By Bill Clayton

"Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons." ( Popular Mechanics, forecasting the advance of science, 1949.) In 1949, the geeks of the day looked into the future and made a dazzling prediction: One day, they'd build a mini computer the size and weight of a rhinoceros.
Unlike Dick Tracy cartoonist Chester Gould, who dreamed up the wrist radio in the 1940s, computer scientists of the mid-20th century couldn't see beyond vacuum tubes to the time when college students would stroll around campuses, carrying their lives and educations in computers that fit under their arms.

Laptops, Handhelds and the Far Side of the World

Clearly, portable computers and the Internet changed the educational landscape.

Laptops made students' lives and educations portable - today they carry around hard drives that are brimming with notes, papers, dictionaries, syllabi, schedules, lectures (audio and video), transcripts of lectures, as well as their music, games, magazines, personal journals, calendars, letters, address books and financial information. Laptops freed students to write their papers while sitting under a tree on North Campus or satisfying a pizza craving at the Cottage Inn.

Moving computers off of desktops and into the crooks of students' arms was a significant transition. The next step was to put computers in their pockets.

Portable computers set students free to work anywhere, anytime. PHOTO by SCOTT GALVIN

Handheld computers - very powerful smaller siblings of laptops - have been showing up in classrooms, recently. Not as novelties but as tools that enrich the educational experience. Users can write and edit manuscripts, work on spreadsheets, analyze data, build charts and edit photos. Elliot Soloway, a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, noted that handhelds "can do 80 percent of what a laptop can do, for 10 percent of the cost."

Perry Samson, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, and Professor Ben van der Pluijm in Geological Sciences, are doing research for the National Science Foundation on the use of Pocket PCs in large classes. "Ben and I are loaning about 150 Pocket PCs to students in their classes," Samson said. "I've created a software package I use to beam an image from the Internet onto their Pocket PC screens during a lecture. I have them respond to questions by clicking or drawing on the image. I can display the ensemble answers immediately on the front screen to facilitate class dialog and peer instruction."

By the time laptops and handhelds came along, students had already embraced cyberspace and the information highway so enthusiastically as to turn it into the "Infobahn" - a superhighway that took them around the world to more information than they'd ever been able to access before. The Internet pushed aside microfiche, turned journals into e-journals and is beginning to supplant ink-on-paper books.

Unfortunately, using early laptops and handhelds to tap into the Internet required a hard-wired connection - an anchor for students who were otherwise free. So the only thing needed to complete the next step in the portable computer-Internet revolution was the elimination of cable that shackled computers to the wall.

Written on a Handheld Portions of this article were written on a Dell Axim Pocket PC to demonstrate its capability. Michigan Engineer thanks IT Consultants, Inc. for donating the computer and keyboard. PHOTO by SCOTT GALVIN

The Wireless Environment

WHEN WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY joined the laptop and handheld revolution, students acquired another liberating tool.

Today, more than 90 percent of campuses in the United States have some form of WiFi, a radio-based, wireless networking system that allows transmission of information without a physical connection. On North Campus, it's available to all students and faculty, 24/7, in nearly every nook and cranny of every building. At any given moment, between 300 and 350 wireless computers are connected to the North Campus WiFi, which has nodes, or "hot spots," that provide wireless connections to the Internet from distances of up to 300 feet. So, a student sitting with a wireless laptop on the stairs in the G.G. Brown Building can research journal articles housed in the Duderstadt Center, or communicate - by email or instant messenger - with a friend in Beijing or with a professor in a 747 somewhere over the Atlantic.

Michigan Engineering students with wireless portables have become transmitters and receivers of information, and perhaps the first generation of students to be connected and disconnected at the same time.

Email as an Educational Tool

THE AVERAGE IN-CLASS response for students is about 12 words. But in electronic discussions, students blurt out about 106 words for each reply. Clearly, email makes students gabby.

