Douglas Duncan
Senior Instructor, also Director, Fiske Planetarium
Univ. of Colorado Boulder
Arts & Sciences
Department of Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences
Discipline: Astronomy; Science Teaching
UCB 391
Boulder, CO, 80301
Office: 303-735-6141, cell: 303-807-9636
dduncan@colorado.edu
Laptops vs. Paper for Note taking in Class – Which Produces Better Learning?
a. What is the central question, issue, or problem you plan to explore in your proposed work?
Does use of a laptop computer in lecture help or hurt a student’s learning?
b. Why is your central question, issue, or problem important, to you and to others who might benefit from or build on your findings?
Students increasingly bring laptop computers to lecture to take notes. With the advent of iPads and low-priced netbooks this trend will certainly increase.
However, when Duncan made observations of the classes of several well-regarded CU faculty members, he observed that 80-90% of all the laptops he could see where being used for purposes other than the class: Facebook, email, etc. Conversations with a few students indicated that they thought they were “multi-tasking.” However, an important study conducted by Stanford researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner published in the Aug. 24, 2009 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that Stanford students cannot multi-task nearly as effectively as they think they can. I expect that CU students are the same.
CU Professor of Engineering Diane Sieber studied laptop use in one of her classes. She found that students who took notes with laptops earned 11% lower grades (in other words, a full letter grade lower) than classmates who used paper.
This issue affects many CU students and faculty, and it seems quite important to test it in other classes.
c. How do you plan to conduct your investigation? What sources of evidence do you plan to examine? What methods might you employ to gather and make sense of this evidence?
Duncan is fortunate in having the cooperation of Dr. Laura Border and the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) program at Boulder that will fund two anthropology graduate students to work on this project, in the amount of $5,000 funding. I will regularly meet with these students and plan a series of ethnographic interviews and observations of the students in two large introductory astronomy classes. I also would hope to add Dr. Angel Hoekstra to this small, temporary research group, to help teach the anthropology students how to conduct good educational research. I will use any money granted me by the Presidents Teaching and Learning Collaborative to fund Dr. Hoekstra from the Sociology Department. She received her Ph. D. this past year, and I served as the outside member of her thesis committee. Hoekstra’s thesis was a study of classes that used “clickers,” and I was greatly impressed by her understanding of classroom dynamics, industriousness, and how well she interviewed students.
We would attempt to learn the following:
1. How do the grades compare between students who take notes on computers vs. those who use paper?
2. What are student beliefs about what they should be doing during a lecture class, and how this will affect their grades
3. After students are confronted with the results of the laptop study part-way through the semester will they change their attitudes about laptop use? If they do so, will their grades change? (The courses we plan to study have two midterms and a final.)
d. How might you make your work available to others in ways that facilitate scholarly critique and review, and that contribute to thought and practice beyond the local? (Keep in mind that coaching/mentoring will be available to help you develop these aspects of your proposal, so you need not feel you must present a finished project design at this time.)
As Professor Sieber did, we will share our results with CU faculty by giving talks (Duncan gives many presentations for CU’s FTEP.) In addition, we will publish them. The American Astronomical Society has recently begun on-line publication of a journal entirely devoted to the teaching of astronomy, and it has no page charges. Duncan and Carl Wieman Science Education Fellow Leilani Arthurs have a paper in press in this journal, and it would be a likely place to publish.
e. Include a literature review of the theory and effective teaching practice of the subject of your inquiry in order to locate your research in the literature preceding it. (The website, http://www.colorado.edu/ptsp/ptlc, offers expert advice on how to conduct a modest literature review.)
Ophir, Nass and Wagner, 2009, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106:15583–15587.
Grades of laptop note-takers vs. pencil and paper note-takers, D. Sieber, Univ. of Colorado, private communitcation.
f. What is your record of innovation in teaching and/or the assessment of learning?
Duncan has an extensive record of innovation in science teaching. He came to the University of Colorado from the University of Chicago and Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, where he helped begin a trend of modernizing planetariums which has spread to New York, Denver, and beyond. In this capacity he led education program assessment and made a study of how the best science museums in the US develop their programs. He served as national Education Coordinator for the American Astronomical Society, the society which represents the 8,000 professional astronomers in the US. In that capacity he led efforts for better teaching and public communication for astronomers throughout the United States. Upon arriving at CU in 2002, Duncan worked with Dick McCray and became just the second user of “Learning Assistants,” a program he continuously promotes and supports. In fall 2010 Duncan will work with Education Professor Val Otero to teach the Learning Assistant seminar. Duncan published the first book on teaching with “Clickers”, (“Clickers in the Classroom,” 2006, Pearson) and he conducts workshops on clickers and peer instruction throughout the US. He serves as advisor to programs for K-12 teachers at Stanford Research Institute and NREL. Duncan and Leilani Arthurs, a Carl Wieman Science Education Fellow, have a paper in press that describes Duncan’s very successful efforts at teaching the nature of science to non-science majors at CU: “Teaching the Nature of Science: Successful Strategies in an Introductory College-Level Astronomy Course.”
g. Are you able to attend the required meetings as specified the sections titled, “What are the Benefits?” and “What commitments are expected of participants?”
Yes.
h. Can you suggest an appropriate coach/mentor for your project? Please also provide the email address for your proposed coach/mentor. A coach/mentor is a faculty member who has experience with educational research and can thus guide you in your research on teaching and learning. This person must have experience with the IRB approval process. (Naming a coach/mentor is not a requirement but may increase your likelihood of acceptance.) The coach/mentor must attend monthly progress report meetings on the Anschutz Medical Campus in addition to meeting one-on-one with you at least once a semester.
I would love to have Prof. Diane Sieber as mentor but I have only emailed her June 27 and have not heard back from her yet. I would be happy with another mentor you might name.
i. If your project is selected, are you willing to serve as a coach in PTLC in a future year?
Yes.
