Developing an Integrated and Collaborative Learning Environment for CS1 Using Tablet PC and Adaptive Book
1. Technology vision: Describe your campus or school vision on the role of mobile
technology in learning environments. To assist us in understanding your project,
please let us know on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being just beginning and 5 being
advanced deployment, in terms of how far along your campus is on the road to
achieving its mobile technology vision. HP is interested in projects at all stages of
deployment. (CMU may be ranked 4 out of 5)
Carnegie Mellon has long been a leader in mobile computing. It had what were probably the first 802.11 network coverage in all buildings on campus and the first large-scale all-campus coverage with 802.11b. The latter was achieved in the year 2000. Since then, the wireless network has, for many, become the primary network on campus. Many experiments have been conducted with our wireless infrastructure since it was first deployed. Carnegie Mellon has a long history of using wireless computing for educational enhancement. With the inception of Wireless Andrew, the university began exploring; in particular the educational value of unwired computing using both laptops and handheld devices. Hewlett Packard has played a substantial role in supporting many of these experiments with equipment and funding.
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Prior to Carnegie Mellon’s WLAN, a faculty member would often struggle to use a laptop for presentation in class. The combination of the WLAN and equipping every classroom with digital projection has dramatically changed this picture. Getting the technology out of the way is one of our fundamental design principles in technology-enhanced education. Today, Carnegie Mellon is taking educational enhancement through wireless computing to a whole new level, primarily in the areas of online learning tools, the textbook of the future [ Open Learning Initiative (OLI) [ and Cognitive Tutor Project
[ Therefore our institutional commitment to wireless/handheld/tablet computing is very strong. We know mobile devices are both the immediate and long-range future of computing.
2. Mobile technology implementation: What are the next implementation steps on campus that move you toward your campus mobile computing vision?
CMU is clearly moving towards a complete mobile technology model. Our next substantial steps are a) evaluate the potential uses and impacts of tablet computing, b) upgrade the WLAN to higher bandwidth - 802.11a/g, and c) identify more research projects for the test beds we create.
3. Synergy: How will this grant help you make a substantial contribution toward achieving the educational technology vision on your campus?
We hope that this grant will help us assess the cognitive impact of new hardware and software in learning. Carnegie Mellon has a long tradition of not drawing conclusions without data. Currently we are conducting an experiment in design for a course that had wireless laptops in one semester and did not have them in another. A recommendation on whether to institute a laptop requirement will hinge in part on the outcomes of such studies. This project would give us the chance to establish what is educationally important about Tablet PC’s - how they can be used most effectively in education. Gathering this kind of empirical data will inform our recommendations to students and faculty about the acquisition and uses of mobile tablet computing.
4. Evidence of Success (400 words): Describe how you have successfully deployed
or are currently successfully deploying mobile technology in learning environments in ways that have positively impacted student achievement. Describe the ways in which other professors have adopted your methods, practices or curricula. Indicate the number of professors who have done so.
The goal of the Adaptive Book(AB) project (with a code base in C#/.net) is to develop a highly usable and smart environment for capturing, classifying and archiving user interactions that occur within a course[ The primary focus is on the digital textbooks where chapters can be reorganized, specific markups (consisting of highlighted sections, annotations and links) can be grouped and shared. Text, formulas and images in the digital book can be manipulated to create context sensitive work sheets. All markups with various metadata elements can be stored in an online repository for reusability. Students can perform a smart search for markups that addresses a specific concept or FAQ. The Adaptive Book project is an ongoing project at Carnegie Mellon, with a research base is in Human Computer Interaction(usability) and Data Mining (smart profiles). The project is partially supported by NSF, Microsoft and HP.
Adaptive Book has been part of the data structures and programming courses taught at CMU for the last two years. Prof. Malu Roldan from San Jose State University’s (SJSU) School of Business has been using Adaptive Book in Tablet PC for the last two semesters[ Currently 34 students from SJSU business class have access to a custom book from OReilly publishing in a Tablet PC/AB format. The Tablet PC’s for the SJSU project has been awarded under a HP mobile grant. Prof. Victor Adamchik from CMU’s School of Computer Science has used the Adaptive Book technology for the past 3 semesters for his Data Structures course. Professor Jorge Sarmiento from County College of Morris has used the Adaptive Book for Linear Algebra in Fall 03 and has created a complete library of sharable markups using the Adaptive Book tool set. Adaptive book is also available from Brooks Cole Thomson Publishers [ Based on our user surveys students were highly enthusiastic about using this novel technology for learning. Students appreciated the fact that all resources are integrated and they were able to generate markups and share with others. There is no doubt that Tablet PC will significantly increase the level of interaction with digital content.
5. Project Executive Summary (200 words): Describe your proposed project in an executive summary. Describe how other professors will benefit from your knowledge and guidance and will adopt and build upon your practices. Include details on what course or courses in which discipline(s) will be impacted by this project.
The innovative use of new devices like Tablet PC requires special software such as Adaptive Book that takes advantage of digital ink and other integrated collaborative design and development tools. The purpose of this pilot is to study the effectiveness of these tools in an introductory programming course, a course where ability to explain abstract programming concepts using hand drawn graphics and tying them into specific textbook content and code examples is critical to success. Adaptive book provides the most flexible way of supporting this activity on Tablet PC. Students will be able to generate, share, critique and archive all interactions on digital content. We hope that this level of student collaboration will significantly increase the learning effectiveness.
Our goal is to demonstrate the use of ink-based annotation tools in Tablet PC, and innovative new content management software like Adaptive Book will increase classroom interaction, ability to markup and share all content, and opportunity for greater collaboration and archival of the best of all interactions.
