The second task was to find out what Students could do with Laptops in their Lectures? To find answers to this question, we used methods from the IDEO Method Cards.
The method I used for this task was “Predict Next Years Headlines”. So I asked some students and myself the question: “Try to think 1 year in the future. How could (in the future) Laptops be used usefully while Lectures?”
The results can be categorized into 3 different groups: technical infrastructure at the University, teachers and students.
Technical Infrastructure:
-) Electronic Whiteboards (where you can print out/save the information on it) instead of blackboards
-) Better Networkinfrastructure, more Poweroutlets
Teachers:
-) Create “Hypertext-Slides” (so that Students who look at the slides on their laptop can get more information by clicking on links)
-) Possibility for changing the presentation “on the fly” (e.g.: make additions to the slides in the lecture, make annotations directly on the slides, …)
-) Create Audio- & Videorecordings of the lecture (so that Students don’t have to record it and could catch up on a lecture they missed)
-) Create the posibility of direct electronic communication with teachers/assistants (e.g.: via messenger, irc, mail, …) in the lecture for questions (makes it easier than asking them alound when sitting in the last rows of big rooms). Answers to this questions should be made public because they are probably interesting for more than one student
Students:
-) Use a better software to take notes while in the lecture (e.g.: a software with that you can directly take notes on PDF files)
-) Use IRC chatrooms (e.g.: one for each room or one for each lecture) for communication with other students
These and other results brought up some interesting questions: If there is the possibility for class related stuff you can do with your laptop, how can the teacher still grab and hold the attention of the students? What are the reasons for students to visit lectures?
Interesting questions, maybe we will find some answers to them.
One of the answers to “What are the reasons for students to visit lectures?” was “So that they don’t miss something”. Miss what? Maybe something like this:
Hopefully not only because of such things 🙂