Student Directions, Fall 2004 - Laptops and Related Technology Improve Learning Experience of this Student

Josh Reynolds
Junior, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Imagine for a moment that you are in a classroom trying to learn a new program that you have never seen before. You attempt to learn the program by merely talking about it and how it works theoretically. You never get to work with the program during class while the professor is there, but have to figure it out on your own outside of class. Maybe you will get lucky and the professor will project his workspace onto the screen while he works examples, or the text will have screenshots to guide you. I do not have to imagine this, because it has been my experience in several classes at Clemson.

General Engineeering students use
position sensors and laptops to learn
concepts associated with the
relationship between derivatives.

In engineering, as in other disciplines, there are several computer programs that must be mastered in the course of my studies. In the past year, I have been introduced to AutoCAD ® , MATLAB ® , and Maple ® . Maple and MATLAB can be downloadedto student laptops, and AutoCAD is available in all computer labs on campus. My calculus professor demonstrated Maple in the manner described above, and assigned homework using the program. In contrast, MATLAB was taught in a classroom setting where students were encouraged to bring their laptops and follow along. AutoCAD was taught in one of the computers labs on campus. Examples were worked out in class in all instances, yet the classes where I was able to follow along on my computer were the most effective in helping me learn.

Now, imagine you are trying to tackle a new concept in the course of your studies by deriving a relationship between experimental data and a theory in the textbook. Last year a major topic of study in the general engineering curriculum was the relationship between derivatives (i.e., velocity is the derivative, or the slope of the line, of the graph of position over time and acceleration is the derivative of velocity over time, etc.). One way to investigate this relationship experimentally would be to track the position of an object over time (like a car going down the road), and use this data to construct a graph. Then, you could take the slope of the line in that graph and construct another graph of the velocity, and from the velocity graph you could derive an acceleration curve. This was a difficult concept for me to understand until I went to my general engineering class one day, where we used position sensors and a laptop to understand the same concept with DataStudio ® . The program automatically created graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration in real-time. As we moved our hands closer to and farther from the sensors at different speeds, we could see the impact the speed change made on the graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration. We had worked through similar problems on paper in calculus class, but the relationship between the functions was still vague at best. I understood the concept better after playing with sensors for half an hour in my general engineering lab than I did after hours of solving calculus homework problems.

I have also found my laptop valuable during lectures. Wireless is now available nearly everywhere on campus, and, consequently, teachers are beginning to integrate the use of computers into their lessons more. Laptops are showing up in classrooms of all disciplines; my general education professors are integrating PowerPoint, video clips, and electronic copies of lecture outlines into their classrooms. Utilizing such tools keeps me engaged.

I look forward to the day that every class at Clemson University could be considered a laptop section. My freshman year I attended a Microsoft showcase on campus that showed the direction that learning in the classroom is headed. I am excited to think that my university has come so far and is still working to provide such a well-rounded experience to its students.