Notebook Best Practices

In 2005, Bridgewater State College began a new program called the BSC Professional Partnerships for Notebook Computer Integration to build technology and information literacy among all Bridgewater students. The program is funded through the Davis Educational foundation Fellowships and is meant to support faculty and librarians in the integration of notebook technology within the curriculum.


Faculty and librarians were invited to participate in this project as partnership participants or partnership mentors. Faculty and librarians who wished to learn new instructional strategies to help students use notebook computers participated as partnership participants. Participants developed classroom assignments and learning strategies for incorporating student notebook computer use into a traditional course. Partnership Mentors were faculty and librarians who had experience helping students use notebook computers for instructional purposes. Mentors assisted participants in the design of classroom assignments and learning strategies that utilized notebook computers to meet course objectives and learning outcomes for students.


The Teaching and Technology Center (TTC) staff and Faculty Fellow provided peer instructional and technological support to mentors and participants in both the planning and classroom implementation stages of the project.


Click on the topics below or simply scroll down the page to read "best practices" excerpts from faculty who participated in the program.

map to excerpts

Best Practices

 

I taught CS-201 (Assembly Language Programming) in the Fall of 2005. This course requires a number of programming projects. Assembly language programming is “not very user friendly language” and requires considerable attention to small details. No outside help(tutoring) is available to the students in this course. The use of laptops in the class facilitated the ability of students to learn and understand the different phases of assembly programming quickly because of the quick response to their problems that they received in the class. It also helped me to move quickly and cover more topics which I always wanted to do but was unable to do so in the past because of lack of time. For example, I was able to cover background processes and also terminate-but-stay-resident program in this course. See the following homework I assigned to the class.
More from Professor Abdul Sattar . . .

 

The laptops facilitated the ability of students to access Internet links that related to the textbook issues. This provided the class with the ability to compare, contrast, and build-upon the text material with more contemporaneous and potentially relevant information. This also exposed to the students to a broader application of the chapter issues, and should assist them in more easily relating that knowledge to future work scenarios.
- Dr. Jon Bryan

 

I developed a teaching module in COMP 105 which centered around the formation of study groups ... we used the calendar feature of OutLook to schedule group meetings and used the task feature to delegate different study responsibilities to each group member ... the use of the laptops facilitated quick response to creating meetings everyone could attend and a way to keep up to date in real time concerning the completion of tasks.
- Professor Torben Lorenzen

 

I post a PowerPoint slide show on Black Board for each class that outlines my lecture and provides associated visual images. Students view the presentation through their laptops and key-in notes below each slide during my lectures. Students, especially those in their first and second years, benefit from the organizational strategy---notes are directly linked to an outline and image(s).

At once, students are listening to a lecture; viewing the outline, which includes key names and terms as well as images; and actively keying-in their associated notes. I find them to be more engaged than in a “traditional lecture” where a student sits with pen and notebook as the instructor lectures. I also find that as exams approach students are better equipped to tackle the significant amount of information that is covered.
- Dr. Kathleen Cummings

For each essay, students emailed their rough drafts to their peer partners and corrected them online using the “Track Changes” feature. Then they emailed these corrected drafts back to their peer partners, ready for our in-class workshop. In this workshop, while I critiqued each student’s draft, using their laptops, they were incorporating their peer partner’s comments into their final drafts.

  1. At the beginning of the semester, on our course website, students posted their replies to questions about their prior use of technology. I encouraged them to respond to each others’ postings on the Discussion Board.
  2. For an assignment called “You be the Teacher,” the students chose an area of writing that they either did very well on in their papers during the semester or an area in which they needed improvement (e.g., fragments, punctuation, etc.). They worked with a partner who chose the same topic and together they designed a powerpoint presentation and essay in which they defined the term that they chose, gave examples of its use, etc. I gave them some time in class to begin working on their presentations. For their presentations, they also involved the class in some way by asking questions, giving handouts, doing boardwork, etc. They designed some excellent powerpoint presentations this semester!
  3. Prior to starting the above assignment, we critiqued an online powerpoint presentation concerning plagiarism so that they would get their critical skills working for their own powerpoint presentations.
  4. Coming attractions this semester: For our next assignment which concerns argumentation/persuasion, I will assign a debatable topic about a city/town issue and divide the class into 3 groups. Some students in each group will serve different roles such as the town manager, concerned taxpayers, etc. They will argue for/against the topic and post their responses on the course website. There will be much exchange of ideas and each group will be able to read the other groups’ postings.
- Professor Deborah Barshay

 

The students used their laptops to take in-class notes and post them on the course website.  Having the internet at their fingertips during class allowed students to look up information about topics or issues that we were discussing, and immediately share it with other members of the class.  Outside of our class meetings students used their laptops to research and write their papers, access the course website on Blackboard, and e-mail one another and the instructor.
- Dr. Mark Kemper

 

As a novice in "notebook" know-how I began the course by polling the students.  I asked them what they were comfortable doing on their lap-tops.  I found they were able to do everything from creating graphs and charts to setting up chat-rooms. 
- Dr. Lisa Battaglino

 

My work with notebook computers over the past Summer and Fall has not involved work in the classroom, but rather has been in anticipation of changes in our Psychology Department curriculum that will require our majors to take their statistics and research methods courses as prerequisites for all of their upper level coursework in Psychology. These are courses our students find challenging under the best of circumstances.

