Kathy Schmidt

Do mobile and wireless technologies add value to higher education

Will handheld, wireless devices replace traditional teaching and enhance student learning? In the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, we set out to find answers to these questions. In the fall of 2001, the College was awarded a grant by Hewlett-Packard (HP) to focus on two key arenas: the instructional redesign of the traditional higher-education classroom and the expansion of the engineering community environment for anytime, anywhere learning and access. This grant, known as the Mobility Initiative, built a college-wide wireless network using HP Access Point technology as well as pioneered mobile technologies in two courses. This paper describes the wireless environment, changes to the teaching approaches, preparation of materials, student issues (both technical and instructional), and lessons learned.

Teaching engineering: The student’s perspective

When it comes to undergraduate education, there is concern at a national level of the quality of education. The influence of teachers and their approaches to teaching on student learning impacts the number of engineers we produce as well as the quality of those engineers. Yet it is not an easy task to assess instructional quality. Typically we measure teaching by end-of-course surveys, peer reviews, and other measures such as ABET criteria. But do these approaches get at what students expect of their teachers? A group of engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin felt that their perspectives on quality teaching were not heard and they wanted to open a dialogue on their instructional needs. They came into the Colleges Faculty Innovation Center and asked how to conduct such a process. Basically these students wanted to help identify instructional challenges as well as possible solutions. This paper will describe a student process to scrutinize their learning. Specifically, they surveyed their peers and this paper provides results and well as their approach to dissemination of the findings.

The professor and the media laboratory: a case study in Web-based course creation

One thing is certain: modern engineering education will move towards more Web-based distance learning in the future. Can we realistically expect the average professor who contemplates participating in this development to be an expert in his or her technical specialty, in modern educational theory, in distance learning technology, and in effective strategies for media presentation? To create professional quality instructional materials a critical partnership must emerge between the modern professor and a media support infrastructure. This article presents a case study of a successful partnership in the creation of a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI or Keller Plan) course for delivery over the Web with the aid of the Faculty Innovation Center (FIC) of the College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. This paper describes the course objectives, the chosen pedagogical strategy, and the crucial issues that emerged along with specific examples.

Panel session - pen-based computing in the engineering and science classroom: Implementation scenarios from three institutions

As digital ink technology continues to make an impact on the technical classroom, faculty members are exploring the different strategies for using this technology to improve student learning. The purpose of this panel is to demonstrate how faculty members are implementing this technology in engineering and science classrooms at three different institutions: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Vermont. The panel is designed to show both experienced pen computing users and those who are new to the field the different ways this versatile technology may be employed. In addition to the demonstrations, the presenters will discuss the pedagogical implications that result from the implementations. Faculty who are interested in both the pedagogy and assessment of pen-based computing in the classroom should find the session informative and useful.

Construction student technology skill assessment: A survey instrument

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and initial results of a data collection instrument developed to assess student technology skills. These baseline data are believed to be important for the educators in the construction industry to incorporate technology knowledge into the academic curricula. The instrument is a questionnaire that assesses the subject’s level of technology skills in five dimensions: Attitude, Operational Skills, Interactions, Active Learning, and Cooperative Learning. Each of these dimensions has five developmental stages or maturity levels: Functional and Perceptual Knowledge, Pluralist Awareness, Synthetic Awareness, Competence, and Proficiency. The instrument is designed and will be validated using the Structural Equation Modeling method. The paper will present the process of initial design and data collection, the method for validation of the original instrument, and its refinement process. The original survey was distributed to 117 students in 4 Civil Engineering departments in America and initial results were used to explore the validity method of the instrument. These preliminary results and exploratory analyses suggest that with a sufficiently large sample size, it is likely that the model can be validated to satisfactorily meet the validity requirements of a well-designed measurement instrument. The data collection and validation process is still ongoing and will be feeding the design cycle of this presumably valuable instrument.

Student generated course demos

Actively engaging engineering students in classroom instruction often results in project-centered activities. Generally these projects are selected because of student interest or topic availability. In an advanced graduate level course, EE 381K-9 Advanced Digital Signal Processing, in the Department of Electrical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, students are assembling technology-based projects that will be used by other students in the class and in subsequent years. Thus, these projects serve a dual educational purpose: to teach those students who are creating them and to serve as resources to teach future students. This paper describes some of the challenges of developing student generated educational projects and course demos. Outcomes and observations are presented based on a trial run in the fall 2002 class. Specific topics such as the parameters of the assignment, necessary incentives, and mechanisms for collecting feedback are discussed. Numerous suggestions for incorporating these ideas into other classes are provided.