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iPad: a new classroom technology?
A report from two pilot studies
Alma L. Culén
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
P. Boks 1080, 0316 Blindern, Oslo, Norway
almira@ifi.uio.no
Andrea Gasparini
Digital Services, University of Oslo Library
P. Boks 1085, 0317 Blindern, Oslo, Norway
a.a.gasparini@ub.uio.no
Summary
In this paper we discuss two pilot studies involving the use of iPads for active
reading in a teaching/learning situation. This is part of a broader study of how
introducing tablet PCs may transform the work and learning practices of
learners. One of the pilot studies was conducted in a graduate level course,
involving 40 university students. The other study involved 26 fourth grade
elementary schoolchildren. The results concerning acceptance of the technology
were vastly different in the two studies. We find the comparison to be very
interesting in several aspects, most notably on the issue of ownership and
perceived usefulness. We hope that our experience with these pilot studies may
be of use and interest for a wider community. Our research method is based on
ethnography (in-class observations), enriched by workshops, questionnaires,
group and individual interviews involving students, faculty and, in the case of
elementary schoolchildren, families. The data from interviews has been
consolidated and mapped out into an affinity diagram. The resulting diagram
shows clearly issues that should be further addressed, as well as areas where
changes in study-related work practices may occur. This paper offers some
reflections on differences and similarities observed in the two study situations.
Key words: Classroom Ecology; iPad; Learning; Mobile Technology in
Classroom; Tablet PC; Technology Adoption; Touch User Interface.
Introduction
A system consisting of students, teacher, practices, values and technology may
be referred to as classroom information ecology (Nardi, 1999). Our interest was
to observe how introducing a tablet, in this case an iPad, would change that
INFuture2011: “Information Sciences and e-Society”
ecology. Unlike more traditional ‘desktop technologies’, mobile technology like
tablet PCs may be easier integrated into the daily life of students. It also has the
potential to redefine what constitutes a learning space. Without constraints of
specific time and place, it may facilitate more robustly situated learning
practices. Whether this hypothesis holds true needs to be verified in real life
situations. Many educators world around are aware of this potential and there
are many studies that are being conducted around the globe testing this or a
similar hypothesis (see (Hu, 2011), (Chen, 2010), (Wilson, 2011) or (White,
2010)). In (Vollen, 2011), Danish IT paper, it is reported that the rector of the
school conducting one such experiment in Denmark has said: “It does not sound
nice, but we'll see if we can claim a larger portion of students’ free time. The
path to learning is now shorter. Students may, whenever the opportunity arises,
read school related texts or watch a videotaped lectures in the comfort of their
sofa in the evening.” (Trans. Culén). However, scientific studies on the effect of
iPad-based learning are yet to come.
An opportunity to conduct the two pilot studies in a real learning situation arose
in the fall semester of 2010, when the University of Oslo Library decided to try
out a digital curriculum on iPad, and equipped an entire Geology class (40
students and their instructor) with iPads. In the spring semester of 2011, some
of these iPads were used in an elementary school study. The goal of the studies
was to see how students adopt this new technology and how does it influence
the classroom ecology. The first pilot study was also part of the (Green
University, 2010) project with focus on the environment. The use of paper and
the volume of printing was the primary measure of possible environmental
benefits of using iPads in the class.
The Geology class was chosen without any special considerations as to how
iPad could be used in that field. However, placing an entire course curriculum
on the iPad at no expense for students, alongside of environmental benefits of
less printing, was viewed as something that would increase the perceived
usefulness of the tablet for students. In addition, iPads are generally viewed as
devices that have an easy to use, intuitive interface. In (Davis, 1987), the
influence of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are discussed in
