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Intelligent Chalk-Systems for Modern Teaching: in Math, Science & Engineering Areas Abstract

This article describes a software system that transforms an electronic whiteboard into a teaching tool simulating a traditional chalkboard. In addition to writing and drawings, the electronic chalkboard handles a wide range of multimedia enhancements. These may be used to enliven the lessons by visualization, allowing the system to surpass the didactic potentials of the traditional chalkboard. The system records all actions and provides both a live transmission and a replay of the lecture from the web. Systematic evaluations from regular use at two universities are presented.

1. Introduction

University teachers have often come to rely on the wide-spread use of slideware (such as Microsoft PowerPoint) for additional motivation of their students by providing a modern touch to their lectures. These tools allow the teacher to easily produce materials with a professional, polished look and facilitate simplified publishing, both electronically or as hardcopies. Even more importantly, once created the lecture materials can be quickly and easily reused.

In contrast, the employment of slideware products in teaching has also been heavily criticized6. These products have originally been developed for presentation purposes. It has been argued, that they are well-suited to the task of “selling” a product or idea while they tend to be inadequate for presenting complex arguments.16, 17

Also, the human brain can be easily overloaded by the sensory input that eLearning and multimedia technology is capable of generating5. Even though these tools can be used to give a well-structured and easy-to-follow lecture when correctly employed, they do tend to foster a tendency to overwhelm learners with an overly rapid presentation of information. The lecturers, naturally, posses a deeper understanding of the subject and often tend to progress through the lecture at a pace too fast for their students to follow. Traditional teaching using a chalkboard imposes a natural limitation on the pace of the lecture that is overcome through the use of slideware. Also, classes given with slideware tend to be far less flexible and spontaneous than more traditionally presented ones. To use the words of a university lecturer, “PowerPoint sucks the life out of a class” 2.

Some approaches try to address this situation by adding annotations to slides. Office XP now features annotation tools in PowerPoint. Classroom Presenter streams a combination of PowerPoint slides and freehand “inking”.3 The “eClass” (later “Classroom 2000”) software is an early example of recording snapshots of annotated slides and electronic whiteboard drawings for distance teaching purposes.1

The main drawback of the slideware approach lies in being technology-driven, focusing on utilizing the technological possibilities offered by computers and multimedia technology today,

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Jeschke, S., & Knipping, L., & Rojas, R., & Seiler, R. (2006, June), Intelligent Chalk Systems For Modern Teaching In Math, Science & Engineering Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--774