1:1 Computing Utilizing Tablet PC's in Higher Education - The Dakota State Implementation

A new way of doing education

Tom Farrell, Associate ProfessorDakota State UniversityMadison, SD

1 to 1 Computing A New Way of Teaching & Learning

The Original Wireless Tablet

Not really, but think of a computer that has all of the computing potential of a fully powered laptop computer but with all of the rich features of a Wireless TabletPC

Dakota State University Demographics

Undergraduate (3 Colleges) Arts & Science Education Business & Info

Systems All colleges

participated in WMCI at 100 and 200 level courses

Enrollment: 1,800 with 1,200 on campus

Graduate (3 Degrees) MISIS MSET MSIA

Blended delivery of Internet and on campus

Currently students can opt into WMCI only

Dakota State University Mission Statement

Dakota State University is South Dakota's leader in applying computer and information systems technology to higher education.

Dakota State's academic programs look to the future, emphasizing a high-quality, comprehensive, discipline-based education with the intense application of existing and emerging technologies.

The WMCI Concept

The concept was to enrich and take full advantage of an existing computing infrastructure by moving to a Wireless Mobile Computing Initiative (WMCI)

This initiative would place a Wireless Mobile Tablet PC on each of the student’s desktop for all classes to take advantage of opportunities afforded with wireless mobile tablet computing

Accomplished via a 1 to 1 computing initiative

Early Pioneers

Two faculty were identified by administration to explore the concept of the “Tablet PC”

I Remember well the day when we were told we were going to explore the concept We did not laugh in Dean’s office,

however by the time we got to the drinking fountain were having a laughing good time

Opportunities to Explore (Jan. 2003)

Lack of knowledge was hurting us so… Vendor Events

HP in Houston in January Gateway in Tucson in March

Very informative Quickly changed mind Airports saturated by Microsoft with Tablet PC’s

In addition to the vendor events, two systems were purchased for permanent assignment to two faculty to use as desk top replacements

Planning for Year One

Generally positive feed back moved us to pilot a larger group of Tablet PC’s Had previously rejected 1 to 1 mandate

programs because of rich infrastructure and computing environment, however were loosing that edge

Originally I was opposed, but now proponent Explored multiple vendors Ultimately selected Gateway’s Motion

Slate

Why Gateway (Motion Slate)

Tremendous attention from both vendors in addressing concerns

Keyboard modifications Price appeared to be

competitive in comparison to other brands

Thought the slate would be the way to go

Fall 2003

130 Gateway (Motion Slates) Cart Machines

2 30 stations labs were developed using rolling carts

One was a desktop lab replacement One was a lab for a new building opening on

campus 30 assigned permanently to students from

Center of Excellence for Information Systems 30 assigned to faculty across campus 10 to the library for check out

Fall 2003 Wireless Update

The 130 machine roll out caused additional expansion of the wireless network on the campus More areas including areas where carts

were located Additional site surveys and access point

placement Became about 75% wireless in all

academic areas

Cart Usage

1 30 station tablet cart was assigned to a room where all sections of Introduction to Computers were taught as were some of the programming classes All students used a tablet in class

Students never given the opportunity to embrace concept of working outside of class on tablets Migrated to traditional labs for outside of class

work Many reported liking the tablet as a tool

Cart Usage (Lab 2)

The second cart was assigned to a new technology classroom building

Wide variety of classes and disciplines Mix of distance and face to face classes Use less wide spread than the

Introduction to Computer lab Good reviews depending upon the

class and activities presented

30 Center of Excellence Students

Became one of the most important groups of pilot study

Systems became students to use at all times both on and off campus

Preview of what the 1 to 1 mandate program would yield

Students became very innovative and quickly embraced the technology

30 Faculty Machines

Initial problem was finding 30 faculty willing to try new technology Original thesis was to get a Tablet PC

you would have to give up your desk top system

Were to use as only computer system Tablet would function as a

presentation system (SmartBoard) in class as well as the faculty member’s university provided computer