relation to acceptance of technology. Many other variables have been relevant
to the technology acceptance model (TAM). In (Barki et al., 2007) the authors
name: trust, cognitive absorption, self-efficacy, job relevance, image, result
demonstrability, disconfirmation, information satisfaction, top management
commitment, personal innovativeness, information quality, system quality,
computer anxiety, computer playfulness, and perceptions of external control as
some of the factors that may be important for the acceptance of technology. Our
findings show that while many of the above showed up in the course of the
study, ownership and the possibility of sharing the work on iPad have been the
most important (Culén et al., 2011). However, at the end of the pilot study we
could only conclude that the introduction of this technology had not been a
A. Culén, A. Gasparini, iPad: a new classroom technology?
success with the Geology class. The disinterest of students in this platform for
work purposes is illustrated by the fact that all of the students were offered the
opportunity to buy the iPads that they used throughout the semester at a
favourable price, but only 3 students took up the offer.
On the other hand, the results of the second pilot study show that the iPad has
been successfully introduced as a tool at an elementary school. As an indication
of how important the iPads were for children, we can quote one of the fourth
graders who participated in the study: “the best things we ever had at school are
iPads and chickens” (they have incubated some eggs and watched the chickens
get out of their shells in the second grade).
Context of Pilot Study 1
Forty students, 1 lecturer and 3 teaching assistants participated in the study in
the fall of 2010. Each iPad had the class curriculum downloaded in advance.
The curriculum for the course consisted of book chapters, lecture slides, maps
and academic papers. Each iPad came with a Dropbox containing the
curriculum. The students have also received a gift card of approximately $25,
and were required to get iAnnotate and Elements applications from the Apple
Apps store which would enable them to add their own annotations, highlight the
text etc. No stylus or cover for multi-positional viewing of iPad was given to the
students. The physical setting for this course was typical for higher educational
institutions countrywide. Students have lectures in a large auditorium and
discussion/work groups in small groups and rooms. Wi-Fi is available
everywhere at the University premises, but student housing, where many
international students from this class lived, did not have Wi-Fi, thus disabling
iPad Internet use while studying at home. Their program is very competitive
and fast paced, thus leaving students with little time for anything else but
studies. The students have signed an agreement to participate in our study, and
committed to participation in one workshop and two surveys.
Context of Pilot Study 2
Six iPads were given to a class of 26 children: 1 for the teacher and 5 for the
children. The study began in January 2011 and will last for one year. At the end
of the first semester, we could report that the iPads have been successfully
integrated into the classroom ecology (Gasparini et al., 2011). The
schoolchildren use a spacious classroom, equipped with a Smart Board, laptop
(usually connected to the Smart Board and used exclusively by the teacher) and
three stationary PC's for student use. This is standard equipment for classrooms
at this school and a common setting for other elementary schools countrywide.
There was no Wi-Fi connection in the classroom; wireless mobile broadband
was installed for the purposes of this study. As the iPads were also to be taken
home, it is relevant to note that all participants had a wireless network at home
and access to either a PC or a laptop. The children are 4th graders (aged 8-9).
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They are technologically savvy (see (Buckingham, 2007) and (Druin, 2009) on
facets of children's involvement with technology). The authors of this paper had
used this same class in a previous study (Culén et al., 2011) involving the
children in the co-design of an e-book reader interface. A digitized curriculum
is not yet common in elementary schools. However, access to a digitized
curriculum was obtained from the academic publisher (free of charge) for
Religious Studies, Mathematics and Science. English is relevant both as a
school subject and as the language of the applications. The children have some
knowledge of the language, but many are far from fluent. The traditional way of
teaching English was supplemented from the start of the study with stories and
Apps that could help children to improve their English through play. No
restrictions were imposed on what they could download and how they could use
the tablets in their free time. Each iPad had an iTunes account with $25, with no
required purchases. The children were left to make a financial decision: if they
wanted more expensive Apps, they could join forces and pay for them as a
group, or find other ways of managing the funds. Each iPad came with a
Dropbox containing the curriculum books and the iAnnotate application, which
enables users to highlight the text, make notes, etc. The children, like Geology
students, were not given a stylus or a cover for multi-positional viewing (see
Figure 1). The parents of the schoolchildren have signed an agreement giving us
permission to conduct surveys, workshops and short interviews with children at
school. Two families have agreed to be interviewed in their homes.
