We are introducing a new learning environment for linear algebra at my university, and this is changing our teaching methods.  Korea's e-Campus Vision 2007 is a program begun in 2003.  At Sungkyunkwan University, most of our lecture rooms are now equipped with beam projector, Viewcam, tablet PC and internet D-base.  This provides a modern learning environment for our linear algebra classes.  Computer demonstrations are easy, and lectures can easily be recorded so that students can review them right after class.  We will discuss some of the positive effects that we have experienced. 

 

In December 2002, the Korean government established 「e-Campus Vision 2007(2003～2007)」. This comprehensive measure for university information utilization is a long-term plan to improve the education and research facilities of Korean universities. Department of Education (DOE) of South Korea decided to invest KRW 700,000,000,000-Won (690Million US$, KRW 1,020=US$ 1) over 5 years to innovate educational environment at colleges of Korea.   This e-Campus Vision 2007 indicated the following 5 goals:

 In order to achieve the goals, three directions were suggested:

DOE classified new lecture rooms in the following category:

 

 

Also DOE suggested the following schedule to be accomplished:

 Before we start, we may note that Educational Broadcasting Service(EBS) of Korea have given Internet broadcasting service of K-12 lectures. Recently most of the best classical lectures of high school teachers for National SAT exam has been added on it through internet since 2004, this service was intended to fill the gap of opportunity between urban, rural and island region students. But this system still are using video recording of traditional lectures with the help of cameraman. At Sungkyunkwan University, we did want to overcome the limit of this old system from the beginning.  So our new system do not require any extra technicians to do all the above and the quality of recorded lectures are as good as original one. In addition, we were thinking about improvement of our regular off-line lectures not cyber lectures, but we also wanted to add all the advantage of on-line resources to our off-line classroom. It is called as ‘Blended-Learning’.

 

With US$3.5million (KRW 3,600,000,000-) of the financial support from DOE and its own resources, the Sungkyunkwan University utilized its own committee. As a member of the committee, the author and members designed e-Learning and Blended-Learning capable our own e-lecture rooms that meet the most of the above DOE criteria. Our goal was indicated as 4A (Anyway, Anywhere, Anytime, Anyone) learning environment. The significance of our model is we only use our new lecture table and internet resources to meet all of the suggested needs. This means it did not cost much. We named this classroom model to 「e+ lecture room」. We introduce this system and how this learning environment altered our teaching method.

 

2. What did we do for 「e-Campus Vision 2007」?

 

With the limited budget, we were trying to use minimum amount of hardware and use more of virtual resources that we could utilize. In order to do so, we did try to use our own regular classroom and university’s internet resources only. 

We did design them in the spring semester of 2003 and remodeled 8 rooms for e+ lecture room over the summer break. 

 

Internet Connected Tablet PC for instructor, Beam Projector and Speakers,

[View of new regular e-lecture room and e+ lecture room]

 

Now every 2-4 departments group of size 30-40 tenure track professors have at least one e+ lecture room with projection equipment, Viewcam, tablet PC and internet D-base (24 e+ lecture rooms). Since we can record most of our class activities, these rooms are used for Blended-learning. And four extra large classrooms for distance learning are better equipped with more viewcams, one professor can give a lecture for several different classrooms at the same time in this classroom.

  

                            

 

<Four extra large e+ classrooms for distance learning, Screen and board, e+ lecture room>

 http://matrix.skku.ac.kr/sglee/03-Note/index7.htm

[System of new lecture table equipments]

 (With our lecture note, we can write on tablet monitor, the viewcam transmit instructor’s activity and PC transmits everything on the Tablet PC with writing and sound. And same lecture can be viewed in real time, everywhere through the internet. Furthermore all are saved and can be reviewed right after the lecture over and over again.)

