Multiple Line System for Visualizing and Sharing

Students’ Commitment on the Tablet PC

Keita Muratsu

, Hideo Funaoi

, Etsuji Yamaguchi

and Shigenori Inagaki

Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, 3-11 Tsurukabuto, Kobe, Japan

Faculty of Education, Soka University, 1-236 Tangimachi Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

Keywords: Visualizing Commitment, Sharing Commitment, Tablet PC.

Abstract: We enhanced and evaluated a system for visualizing and sharing the students’ commitment to multiple ideas

that runs on the iPad/iPad mini. This system has the following two functions: a) the function for the student to

represent his/her commitment to multiple ideas, and b) the function to count the distribution of the students’

commitment. We conducted a science lesson using this system targeting Japanese sixth grade elementary

school students. Students were asked to input their commitment to the ideas each time they conducted an

experiment. Subsequent to drawing the line the second time, the whole class discussed the commitment

situations using the counting function. After the lesson, we investigated students’ impression about the

usability of the system and class discussion using the counting function. The results showed that this system

was quite easy to use and effective in supporting learning that focuses on tracking the process of commitment

change.

1 INTRODUCTION

It has been pointed out that it is important to

visualize and share students’ concept as an external

representation in science education that support

conceptual change (e.g., Duit and Treagust, 2012).

This is because conceptual change is promoted when

students share their own concepts and examine the

differences among them.

Among the representation methods

recommended by the theoretical study of conceptual

change, a model that researchers and teachers

consider promising is the conceptual ecology model

by Posner et al. (1982). It regards conceptual change

as a process of natural selection of multiple ideas

(encompassing theory, knowledge, etc.) that exist

within the intellectual environment. Each student is

considered to have multiple ideas, rather than a

single idea, ranging from the ones higher in the

ecological hierarchy, which have successfully

adapted to the intellectual environment, to those

lower in the ecological hierarchy and facing

extinction. A curriculum aiming to promote

conceptual change in students by using the

conceptual ecology model is required to visualize

and share students’ commitment to multiple ideas

related to the lesson. In the past, a method that

shows the commitment as a line by using pen and

paper has been used (White and Gunstone, 1992).

In recent years, there have been attempts to

display the commitment line on a system instead of

using pen and paper. For example, Funaoi et al.

(2006) and Nakashin et al. (2012) have developed

systems to visualize and share the commitment to

multiple ideas. These systems run on an iPod Touch.

However, since the iPod Touch has an inherently

small screen, its operation is not necessarily easy. In

terms of visualization of commitment, difficulties

have been observed in tracking the process of

students’ commitment change and its reason.

Therefore, in order to overcome the challenges

described above, we developed a system in this

study that visualizes and shares the commitment

running on an iPad/iPad mini, which have become

increasingly popular in recent years. The purpose of

this study is to introduce this system to a science

lesson at an elementary school in Japan, and conduct

a preliminary assessment of its usability and

effectiveness in supporting learning that focuses on

tracking the process of commitment change.

258

Muratsu K., Funaoi H., Yamaguchi E. and Inagaki S..

Multiple Line System for Visualizing and Sharing Students’ Commitment on the Tablet PC.

DOI: 10.5220/0004943302580263

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 258-263

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2 OUTLINE OF THE SYSTEM

2.1 Development Environment

The development environment for the client side

(iPad/iPad mini) is Xcode 5. The development

environment for the server side is Windows 7

(Professional), Tomcat 6.0, and MySQL 5.5. The

system can run on other operating systems if

equivalent services are available.

2.2 Operation of the System

This System has the following two functions: a) the

function for the student to represent his/her

commitment to multiple ideas (hereinafter referred

to as “the representing function”), and b) the

function to count the distribution of the students’

commitment (hereinafter referred to as “the counting

function”). The representing function is performed

on the iPad/iPad mini operated by each student. The

counting function is performed on the PC operated

by the teacher. The teacher’s PC screen is displayed

using a projector or large LCD TV in the classroom.

First, we will explain the representing function.

Figure 1 shows the system configuration. Although

it only shows one iPad/iPad mini, multiple devices

can be connected to the server to share the inputted

commitment. Once the System is launched and the

school, grade, class, group, lesson unit, name of the

student, and password are entered, the commitment

input screen is displayed as shown in Figure 2. The

vertical axis represents the level of commitment and

the horizontal axis represents the progress of the

lesson in time. First, tapping the button on the

bottom left corner of the screen shown in Figure 2

will allow you to begin inputting your commitment.