I have been working to identify software and online resources that could be used to work with students in the classroom, in one-on-one tutoring through the Academic Achievement Center, and for self-help, with Blackboard as the foundation for accessing and utilizing these resources, I have also been developing assessment tools and tutorials that students will be able to access through the Blackboard site. With Blackboard and related software resources, whether initiating their own research or working on canned studies presented by the instructor, students will be able to perform literature searches, design and organize research projects, collect and analyze data, and communicate their findings in writing.
More from Dr. Susan Todd . . .

 

Two of my upper level economics classes are currently being conducted as “laptop” courses. Since they are upper level courses most of the students do not have laptops of their own. Thanks to BSC’s laptop loaner program all of my students (about 30) have laptops to use for the entire semester. The students have told me how much they appreciate the opportunity to use a laptop for the semester. They are able to use the laptop for more than just my courses and their computing skills are increasing dramatically from where they were at the beginning of the semester. The students have shown an enthusiasm for learning that is much greater than I’ve seen before, and I believe it is because they have their own laptops (at least for the semester).
More from Dr. Michael Jones. . .

 

This fall, my Two-Dimensional Design students incorporated their notebook computers into the classroom by creating personal web logs, also known as “Blogs.” Through the experience they became more familiar with both notebook computer technology and with the two dimensional design material we covered during the semester.

The class was introduced to blogging during the third week of the semester by having each student go to the Google home page and create a free blog. Their first assignment was to choose a design template and explain why they chose that particular design using some of the design terminology we had gone over in class. Following that, with the help of one of our more computer savvy students, we learned how to establish links to each other’s blogs, enabling us to quickly view what others had posted. Later, as each student posted their art work and written assignments they were encouraged to view and comment on the work of their classmates. While we continued to hold group discussions and critiques in class, having the work available on line has proven to be useful and convenient as a way to catalog and review.

One assignment that I thought worked particularly well was when we visited the Anderson Gallery with our computers in tow. Each student was asked to respond to the art work on exhibit by writing a short review and posting it. The technology helped allow the writing to be more intuitively responsive, immediate and fun.

All in all I think having introduced the notebook computer into my classroom in this way has been extremely beneficial to the students.  I thank the Davis Foundation for making it possible. Anyone interested can view our blogs by going to http://bsc2d.blogspot.com . From there you can see the others by connecting through the links.
- Professor Dan Cooney

 

This semester my statistics class was cancelled because of low enrollment, but in spring semester I used the laptop extensively in class. I asked students to have Microsoft Excel installed on their laptops and provided them with two Excel supplement programs that they installed on their laptops. This made it much easier for them to use excel to solve statistics problems. I showed them how to solve some of the problems in the textbook manually (some took a lot of time!) and then using Excel we did the same problems in a few seconds!

I also encouraged them to use their laptops during the exams that we had in class, most students did and were very excited about it. They also had to do a project at the end of the course that required the use of laptops. When I had my meeting with James Hayes-Bohanan, I explaind these facts to him and he mentioned that this was exactly the purpose of the program and he was very supportive of it. I plan to use the laptop in my future stat and other classes to show and encourage the students to use the computer as much as possible because this gives them an edge in the real world job market by making them more skilled.

I had a talk with someone who teaches statistics in the psychology departmentt at Northeastern University recently and he mentioned that he has never used computers in his class and one of his students had an interview recently for a job and when the subject of stat course came up, the interviewer asked how they were solving the stat problems and the student replied that they do all problems by hand. This made the interviewer laugh and make the remark that in real world you don't have time to do research by hand and it is time to start learning how to use computers.

I think that even before this program, BSC students had much more computer skills than many students in private schools and this program makes them even more skilled and competitive in the real world.
- Prof. Ahmad Saranjam

 

So many things have improved in my teaching and learning activities because of the use of technology in general. I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll go to my students.  One huge benefit is the Blackboard discussion board so my students and I can keep learning together between class times.  I did a mid semester survey on Blackboard, which we decided to keep active throughout the semester. The survey asked which tools did they find most useful to their learning.    

