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From the issue dated October 11, 2002
Are Personal Digital Assistants the Next Must-Have Tool?
By SCOTT CARLSON
Last year, the University of South Dakota started requiring
its freshmen to bring Palm hand-held computers to class, along
with their notebooks and texts. Josh Carr was part of that
first Palm-equipped group, though he says he didn't use the
device much in class. He loaded his class schedule onto the
machine and noted his exam times. And, new to the university,
he used a campus map that the Palm came with, which showed the
locations and phone numbers of his professors. It also came
with the names and numbers of hangouts in Vermillion, he says.
"For example, it has the number to Pizza Hut."
But now Mr. Carr uses his Palm for studying all the time. He
downloads his biology professor's lecture outlines onto the
Palm, and his psychology professor has written a number of
practice quizzes for use on the device. "You can take these
quizzes anytime you want, and it helps you study for the
test," Mr. Carr says.
He could represent a new kind of student, one who taps
essential class notes not into a laptop, but into a small
hand-held device.
Is the personal digital assistant, or PDA, poised to be the
new technological darling on campuses? It is generating a buzz
among some administrators, who are buying into using PDA's for
selected classes or departments at their universities. But
elsewhere, administrators and faculty members are skeptical
about whether these devices can be effectively used as
teaching tools, instead of just as digitized calendars and
phone books.
Although PDA's are making themselves genuinely useful in
disciplines such as medicine, they have yet to catch on in
most undergraduate programs. The small size of the hand-held
devices has been an attractive feature for educators, who say
that such machines are less disruptive to classes and easier
on students' backs than are laptops. But with those small
sizes come limited functions, which have been a frustration to
some students, especially those who have been required to
shell out money to buy PDA's but also want larger computers.
More Capabilities
Among professionals, PDA's are popular for storing phone
numbers and addresses, keeping track of schedules and expense
reports, checking e-mail, or playing quiet games of digital
solitaire. But PDA's, which range in price from $100 to $500,
have been expanding with various add-ons and extra software.
For example, folding keyboards, available through PDA
manufacturers, can turn a PDA into a miniature word processor.
A Web site called Healthy PalmPilot offers software, like
acupuncture charts and Spanish medical terms, for nurses and
doctors. A company called Data Harvest Educational
manufactures paraphernalia such as temperature gauges and
heart-rate monitors that can be attached to a PDA.
Many of the devices now come with wireless modems built in, so
they can connect instantly to college networks. And almost all
have infrared ports that let users beam data from one PDA to
another.
So far, however, good educational software for PDA's is in
short supply, campus-computing experts say. But a handful of
professors and college technology administrators are writing
programs for the devices. At Wake Forest University, for
example, programmers are working on software that would let
professors use their PDA's to control PowerPoint
presentations, turn on VCR's from across the room, and quiz
students on course material.
The devices are used in many medical schools because medical
software made especially for PDA's is widely available.
Students in Samford University's pharmacy school are using
Palm hand-held computers to take notes in class and check
medical references. Students at Florida State University's
College of Medicine use Palms to compare interactions of
prescription drugs in patients.
Dozens of colleges have started to incorporate, and in some
cases require, such tools in other disciplines, too. Drexel
University has installed a wireless Web service that allows
students to pick up class schedules, grades, and campus news
on their PDA's. Stanford University law students are
participating in a study, supported by West Publishing, that
examines the effectiveness of putting legal-study materials on
PDA's. Marketing students at Bentley College have used their
PDA's as clipboards during market-research assignments.
Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa's business college,
and Duke and Brigham Young Universities all require students
to have hand-held devices for some classes.
Wide Usage
The University of South Dakota, now in its second year of
requiring freshmen to purchase Palms, has the most ambitious
PDA usage. Professors have incorporated students' Palms into
many disciplines. Music professors have used the devices for
pitch-training. High-school students, with guidance from
students in the university's education program, have added
attachments to the Palms that measure acidity in rivers and
streams. A media-studies professor has instructed students to
store news clips on the PDA's to show them to, and trade them
with, other students in class.
Douglas A. Peterson, an assistant professor of psychology at
the university, offered class topics, schedules, practice
quizzes, and syllabuses in formats that were compatible with
the students' PDA's. The schedules he built tripped alarms on
the PDA's that reminded students of forthcoming exams. He
found that the scores of his students who used the devices
were higher than students who did not.
Donald C. Dahlin, the acting president of the university,
hopes to see more such personal-digital-assistant use in the
classroom. He says South Dakota's program is an experiment
that began modestly, with professors merely putting syllabuses
and course materials on the PDA's.
"We sat around confidently saying, Well, we don't know all of
the PDA's uses, but because students are so technology-savvy,
they'll be coming up with uses that we never dreamed of," Mr.
Dahlin says, but that turned out not to be the case. "I think
this is fairly new technology for the students, too."
Progress in the program is important, he says, because it has
cost both students and the university a fair amount of money.
Last year and again this year, the university purchased more
than 1,000 high-end Palms that sell for $200 to $400, and then
sold them to students for $150 each. A university foundation
also kicked in $75,000 for new servers and for "sync" stations
-- places where Palm users can synchronize, download, or
upload data.
