iPad and teaching


Pad-agogy: an exploration of the iPad for teaching and assessment in higher education[1]

Description of the project
Although the iPad is a relatively new product (2010) a literature review reveals that it has already been the subject of a handful of studies investigating its use in higher education as well as making several appearances on YouTube in 'apps' presentations by excited American university professors. The journal reports tend to emphasize the iPad in mobile learning, in a sense as an extension of smart phone use, however one study (Manuguerra and Petocz 2011[2]) reports the use of the iPad in a lecture/seminar situation and as a tool for assessment.

I have tried the iPad on a few occasions in my level 5 (year 2) music analysis lectures in a similar way to the use of an interactive whiteboard in a school classroom setting. This proved to be potentially an extremely efficient tool for teaching and students were engaged by the presentation. This project aims to achieve the following:

1. To test and evaluate applications for 'live' annotation of materials (pdf) during lecture/seminars using a stylus on the touchscreen.

2. To test the possibility of electronic marking using a stylus on the iPad touch screen for both typed scripts and handwritten/notation portfolios scanned and uploaded by students.

The project aims to assess the viability of the iPad's touchscreen technology as an effective and more intuitive or interactive mode of delivery, together with the ability to save screen annotations in pdf format for Minerva upload plus sound/video files etc., linked to the lecture/seminar.

The project will make recommendations on software, teaching strategies and applicability across other disciplines.

Activities
1. The use of pdf annotating software to annotate scores and other materials on screen using a stylus, writing music notation analysis 'live' projected via a data projector; saving the annotated document as a pdf to upload to Minerva.

2. To explore the effectiveness of manipulating multiple applications during lectures: audio, video and annotated pdf.

3. To test the effectiveness of marking students' handwritten music analysis projects being scanned and uploaded for assessment with comments given by annotation using a stylus. There is also the possibility to attach notes, images, sound files etc.

4. To test and evaluate iPad applications such as iAnnotate, 2Screens, Notability, Note Taker HD etc.



[1] Apologies to Brand and Kinash for borrowing their word 'Padagogy'. Brand, J. & Kinash, S. (2010). Pad-agogy: A quasi-experimental and ethnographic pilot test of the iPad in a blended mobile learningA environment. Paper presented at the 27th Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE), Sydney, Australia. <http://works.bepress.com/shelley_kinash/50/>
[2] Manuguerra, M. Petrocz, P. (2011). Promoting Student Engagement by Integrating New Technology into
Tertiary Education: The Role of the iPad. Asian Social Science 7, (11), 61-65. <http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/12841>

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