Week 5 Annotated Bibliography

Here are my annotated bibliographies with links to the articles in PDF format:

Citation:
Price, E., Malani, R., & Simon, B. (2006). Characterization of instructor and student use of ubiquitous presenter, a presentation system enabling spontaneity and digital archiving. American Institute of Physics, 7(3), 125-128.

Summary:
With new technologies being developed everyday for students, traditional methods of teaching may be a thing of the past. This study examines the usage of the Ubiquitous Presenter (UP), which is a tablet PC based program that allows the user to write on prepared slides. The writing process known as “ink” can be added to prepared slides to show emphasis, animation, or simply to stress an important topic. The ink can be a multiple of colors and can be erased at any time. One of the strengths of this UP system is that each stroke of the stylus on the tablet pc can be recorded and view synchronously via the web.
This research study involved two physics classes using the UP system to teach the students. Lecture slides were “inked” in class during both studies. The instructors could add color, erase, more details or definitions or simply blank space to their slides. Problems could be worked out during lecture on the tablet pc instead of the traditional method of using the chalk board.
A student survey was administered to the students in both of these classes and the results were tallied. The students from both classes felt the UP system was a benefit to the learning of the materials rather than a distraction. The students usually viewed the recorded lecture slides right before taking an exam or quiz. Other students used the slides for lectures that they might have missed. Both blank slides and fully inked slides were viewed by the students. Very few of the students took advantage of watching the progressive slide recordings where the slides progressed from unmarked slides to fully inked slides.

Review:
The UP system is what the future teachers need to start preparing for. More and more of these newer technologies are going to start taking over traditional methods of teaching on the chalkboard in front of the classroom. This system could be implemented in both a traditional class like this study was conducted on, or hybrid and online classes. The recording features of the UP system are definitely an advantage especially for the students who want to review notes in preparation for an exam.
The survey and results sections were also very interesting. A majority of the students used the slides to help review materials before an exam or quiz, but very few admitted to using the slides to make up for class lectures that they might have missed. A majority of the viewed slides were the fully inked versions versus the bare prepared slides. These results could be very different depending on the institution that one might be teaching at, such as community college versus a 4-year university.

Article #1


Citation:
Cox, B. (2008). Developing interpersonal and group dynamics through asynchronous threaded discussions: The use of discussion board in collaborative learning. Education, 128(4), 553-565.

Summary:
Communication in an online class is one of the difficulties we face as educators. The methodologies that are implemented to replicate the face to face discussions are often times the most troublesome part of online teaching. However, discussion boards can be used to replicate the instructor to student as well as student to student discussions that can occur in a traditional face to face class.
This study examines using the discussion boards as a tool to generate discussions in three online classes between both the instructor and the students. The instructor posts opened ended questions in which the students in the class would respond to either the instructor’s initial post or to other students’ replies. This type of communication is asynchronous which benefits most graduate students who are working during the day.
Discussion boards allow the students to respond to both the instructor as well as other students in the class. This type of social relationship that is created is similar to the face to face discussions and relationships, but in online classes, this relationship simply takes more time to develop. Sometimes students are more hesitate to respond to another student online because they cannot see the body language of the student receiving the reply. Other students would post comments and replies to a discussion board that would never raised their hand in a face to face classroom.
A study was conducted with three graduate level law classes, one 5 weeks and two 10 weeks in duration. The classes were online with a discussion board type of response system. The instructor would post open ended questions and the students would respond to either the instructor and/or to other students in the class. The results were very similar in all three cases. The discussion boards allowed all students in the class to participate in discussions. Their thoughts and ideas were shared with others in the class. Also, the learning community that was created by the discussion boards took a little longer to establish than it would have in a face to face class, but the asynchronous format allowed for collaborative learning.

Review:
This is an interesting article for anyone who is interested in the use of discussion board to promote telecommunications in an online course. The use of open ended questions for the instructor to post might not be suitable such as in a pre-algebra or geometry course, but higher levels of mathematics might benefit from this type of discussion.
The author notes the fact that discussion boards do create a learning community for the students to develop; however, it might take more time than it would in a face to face class. Collaborative learning is essential to any online class and discussion boards are one way this can occur.


Article #2

James