It actually takes away from the learning process.

Conclusion:

Presenting (long) bulleted lists while narrating during presentations is detrimental to learning.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

Corollary1:

While narrating in a presentation, showing an appropriate image on the screen is better than showing a bulleted list.  This leverages the dual channels to facilitate learning.

Corollary 2:

Putting both an image and a lot of text on a single slide is detrimental to learning.  This can overwhelm the visual channel.

References:

1. Working memory (Baddley and Hitch) [PubMed][Wikipedia]
2. Dual Coding Theory (Paivio) [PDF article][Wikipedia]
3. Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller) [EduTech Wiki]
4. Select Organize Integrate Theory (Mayer)
5. Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer and Moreno)
6. List of learning theories at Learning-theories.com
7. Richard Mayer's full text article [PDF]
8. 5 ways to reduce PowerPoint overload (Atkinson and Mayer)

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Some of the biggest advantages of using tools like PowerPoint are:

1. Use of Multimedia Elements
2. Integration with Audience Response Systems
3. Creating branching/non linear presentations based on audience needs
4. More legible text, clearer images
5. Ability to re-purpose/reuse material from other presentations (can be dangerous)
6. Options for distribution and sharing

Thus, it is quite obvious, why PowerPoint (and other technology) is used so much in education.  It is very important to remember the steps for using technology in learning:

1. Understand how people learn
2. Think about how educators can Facilitate this learning process
3. And only then think about how technology can help improve this facilitation process.  

When we keep these three steps in mind while designing our presentations, it will lead to better use of PowerPoint.  When the presentation "fails" it is most likely because we ignored one or both of the first 2 steps and jumped straight into the technology (PowerPoint).

Classroom Presenter

I was recently attending the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Euducators in the Health Professions. Robert Kegan was doing a masterful workshop and what got my attention was a his story of how he moved from using overheads to using a tablet PC.

Bob hates PowerPoint presentations because the content seems to be predefined and not responsive to audience needs or interests. He uses the Classroom Presenter on a tablet PC to help him keep his workshop interactive.

Once I got home I pulled out my old convertible PC (tablet/laptop) and loaded Classroom Presenter 3.1 which is a free software from the University of Washington. After playing around with it for a while, I was thrilled. I started pulling various unsuspecting colleagues into my room to show it off.

So what is so special about this software? Here are some features that stood out:

1. Instructor computer connected to student computer via network (wired or wireless LAN or via Internet)
2. Instructor can allow his/her slides to be displayed on student computer
3. Student can annotate these slides and save them on their compuers
4. Instructor can ask students to write answers to questions/label images etc and send back to Instructor
5. Instructor can do quick polls and display a histogram like report of responses.
6. Instructor can import PowerPoint slides or presentations into the software.
7. Instructor can keep toggle between several slide decks - the PowerPoint slides, whiteboard slides, student responses and quick polls.
8. While it would be best if the Instructor has a Tablet PC, the students can work with a regular desktop, laptop or tablet.
9. Can be used at a distance.

So how can this be used in a class? Here are 2 quick examples:

1. Think-pair-share: Instructor asks students to work on a question or problem in a small group and then each group writes/types its response into a slide and send back to instructor. The responses can be projected on a screen from the instructor's computer. This is the equivalent of using flip charts in small groups. The advantage is that as each group presents, their slide can be projected to the class, the slides created by all groups can be saved digitally and shared.

2. A histology instructor can share slides with the class and ask students to label specific cells or organelles and send back to the instuctor. This can be used to do needs analysis or assess cognition.

There must be many folks who have used this software in a creative manner. There are a ton of papers and presentations from the University of Washington. For example, there is a link to UCSD where they have developed the Ubiquitous Presenter, based on the Classroom Presenter. UP allows students to use any web enabled device like cell phones to link to the instructors presentation. It also appears to host the presentation and student annotations on a web server so students can review it later. Would love to hear of more examples.