Classroom 2000:
Inventing a Future for Education
Gregory
D. Abowd
College of Computing and GVU Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
abowd@cc.gatech.edu
Introduction
It is becoming increasingly possible to embed more and
more powerful computational devices into the very fabric of our
everyday lives. Various emerging disciplines such as wearable,
ubiquitous or perceptual computing suggest that in the near future
we will have intelligent environments able to provide
extremely personalized computational services when and where we
want them. One of the leading visionaries in ubiquitous
computing, Mark Weiser, has stated that the ultimate purpose for
research in these areas is not simply to push the frontiers of our
technical capabilities, but to establish human-centered services
that will drive the penetration of this technology into everyday
life.
Research in the Future
Computing Environments Group at Georgia Tech is focussed
on this human-centered application of future computing
technology. This brief abstract describes one of our major
projects, Classroom 2000,
a large-scale experiment to determine how ubiquitous computing
can impact teaching and learning. We will provide an overview
of the project objectives and progress and then directly address
some of the themes of this NAB workshop on Human-Centered
Systems.
Overview of Classroom 2000
In a traditional class, the instructor either writes on a blank chalk-
or whiteboard or uses an overhead projector to display prepared
information that can then be annotated. The problem with using
whiteboards or annotating overhead slides is that the student is
forced to copy everything the teacher writes into their own private
notebook. This problem can be partly addressed by providing students
printouts of the teacher's prepared material, either before or after
class. However, this approach loses a lot of the information that is
provided only during the lecture itself. This value-added information
includes additional annotations that the teacher writes on the board
and questions and answers generated through discussion with the
teacher.
By introducing an electronic whiteboard, we make it possible to
preserve the record of class activity and potentially remove the
burden on the student of taking copious notes. While some students
feel that they learn best by taking notes during a lecture, this is
not true for all students. Furthermore, as we continually expand the
capabilities of a teacher to present richer and more complex material,
we are only making it harder for the student/scribe to keep up.
Removing the note-taking burden can free the student to spend the time
in class paying attention, understanding the material being presented
and engaging in discussions that further clarify important topics.
Classroom 2000 is an experiment in creating classroom environments in
which the room is equipped to take notes on behalf of the student,
capturing the classroom experience for later review. We have
developed tools that automatically link teacher generated
presentations with audio and video and we are examining what impact
this has on both teaching and learning practices.
We distinguish the approach of Classroom 2000 from other valuable work
in multimedia courseware development. The production of multimedia
courseware is a time-consuming task. It may take years of effort to
produce a high-quality course module. One of the objectives of the
Classroom 2000 project is to reduce the content-generation effort by
viewing the traditional classroom lecture itself as a multimedia
authoring activity [Abowd et al. 96]. In a classroom setting, there
are many information streams present in addition to audio and video
recordings of what we hear and see. The teacher typically writes on
some public display, such as a whiteboard or overhead projector, to
present the day's lesson. It is now common to present supplemental
information in class via the World Wide Web, if sufficient network
connectivity and display technology is available. Additional dynamic
teaching aids such as videos, physical demonstrations or
computer-based simulations can also be used. Taken in combination,
all of these information streams provide for a very
information-intensive experience that is easily beyond a student's
capabilities to record accurately, especially if the student is trying
to pay attention and understand the lesson at the same time.
Over the past 18 months, we have experimented with providing
easy-to-use audio and video capturing tools, electronic whiteboards
and instrumented Web browsers to enable the capture of a lot of what
naturally occurs in a typical university lecture. We have provided
support for 19 separate graduate and undergraduate courses offered in
Computer Science and Mathematics at Georgia Tech. Interested readers
can take a
look at a number of these classes online. We have constantly
modified the components of the system as we have received feedback on
its continual use by students and teachers. The insight we have
gained through constant use over the past 18 months has been
invaluable. We will relate some of that experience here with respect
to specific issues being addressed by this NAB workshop on
Human-Centered Systems.
Information, Organization, and Context
One justified reaction to the capture capabilities of Classroom 2000
is that it is only exacerbating the information overload problems that
are all too familiar. While it is true that we are capturing far more
information than previously done in an educational setting, we are
taking measures to provide useful ways to access that information.
Ben Shneiderman expresses a goal of future human-centered research
quite elegantly in his
position paper to this workshop:
Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand
In our work, we have investigated two different ways to achieve Ben's
goals [Brotherton et al. 97]:
- We have provided automated
support to integrate different media streams of information presented
in the classroom. The simplest integration technique is to link
a pen-stroke created by the teacher on the electronic whiteboard
to what was said at that time in the class. This form of
multimedia stream integration can be done at varying levels of
granularity.