The most useful tools that came up were on line homework/ tutoring software, the Blackboard discussion board, the use of a Tablet PC in class and course cartridges provided by the publisher.  What they disliked were online quizzes and this was mostly because of technology problems where they lose connections and can’t complete a quiz.

The on line homework/ tutoring software I use has come from a couple of different publishers.  I teach Accounting and Finance and I probably assign 10 to 15 problems a week to about 150 students. So I would have to correct about 2000 problems a week if I wanted to make sure they were keeping up and completing the homework.  These software products tutor the students while they are completing the assignments and correct the assignments.  By tutor I mean, the software gives the students hints (some of which I can add), shows pages in the text where the problem was discussed originally, actually walks them through a similar problem and brings them back to the one they are attempting, and upon completion asks if they would like to try another. One note, you must assign a percentage of the student’s grade to this activity to get good participation. Also, there are new excuses to “my dog ate my homework”, such as “lost my internet connection” or “my computer is broken”, etc. For me, I get immediate feedback as to which type of problem the class was having trouble with and can focus on those problems during the next class. More from Dr. Shannon Donovan. . .

 

In First Year Seminar: Science Fiction Science, we used the notebooks in class to write and share documents electronically, perform online literature and Lexis-Nexis searches, listen to archived radio broadcasts from NPR and complete online assignments ... having the notebooks there really helped make the class time feel more relevant to the students.
- Dr. Thomas Kling

 

My work on the grant was done initially in the summer of 2005. I looked at internet sites and designed several trial lessons to identify resources suitable for Voice Class I (MU 130). I completed my preliminary work in the summer by developing a resource list of songs available on various internet sites which might be downloaded by students enrolled in Voice Class I. Using their laptops, students can access printed music from any of several sites. They can print notated versions or download audio files, which they can store on their laptops. I believe the software to download audio files is not standard equpment on their laptops, but some students have this capability. They must pay to download any complete song, so I have discontinued a textbook requirement for Voice Class I, asking them instead to pay to download four songs, which are their required reperotry for the semester.
I started out with a song list containing about 75 pieces, but would like to expand it over the coming year.

All of my colleagues have joined me in adopting this method of providing music for Voice Class I. Ed Milham and I have gradually posted all the songs on the song list on Blackboard. Some students who lack strong computer skills find it easier to find their songs on Blackboard, than to "shop" on the Internet. We feel that using laptops to download music in Voice Class has been an overwhelming success. We can comply with copyright law, and the particular services offered by most websites, including audio downloads and musical transposition enhances the whole voice class experience for students, while making our jobs as faculty easier.

We have faced a number of minor problems:

  1. Not all students know how to effectively use their laptops. The Help Desk in Maxwell Library has been invaluable as a continuing resource in this area.
  2. The internet sites seem to be very fluid. A song that is available one day may not be there the next. Downloading songs onto Blackboard is an effective means of dealing with this.
  3. Some students have a financial aid package which covers the cost of their textbooks. Steven Young has consulted the Financial Aid Office and found that students can also receive reimbursement for their expenses in Voice Class I, since the internet charges are in lieu of a textbook requirement.

I would like to design an interactive questionnaire for both students and faculty which could be posted on Blackboard. I believe this would help us improve this fledgling system. I don't know of another college or university using such a system. In case we are truly unique, I will send a proposal to the College Music Society for a presentation or poster paper at the next regional conference.
- Dr. Leslie Goldberg

 

Students in SPED 199, a writing intensive course, bring their notebooks to every class. After discussions of past projects and new material, students word process an assignment in class, email it to me as an attachment. I review their work, make comments and suggestions, and then email it back to them for corrections.  This occurs in every class.
- Dr. Kenneth Dobush

 

I am implementing the use of laptops in the classroom for one section of my GER, Philosophy 101 Reasoning and Value.  The project has three components. 

For the first, I will be giving the regular weekly quizzes on line in class.  This will assist me by eliminating the grading process.  Students will have instant and on-demand access to their grades throughout the semester. 

For the second part, I will be assessing the use of a critical thinking testing program that the Philosophy Department is considering using for their assessment of the new GER Foundations of Logical Reasoning. 