January 2004

New President arrives One of his strengths was having worked with a

mandate program at the University of Minnesota Crookston

First IBM Think Pad campus

Time to make decisions for mandate program: Which student population Which vendor What policies and procedures

Which Student Population

Decided upon all 100 and 200 level courses across the entire campus with goal to move to all undergraduates

Would be a population of about 700 plus students

All current freshmen had at least worked some with a tablet

Needed to become a part of student recruitment plans

Vendor

Determination was made that the Slate model was not the direction to pursue Slate shortcomings

Keyboard No optical drive attached Not an integrated system unit

Wanted a “Convertible” system for all of the reasons listed above

Vendor (Cont’d)

Evaluated various vendors including: HP Toshiba Acer Gateway Viewsonic

Gateway’s introduction of the M275 was on the horizon

Why Gateway and the M275

Felt Gateway despite financial challenges had taken the necessary steps to become stable

Service from both the sales people as well the technical engineers was excellent

Value The cost vs features certainly came out the

best for the M275 Side note actually delivered 700 systems

1 week ahead of scheduled delivery

The Gateway M275E (Summer 05)

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition

Processor: Intel® Pentium® M Processor 715 (1.5GHz)

Memory: 256MB DDR SDRAM Hard Drive: 30GB 4200rpm ultra ATA hard drive Floppy Drive: Integrated 4-in-1 Memory Card

Reader Optical Drive: Integrated 24x/10x/24x CD-RW and

8x DVD combo Expansion Slots: (1) Type II PC card slot External Ports: (2) USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 (FireWire),

VGA

WMCI Policies and Procedures

Very time consuming So many things to think about Visits to campuses with mandate

programs Formulated a WMCI task force

Appointed Chairperson (Dean BIS) Computing services staff Faculty and student representation As well as administration

Our WMCI Task Force

Met regularly and often Discussed many ideas and concepts Formulated a plan Over saw planning Unfortunately once the systems

were rolled out the task force has had limited involvement

Pre-Selling

It was determined that it would be important to pre-sell the concept to the two constituency groups of incoming freshman and next year’s sophomore students

Were scheduled for a minimum of a 30 minute presentation and question/answer period with all incoming freshman and parents Recruitment visits and registration

Pre-Selling (Cont’d)

Two faculty from WMCI task force offered services to all existing 100 level course instructors to visit their classrooms to present the WMCI plan and answer questions

Visited in excess of 15 classes and saw most students more than once Not bad concept to see more than once

The 1 to 1 Program

Students with < 64 credit hours would be required to participate

Would then qualify as a portion of financial aid

Would redesign curriculum in all 100 – 200 level courses to take advantage of the Tablet PC and Wireless connectivity

Students above the 64 credit hour threshold would have the option to opt in

Program Cost

Tablets were leased (3 year lease) Pricing model was presented to SD

Board of Regents Cost would be $275 per student per

semester Would include the M275 tablet,

Microsoft Office Suite of Products and Programming Languages and Internet

3 year warranty and accidental damage On campus service and warranty

How Able to Keep Cost So Low

Competitive pricing from the vendor Favorable lease rates Redirection of a portion of existing

technology fees away from labs Competitive software license agreements

Use of existing staff and student workers for support

Drawback to Lower Cost

For 2005 – 2006 academic year have attempted to raise fee and SD Board of Regents is only allowing us a 5% fee increase

Faculty Training

A key part of a successful mandate program

Our worst nightmares were of students questioning as to why they needed the Tablet in a given class

Applied for a grant for faculty training from the Governor’s office

Very successful in obtaining funds Now must deliver in the classroom

setting

Faculty Teaching 100 & 200 Level Courses Required to Participate

Three pronged approach: Faculty must be given a Tablet PC as

early as possible Faculty must be trained in many of the

tablet features as well features of additional software such as Office 2003, OneNote and Windows Journal

Faculty must have buy in $$$

The DSU Training Model

In June all faculty were given for their use over the summer a Slate tablet

Not the best but still better than no tablet

However, may have actually forced them to use Tablet capabilities more

The DSU Training Model(cont’d)