- Once we can capture and integrate multiple streams of
information, it is important to provide interfaces that
support a student's desire to see all relevant information in
order to pinpoint down to the part of class that is of
interest to them. We have investigated and implemented
several multiple stream visualization techniques
that scale and support this pinpoint browsing strategy. One
example is the introduction of a single timeline for a lecture
that predicts what the focus of attention of the whole class
was at a point in time (e.g., the whiteboard or a publicly
viewable Web browser) and presents only the one stream at a
time.
Communication and Collaboration
As students and teachers begin to rely on the artifacts produced by
Classroom 2000, we can begin to expand beyond the temporal and spatial
boundaries of the conventional classroom. Lectures from the past can
be easily summoned up for use in the present. Student reactions to
those lectures can be recorded as a way to give advice to future
viewers. We are also investigating ways to support modification of
notes after a class. There is a natural development of study groups
in most universities. How can products of Classroom 2000 support the
informal study group? One answer, among many, is that study groups
need not be taking a class at the same time any more. Another answer
is that we are providing tools for a student to produce even better
post-lecture summaries that can be shared.
We are also experimenting with various electronic devices to support
student note-taking during the lecture. Simple networked,
pen-based units can allow for students to produce simple indexes
into a lecture for future use. Real-time feedback to the
lecturer is also possible.
Human-Centered Design
It is very important to understand that our research method in
Classrooom 2000 is to live in the environment that we are building
in order to better understand how it is used. This allows us to
continually iterate the design of our tools to better meet student
and teacher needs. More importantly, we are deeply influenced by
the words of two well-known innovators in the history of
interactive technology:
- Dennis Gabor (Nobel Prize winner in Physics 1971 and inventor of
holography) "You can't predict the future, but
you can invent it."
- Alan Kay (key figure in the personal computing revolution) "The
best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Classroom 2000 is our invention of the future of education. We are
not so bold as to declare this the only possible future, but it is
clearly a way we can use ubiquitous computing technology to our
advantage in the classroom. By implementing this vision and using it
continually for the past 18 months, we are seeing how it can be used
in ways that were not predicted in advance. Whereas some might object
to this apparently technocentric approach to computing, it is
quite the opposite. Yes, we are interested in introducing new
devices into the classroom and it is true that a lot of time the
availability of a new piece of hardware pushes us in the direction
of introducing it into the classroom. But the introduction of
technology is always tempered with a critical judgment of whether
the technology will support or enhance the application at hand. In
the case of Classroom 2000, we have been very eager to introduce
handheld, pen-based units for the students because they are
affordable and provide a relatively natural way to support the
note-taking activity.
Social Informatics
We have been conducting informal ethnographic studies of both students
and teachers exposed to Classroom 2000. At this point in our
research, it is much more important that we understand how people
are using Classroom 2000. We see no reason to push for controlled
experiment until we have a better idea of long-term use of the
artifacts produced in class and after class.
There are some very interesting social issues that emerge in this
project, however:
- How are people going to be affected by the
knowledge of the entire class being recorded? What kind of
positive and negative impact does recording have on the class dynamics?
- Do students involve themselves in class discussions more?
- Do students ask more or less questions? Does the technology
encourage or discourage speaking up in class?
- Are teachers reluctant to use the technology
- To what extent are past lectures reused for present purposes?
References
See the Classroom
2000 publications page to access all relevant writings on
the project and to find references to related work.
1. Gregory D. Abowd. Ubiquitous Computing: Research Themes and Open
Issues from an Applications Perspective. Georgia Tech Graphics,
Visualization and Usability Center Technical Report,
GIT-GVU-96-24, September 1996.
2. Gregory D. Abowd, Christopher G. Atkeson, Cindy Hmelo Ami
Feinstein, Rob Kooper, Sue Long, Nitin ``Nick'' Sawhney and Mikiya
Tani. "Teaching and Learning as Multimedia Authoring: The
Classroom 2000 Project". Proceedings of Multimedia '96, November,
1996.
3. Gregory D. Abowd, Christopher G. Atkeson, Jason Brotherton, Tommy
Enqvist, Paul Gulley and Johan Lemon. Investigating the capture,
integration and access problem of ubiquitous computing in an
educational setting. Submitted to CHI'98 conference. September
1997.
4. Jason A. Brotherton, Janak R. Bhalodia and Gregory
D. Abowd. Automated Capture, Integration, and Visualization of
Multiple Media Streams. Submitted to IEEE Multimedia'98, October 1997.
Gregory D. Abowd
Last modified: Sun Nov 2 17:00:35 EST 1997