Finally, students will use their laptops in research for their mid-term and final papers.  In the past, students have done some internet research on their own for their papers, but their use of critical thinking skills and vocabulary in considering the validity of sources and soundness of arguments has not met my expectations.  With laptops in class and under my supervision and guidance, students will work in pairs to research some of the arguments given by special interest groups on one of two controversial topics: abortion and gun control.  My objective is to help students apply the skills and vocabulary they have learned in the course to research on these important social issues.  By analyzing arguments presented to them in the media, students will acquire an increased understanding of those arguments. This will enhance their ability to achieve nuanced views on their topic and to support those views with arguments of their own.
- Dr. Laura McAlinden

 

Students in SPED 203 who have notebooks have been given powerpoint assignment options. The class is also using Blackboard discussion boards and digital drop box for submitting assignments.  Students are also encouraged to use their notebooks for notetaking in class. All students are now using the Blackboard assignment area to submit all work to me. Students must submit digital files -- no more paper allowed. Students use email with each other through blackboard for group assignments as well as the collaboration area. Students have conducted group webquest projects. Students have also done a scavenger hunt on diversity using web resources.
- Dr. Jeri Katz

 

Some ways we're using notebooks in class in COMD 281-001 Speech and Hearing Anatomy and Physiology:

    1. To enable students to participate in anatomy and physiology laboratory activities. 
      Example - Students are placed into small groups and assigned a part of the respiratory system (skeletal support, muscular system, lungs).  In class, each group uses the web to research their "part" and answer a number of questions that I have provided on a worksheet.  The groups are then rearranged so that each group contains people who each have a different "piece" of the whole picture.  They then need to work together to hypothesize how the system works and to come up with additional questions.  We then study the system as a class.
    2. To access a greater variety of learning styles in the classrooms by using websites to view animated models that illustrate not only how various systems function but also the underlying physiologic principles.  Students benefit by experiencing an integrated approach and learn to look outside of the specific field of communication disorders to aid understanding and promote learning.
      Example:  The American Cancer Society has a great site that illustrates how the lungs function.  As a companion to that there are sites we use that illustrate Boyle's Law and Ohm's Law.  When we discuss the Phonatory System we also use Physics sites that illustrate the Bernoulli Effect as well as sites such as the National Center for Voice and Speech which contains information about voice from a performing arts perspective.
    3. To allow students access to a greater variety of learning experiences.
      Example:  We use websites that provide interactive experiences. We also use a text with a companion CD that contains learning exercises to augment lectures.
    4. To provide students with a tool to measure their own learning.
      Example:  The companion CD has a number of learning exercises that provide a "score".  Students are able to repeat these exercises and gauge how much of the material they are retaining.  These exercises also help students to identify knowledge deficits and formulate more specific questions for the instructor.
    5. To improve students' computer literacy skills.
      Example:  A student who is computer savvy may be paired with a student who has a lower level of comfort/skill using a computer during class activities. 

Some of these activities could be "home assignments"  - however they are much more effective when students have access to the information on the web and the course instructor at the same time.
- Professor Joanne Abdallah and Dr. Sandra Ciocci

The primary focus in MATH100 (Precalculus) is the study of functions, including their graphs. One topic involves translating (moving) graphs of functions. This is done by adding or subtracting a number in a part of the equation that defines the function. Students learn how the graph is translated, depending on the number(s) added or subtracted. In the past, I have covered this topic in two different ways.

Initially, I presented the results as part of a class lecture. Modified equations and translated graphs were shown, and the general result about translations was given. Later I changed the presentation to have the students discover the general result on their own. Depending on the class size, either I divided the class into small groups, or urged students to talk with other students nearby. Worksheets were distributed that contained several rectangular grids. Students were given a function and directed to graph it on one of the grids. The function was then modified several times and the students graphed the modified functions. Students were then asked if they could describe, in general, either in words or using mathematical notation, the general result – that is, how the graph of the original function was translated, depending on the adding or subtracting of a number in the function. The result was reinforced by having the students graph translations of a few more, different functions.
More from Professor Robert Sutherland . . .

I used the Davis Grant for Faculty Partnerships for Notebook Computer Integration to enhance data analysis exercises that my students complete in SOCI-102, Introduction to Sociology. I teach Introduction to Sociology emphasizing sociology as an inquiry-based discipline and I encourage students to carry out their own research in the class. The text that I use includes Online Sociology Data Analysis exercises based on data sets which are available on the publisher’s website. I generally require students to complete some of the exercises, but I used this grant to develop the exercises further and extend them to the classroom.

In the Online Exercises students are asked to use three different data sets to answer questions. For example, in a chapter on crime they are asked to examine levels of support for capital punishment among Americans and explain how those opinions are correlated with things like age, educational level, income, and gender. They then examine a data set on the 50 American states to see how states rank in terms of executions and they do the same with an international data set. In addition to doing the data analysis they need to explain their findings. By using notebook computers, the students can work on these in small groups in class and can decide how to extend the analyses.

I set up extended versions of four of the Online Sociology Data Analysis exercises for students to carry out with Notebook computers both in and out of class. I assigned certain questions, but also left some openness so that students could pursue their own ideas.
- Professor Walter Carroll

blogging at the Anderson Gallery
Students from Dan Cooney's fall '05 Two-Dimensional Design course blog about their visit to the Anderson Gallery.

photo/Dan Cooney