Figure 1. Students received an iPad each, the schoolchidren one iPad per group of five children.
The Method
The main method was based on ethnography. We were aware of technology
adoption assessment questions such as those in (Staley, 2004). In Pilot Study 1,
graduate students of informatics worked with students of geology during the
semester. The students of informatics observed the use of iPads in the
A. Culén, A. Gasparini, iPad: a new classroom technology?
classroom, carrying out a contextual inquiry, and also doubling as technical
support. Additional data was collected from two surveys, one workshop and
three group interviews (2 interviewers per group and 4-6 participants). After the
end of the course, 3 students and the instructor were interviewed individually.
All interviews, group and individual, were recorded and transcribed. The
interview data was consolidated using the sticky notes method (one observation
per note) to map the observations into an affinity diagram. The analysis pointed
towards ownership and cooperation as new and interesting variables to consider
in relation to mobile technology adoption in education.
In Pilot Study 2, for the first weeks of the study, we followed the grounded
theory procedures (Sharp et al., 2007; 388) and simply observed the ecosystem,
waiting for participants’ main concerns, challenges or areas of mastery of
something new to emerge. The children were observed in the class every
Tuesday. The researcher also provided technical support. In addition, we
conducted two workshops, interviews with two families (including students), as
well as one with the teacher. Data was collected using audio, video, notes,
photographs and periodic collection of iPads in order to view and document the
content. Many informal conversations during the observations were very
valuable. Some quantitative data was collected through four short surveys (each
comprising 1-5 questions). The data was analyzed and categorized similarly as
in Pilot Study 1. The analysis indicated three variables of particular interest: use
of the iPads for creative learning, attitudes towards learning, and the emergence
of new social patterns.
Organizational challenges
This set of challenges addresses issues around the premises on which the iPads
are distributed (short term loan, long term loan, owning) to students, how the
content is acquired and later accessed, who is to provide the support, and when.
In both studies, participants are “borrowing” iPads for a given length of time
(one semester for students and a whole year for schoolchildren). In both cases,
technical support was made available to all participants. Both students and
schoolchildren needed support of various kinds, most notably with equipment
breakdowns (one iPad stopped working completely, but many participants
experienced temporary problems when iPads were not shut down for a long
time). The students needed a tutorial on iAnnotate (YouTube, 2010); the
elementary schoolchildren were given one hour of introduction to iPad at the
beginning of the semester, and once a week they could get help with whatever
problems they had, most often with the wireless network connection and with
download of Apps as well as some guidance on how to use them.
The most important variables that were directly, but only partially, related to
organizational challenges were:
Perceived intuitiveness and the ease of use of iPad
Perceived ownership
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General perception that touch user interfaces (TUIs) are natural, intuitive etc.,
was falsely extended into thinking that applications would be equally easy to
master by graduate students. However, they needed guidance on the use of the
basics they got with the iPads, such as Dropbox and iAnnotate. The students felt
that learning all these apps “properly” would take too much time. Therefore, in
order to make them more willing to set the time they need to get used to
working with iPads, a tutorial for iAnnotate was made (YouTube, 2010). All of
this was perceived as rather complicated to use, in spite of the fact that the TUI
itself was found to be very easy by majority of students.
The children, on the other hand, were not under time or academic pressure.
They were interested in exploring and found it not to be difficult at all. Thus, for
the level of tasks they were performing, they found the iPad to be easy to use,
intuitive and playful. It is perhaps interesting to remark that arrangements
around sharing of the 5 iPads among the children have gone without any
problems and were fully self regulated. They have never complained about
someone doing something on the iPad they did not like (such as removing
content they placed on it).