It also can create a sense of anonymity that makes it easier for shy students to join in. Email has even become a way to eliminate feelings of isolation - students from nearby Detroit or as far off as Moscow can easily exchange messages daily with family and friends back home. The speed of delivery, the freedom from the constraints of location and time, the possibility for greater interaction (one email can reach many people at one time) - these are a few of the traits that make email the most pervasive use of the Internet.

Instructors are finding that email's a fabulous tool for encouraging student-faculty contact, and cooperation among students. It facilitates prompt feedback and provides an "electronic paper trail" that students and instructors can use to track information. And according to Gary Herrin, it's a handy way to create, maintain and use a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

Email plays a major role as Gary Herrin teaches 10,000 students worldwide from his desk. PHOTO by DAVID TUMAN

Herrin is the associate dean for undergraduate education and a professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE). He and Pat Hammett, an adjunct assistant professor in IOE, use online technology to teach a professional development course to 10,000 students in nine languages worldwide. For Herrin and Hammett, email's an indispensable communications tool.

Herrin said that, with large numbers of students asking questions at different times, he might need to "explain the same thing over and over. But after I know what the repetitive questions are, I can use a standard email to respond, or I can post the Q&As on the web. It lets the students find their answers without waiting until I'm available. And it helps me find out where I might not have been clear, or where I need to add more information. It gives me the feedback I need to change the lecture. So the course is continually improving. I couldn't do it without email."

Instant Messaging

INSTANT MESSAGING (IM) is fairly new to education. But as a communications device among students, IM is indispensable - about 80 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds use IM regularly. Already it's a technology that corporate and home users have embraced, and its use is still growing, primarily because it allows two or more people to communicate at one time, over any distance, in real time. It's fast. It's free. And it's easy.

Increasingly, IM's applications in education are becoming clear. Like email, IM offers a sense of anonymity that nudges students to participate. It forms communal circles of students who chat about common interests, in real-time, without regard for location. And IM's proliferation is creating a new, rapidly evolving language of acronyms that are finding their way into general usage - especially among younger students.

You might see this IM conversation between two first-year engineers: "Dude! WU? LTNS - UNI haven't talked F2F for weeks. IMHO, that's way 2 long. I hear things R LU 4U in 101. Well, GMTA - I'm DOK, 2."

Translation: "Hey, buddy! What's up? Long time no see - you and I haven't talked face-to-face for weeks. In my humble opinion, that's way too long. I hear things are looking up for you in Engineering 101. Well, great minds think alike - I'm doing OK, too."

FWIW (For What It's Worth), the University of Michigan libraries are making good use of email and IM - without the acronyms.

Online Research at U-M

"ASK US" IS a virtual reference service that provides the option of using IM or email to ask the U-M Library's reference staff for help in locating facts, addresses, statistics, bibliographic citations - whatever a researcher's heart desires. (Check it out at http://www.lib.umich.edu/askus.)

"Ask Us Now" is the IM side of the Ask Us reference service. Ask Us Now elicits an immediate, real-time IM conversation with the reference staff, simply by clicking a button on a webpage. After the chat session, the librarian emails a transcript to users.

Using the Ask Us webpage, students communicate with University librarians in real time.

 

With the "Ask Us Email Reference Service," library patrons can submit requests by filling out online forms. The library's reference staff emails responses to questions within 24 hours, seven days a week.

Karen Reiman-Sendi, a digital information services librarian and coordinator of the University Library's virtual reference services, said that the Ask Us Now and Ask Us Email Reference Services reach students, staff and faculty "where they are, with the technology that they've come to expect from a world-class library and an outstanding academic environment. Email and IM research assistance services are just the latest methods librarians are using to connect library patrons to information."

Faculty, students and staff can also email questions to subject matter specialists at the Art, Architecture and Engineering Library in the Duderstadt Center at http://www.lib.umich.edu/collections/specialists.html.

Another resource in the U-M library system is LexisNexis, the only digital database that allows individuals to search abstracts from journals, newspapers and other sources for free. The major benefit to using the LexisNexis database is that professionals have already poured through the publications, indexing only those that they consider to provide important information. And it's all accessible, free, to University of Michigan students and faculty who have an Internet connection.

