February 2, 2004
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February 2, 2004 |
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Hewlett-Packard Company has awarded Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology $130,489 in cutting edge personal tablet computer technology to develop "m-learning" educational models to amplify student-professor interactions, and enhance learning in the classroom and laboratory.
The grant, provided through HP's Advanced Mobile Technology program, extends Rose-Hulman's leadership role in using technology in the classroom, continues the college's efforts to explore the potential of mobility solutions in the classroom, and exposes undergraduate students to the most current mobile and wireless technologies available. HP also provided the college with a $220,509 advanced mobility technology grant last year. An estimated 450 students -- more than a quarter of the college's enrollment -- will use mobile technology devices during the 2004-2005 academic year. HP will provide Rose-Hulman with hardware and software products, including 52 tablet personal computers (valued at $119,989) and $10,500 in monetary support for students implementing the educational programs and travel to attend a HP grant forum. The tablets will support the creation of innovative "m-learning" projects that apply wireless mobile technologies in a variety of academic disciplines, learning models and settings. The program will facilitate longer-term use of mobile technologies, integrated across the curricula, according to Art Western, Rose-Hulman's vice president of academic affairs. "We're always experimenting with emerging technologies so that when new capabilities -- ones that make a real difference in student learning -- become sufficiently powerful and cost effective, we are poised to implement them," Western states. "We are excited about the ability this grant affords us to more fully explore our faculty members' creative ideas for using mobile computing."
Fifty Rose-Hulman juniors from a wide range of academic majors will use the tablets during the fall quarter through carefully-crafted classroom exercises in two sections of the required Technical Communications course. The classes, taught by Associate English Professor Julia Williams, prepare students for the forms, practices and strategies appropriate to communicate in the technical workplace. The students will assess the effectiveness of the tablets for enhancing communication in a mobile environment. Then, during the winter quarter, these same Rose-Hulman students will use their tablets in a variety of courses, particularly in team projects with external clients. This educational migration has the opportunity to involve at least 300 students and 10 faculty members. Besides the 50 new tablets, Rose-Hulman students and faculty will also utilize the 85 iPAQ pocket personal computers and 70 tablet personal computers that were provided in the 2003 HP Advanced Mobile Technology grant. "This grant from HP is a continuation of a beneficial relationship between two world-class organizations," states Louis Turcotte, vice president of instructional, administrative and information technology. "The partnership allows us to enhance the quality and effectiveness of mobile technologies in the educational ecosystem." Compact (8.3" long by 10.8" wide by 0.8" high) and lightweight (approximately 3 pounds), the tablet PCs offer unprecedented mobility and versatility. This spring, junior chemical engineering students are taking the tablets outside Alfred Carlson's classroom to the unit operations laboratory in nearby Olin Hall to operate experiments on thermodynamic analysis. Students use stylists to write lab notes and Carlson's laboratory comments are handwritten across the touch pad computer screen. Later, the comments are converted into a text file and downloaded into a student's personal file for retrieval while completing a lab assignment or studying for an exam. Meanwhile, in a physics lab in Moench Hall, Sudipa Kirtley's physics students are using tablets, with LabPro computer software, to collect and analyze data collected for electricity and modern physics experiments. For an experiment on Malus Law, students use the tablets outside of the laboratory, in an open-air setting, along with solar detectors and calibrated polarizers, to gather data. Physics III students are taking the tablets across campus to the Sports and Recreation Center to better understand the concepts of tangential and radial acceleration.
"The possibilities are endless. We're just touching the tip of this new technology," states Natalie Morand, a junior chemical engineering major who utilized the tablets during Carlson's fall class. She favors the tablet's note-taking feature, through the Microsoft Journal program, that enables students to write chemical equations onto the tablet screen. The text file version of these notes can be sent, through e-mail, to students in a course workgroup. An assessment and evaluation study of students using the tablet PCs and iPAQs through the 2003 HP grant, conducted by the Office of Institutional Research Planning and Assessment (IRPA), revealed an overwhelming majority of those students utilizing the handheld technology liked the devices and wanted to use the PCs in other courses. The 2004 HP grant will meet this need, according to Computer Science Professor David Mutchler, who helped write the grant. The tablets also enhance an academic educational environment which has utilized laptop computers since 1995. "The laboratory is now the world and we want Rose-Hulman students to have access to this cutting edge technology. The tablets are a great educational tool," Mutchler stated. "This mobile technology could take us beyond the laptop computer initiative." The "m-learning" models showcase the breadth of technology available for Rose-Hulman students and professors, according to Western. Earlier this year, the college was ranked fifth on a list of the nation's "Top 25 Most Connected Campuses," by The Princeton Review, and tied with Carnegie Mellon University as the most tech-savvy schools in Kaplan/Newsweek's "Hot Colleges" list. All classrooms on campus are wired for high-speed network connections and there are wireless nodes strategically placed around campus. Administrators involved in Rose-Hulman's mobile technology program are Gloria Rogers, vice president of institutional research, planning and assessment, Western and Turcotte. Faculty involved will be Claude Anderson, Mark Ardis and Mutchler of the computer science and software engineering department; Williams of the humanities and social sciences department; Mark Yoder of the electrical and computer engineering department; Carlson of the chemical engineering department; and Kirtley of the physics and optical engineering department. Staff members involved will be Steve Jones, chief systems architect in the computer center's information technology department; and Gwen Lee-Thomas, director of assessment.
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