When it comes to ownership, a more detailed report may be found in (Culén et
al., 2011). It suffice to say that the schoolchildren live “in the now”, and the
timeframe for which they could use the iPads did not weigh on them. Neither
were they concerned with the destiny of their work stored on iPads. They are
happily unaware of many aspects of the ownership issues, and this variable was
of no importance for them. Quite a different picture is seen when it comes to
students. Again, part of the problem could be resolved by organizing the terms
of the loan of iPads to students in a different manner (as was done at Stanford
University (Hussein, 2010)), but other ownership issues, such as proprietary
(Apple) software or ownership of annotations made on PDF files and stored in
the cloud, would still persist.
Challenges due to physical environment
In this category, findings were also quite different. Students have quickly found
out that taking notes on iPads is hard, not only because iAnnotate is difficult to
master, but also, because their physical space is limited to a chair with a small
work surface, which is insufficient for holding an iPad, a book and some paper
and pencils. They were much happier with use of iPads in smaller discussion
rooms with tables, where they could share images and texts from their iPads.
Apart from this, as aforementioned, the availability of Wi-Fi on iPads was
limited to the University, thus forcing the students to use devices that could be
connected to the local area network by wire.
When it comes to elementary schoolchildren, the adjustments and changes in
the physical environment they had to make due to the number of iPads they got
(the classroom was now organised into 5 large work areas, one for each group
of children with an iPad they could jointly use) fostered collaboration and
A. Culén, A. Gasparini, iPad: a new classroom technology?
sharing, and increased the interactions among the children. They had also the
only Wi-Fi equipped classroom in the school (enabling increased use of the
internet in class). The Wi-Fi did not work perfectly, but everyone was very
patient with it, indicating that the benefits outweighed the problems.
Academic challenges
When a new device is put into a classroom use, it naturally changes the way
students work. In Pilot Study 1, we found that time pressure and the need to
obtain a good grade in the class were factors that prevented students from
making much time to explore the possibilities that iPad offers. Their field has a
strong tradition of how the things are done. Students often resorted to these
traditional means (please see the Survey2_Geology, 2010) thus missing the
benefits of some features iPads offer. For example, none of the university
students searched the curriculum on their iPads for specific themes or concepts,
or shared their own notes taken during the lectures via email or Dropbox.
In Pilot Study 2, the challenges concerned the selection of appropriate
educational applications that could adequately supplement the teaching, a
common theme for many of the studies concerning the iPad in education.
It is well known that the role of the teacher in acceptance of new classroom
technology (see for example (Baylor et al., 2002)) is very important. The
teachers in the two studies were providing different role models for their
respective students:
The University professor has a well-established course, with a long
tradition, and learning to use an iPad efficiently would take a lot of
time: “When I have very long working days and I want to be as effective
as possible, the effort of sitting down for 2 -3 hours to learn the iPad is
too great for me”. (Trans. Culén). He did not use the iPad when
teaching.
The elementary school teacher used the iPad actively every day during
classes for variety of tasks.
Technological challenges
These challenges were of much greater importance to students and they have
given a long list of frustrations, some of which are:
Two applications cannot be open at the same time (for example, it is not
possible to follow the lecture slides and browse at the same time).
Students are used to multitasking in this field.
Reloading pages or slides in PDF format takes a very long time (for
example, if the text references some figure that is on a different page, it
can take a considerable time to find the figure; similarly when zooming
on a figure, which Geology students often do, it may be slow to reload).
Downloading files was difficult for many students.
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No support for Flash.
Problems with 3D viewing.
Some of the challenges that emerged during the course of the two pilot projects
were not too “serious”. They could be eliminated or bypassed. Others could be
resolved when iPad is redesigned, or when some other tablet offers better
support for active reading.
Samples from interviews and surveys
Surveys were focused on both environmental questions (as mentioned in the
introduction, mainly related to the reduction in printing) and on use for course
work. Regarding the use of paper, we see a positive trend in both studies. The
students have achieved a significant reduction in the amount of pages they
printed for the Geology class. 57% of respondents have answered that they have
printed much less than usual. Before the iPads, the school children used to make
copies of the book pages in order to do exercises, but with iPads, they had no
need to make extra copies. Thus, they too, have reduced printing significantly.