Innovative Courses and New Approaches

AT ONE TIME, a book, a box of chalk, a blackboard and a command of a subject were all that instructors had available to turn an everyday lecture into a memorable experience. Today, they're discovering just how different teaching is when the content and presentation involve bits and bytes, rather than ink on paper.

NERS 211, Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, is an example of this "new education."

For several years, the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences has structured NERS 211 in such a way that students have spirited debates about the costs and benefits of nuclear technology. Then, after breaking into groups, they create websites that feature their research and arguments. The sites become Internet archives that document their projects for future students. At the conclusion of the course, the instructor and a panel of scholars evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of each group's presentations, arguments and websites.

Deba Dutta uses the web to teach students from Michigan Engineering and in Germany and Korea, "live" from a classroom on North Campus. PHOTO by MICHAEL SCHIMPF

In 2000, Professor Deba Dutta, Mechanical Engineering, created Global Product Development (ME 581), a graduate-level web course that's offered "live" to engineering students from Michigan Engineering and in Germany and Korea - it's an opportunity for students in far corners of the world to study the development and marketing of products for global consumption. Guest lecturers with various areas of expertise - anthropology, business and law - speak about culturally appropriate innovation, global branding and the liability associated with global products.

Dutta said that in this age of globalization and diversity it's "extremely important for the students to understand how to work across international boundaries and how to value different styles that people have. There's nothing like actually experiencing it to understand it."

In a survey taken at the end of the semester, 97 percent of Dutta's students said they'd recommend the course to others.

Video Solutions

IF A PICTURE'S WORTH a thousand words, then a moving picture is an encyclopedia. And video used in conjunction with the web is proving to be even more valuable. As an educational tool, video delivered over the Net eliminates obstacles such as time and distance. But getting this system to work isn't easy.

Phil Treib, director of instructional technology, recently simplified the process by creating a "lecture capture cart," which an instructor can wheel into a classroom and, for all practical purposes, flip a switch and start talking. Treib explained that the device can do "video-on-demand" and "live streaming."

Phil Treib demonstrates a capture cart, which faculty can roll into a classroom and use "live streaming" and "video-on-demand." PHOTO by DAVID TUMAN

Video-on-demand - "With video-on-demand," he said, "if students miss a lecture - they might be sick or busy - they can connect to a website and watch it when they want, as many times as they want. Or there might be off-campus students who work during the day and can't watch from their desks at work. Video-on-demand allows them to connect and watch later from home."

Students can also review the recordings as the term goes on - a definite study aid - or students in other classes or subsequent terms can watch guest lecturers who aren't able to return to campus every year. Video-on-demand is also a mainstay in Herrin's worldwide classroom.

For students, the disadvantage of video-on-demand is the loss of realtime, teacher-student interaction during the lecture, although email and IM can help to fill this need. And for instructors and staff, there's an investment of time and effort that goes into recording and processing the video, then uploading it to a space on the web. But the educational advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.

Live streaming - This technology delivers the video live, as a continuous flow in real-time. Students have to watch the lecture as it's transmitted - and once it plays, it's gone, unless the streaming lecture is coupled with video-on-demand and recorded. Also, with live streaming, students can use IM, email or other means to submit questions to the instructor.

The two options - video-on-demand and live streaming - give instructors a choice. Henry Wang is a professor in the Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering departments; he's also the director of Pharmaceutical Engineering, an interdisciplinary graduate training program that focuses on professional development and continued education. He selected video-on-demand to deliver some of the courses in the program.

"We draw students nationally and internationally," Wang said. "Many interested students are working professionals but aren't within driving distance. So we wanted to establish a distance learning component to complement our on-campus instructional activities. Using video-on-demand, the course instructor can tape lectures and post the video streams of these lectures onto the web. Some of our lecturers are outside experts we invite, and they might not be able to appear on-campus more than one time. But their taped lectures can be re-used in subsequent years as long as they're still relevant to the course."

