The Effectiveness of “Pencasts” as an Instructional Medium

Abstract

Stahovich joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Riverside in 2003 where he is currently a Professor and Chair. His research interests include pen-based computing, educational technology, design automation, and design rationale management.

Homework and achievement: Using smartpen technology to find the connection.

“…Finally, the out of order measure describes the frequency with which a student works nonsequentially. Prior work has found that expert students often solve problems in the order assigned, while novice students may begin one problem and then move on to another before completing the former (Herold, Stahovich, Lin, & Calfee, 2011). The out of order measure is the number of times a student transitions to a problem other than the next one.…”

“…In short, suppose we had a way to know when a student was working on a homework assignment and we were able to record every pen stroke a student made while working on a handwritten assignment. This level of rich data mining of student handwritten homework activity employed in the current study is enabled by the use of newly developed smartpen technology that accomplishes this goal (Herold, Stahovich, Lin, & Calfee, 2011).…”

The Effectiveness of “Pencasts” in Physics Courses

“…Students can quickly jump to a desired section rather than listening to hours of audio used with voice recorders. Furthermore, these videos may be preferred to traditional print instructional materials by students who prefer audio and visual input [1,2]. Pencasts are becoming an interactive instructional tool in education, but their effectiveness has not yet been studied thoroughly [1], and faculty may be confused about how to implement them in their classes.…”

“…Furthermore, these videos may be preferred to traditional print instructional materials by students who prefer audio and visual input [1,2]. Pencasts are becoming an interactive instructional tool in education, but their effectiveness has not yet been studied thoroughly [1], and faculty may be confused about how to implement them in their classes. In the following sections, we outline how we use pencasts in our small-enrollment physics class, present some evidence of their effectiveness, and discuss technological issues in their implementation.…”