TechEDge | California Community Colleges

New Uses For CCC Confer And Tablet PCs

Last Updated on Thursday, 12 August 2010 Written by Jen Gednalske Wednesday, 26 May 2010

Foothill College physics instructor Frank Cascarano has employed new technology methods to aid success in one of the most difficult challenging for many students.

Using CCC Confer online instructor hours and tablet PC videos Cascarano has made it possible for students to learn and review physics at their own pace.

“Since not every student grasps concepts at the same pace, I wanted to find a way to help students be able to work and review concepts and problems as they need them,” Cascarano said. “This way a student who gets something right away can move on to the next problem, while students who need to take more time can do so.”

Frank Cascarano physics demonstartion. Photo courtesy of Cascarano's website.

Cascarano has helped his students using two methods. The first method uses CCC Confer Online Office hour to archive help sessions that might take place during an instructor’s traditional face-to-face meeting with a struggling student. The difficulty with online students is that many students chose online courses because they may not be able to attend necessary courses during the hours they are offered. This also makes arranging times to connect with struggling students for office hours more difficult.

“Many of the students who come to me for extra help are struggling over the same concepts and have the same questions,” Cascarano said. “It is difficult however to organize an office hour for a time when all the students who need help can log in and attend. Using CCC Confer to record, archive and post the help session allows students who couldn’t log in to hear and see the answers to the questions of their peers, which may help answer their own questions.”

Cascarano’s initial introduction to using CCC Confer in this manner was shown to him during a training with fellow Foothill math instructor, Mark Noble.

“This system is very well thought out and easy to use. Students can log in and be up and running in just a few minutes. The problem is using the white board feature when working out physics problems. You need an input device that you can write on, like a table PC.”

To resolve this issue, Cascarano turned to another method he had recently began utilizing, video capture of problem solving on a tablet PC. By connecting the tablet PC to the whiteboard function in CCC Confer, Cascarano was then able to write out and solve problems for his students in real time.

The drawback to this method was that he could not engage the keyboard while the tablet PC was connected or see if students were asking questions through CCC Confer chat feature. Cascarano’s solution to this was to see if it was possible f he could be logged in to his CCC Confer account simultaneously on two computers. It worked.

Cascarano’s second solution was to begin to create a video reference library that students can access through his website to be able to hear and watch him work through various problems. Using Camtasia Studio Software, Cascarano can record and upload problem solutions for students to review on demand.

“All my writing is recorded, as well as my voice. It is just like working out a problem on the board in the classroom,” Cascarano said.

“Little editing is needed because the software follows your movements as you write on the screen,” he explained. “If you are writing in one small area, it can focus on that area and zooms out as you move to different areas on the pad. It also allows you to add textbox notes to areas of the video.”

Cascarano however ran into another issue, he quickly exceeded the small amount of storage space he was allowed through his website to store the videos. He resolved this by moving his library to EduStream.org.

EduStream.org is a cost-effective, user friendly, centralized resource that provides participating institutions with the video-on-demand capabilities, such as embedding captioned general education video playlists within learning management systems, uploading and embed instructional/information videos, and providing individual 24/7 streaming video-channels.

“My students really like them. In fact, it is my project for next year to make many more of them for the department to share,” Cascarano said. <>

To view Frank Cascarano’s physics videos, please visit: http://cid-c62e00261ceb6382.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Phy%204B

For more information about CCC Confer, please visit: http://www.cccconfer.org/

More information about EduStream is available at: http://www.edustream.org/

Jen Gednalske is a writer and editor for TechEDge
and a project manager for the California Virtual Campus and CCC Technology Center.