You can specify the level of commitment by

dragging the square cursor up and down, and then

confirm the level by tapping the cursor. Once

confirmed, a line connecting the level of

commitment inputted earlier to the level of

commitment inputted most recently is displayed.

When inputting commitments for different ideas,

Figure 1: The system configuration.

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tapping the button on the bottom right of the screen

shown in Figure 2 will display the idea selection

screen for inputting the commitment. The data on

inputted commitment is sent to the server via the

network and then stored in a MySQL Database

through the control unit in Tomcat.

Next, we will explain the counting function. The

counting function features the ability to list

combinations of commitment changes to multiple

ideas. When the request is sent from a teacher’s PC,

the commitment information inputted by students is

read from the MySQL Database and then the

combination of commitment changes to multiple

ideas is displayed. This counting function focuses on

the commitment inputted by students for the second

time among all instances of input. It is possible to

count the number of students who changed their

commitment in the second round of input from

“correct” to “incorrect”, or vice versa and display a

matrix of the commitment change combinations for

two ideas. Figure 3 is the counting function screen.

Here we can see that there were three students who

changed their commitment to Idea A from “incorrect”

to “correct”, and their commitment to Idea B from

“correct” to “incorrect”. The use of this function

allows us to track the process of the change in

commitment to two ideas.

3 EVALUATION OF THE SYSTEM

3.1 Evaluation Method

3.1.1 Purpose

The purpose of the evaluation was to clarify the

following two points: 1) whether the system is easy

for the participants to use, and 2) whether class

discussion using the counting function promotes the

sharing of commitment among students.

3.1.2 Participants

The participants included 40 sixth-grade students

(11-12 years old) at an elementary school in Japan.

They had never used this System prior to this study.

One iPad mini was assigned to every two students

for inputting their commitment. The counting

function was performed on a laptop operated by the

teacher. The teacher, who was certified to teach

Figure 2: The commitment input screen.

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science, had 15 years of teaching experience. The

PC screen was mirrored on a LCD.

Figure 3: The counting function screen.

3.1.3 Tasks

The evaluation tasks were to investigate the students’

impressions about the usability of the system and

class discussion using the counting function.

3.1.4 Procedure

First, a total of nine science curriculum units (one

unit is 45 minutes) were conducted. The lesson

subject was static electricity. The aim of the lesson

was to change a scientifically invalid idea (“There

are two types of non-conductive objects: those that

become electrically charged, and those that do not,”

referred to by the teacher and the students as the

“Two Types Theory”) to a scientifically valid one

(“All non-conductive objects become electrically

charged,” which was referred to as the “All Theory”)

through hands-on experiments and discussions.

Students were asked to input their commitment to

these two ideas each time they conducted an

experiment. In the first experiment, the students

brought a charged drinking straw, charged paper bag,

and charged plastic ruler into close proximity to a

charged drinking straw. In the second experiment,

they brought several charged objects into close

proximity with a thick enamel wire. The charged

objects were the following: a drinking straw, plastic

ruler, candle, glass rod, and rubber hose. In the third

experiment, they brought a charged drinking straw

into close proximity with several non-charged

objects: a piece of wire, plastic ruler, glass rod,

spring onion, and pretzel snack. The line was drawn

for a total of four times during the science curricular

units. Subsequent to drawing the line the second

time, the counting function screen was displayed on

a large LCD every time the line was drawn, and the

whole class discussed the commitment situations.

After the lesson, an interview survey was conducted

among four randomly selected students regarding

the evaluation tasks. The tasks were performed using

the individual interview method, which took about

10 minutes per person.

3.2 Results

First, we will describe the results of the interview

survey on the usability of the system. Table 1 shows

comments regarding the usability of the system

extracted from the interview survey. S1 stated that it

was possible to quickly draw a line when inputting a

commitment because the drag and drop response

time was good. This is a comment related to the

response speed of the System. S2 commented on the

screen size and the ease of the steps used to draw a

line. S2 said it was easy to draw lines because there

were no unnecessary steps before inputting the

commitment. Regarding the iPad mini’s screen size,

S2 said it was appropriate and pointed out that it

could become difficult to read if the screen size were

smaller than that of iPad mini. Both S3 and S4

mentioned the fact that they were able to get used to

inputting the commitment. They reported it was

because they were able to immediately grasp the

information necessary for operation.

