Ubiquitous Presenter: Activating Engineering Education with Tablet PCs

In this workshop, participants will gain hands-on experience which will prepare them to lecture and perform active learning exercises with the ubiquitous presenter (UP) system. UP (in use by more than 10 faculty at over 6 institutions), is a Web-based system which enables instructors (with a Tablet PC) to incorporate the best of chalk and digital presentations and automatically archives materials for student review. Additionally, UP supports a range of active learning, problem-based learning and JITT styles. Students equipped with Web-enabled devices (laptops, cell phones, Tablets, etc.) can interact anonymously with instructor provided activities in and outside the classroom. Many modalities of student interaction are supported including multiple choice selection, typed text, and free form ink drawing or writing -allowing students to control and select their preferred form of interaction. Student response to UP has been very positive across a number of engineering courses. Specifically, students indicate that seeing and reviewing other students´ anonymously submitted answers both in and outside of class improved their confidence in their abilities in the class