Hewlett Packard Helps Professors Pace Lectures

WNCG professor Bill Bard and ECE professor Archie Holmes will be piloting an innovative teaching method in EE courses in the Fall 2003 semester. Students will be issued HP Compac Evo Notebooks for the duration of a class period. During class, students' work can be displayed to the entire class through the TASK system, which was developed as part of an Honors Senior Design (EE 464H) project. The TASK system will allow complex problems to be done out of the classroom and be used in an interactive classroom discussion.

Other features to be incorporated include demonstrating course concepts such that students will be able to manipulate the important variables and see the effects. In addition, feedback from the notebooks will allow professors to measure student understanding in real-time and focus class time on the topics which are giving the students the most trouble.

This pilot was funded by Hewlett Packard's "Initiative in Mobile Technology Solutions" program. More information about the Electrical and Computer Engineering department's involvement in this program can be found at http://grants.hp.com/us/programs/univ_mobility_texas.html.