Next, we will describe the interview results about

the counting function. Table 2 shows comments

regarding the counting function. First of all, S1

mentioned a case in which he asked why a few

students changed the commitment that they

supported. S1 said he understood from the counting

function that there were three students who changed

their commitment to All Theory from “incorrect” to

“correct;” consequently, he became interested in

those three students since only a few in the class

made this commitment change, and felt like asking

why they changed their commitment. Next, S2 stated

that from the counting function he understood that

the majority of students did not change their

commitment to All Theory and Two Types Theory,

which made him want to ask each student why their

commitment didn’t change.

This is a comment on a

case in which a student asked why the commitment

supported by the majority didn’t change.

Furthermore,

S3 mentioned a case in which he asked others who

made a commitment change different from his to

express their reason. S3 did not change his

commitment because he thought All Theory was

incorrect at the first opportunity he had to input his

commitment as well the second. However, he said

that it made him want to ask why there were others

who changed their commitment to “correct” in the

second round even though they had thought All

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Theory was incorrect, as S3 did, when the first

commitment was inputted. Finally, S4 said that he

became eager to hear what others thought when he

noticed there were others who changed the

commitment as he did, because he thought there

Table 1: Comments regarding the usability of the system,

extracted from the interview survey.

S1:

It was nice because when I used the system to

draw a line, it responded well to normal touch

and I was able to draw the line in a minute or so.

S2:

It was easy to use because it is compact, there are

no unnecessary steps to draw a line, and the

procedure to draw a line was easy. The size of the

screen was also just right. I think it would

probably be difficult to read the screen if it were

smaller than that.

S3:

Using this system was really easy, and I

immediately found out what was written where. I

think I also got used to writing on it right away.

S4:

I got used to the steps to draw a line within

minutes because it was easy to draw the line. The

screen was okay to read.

S1:Subject1 / S2:Subject2 /

S3:Subject3 / S4:Subject4

Table 2: Comments regarding the counting function,

extracted from the interview survey.

S1:

Even though there were only three who changed

from “incorrect” to “correct”, I think it was

rather useful because it got me interested in how

people changed their thinking based on this

experiment.

S2:

Because I immediately saw on the screen that

there were many people who did not change, I

thought it would be a good idea to ask each

person what he/she thought.

S3:

I kept thinking that All theory was incorrect. So

when I saw there were three people who changed

from “incorrect” to “correct”, it made me wonder

why they changed their mind, why they thought

All theory was correct, and so on. It just got me

thinking.

S4:

It made me want to ask people who changed their

mind from All theory is “incorrect” to “correct”

their opinions. I wanted to ask because I changed

my mind the same way, you know, and I thought

it might influence my thinking if I heard the

reason why they thought that way.

S1:Subject1 / S2:Subject2 /

S3:Subject3 / S4:Subject4

might be other reasons even though the commitment

change was the same. This is a comment about a

case in which a student asked why others made the

same commitment change.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

The purpose of this study was to introduce the

system for visualizing and sharing the students’

commitment running on the iPad/iPad mini to a

science lesson at an elementary school in Japan, and

to conduct a preliminary assessment of its usability

and effectiveness in supporting the learning.

First, we will consider the interview results

regarding the usability. The results of the survey

showed the operational effectiveness from the

following four perspectives: 1) the responsiveness of

the screen when inputting commitment is fast, 2) the

steps to input commitment are easy, 3) the

information necessary for inputting commitment is

easy to understand, and 4) visually confirming

information such as words on the screen is easy

because the screen is large. Based on these results,

we found that the System was easy for the

participants to use.

Next, we will consider the interview results

regarding the counting function. The four cases

obtained in the interview survey can be roughly

divided into two categories. The first are cases in

which a student finds other individuals whom he

wants to ask questions based on the population

distribution trends displayed by the counting

function, as in the cases of S1 and S2. There, the

students were interested in the population

distribution that stood out, such as commitment

changes supported by a few students or by the

majority. Therefore, the examination of the

difference in ideas necessary for students’

conceptual change may be promoted. The second are

cases in which, like S3 and S4, a student compares

their own commitment change to other individuals’

commitment changes and finds whom to ask

questions. There, students were interested in others

who made the same commitment change or a

different commitment change. This case may be

more desirable because it may promote the

examination of the differences in ideas, which is

necessary for conceptual change among students,

even more so than in the case of S1 and S2, by

allowing students to compare commitment changes

among others with their own commitment change

for examination.

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The future tasks include the following two. The

first is to conduct a quantitative analysis of the

usability of the system and the effectiveness of the

counting function in supporting the learning. The

second is to qualitatively analyze comments made

by students and the teacher during the class

discussion that used the counting function.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI

Grant Number 24300270.

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