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Move over, Textbook
With a new dual workspace technology tool tailored for his students, UGA Engineering professor Chi Thai is redefining the classroom experience
By Alan Flurry
The largest college generation since the 1960’s, the Millennials – born between 1979 and 1994 – are taking their places at institutions across the United States. In addition to being the most racially and ethnically diverse US generation in history, they have been connected in scholarly studies with high expectations for personalization and customization in their products and services. Think iPod, Facebook, text messaging and YouTube and the picture takes full shape. Having come of age with a vast array of choices, they expect results quickly and depend on constant feedback.
For UGA engineering professor Chi Thai, the demands of this new generation of experiential learners have presented an opportunity to test advances in technology and put them to work in his classroom.
Engineering courses in applied machine vision, computer algorithm design and modeling are the backbone of the engineering curriculum and especially of the new undergraduate degree program at UGA in Computer Systems Engineering. In these core courses students learn to create and use simulation modeling for all manner of applications, from biological viruses to manufacturing plants. And yet, as computer technology itself has improved, with ever more powerful PCs and more stations in classrooms, methods for teaching these essential engineering courses have remained largely unchanged.
Tried-and-true methods in the classroom have persisted despite an observable up-tick in the scholarly attention paid to pedagogy generally. As online learning has grown into a fundamental element of the classroom experience, researchers have noted the rise of “performance content that is generated spontaneously in the process of student learning.” In other words, content has begun to spring forth from multiple, real-time classroom interactions, both online and otherwise. These include faculty-to-student, student-to-student and students-to-faculty. In this process, the traditional communication flow in the classroom has been renegotiated as a need to provide students more opportunities to develop course materials in concert with the instructor during class time.
Within this shifting dynamic, Thai has realized the opportunity to experiment with new combinations of teaching tools that include methods of surveying student habits and evaluating the ways they learn, in addition to an array of industry-standard IT applications. As these new methods gain national attention and this new generation inhabits university classrooms, the collaborative teaching environment is increasingly defined by collaborative learning.
Campus Technology, a national print and online journal, has reported on Thai’s new methods at UGA twice in the last eight months. The reason for the interest: an innovative arrangement of PCs with pen tablets and a combination of multimedia software that allows students and the instructor to share information during class and record it all for later review. Real-time classroom learning, referred to as synchronous learning in industry jargon, has taken on a host of special characteristics as today’s students and classrooms have both become more sophisticated. “From the students’ point of view, they have two monitors to work with: one for their own personal workspace and then another where other instructional materials can be viewed or manipulated, originating from me or from other students,” Thai said.
Thai has made this possible using NetSupport Manager, a multi-platform remote control and desktop management suite that allows instructors to monitor and collaborate with the class. The addition of TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio allows the capture of actions on the screen as well as audio and video. The real innovation was the incorporation of these two tools together. “NetSupport Manager designed their system around a so-called teacher-centric viewpoint, which allows for one-to-one interactions. But the method for switching between the different modes was awkward,” Thai said, describing the process he began in 2001 to optimize a way to both teach and manage his class at the same time, while providing his students a variety of ways to access and practice the material. “I still have my lecture and present material that is pre-planned, but in the classroom you have a lot of ad hoc activity that is very useful,” he said. The ability to record these interactions and make them available to the class later outside the classroom is a key to their success in practicing on their own.
All of these classroom developments suppose constraints that also play a role in creating the learning environment. Thai spends a great deal of time getting to know his students and how they learn. “Our engineering students tend to be visual learners. It’s important for me to know, evaluate and understand what’s going on as the course proceeds, to adjust if I need to,” Thai said. In order to see how students are using the system, he employs surveys then compares the responses to actual statistics from WebCT. Thai is continually fine-tuning the way the tools are introduced to the class to affect the way they are used. “The key for students is, in order for the classroom experience to be good, they need to get themselves prepared in advance,” he says.
Another important constraint, especially in a time of tight budgets, is choosing technology that meets the needs and the budget of a particular department or school. “Our classrooms are general purpose, used for teaching other subjects and other software packages later on. I cannot just use tablet PCs that won’t be powerful enough for other, more demanding software tools,” Thai said. So while the system he designed may be useful in other schools and colleges, Thai cautions that educators need to consult the growing list of educational software tools and determine what works best for them. “Constant improvement in technologies usually moots any discussion of what’s best, so it all depends on your needs,” he says.
Taking these tools originally intended for distance learning and using them in a synchronous classroom environment, Thai has brought the interactive engineering classroom to UGA. “When I teach simulation, machine vision or robotics, the material is so visual and dynamic that is impossible to teach those subjects on a chalkboard,” he said.
By creating new classroom possibilities, Thai also adds an important new leg to the CSE curriculum. Starting this fall, UGA will offer a few weeks of enhanced instruction to computer systems engineering majors. “I want them to get a taste of what computer systems engineers do, before they even get into the technical instruction,” Thai said. “They can see what a computer is, how it interfaces with the real world, how you can program it and when it interacts with the world, what it does to your system.”
This type of understanding of the process upon which his students are embarking reflects Chi Thai’s intuition, in and out of the classroom. When asked what led him to venture out beyond what he already knew and was comfortable with to create a new experience in his classroom, he answers with a quote from Pablo Picasso: “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
For more information on the Computer Systems Engineering degree program at UGA, visit.
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