A 'Bothersome' Requirement
Although the PDA has been good to Mr. Carr, not everyone has
been pleased. "When I heard USD students used Palms, I assumed
they would be free," says Megan Zimmerman, a freshman.
"Students already have to buy books, tuition, and room and
board, and for those of us not getting help from our parents,
paying an extra $150 for something I would not otherwise buy
is somewhat bothersome." She says that only one of her
professors makes use of the machine, and that the rest of the
time she could get by with a $3 day planner.
Lance W. Andrews, a senior who is a psychology major at South
Dakota, got a Palm from the university because he worked as an
orientation leader on campus. As an upperclassman with a
hectic schedule, he has made extensive use of his PDA's
calendar features and has used the infrared ports on the
hand-held device to transfer files to and from his professors.
But freshmen and sophomores make little use of the machines,
he says. "When the students received them, it was like
Christmas. They were very excited, but I think they were more
excited to start beaming games to each other, rather than take
a practice quiz."
The university is convening a committee that will evaluate the
costs and benefits of using PDA's. So far, the institution has
been sufficiently happy with the devices to require next
year's freshmen to buy them, although the university will not
subsidize the purchases this time. "The early indications are
that this is making a difference and that it does have
potential," Mr. Dahlin says, "but I don't think we're anywhere
near the potential yet."
There has also been cautious enthusiasm about PDA's at the
University of Minnesota at Duluth. The college is in its
second year of requiring all engineering students to own
Compaq iPAQ's, which the engineering school settled on after
the students opposed a proposal that would have required them
to purchase laptops.
Students pay a total of $800 over four semesters for the
devices, which run a miniature version of Windows and have
wireless connections to the university's network. Students
have used the devices, which users say are more sophisticated
than Palms, to download and move technical drawings, run
spreadsheets, compute equations on a graphing-calculator
program, and take pop quizzes in class. Over the past year,
the university has put $70,000 into PDA training for
professors.
The iPAQ's have demonstrated some benefits. Compared with
laptops, the PDA's are easier to tote around and less
obtrusive in class. "There's a real barrier with those laptops
open, with that black rectangle in front of everybody," says
James P. Riehl, the dean of the college of science and
engineering at the university.
And the PDA's have saved work for the professors. James Alert,
a computer-science professor, was initially dubious, but soon
found them useful. In the past, when students had a problem
with a concept in class, he would draw diagrams he had
sketched a hundred times before. "Now, bang -- I drag out the
Pocket PC and we can look at a simulation, we can feed it
numbers, we can go over it," he says. "I view it as being able
to rip off a piece of your computer and take it with you."
Limited Power
But the devices' small screens and limited power have been
frustrating. This year, after some complaints from students,
the department will allow 50 of the 250 students to buy
laptops instead of PDA's. "We never intended these things to
replace a computer," Mr. Riehl says. But students are already
pressed for cash, and the university is reviewing the use of
PDA's with that in mind. "I know that many institutions are
rethinking their technology programs because of the high
tuition that we have students pay. That's a consideration that
we're concerned about."
Major PDA manufacturers like Palm, Handspring, and Compaq have
courted colleges with offers to set up educational programs,
and with deals on bulk buys. Stories about the use of
hand-held devices in the classroom are a major part of the
manufacturers' marketing efforts on their Web sites. But
Kenneth C. Green, the director of the Campus Computing
Project, who tracks the use of technology in education, says
that, in higher education, "it has not captured critical mass
yet, and I think there are important reasons to understand
why."
"You need a bigger screen or fuller functionality in the
campus environment. The PDA has not yet emerged as a
competitive substitute" for the laptop.
And the price has been a deterrent. "While it is true that
there are some cheap PDA's, the midrange and more expensive
ones run in the high $300s to $500s," Mr. Green says. "When
you compare it to a notebook computer that starts at $1,000,
it is not a winning comparison on the PDA side." This fall,
Mr. Green says, computer companies plan to release tablet
computers that will reportedly have some of the features of
the PDA, like the ability to recognize handwriting, but with a
larger screen.
But others see potential in the current range of devices.
Jeremy Roschelle is a senior cognitive scientist who studies
technology and learning at SRI International, a nonprofit
technology-research firm. He says new PDA applications for the
classroom may make all the difference.
"There is a danger in evaluating it based on inappropriate
software -- that we may see it as a fad and miss it as
something that doesn't work. There could be impacts if we use
the right software." He mentions, as an example,
instant-polling programs that are being loaded into PDA's at
various colleges. With the program, the instructor can toss
out a pop-quiz question and tell students to answer it on the
PDA. Through the classroom's wireless network, the instructor
instantly gets a sense of how many, and which, of his students
understand the material. The instructor can redirect the
lecture based on that information.
Rajit Gadh, a professor of mechanical and aerospace
engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles,
believes the PDA can make a difference not only in courses but
in students' broader college experience.
"Outside of class, the student is part of a community, and
this is a personal-communication tool," says Mr. Gadh. He has
ordered PDA's manufactured by Hewlett-Packard for his students
to play with, in class and elsewhere.
He says he hopes that the students will come up with
interesting new software, such as a program that can orient a
person on a campus map. "In the end, I think the in-class
applications are going to be a small subset of what students
will do outside of class."
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Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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