The controls on the capture cart are simple to use; an equally simple web interface makes the video easy to access; plug-ins make it possible to juxtapose two different languages.

This concept of distance learning isn't anything new. But it is a relatively new way to educate college students who don't have the resources or opportunity to live nearby and study on-campus.

Distance Learning

THE "CAMPUS WITHOUT WALLS" is becoming increasingly popular and a potentially significant revenue source for many institutions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2002, approximately 84 percent of four-year colleges offered distance-learning courses.

Herrin, whose classroom extends around the world, said, "Now we can educate the world with students in China, Korea, India. Students can sit anywhere, anytime, and do their work. They can take over a single remote desktop and do their work together, in real time. And with wireless laptops, they can work and collaborate from anywhere - North Campus, Australia, you name it."

Currently, distance learning at Michigan Engineering isn't for everyone. As Herrin said, "The focus right now is on distance-learning courses for graduate programs - students can get their entire master's degree online; they don't have to have residency. Soon we'll introduce this technology to undergraduate courses by blending in the best elements of distance classes, using them as supplements to the conventional classes - we'll phase it in to get acceptance of the technology."

Statistics show that comprehension is the same for students taking online courses and students enrolled on-campus. And, Herrin noted, the off-campus students frequently seem to be "more motivated and mature, probably because they assume responsibility for their own educations. They're often traveling or already working as engineers, so they can't be in conventional classrooms at 10 a.m on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

The Center for Professional Development - another prominent structure of the distance-learning campus - has made a name for itself by creating and delivering a variety of e-learning curricula, including programs that are available in nine different languages, to students in 37 countries.

Easy Web Tools for Everyone

FOR QUITE A while, creating websites and web content was somewhat mysterious for most folks. But software developers created WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) - pronounced "wizzy wig" - programs that were so simple even Luddites could use them.

With SiteMaker, anyone can create a website in minutes.

SiteMaker is one of these easy-as-pie programs. It's a web-based system, created at UM, that allows non-technical people to create websites quickly, without having to know anything more than they'd need to know to write a Word document. With only a web browser, site makers simply fill in forms, check boxes, write text, click a "save" button and - wallah! - they have a website.

Students use it to build sites where they can post lecture notes for classmates, or photos for the folks back home. Faculty post class assignments, notes and schedules. There's no end to how people use the web, and with SiteMaker it's a snap.

The Wiki in Education

A WIKI IS a collection of web pages that a "community" of people can add to or edit, unlike a conventional website which only the webmaster can change, or a blog, to which visitors can merely add comments. Perhaps the most well-known example is Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), a free online encyclopedia that anyone can add to or edit. People volunteer to write about subjects, and subject- matter experts review the material for accuracy. Wikipedia continues to grow, day by day.

A wiki enables faculty and students to create, edit and share information in a dynamic web environment.

The wiki is proving to be a simple but very powerful tool.

Jason Daida, an associate research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, uses a wiki for his ENGR 100 and 101 courses. He started his explanation of wikis by comparing them with CTools (formerly known as Course Tools), an online kit that instructors can use to distribute course materials to students, maintain an online calendar of activities, manage electronic chats and discussion boards and handle electronic assignments.

"Whereas CTools have the capacity to handle only one course selection at a time," Daida said, "a wiki can manage multiple sections and projects. So those who are involved in each course can communicate and collaborate with those in another course. For example, with Wiki100, we coordinate projects across multiple classes in ENGR 100, as well as with mentors in ENGR 390, collaborating senior capstone design courses and clients who're associated with the projects. Wiki100 also reinforces the idea of engineering design as a community activity, because students can use communal notes, add to them, edit and annotate. Former students from the class can check in to see what's going on, find out how current students are doing and respond to questions. So students can learn from them and, if the students turn up something new, the former students can learn something new, too."

