Developing a Collaborative Teaching
& Learning Environment for Engineering Instruction
Chi N. Thai (thai@engr.uga.edu)
As
“hand-written notes” and “personal narrations” are the
most natural tools to record, review, integrate and develop our own learning process,
we have developed a collaborative learning and teaching environment integrating
the use of Tablet PCs and/or Pen Tablets and multimedia technologies at the
student/teacher level with the goal of achieving active learning for students
in the classroom. To fulfill different instructional & technological needs,
we describe below an innovative implementation of the same basic IT tools
(NetSupport Manager Suite - Control & Tutor, TechSmith
Camtasia Studio and Tablet PCs or Wacom
Pen Tablets) corresponding to 2 scenarios:
1) Students contributing to Student initiated work.
2) Students contributing to a Community work, initiated by
the Teacher.
The links below will bring up narrated presentations
describing the goal, design and functionality of Room 310 in the
1) Powerpoint presentation describing Room 310 (see this one
first).
2) The following links are
recorded narrated sessions of the same demonstration
but from 3 different points of view:
a) The Teacher
Station Desktop PC point of view (start with this one).
b) The Teacher
Station Tablet PC point of view.
c) The Student Station
Desktop PC point of view.
Starting mid-August 2007, Room 310 had been used to
teach ENGR-4940 (Introductory Systems Modeling) and we recently had concluded a
preliminary
assessment of this system.
Currently, we are exploring the idea of providing each
student PC with Dual Graphics Displays so that the student can use ONE display
for his or her "PERSONAL WORKSPACE" while the SECOND display is used
for the teacher to send over the materials shown on the Teacher Desktop in the
Teacher-Centric Mode, or to be used by the student to remotely share into the
Teacher Desktop when the class is in Collaborative Mode. The following links are short narrated
sessions of the same demonstration from 2 different points of view:
1. The Teacher Station Desktop.
2. The Student Dual Display
Desktop.