6. Impact on Teaching and Learning (400 words): If funded, describe how this
project will positively impact and transform the teaching and learning
environment for faculty and students. Include:
• The fundamental problem/opportunity the project addresses
• The anticipated outcomes for the project and how outcomes will be measured
• How you anticipate the student learning experience will be transformed
• The number of faculty involved in this project, their disciplines, and the
approximate number of students by course level who will be directly impacted
Learning in the classroom, such as from lectures, places significant information processing demands on students. Previous studies have shown that students’ notes taken during class are rarely generative, that is, they lack organization or synthesis and are usually incomplete, and verbatim. Furthermore, studies have shown that when note-taking structures that facilitate the recording of more generative and complete notes, subsequent performance improves (Kiewra et al, 1991). The use of advanced technologies, such as the Tablet PC and Adaptive Book, may provide a mechanism to reduce the cognitive load imposed by listening, organizing, synthesizing and recording information, and facilitate the recording of more generative and valuable notes. To investigate how these new technologies could facilitate student performance, a series of studies will be designed to compare student performance under various user scenarios of the technology. For example, as an extension of the Kiewra et al studies on note-taking, we would compare student performance when provided with professor-annotated slides vs. student annotated slides to review, and contrast those conditions to a non-Tablet PC condition. The ability to select, highlight, annotate (using ink) and organize information seems to have a clear pedagogical advantage when this is done in a specific learning context [ For example, we would ask each student to create an annotated learning profile (grouping highlighted sections from the book, adding their own ink annotations) to demonstrate the mastery of a concept. The learning profiles then be electronically distributed and anonymously critique by other students. Based on peer review, we would pick the best of these learning profiles and archive them online. Since most of the critical cognitive activities are done by the student, one would expect this to have an impact on student outcomes, or differential impact dependent on whether the student was high or low competence. CMU’s Eberly Center for teaching excellence will come up with a workable and useful design, identify sources of data that would be most useful to collect, and consult and assist with the implementation and analysis. Based on the outcome we plan to modify and/or add features to the Adaptive Book technology to make it more learner centric and Tablet PC friendly. This grant brings an opportunity to extend our use of Tablet PC for classroom instruction and place similar tools in the hands of the students and measure the learning impact. The unique hardware/software combination of Tablet PC and Adaptive Book should provide the most natural (ink-based), interactive and collaborative learning experience for the students. Two computer science faculty members will assist PI in implementing this pilot. A freshman level introductory programming course with an annual enrollment of over 500 students will serve as the pilot course. We anticipate that a total of about 60-80 students will be able to use the Tablet PC for the duration of the project.
7. Use of HP products in the Project (100 words): Which of the equipment packages
below will you be selecting for your project? How do you propose to use HP
products to support the goals of this initiative?
We will be using Package B for this specific project. The Tablet PC’s will be distributed to twenty non-majors during Fall 04 and twenty majors during Spring 05. The Students and the Professor will have the ownership of the equipment for the duration of the project. This would allow them to use Tablet PC in all aspects of their educational experience during that semester. For the pilot program, we do have all content in digital format including the textbook. A custom book consisting of related chapters from Karel the Robot and Introduction to Programming will be integrated into the Adaptive Book. We would encourage students and professors to use Tablet PC exclusively for all the work related to the course so that each annotated document could be labeled, enhanced and saved easily.
8. Campus Involvement (100 words): Describe how the campus Information
Technology department will be involved in supporting this project? What other
Departments or functions, if any, will provide support to the project?
Dr. Joel Smith, Associate Provost for Computing at CMU and the head of OTE will be part of the proposed Tablet PC research team. OTE will provide necessary customizations to CMU’s course management system for easy archiving of the content generated as part of this project. Mark Sthelik, Assitant Dean for undergraduate studies at CMU’s School of Computer Science has formally endorsed this project. Mark has committed internal resources necessary to maintain the Tablet PC’s for the duration of the project.
9. Project Visibility (100 words): Please describe your interest in and method for
developing visibility for the project on your campus and beyond (publications
and presentations at academic events, industry events, etc.).
Adaptive Book in Tablet PC is an educational technology product currently been used by Professors from San Jose State University and CMU. PH The project coordinator was invited to present the Adaptive Book technology at the HP Higher Education Forum in Houston in July 2003 and was the only presenter for Educational Technology Products in Tablet PC. The audience consists of CIO’s and other Administrative and faculty personal from various universities (most are HP Clients) reacted very positively to the presentation. The PI will continue to present the technology and the pilot project results in similar national and international conferences. The visibility for the project on campus will be organized by OTE as a series of presentations and discussions during Spring and Fall 05 semesters. The findings related to the computer science issues of the project will be presented and publishes at the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education(SIGCSE) meeting in March 2005 in St. Louis and at iTiCSE (innovations in technology in computer science education) conference in Lisbon, Portugal in June 05. The findings of the project related to the software design and usability will be presented and published at SIGCHI (Computer Human Interaction) conference in March 2005. CMU’s OTE and Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence will present and publish results related to the cognitive implications of the Tablet PC and Adaptive Book technology.
10. Grant Recipient Details: Please provide the following contact details:
Principal Investigator: Ananda Gunawardena, Associate teaching Professor, Computer Science, 412-268-1559,
Institution Name: Carnegie Mellon University, 4000, Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
Institution TaxID number 25-0969449 (9 digit IRS number)
Co-Investigators:
- Jim Roberts, Teaching Professor,
- Don Slator, Lecturer, Computer Science,
- Joel Smith, Associate Provost for Computing,
- Anne L. Fay, Assistant Director, Assessment , Office of Technology in Education and The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, Adjunct Professor, Psychology
Shipping Instructions: Angie Brookins
Wean 5101, School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
4000, Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412)268-5483