Technology in Moderation
SIMONE LAUGHTON

Abstract:
In a class of 800 students balancing the use of different technologies can be a challenge.  In this interview Any Wilk, Lecturer with the U. of T. Mississauga Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, discusses her exploration of various approaches to reach her students.  Using technologies to support student learning for math topics can be particularly demanding as working out lengthy theorems and problems is often highly visual and involved.  Combining technologies that enable the recording of voice and video can help to document what is being taught and to provide students with a record they can refer back to as often as needed.  Any has used technology to:

Create mini-lecture snippets of challenging problems in video and pdf formats; Deliver and record lecture content using a Tablet PC; Experiment with in-class lectures using Camtasia; Provide online office hours; Collaborate with the Integrate Group to develop: Online practice tests with feedback; and, First year diagnostic tools such as the Calculus Readiness Assessment

Working collaboratively with other groups on campus can help to leverage expertise in different areas to enable experimentation with and evaluation of the impact of technology on teaching and learning.  Most importantly, however, technology cannot replace the human touch and the interactions that occur when instructors and students meet face-to-face.

 

Main Article:

Any Wilk, Lecturer of the U. of T. Mississauga Department of Mathematical and Computational Science shares her experiences working with colleagues and family to enrich her teaching and enhance student learning in an interview with Simone Laughton, Instructional Technology Liaison Librarian at the U. of T. Mississauga Library.

SL:  What were some of your earliest experiences/experiments with
technology?

AW:  The first thing of quasi-technological experiments I was involved in was preparing and managing course webpages for our department.  This was before CCNet and WebCT and so on.  I am very fortunate to have technical people in my home who keep me abreast of anything new.  That was many years ago, probably 15 years ago.  I have a very technologically advanced family and I cannot do anything but keep up with them.  So I have an advantage having support instantly at home even as I’m thinking of new things to try.

My biggest technological advance was when I used my expense money to buy a tablet PC.  That was the mark of when I really felt I was using technology.  To give you a little bit of information about this experience, it wasn’t just about presenting PowerPoint lectures to the students, it was about getting them involved by providing them with a skeleton of the lecture including:

This provides students with an idea of what the lecture will be about.  When the time came I could fill in the blanks during the lecture.  Depending on student response to questions that I would raise, then I could modify the lecture right there and then.  Apart from not using chalk (which is a problem for me), this gave me a way to have a record of the lecture so that when a student came later on and said they didn’t understand part of the lecture I could really go back to that part of the lecture and go over it with the student or clarify that they had copied what I wrote incorrectly or they had missed a whole paragraph or something like that.  In addition to having an easy way to display what you are writing in a more readable manner than the chalkboard, it provides a permanent record for each lecture.

I have not published full lecture notes and made them available to students simply because that would probably give them a very good excuse not to be there.  However, looking back at a lecture, if there was a part of a lecture that was clearly challenging for students, I could then put a small snippet of the lecture online for the students so the students could listen to it and see it. 

SL:  What is the format you use for the lecture snippets?

AW:  I use two different formats.  The information is provided either as a PDF file as a record of about 2 pages depicting a solution of a problem in more detail without any voice, or as a video using Camtasia, which is a software that can be used to capture video and sound of what you are doing on your PC.  I use Camtasia to provide a short 5 – 10 minute mini-lecture on a topic.  For example, when we do linear algebra there are parts of it where you have to do some processes on a matrix.  Doing that in the lecture may be considered boring by some students.  Many of the students already know how to do this.  It is easier to prepare the mini-lecture so that a student who needs the help can choose to watch it through the course website.  The plan is to have such snippets on topics that give students in general trouble, - to have a library of such things so that students can refer to them. 

SL:  Have you had any comments from students about the mini-lectures?

AW:  The students really seem to like it.  They prefer it to having things on the chalkboard.  The screen initially was not very good in the lecture halls in the South Building, but that has been partly resolved.  The screen used to be very high up so that students in the front had to really strain their necks.  Since January we have had a much bigger screen so it’s a lot better.

SL:  Are there any disadvantages to using a tablet PC?

AW:  One disadvantage of using a tablet PC is that I’m able to have only 2 pages at a time in view.  Especially for mathematics there are many times when you have to refer to a previous page or a previous theorem.  When you are using 6 chalkboards, it is much easier to refer to previous points in the lecture.  I have solved the problem partially by foreseeing things that we will refer to and making a transparency slide for an overhead projector that I can turn on or off on the side of the lecture hall as it is needed.  Also, students have handouts that they can refer to during the lecture.  If there is a problem that I want students to work on then it is best to place it on a transparency slide and allow students to work on it during a lecture.  I like to have students actively work on problems during a lecture so that I can find out where they may be having trouble. 

I have merged old-fashioned technology with newer technology for a solution.  There are starting to be some students who have seen the tablet PC in my hand and they have gone out and bought a tablet PC.  They sit in the front and use the tablet PC to write out their equations.

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