Faculty were trained in Tablet 101, Office 2003, OneNote and Windows Journal Challenged to develop implementation

ideas Concept of Wireless Projection with

potential and draw backs

DSU Training (Cont’d)

Course management system training We are a WebCT state

No choices Limited utilization up to training and

mandate especially for on campus courses

Emphasis placed on the paperless classroom

DSU Training Round 2

A second round of training was held in early August once the M275 systems had arrived on campus

Emphasis on utilizing fully the features of the M275 as well as a review of a limited number of Tablet features they had been working on over the summer

Faculty Curriculum Grants

Faculty were moreready to buy in once they were provided training and a Tablet PC

However a $3,000 grant for participation certainly helped to motivate them

Deliverables: Participate in training Modify syllabus to include the Tablet PC Modify instruction to maximize the use of

the Tablet PC

The Scope

800 was initial order

Final total was 965

Fall Roll Out to Students

From This to This

Imaging

Made a choice to do our own system imaging

Experienced with desktop labs

Use the Ghost product

Hired students to assist in August

Student Training and Check Out

Used students to do a brief 15 minute training to teach new students about the M275 and Perfigo

Additional training for freshmen in CSC 105 required class

Did at the time of fee payment

Help Desk / Staff Training

Gateway came and trained computing services staff and designated students

We are classified as an ASP (Authorized Service Provider)

Help Desk Location

One very large issue for Dakota State University was the placement of our Help desk facility

Various locations were considered however in the end the President made the determination it would be housed in the library

Still pros and cons to this placement, but that is campus politics

Help Desk

Initially open between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. M - F plus weekend hours Currently staffed 9 a.m. until 4:00 p.m

Goal is 10 minute evaluation and fix Loaner pool provided as a part of

the lease helps with to meet this goal

Hard drive fresh image

Support Issues

Spyware Spyware Spyware Student added programs Very limited hardware issues Did have a screen issue early on,

but screen manufacturer and Gateway were Great

No major hinge problems

Why the M275

Value Cost vs Benefit was good

Student centric machine

Easier faculty buy in as a desktop replacement

The Opt In–Those above 64 hours

110 Juniors 75 Seniors who opted in 65 in hands of faculty and staff

including admissions and all 100 – 200 course level faculty

All faculty regardless of course level have the option of at least a slate tablet system

Success Story–Only One Example

CSC 105 Introduction to Computers required freshman level course 317 students 33 assignments including hands on

activities, simulations and exams Not a single sheet of paper printed All submission done on line via WebCT Grading done using the Tablet features

and assignments returned via WebCT

Lessons Learned – From CIO

Need a special line item in budget Formal definition of support desk

and management Need a single person to manage

Memory be certain that you have at least 512 MB

Wireless Projection

We are using a product called Air Projector http://airprojector.c

om/ Also D-Link has a

similar product Linksys has a

product that is also an Access point

Things Done Correctly

Spring 2004 Version I of wireless projection Wireless projection assisted in faculty buy in

Version 2 of wireless projection Fall 2004 All classrooms

Citrix Implementation SAN implementation in advance of

initiative more home directories & web space

Citrix

Used initially to have the capability of connecting for teaching PeopleSoft courses

Real plus for the tablet implementation

www.citrix.com

Perfigo

Perfigo is used to authenticate to the network and ultimately to the Internet

Now owned by Cisco http://

www.perfigo.com/index_old.html

The “Old” Model

The “New” 1 to 1 Computing Model

Some Future Directions

Summer 2005 outdoor campus plus all dorm areas and rooms will be wireless

Move to all 300 (Junior) level courses Personal opinion looking back

should have included 400 level courses at the same time.

Conclusion

Seen lots of wireless/mobile computing, but only scratched the surface on Tablet PC capabilities

In my time with the TabletPC have seen so many additional software improvements

Hardware and OS have arrived

The End

Questions Comments

Tom Farrell College of BIS Dakota State University Madison, SD 57042 605 256-5173 tom.farrell@dsu.edu