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Everyone's talking about data. But it isn't the results of high-stakes tests that's going to help students, because they don't always measure what's important and the data takes too long to show up. It's sort of like grading beef - the cow is dead. Real-time (formative) data is where the excitement is. Time after time, I'm hearing examples of how tablet pcs deployed in a classroom 1:1 (one per student) or shared 2:1 or 3:1, can expose very powerful data about students - and change the way we teach...

Some wonderful examples are coming from the team at Colorado School of Mines. With the support of HP Technology for Teaching grants, faculty are using tablet pcs to redesign the learning experience in courses like Physics - and in the process, discovering how exciting it is to revisit the scholarship of teaching.

I've previously blogged about the Mines Video and the InkSurvey web-tool that provides an easy way to ask students open ended questions whose answers are drawings - a graphical version of classroom polling. But I've just received the Mines project update and obtained permission to share what the faculty are experiencing.

Frank Kowalski, the principal investigator for the original HP Technology for Teaching grants and a professor physics, shared with me the following personal reflection:

"I am continually amazed at the difference between what I think the students know and what they demonstrate when I ask a question with InkSurvey.  Going into the classroom now becomes an adventure in exploring and correcting student misunderstanding rather than an effort to deliver content in a structured lecture."

He goes on to say, "This project has fundamentally changed how I teach. Going into the classroom, I now focus my efforts on what the students will have difficulty learning rather than on content delivery, with a large "impedance mismatch" between that delivery and student understanding. This has generated a thrill that was not present in my pre-InkSurvey teaching. I go into the class not knowing what I will learn about the student understanding and also not knowing how I will have to meet the challenge of addressing that misunderstanding."

The net result for students is very positive. Perhaps equally important to me are the implications regarding how we prepare high school students for college are very important. As Frank points out, "I also find a surprising lack of deep understanding when I use the standard lecture/homework problem format compared with the learning achieved using InkSurvey, as indicated by exam performance. Apparently, their schooling has taught the students how to get answers quickly so they can move on to the next assignment rather than fostering an inquisitive attitude about the subject."

{Side note: To me this points to the greater need for revisiting what we're doing to our high school students in the typical AP class.}

Frank is not alone. Colleague Tracy Gardner is also using InkSurvey to teach, and reports that, "It is like a door to the students' minds, which is a professor's dream because it makes teaching so much more effective.  Though students are always free to ask questions during class, I believe I get more questions, and more importantly I get questions from students who would not otherwise speak up. Therefore I am hopefully reaching a wider array of students than I would without the technology.  [Graphical feedback through InkSurvey] really helps me to both pace the class better and to talk about concepts in more varied ways to reach more students..."

... which is EXACTLY what "re-imagining the classroom" is all about...

Keep up the great work, Colorado School of Mines!

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Worldwide Education Programs
HP Global Social Investment
Hewlett-Packard
Twitter @jgvanides

For information about the HP Global Social Investments, visit www.hp.com/hpinfo/grants