Screen test

Papers don’t rustle in Charles Grisham’s Chemistry 441 class. None of his nearly 130 students have bothered to haul the 1,216-page, 9-pound textbook to class and, during the lecture, no one furiously copies the schematic structures of lipid-anchored proteins from Grisham’s PowerPoint slides into a spiral notebook.

Each student, however, totes a two-pound Hewlett Packard Tablet PC, a personal computer that’s about the size of a five-subject notebook and loaded with all the software and Internet resources a tech-savvy scholar could want.

These students are among 400 undergrads in three College classes that are part of a collaboration of Thomson Learning, Microsoft Corporation, Hewlett Packard and the University testing classroom applications of the newest digital technology. 

“U.Va. has been on the forefront of developments in digital humanities,” said Dean Edward L. Ayers, “and we were eager to use that visibility to find new partners for teaching innovations.” 

Microsoft’s OneNote software, combined with the Tablet PC’s touch-sensitive screen, is a perfect example. It allows students to access Grisham’s lecture slides during class and, with the aid of a stylus, write, draw or highlight right on the virtual image as he lectures. After class, they can review their notes as they listen to an audio recording of the lecture. The software also converts handwritten and audio content to digital text.

Jim Edwards (Biochemistry ’06) finds the Tablet lets him pay more attention to what’s important rather than worrying about getting Grisham’s diagrams down on paper. “You can do all kinds of things with this that you can’t do with paper notes or a laptop,” he said. “I can spend more time thinking about actual material than just copying the drawing from the board.”

Students don’t miss that ponderous textbook either; it’s available online through the University’s wireless Internet network. Grisham also posts worksheets and exercises that students download to practice course material.

Other tools include an online media package developed by Thomson to accompany the textbook with animations, exercises and a sophisticated tutoring program that provides pretests, posttests and answers.

Grisham was instrumental in developing the program as the College’s chief technology officer. “Two independent research firms have been hired by Thomson, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard,” he said. “They’ll test to see if students learn better with the Tablets and which parts of these various functions help students the most.”

One function that particularly excites Grisham is the way this technology allows students to draw and write in their own hand. Citing hundreds of studies that demonstrate a hand-eye-brain connection between tactile interaction with course material and its retention, Grisham observes that the OneNote software returns to this model in a whole new way.

Dennis Proffitt, who teaches a psychology class that uses the tablets, agrees that this equipment can be a powerful tool. “I’m absolutely sold on the Tablet PC,” said Proffitt, who believes it will be the notebook of the future. Still, he feels there are a number of things that need to be improved before it becomes universally acceptable.

Unlike the chemistry students, only about a third of Proffitt’s Cognitive Psychology class actually uses the Tablet PCs. Proffitt notes that the software is not intuitively easy to use and, for many students, sticking with paper and pencil is easier than investing the time and effort necessary to learn the new software for the short duration of the project.

For Grisham, the technology is bringing the classroom experience full circle. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” he said. With the Tablet PC, “we’re getting back to what we should have been doing with paper. But these students have grown up with technology and computers, and they don’t play with paper. I’m really hoping that the one thing this new technology has that other computers don’t is the ability to encourage students to write in their own hand.”