The first survey at the elementary school was held after the participants had
been using iPads in class for one month. Just before the survey, the children had
a read-aloud session. Each child had to read a particular story from the iPad for
the rest of the group. After the reading, the children discussed the story. The
survey was based on simple questions that were to be answered with a star
rating (5 stars being the highest score and one star the lowest). Twenty children
were at school that day, and 17 rated the iPad as a preferred or equal platform
for reading. Only three were negative toward the reading experience on this new
artefact. After four months, we asked if they had changed their minds over
reading preferences. Twenty students were present: two had changed their mind
in favour of books, while two had changed in favour of iPads. The balance
remained the same: 17 for iPads, 3 for books. One of the participants who chose
books did so on the basis of a usability issue with iPads: it was too easy to
change the page and the student kept doing so accidentally. One of the students
who chose the iPad on this occasion had voted against it previously.
Through the interview with the elementary school teacher we find that she
considers iPads as both useful and enjoyable to have in the classroom, even
though in some cases the results were poorer then when using traditional
methods. An example here was an attempt to teach them about composition
with the help of iPad App Puppet Palls designed for storytelling. While they
were very engaged and entertained, the teacher evaluated the results as weaker
in terms of learning outcome.
When asked if preparation for the class is more difficult now that she also needs
to think about iPads, she said: “No! It in fact simplifies matters. I can ask them
to use their iPads to check things and they should manage to do it by
themselves. They have tools for doing it by themselves (referring to Apps,
Wikipedia or Google search). … They are also better at reading from the screen
A. Culén, A. Gasparini, iPad: a new classroom technology?
(referring to iPad). I skim-read, but they certainly get interested and immersed,
and they actually got things from one text we were reading that I did not get, as
I did not read carefully enough.” (Trans. Culén).
When it comes to reading, 85% of children answered that they prefer to read
from the iPad than from the book. They liked the ability to zoom in and out, and
while reading, many of them were changing scopes often.
The data on the reading habits of the university students can be found in
surveys. The two surveys are provided in their entirety at (Survey_Geology,
2010) for the first one and (Survey2_Geology, 2010) for the second one. Some
highlights: 51.9% of students use iPad for reading less than an hour per day,
81% say that the benefit they got is that it is portable (easy to carry around).
While differences between the two groups of participants were numerous, there
were some noteworthy similarities, too. Most notably, both groups enjoyed
sharing the content from iPads and collaboration. All interviews with students
were semi-structured and one of the questions we asked them all was in what
situation have you found the iPad most useful. The answer was invariably
related to work in smaller groups, when it was possible to share the information.
The second most useful situation was while travelling, both in relation to the
longer field work trips and localy. The schoolchildren already had the groups
around iPad, the question for them was if there were any problem in sharing.
Without exception, they said that sharing was not the problem but fun.
Conclusion
The pilot study conducted at the University level has pointed towards non-
acceptance of iPads as a learning platform for Geology students. Various
challenges contributed to this situation: from problems with physical space to
academic challenge. The two variables that played an important role in the
study were perceived ownership and perceived ease of use. A more thorough
study is called for in order to better understand the ownership issues, especially
in relation to the emerging cloud computing. In contrast, in the elementary
school, we observed, but also heard from the families, the children and the
teacher, that iPad enhanced teaching, learning and play. The variables that were
most prominent for the acceptance of the technology were creativity, attitude
toward learning and the emergence of new social patterns. The study with
schoolchildren is now continuing, observing if there would be any changes in
established patterns with prolonged use, as well as closer observation of how
the device actually contributes (or not) to the learning itself now that the novelty
of it is in the past.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank all the participants in the study. Special thanks are due to the
five informatics students who assisted us in this research, to Akademika, the
INFuture2011: “Information Sciences and e-Society”
University bookstore and publishing house, for providing the iPads and the
University of Oslo Library for project organisation and support.
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