 

Beside these alternatives, there has been cyber space (i-campus) for reading materials, hand in homework and questions on every classes of the university. After we did set up the facility, we used the new system for our own linear algebra class. We tried to put up more teaching materials on the web before the class, and brought some Word, PDF or PPT file of each lecture.  Then we precede our lecture on the lecture file, we did fill the gap and write proofs on it. We could show and use every possible resource for the lecture. And all of our activities in the class were saved for students. Students could review the parts that they did not fully understand in the class over and over again after the class. We gave some incentive for good questions and answers from students for raised questions. After two weeks of teacher’s help, students were getting involved to answer for the most ofquestions.

Questions and answers, Whiteboard, PDF file with marks in a classroom

    

Visualization materials,  JAVA tools to be used

 (PC program to save and review lectures)

This way of learning process and facility may not work well with some math courses, but our linear algebra course was quite well matched with this new learning environment. Because we could visualize concepts of linear algebra and use tools to calculate determinant and eigenvalues of large-sized matrices in the class just after the hand calculation of small-sized matrices. Students asked more questions, and were actively involved in this learning process, and students were eventually being able to answer most of questions each other. We finalized those answers in the class. Some good questions of their own were used for the midterm exams problems as well. This activity finally made big changes on the performance of students. They began to make active participation during the class. As a consequence, student’s satisfaction and their performance in the final exam were far better than any other classes. But we all know this new system don’t do all works on behalf of us. We have to design the whole lectures first, and then we must be able to manage each lectures and extra works of students.

 

<Example>

<Teaching evaluation, 2003>                                                                               Score : 97/100

On-line Course       Number              No of Students who answered          Score

Linear Algebra      2005082-I1                      67/ 67                              97/100

 

< Number of students for each Questionnaire >

Course No         Answer   Q.1          Q.2          Q.3          Q.4          Q.5          Q.6          Q.7          Q.8          Q.9          Q.10     Total

2005082-I1         S. Agree   32      34          33            27            25            32            42            31            28            26         310

2005082-I1         Agree       24     23            24            25            26            23            13            21            23            26          228

2005082-I1         Average   11            10            10            14            12            9              10            12            13            11            112

2005082-I1         Bad          0              0              0              0              4              1              2              1              1              3              12

2005082-I1         Worse      0              0              0              1              0              2              0              2              2              1              8

2005082-I1         No Answer1             1              1              1              1              1              1              1              1              1              10

 

http://matrix.skku.ac.kr/PerData/2003-Teaching-Eval.htm

 

<Teaching evaluation, Fall of 2004>                                                           Score : 96/100

Off-line Course       Number             No of Students who answered          Score

Linear Algebra       2005082-44        28/29                                           96/100

 

In Jan. 2005, government also announced that they would like to make Korea to be a Hub of e-learning. In order to do so, they decided to invest KRW417,100,000,000 –  in  the year 2005 for  IT industry and schools. This investment will also effect on our educational environment at college as well. We believe our new educational environment of college will be effectively used over all level of education without much cost. 

 

                                                    What we did try in our new lecture room environment was not “lecture - memorization – tests”, but it was “visualization (intuition) - trial - error - speculation – explanation”. From the first, our goal was to improve the quality of our college education. We did put our course materials on the web before the class as much as we could, so students knew what to do in the earlier stage, and asked questions before the classes and discussed them as well. When we met the class, we cleared up those questions first, and did precede regular off-line lectures on white and black board type tablet PC. We could go anywhere when we need, for more on line information. We could visualize any possible mathematical concepts, and do large-size calculation to verify facts and get new conjectures. And all these activity on tablet monitor were recorded as clear as original lectures with sound. So students could review any parts that they missed whenever they need right after the class.  Finally we made them to explain by themselves what they could do. http://matrix.skku.ac.kr/WebLA/index.html .

In our learning process, students found professor’s roles as not only a teacher but also an Innovator, Mentor, Facilitator, Coordinator, Director and Producer. We found that student’s satisfaction and their performance were much better than before. We finally found we now lives in future educational environment already.