“More than 150 UC Berkeley students in Ruth Tringham’s Anthropology 2 course last fall engaged in rich and lively classroom discussions, thanks to the presence of a new participant: wireless technology.
The course, an introduction to archaeology, was redesigned to take advantage of the communication possibilities that the web and wireless technology afford. Instead of lecturing, Tringham provided the students with information guides and library sources on the web in advance of class and used the lecture periods to hold “forums” in which students assembled into research teams and discussed specific archaeological topics. The students used wireless-enabled laptop computers to take part in chat rooms, the text of which was projected on a big screen for all to read. Discussion leaders – Tringham, her teaching assistants, and designated undergraduates from the course – served as moderators, responding to selected topics appearing on the screen while the online chat continued.
‘The use of wireless and a public chat discussion was enormously helpful for – in fact essential to the success of – the forum discussions in the large classroom,’ says Tringham. ‘If we had just the chat and not the spoken word reacting to it, students would have become so involved in their own computer world that it would detract from engagement in the classroom activity. But the combination really enhanced the learning process and made for varied discussions. It allowed for a larger group of students to be engaged at one time, with the extra benefit of providing a written record of what we were discussing.’
Tringham’s course was one of three at UC Berkeley – Statistics 21 and Chemistry 1A being the others – to experiment with wireless solutions in the classroom through a grant from Hewlett Packard that expanded AirBears, a system that enables students to connect with the campus network from designated access points using a laptop computer equipped with a wireless Ethernet card.”