Glenn Gordon Smith

Diagrams and Math Notation in E-Learning: Growing Pains of a New Generation

Current e-learning environments are ill-suited to college mathematics. Instructors/students struggle to post diagrams and math notation. A new generation of math-friendly e-learning tools, including WebEQ, bundled with Blackboard 6, and NetTutors Whiteboard, address these problems. This paper compares these two systems using criteria for ideal math-friendly e-learning systems. NetTutors Whiteboard is, apparently, the only system allowing two-way communication of both diagrams and math notation between instructor and students. This paper also summarizes a case study of two community college mathematics courses (calculus and algebra) using NetTutor over two semesters. Pilot studies, interviews and experimental problems revealed that NetTutors Whiteboard is effective for 2-way communication of diagrams and math notation in college courses. Learning difficult concepts was comparable to face-to-face courses.

The Web versus the Classroom: Instructor Experiences in Discussion-Based and Mathematics-Based Disciplines.

This study examined the instructor experience of teaching college courses (discussion-based and mathematics) over the Web, versus in the classroom, in terms of teaching, social issues, and emergent issues such as media effects. We interviewed, by e-mail and telephone, 22 college instructors who taught in both formats. We categorized interview fragments to highlight trends. Results indicated Web courses have profoundly different communication than classroom courses, resulting in greater student-instructor equality, explicitness of written instructions required, greater workloads for instructors and deeper thinking in discussions. Initial feelings of anonymity give way later to online identities. Disciplines involving reading, writing, and discussion seem well suited to online education. Mathematics instructors feel the shortcomings of Web-based distance learning environments more than do instructors from more writing-based disciplines. A follow-up needs-assessment of distance mathematics instructors indicated current Web distance education environments do not provide the basic communication tools for mathematics courses.

Teaching On-Line versus Face-to-Face.

This study investigates and describes the current instructor experience of teaching college courses over the Web (versus in face-to-face formats) in terms of the teaching strategies, social issues, and emergent issues such as media effects. We interviewed 22 college instructors who had taught in both formats. Four of the interviews were made by telephone and eighteen by e-mail. Interview fragments were categorized and counted for frequency to highlight emerging trends. Results indicate that Web-based classes have a profoundly different communication style than face-to-face classes. This has far-reaching consequences for on-line classes in terms of greater equality between students and instructors, greater explicitness of written instructions required, greater workloads for instructors and deeper thinking manifested in discussions, initial feelings of anonymity giving way later to emerging on-line identities. Authors propose a model with two competing systems, isolation effects versus community effects.

Stills, not full motion, for interactive spatial training: American, Turkish and Taiwanese female pre-service teachers learn spatial visualization

This study investigated how female elementary education pre-service teachers in the United States, Turkey and Taiwan learned spatial skills from structured activities involving discrete, as opposed to continuous, transformations in interactive computer programs, and how these activities transferred to non-related standardized tests of spatial visualization and mental rotation. The study used a pretest, intervention, posttest research design with experimental and comparison groups. The experimental group participated in transformational geometry visualization exercises, once a week for six weeks, for approximately 20minutes each session. Instruments were standardized measures of spatial visualization and mental rotation; intervention activity worksheets directed the participants through 2D and 3D transformational geometry tasks in computer environments. For Turkish and Taiwanese participants, the experimental group improved significantly more than the control group in spatial visualization, while the American participants showed no such significant improvement.

Why Interactivity Works: Interactive Priming of Mental Rotation.

This study has important implications for microworlds such as Logo, HyperGami, and Newtons World, which use interaction to learn spatial mental models for science, math, geometry, etc. This study tested the hypothesis that interactively rotating (dragging) virtual shapes primes mental rotation. The independent variable was observation vs. interaction: a) watching an animation of a shape rotating, versus b) manually rotating a shape on the computer. The dependent variable was mental rotation of the same shape. Two age groups, 9-year-olds and college undergraduates participated. For 9-year-olds, the interactive group mentally rotated significantly more accurately and faster than the observational. Therefore, interaction primed mental rotation. For the college undergraduates, the interactive group mentally rotated significantly more accurately, but significantly slower than the observational group. This suggests that the interaction disrupted a routine process, causing undergraduates to switch strategies. Results from both age groups reinforce the educational value of more naturalistic interaction with virtual shapes, i.e., dragging is better than clicking.

Feature Masking in Computer Game Promotes Visual Imagery

Can learning of mental imagery skills for visualizing shapes be accelerated with feature masking? Chemistry, physics fine arts, military tactics, and laparoscopic surgery often depend on mentally visualizing shapes in their absence. Does working with ‘spatial feature-masks’ (skeletal shapes, missing key identifying portions) encourage people to use visualization strategies? This experimental study tested that hypothesis using an online computer game involving rotating and stamping a 3D cube on a 2D pattern. According to a chi-squared test, people who trained with 3D feature-masks reported using significantly more visual imagery strategies on a related visualization posttest. Spatial feature-masks provide a new building block for instructional designers to address educational outcomes involving visual imagery of shapes.

From Players to Programmers: A Computer Game Design Class for Middle-School Children

The prospect of making computer games has often be used to “hook” students into learning programming or cognitive skills. There is, however, little research on using computer game design classes to teach computer skills. This article provides an answer to the question: Can a computer game design course employing the new generation of game authoring tools set middle school students on the path of learning a broad and sophisticated range of computer skills? The answer, based on the senior authors experiences teaching such a course eight times is, Yes. Students learned: an authoring system specifically designed for creating computer games; Windows 95 file management and other basic computer literacy skills; how to integrate outputs from several programs in one project—a form of computer literacy vital for multi-media designers; “if-then-else” logic; and rudimentary knowledge of programming with real-time events. Students also mastered a process for creating unique games and developed skills as autonomous learners.

Digital Guidance for Susceptible Readers: Effects on Fifth Graders’ Reading Motivation and Incidental Vocabulary Learning:

In this digital era, a fundamental challenge is to design digital reading materials in such a way that they improve children’s reading skills. Since reading books is challenging for many fifth graders—particularly for those genetically susceptible to attention problems—the researchers hypothesized that guidance from a digital Pedagogical Agent (PA) could improve students’ reading motivation and incidental vocabulary learning. Using a sample of 147 fifth-grade students, the researchers carried out a randomized control trial with three groups of students reading: (a) hardcopy (print) books, (b) digital books, and (c) digital books with a PA. For students with a genetic predisposition to attention problems, carriers of the DRD4 seven-repeat allele, the PA supported their incidental vocabulary learning. For noncarriers, there were no effects of the digital reading materials or the PA.

IMAPBOOK: Engaging Young Readers with Games

Glenn Smith, Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of South Florida (USF), pondered the challenge presented by the need to transform his research into a marketable product. For more than two years he had worked with doctoral students and his wife, Mieke Caris, to develop a platform for embedding games into online books. Classroom testing in the Netherlands and elsewhere had demonstrated the efficacy of the approach. The next step required was commercialization, without which the benefits of using the technology could not be realized on a broader scale.