Current is&t Issue

Volume 20

No. 4  March/April 2005

This Is Spinal Tablet: A Better Tool for Teaching Neuroanatomy

Robyn Fizz

Dr. Rutledge Ellis-Behnke is a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He and Prof. Gerald Schneider teach 9.14, Neuroanatomy, a course that relies heavily on illustrations and handouts. Reproducing all of the course materials in color was prohibitively expensive, so in 1998 Ellis-Behnke began to explore the option of using tablet PCs in class and dispensing with paper. Over the next few years, he and his colleagues discovered that using tablets greatly increased the students’ ability to learn and retain information. There were other, unexpected benefits as well. Here’s a look at how tablets have transformed the learning environment of 9.14.

The Classroom Experience
Ellis-Behnke began by comparing over 60 different tablet models. After narrowing the field to two models and testing them for a semester, he opted for a Hewlett-Packard (HP) tablet – it was sturdy, had good battery life, and was easy to maintain. The tablets are loaned to students through the MIT Libraries, which allows the instructors to stay focused on content.

PowerPoint slides and other handouts for 9.14 are posted to Stellar, MIT’s online course management system. This makes the course materials easy to maintain and revise, and easy for students to access via the Web (like laptops, tablets have built-in wireless network cards). This setup doesn’t require a special classroom or a plug at every seat.

The instructors, also equipped with tablets, no longer use blackboards. As they lecture about a slide, they can annotate it on their tablet: both the slide and annotations are projected onto a large screen. The students, viewing the same slide on their tablets, can take notes right on the display using a digital pen, or type notes using a mobile keyboard. They tend to switch between the two, and use multiple colors to highlight different anatomical structures.

Students can add keyword tags to each page and then do searches to find material for review. This saves them a lot of time, especially compared to flipping through vast amounts of paper. Required reading has increased from 1100 pages, pre-tablet, to 1500 pages, and slides have increased from 700 to 1200. But students have not been overwhelmed by these increases because the tablets let them organize the material effectively and access it instantly.

Through trial and error, Ellis-Behnke and his colleagues found that you don’t want to give all the material to the students up front, or they become passive learners. They need to take notes during class in order to learn. Providing about 60 to 70 percent of the intended material on each slide makes students pay attention, take notes, and learn – without turning them into stenographers.

Changed Interactions
While Ellis-Behnke and his colleagues expected tablets to enhance teaching and learning because course material could be delivered in color, they were surprised to find that tablets also introduced fundamental changes in behavior. There were more student interactions after class and in eating areas. Students were seen explaining points to other students, using their digital pens to circle the areas under discussion. Tablets became part of the dialog, which has not been the case with laptops. This may be due to the tablet’s small size, or perhaps because laptop covers, flipped open, act as a kind of barrier. Ellis-Behnke has observed the same increase in student-to-student interaction in tablet-based classes in other cultures (he also teaches at a medical school in Hong Kong) and in other age groups (elementary school children). Tablets act as magnets to bring students together.

Since the teaching assistants (TAs) for 9.14 no longer need to spend the hour before class making photocopies, they are able to greet students as they come to class and spend more time with them. Students have reacted positively to this in-person time with TAs. Tablets have also boosted the effectiveness of online office hours: instructors and students, while in different locations, can use the tablets for quick drawings to get their points across.

Another surprise was that students used the tablets everywhere. Tablets appear to meet a critical threshold of convenience in terms of weight and size. With class materials available in this highly portable format, students study when they are ready to study, as opposed to studying where the materials are. Instead of lugging around textbooks, or making a trip to the library, they turn on their tablets whenever they have spare time. That might include a 15-minute ride on the subway.

Tablets have also given instructors more flexibility. Being able to quickly access selected chapters from different textbooks lets them customize the way they teach the course.

Bottom-line Results
Ellis-Behnke has been measuring the results of using tablets in the classroom. The benefits to learning efficiency are clear. Even with significantly more class materials, the bottom 25 percent of the class improved a full letter grade after the tablets were introduced. This cohort learned as much as the average student did before the tablets were used. These are objective findings, since the neuroanatomy exams are based on short answers, which require students to demonstrate understanding of the material.

In terms of dollars, the cost of tablets offsets the cost of photocopying. Neither is inexpensive. A tablet costs about $2000. However, photocopying with only some color handouts costs $700 per student per class, and that does not include the cost of textbooks or the environmental costs of paper storage and recycling. In addition, the Libraries loan out each tablet to an average of eight students a year – for courses and special projects.

Use of tablets in the classroom has also proven successful for Prof. Julian Wheatley in teaching Mandarin, a pictographic language; similarly, Dr. Hai Ning has developed tablet-based software to facilitate peer review of design concepts in MIT mechanical engineering classes. To learn more about tablets in the paperless classroom, look for Ellis-Behnke’s seminar on the topic on the Crosstalk page.

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