teaching a large class in technological setting - People.stat.sfu.ca

of students with same strength in the same LCD setting. It was clear that electronic slides
tend to be rigid and do not provide flexible mechanisms to adapt the lectures on demand .
An important part of lecturing is to have the ability to adjust material in response to
student reactions and developing spontaneous examples and explanations to clarify and
expand on topics. I wanted a presentation system that will provide a dynamic and
interactive learning environment which fully engages students. I realized that I am not
effectively using the technology. Tablet function allows for the interaction with
audiences during lectures through on-screen annotation with handwritten electronic
inking. This brings classroom setting more closer to the classical blackboard-chalk setup.
Combining electronic slides and digital ink using the Tablet PC are also possible. In the
teaching model that I will discuss, an instructor loads a presentation composed of a deck
of electronic slides onto a tablet computer. The instructor writes on the slides with the
tablet’s pen and control the presentation by invoking controls that are displayed on Tablet
PC. The usefulness of electronic ink for lecture delivery has been discussed in a number
of educational research papers: Simon et al [15], Loch [9], Loomes et al [10]. For the
electronic slides I selected Classroom Presenter [8]. It is a presentation system that
combines the advantages of existing computer-based systems with the handwriting
flexibility of manual systems. As described by its developers, on a Tablet PC, Classroom
Presenter allows the instructor to handwrite over computer-projected slides. It is available
free for educational and research use and can be downloaded from [3]. The electronic
slides prepared for Classroom Presenter had only the outlines of the topics with sufficient
blank space to be filled with digital ink during the lectures.. Rest of the setup for this
course was same as in earlier model.
At the end of the course (this was only for six weeks), students were again asked their
opinions about the course. The results are as follows:
Survey (94 respondents) questions:
1) I liked the LCD-PowerPoint
mode of lectures as compared to
that of MA 105 last semester.
2) This LCD -PowerPoint mode of
lectures is reasonably interactive.
3) This mode of lectures is an
effective way to understand the
course content.
4) Even though the mode of
instruction was of PowerPoint ,
pace of the lectures was not fast.
Yes No
80(85%) 14 (15%)
Yes No
67 (71%) 27 (29%)
Yes No
61 (65%) 33 (35%)
Yes No
41 (44%) 53 (56%)
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