April 28, 2005: Technology - Summary

This final teaching seminar panel proved to be one of the most controversial and best-attended (particularly with respect to faculty) yet! Professor Dwyer opened the session by saying that while it has taken a long time for the math department to incorporate technology into its courses, the time for doing so has come, with real advantages for both faculty and students.

Dr. Chris Clark, from the Kaneb Center, spoke first of the five panelists. Little will be recorded here of what he said. Rather, click here and here to see the two pages of slides that he passed out (Please note that the poor formatting is due to the scanner, not Dr. Clark). To summarize his point, though, one could say that you should not use technology because your neighbor is or because it is a hot topic. Rather, technology should be used only when it benefits either the student (in terms of meeting learning goals) or the teacher (in terms of efficiency). For some online demos of technology in mathematics-related courses that he mentioned, please click here. Following Dr. Clark's presentation, and audience member suggested that it would be useful to have access to a student account (even a dummy student that doesn't exist) in various applications (AFS space, webCT, etc.) to see what students can and cannot access (i.e., to check that priveleges have been set as expected).

Professor Qing Han was up next. Professor Han told us that he will be incorporating a new form of technology into 125 next fall - electronic homework assignment, collection, and automatic grading. The software used for this is called iLearn. It contains the solutions to 2400 problems from Stewart's text, making it one of the best pieces of software of its type, given that we use Stewart for that class. Professor Han also suggested that there will be online tutorials available to students and that this software allows for free response questions and answers, not just multiple choice.

Professor Barry Keating, from Business, spoke next. He used a very sexy tool - a hand-held pen-based laptop of sorts that used wireless communication to project to the screen. His top reason for using technology is to put his students in touch with the primary observed data in his discipline. He showed us parts of his lectures that involved the use of websites concering up-to-the-minutes currency exchange rates and data from specific companies, spreadsheets of data involving certain businesses, images related to marketing products, analytic tools to crunch stats as desired, and more. His lectures have certainly been enriched greatly through expert use of technology!

Dr. Mouktonglang (Tang) went next. Tang will be a teaching specialist in the department next year, and he has been developing webCT (or now, Vista) tools for classes such as 108. Tang showed us briefly how to build a Vista page, use it as a teacher, and use it as a student, emphasizing the various levels of access available to each type of person. He showed a variety of examples of questions that Vista could handle (for online quizzes or practice exams), some of which included plots and figures. One perk of using Vista is that you can rig the problems to pop up in random orders with varying numerical data so that no two people's quizzes will be identical (with high probability, at least). Tang also showed us around the Math 108 webpage a bit, including how to access some Maple files that are available to 108 students.

Professor Nancy Stanton was the last panelist to speak. She strongly advocates the use of computer algebra systems (CAS's) in the classroom, via either calculators or computers. She always reminds her students that anybody can be trained to compute things with a calculator, but what will get you a job is the ability to understand the mathematics involved in the computation (thereby emphasizing that CAS's are just tools for studying math and that knowledge of how to crunch out an answer is not a proxy for the knowledge of the mathematics involved). She suggested that Maple could be integrated into quizzes and exams as well as homework. She has had the most success with technology in 325 and with respect to engineers (especially since the college of engineering recently increased the amount of programming their first years need to learn). Professor Stanton pointed out a few problems with such technology in the classroom:

• Some students lack training with respect to computers, or at least the ND systems (such as AFS space).
• It is unpopular to include technology in multisection courses unless all sections use the same technology.
• (the biggest problem!) Technology in the classrooms is inconsistent. One can never tell which software or hardware will work on any given day, making it very difficult to plan technology-related lectures (other than just using PowerPoint!).

There was a very good discussion, full of good ideas, following the panelists' presentations. Here is a list briefly describing each of the major points discussed. Please let me know if I missed something:

• It was claimed that all students had laptops (or at least calculators), so such resources could be required of students. A representative from OIT pointed out that only 90% of students own a computer, although most have laptops rather than desktops, and each class seems to have a higher percentage of ownership than the previous class.
• Professor Stanton pointed out that there is typically only a student or two in each class that does not have access to a calculator or a computer, and that is typically easily remedied by the student borrowing one from a friend or using a cluster machine.
• One difficulty with respect to the automated grading of free response questions is that no partial credit may be given for nearly-correct work. Also, there is some concern about whether correct solutions represented in a manner other than that in the "solution list" will be marked wrong.
• Some individuals were concerned that automatic grading puts a buffer between faculty and students, so that faculty may no longer have a sense of how their students are learning.
• The OIT representative pointed out that software and hardware problems will soon become less common - OIT is working hard to make all machines across campus consistent. Also, OIT will respond very quickly to problems and will even go so far as to come into a classroom to give a presentation on how to use the software or hardware available to students.
• There are only two classrooms on campus that may be called computer labs - classrooms with computers, not just student computer clusters. This is very shocking to many people, as such classrooms could likely be used for math tutorials or at least occasional demonstrations. A number of grad students seemed excited by the idea of basing tutorials on technology.
• Starting in the fall, all grades for all courses must be submitted via Vista. At least one audience member expressed concern over how cumbersome webCT is, but some of the panelists claimed that Vista is much easier to use than the old webCT. I guess we will all find out soon enough.
• One audience member was concerned that "courseware" would no longer be available. However, the OIT rep assured us all that there will always be some sort of folder for each course that faculty could use to distribute and collect course material.

Professor Himonas closed up the seminar by reminding us to only use technology if it is warranted and to ALWAYS be prepared for software and hardware problems!

If you have any ideas, concerns, or thoughts about how to better organize or run the seminar in any way, Professor Himonas and/or I will be very glad to hear them!

(reported by Dan Bates)