Daida has set up Wiki100 so that community members need a password, and he can audit all of the traffic so that he knows who's done what and when, and how his creation is growing. The site's welcome page talks about the course, the projects and the labs. ENGR 100 alumni often contribute stories. For instance, one former student said she was "interning with Procter & Gamble at their manufacturing plant in St. Louis. I recently sat in on a brainstorming session about why quality was all over the place for their measures of viscosity of Cascade gel. It turns out that..." The writer's explanation proved to be an insight that connected lessons she remembered from class to an engineering problem in the real world.

One of Wiki100's many sections houses a library, several years old now, that contains nearly 1,000 pages of reports and alumni comments on various topics - a tremendously rich resource for students.

Another positive aspect of wikis is that they're fairly easy to create.

"It took about two weeks to get Wiki100 up and running," Daida said. "That includes overcoming some technical obstacles. The content core, which is the final reports archive and the syllabus, took about another week. This isn't typical. Depending on what people want to do with their wikis, it's possible to build one within an hour if you don't need a large core of content to begin."

Podcasting - Earplugs and Education

ONE OF THE latest and greatest entries into the world of digital education is podcasting, which is, in essence, what bloggers do when they get iPods or some other kind of mp3 player. Podcasting is beginning to make a lot of noise on college campuses, including Michigan Engineering's.

Perry Samson records his lectures and turns them into podcasts students can download and listen to anywhere, anytime, on their mp3 players. PHOTO by SCOTT GALVIN

The technology turns faculty into individual radio stations. They simply record and upload their lectures. Students download the lectures to their mp3 players, just as they'd download The Black Eyed Peas, Green Day and Coldplay. Students can listen to lectures when and where they want - on a bike, on a beach, on a bench by the '47E Reflecting Pool - and they can listen to them over and over.

Perry Samson makes his lectures available as podcasts and finds that more students are participating in class. "I started podcasting just to explore how it works," Samson said. "To my surprise, class attendance went up, not down, and I was able to accommodate the needs of those students who legitimately can't make it to class because of health issues."

The Personal Response System

THE PERSONAL RESPONSE System (PRS) is an instructional technology tool that resembles a TV remote control but is, in fact, a hand-held infrared transmitter that students use to answer multiple-choice or yes/no questions. The system records and analyzes students' answers, then immediately displays the results on the instructor's computer screen, revealing information that indicates whether or not the students understand the material. If the responses show that the understanding isn't good, the instructor can explain the material again. If the same problem recurs from class to class, the instructor can adjust the lecture.

Michael Falk, Dow Corning Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, used a PRS in ENGR 101 during the fall of 2004. "I believe it kept the students on their toes," he said. "Surveys indicated that students in my class, where we used the PRS, were more likely to agree with the statement 'During class, I frequently engaged in thinking about concepts."

In the Early Stages on North Campus

A COUPLE OF other powerful digital tools are getting more attention on North Campus.

Blogs for learning - A weblog, or blog, is simply a web page that lets readers - in this case, usually students - add comments and have an ongoing discussion.

Faculty use blogs as web portals for classes, posting homework assignments and promoting discussion and collaboration. Students can create their own blogs, uploading and storing e-files rather than stuffing folders full of paper that they usually toss out when a class is over. They also use blogs as journals, recording notes that become more valuable over time - even years down the road - when they look back and either add to the blogs or use them as a library. They might even open their personal blogs to other students who could use the files and notes as resource material for their own studies.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) - RSS distributes links to content on websites, updates those links automatically and provides a summary of the content at each site. And readers can "subscribe" to the content at each site that offers RSS. So, without going through the hassle of opening up each link, subscribers can decide whether or not they want to read various webpages. Students with RSS readers can find out what papers, articles and podcasts are online, which ones are new and what the content is - without opening each item. Students can select what they want to read or listen to, then click the link to get the complete content.

The digital world at Michigan Engineering facilitates the richest kind of learning - a collaboration of students and faculty in a classroom with a door that, in general, is open 24 hours a day. School is in, even when school is out. Instructors teach, even while they're on vacation. Renowned lecturers visit campus without ever leaving home.

The digital world has brought a sea change to student life and learning. And, like digital technology, Michigan Engineering tomorrow will always be a little different than Michigan Engineering today. -E