Lessons learned from the first-time use of tablet PCs in the classroom

Abstract

The tablet PC (TPC) is quickly becoming a widely used tool for engineering education. However, as with any new education initiative, care must be taken to introduce this properly. This paper will present the lessons learned from the experiences of two first-time TPC users in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto. The courses were a second-year differential equations & linear algebra course, and a third-year electromagnetic waves course. To evaluate the effectiveness of the TPCs the same survey was given to both classes, with a total of 129 responses. Generally, these students strongly supported the use of the TPC, however, as this paper will show, caution must be exercised when incorporating the TPC into the classroom. This is evident by considering how the popularity of the TPC as a learning tool is correlated with the types of learners present in the class. In most of the literature dealing with TPCs, no such correlation is presented, but as the results of this survey show, it is an important relationship to consider. In this paper we will summarize our approach for using the TPC, present the results of the survey, and discuss some lessons learned.