Learning Glass

This week I sat in on a colleague’s General Chemistry class. It meets in the same room where I teach Physical Chemistry. The room isn’t ideal. The whiteboard takes up slightly more than half of the front wall, on the right side from the students’ view. Next to it is a screen-and-projector combo on the left side from the students’ view. One good thing about the class is it has movable individual chair-desks. The class seats 40 students according to the safety limit. My colleague’s class is quite full, but I was able to find a seat by the back wall. Mine is two-thirds full so the back two rows are usually not occupied.

My colleague used a combination of Power Point slides and writing on the board, about half-and-half. I mostly write on the board and use slides mainly to show Figures or worksheets that the students can access outside of class. One thing I noticed in this visit: Since my colleague is right-handed (like me), when he does write on the board, he partially blocks the left side of the class while he is writing. This is exacerbated by the board being mostly on the right side of the room from the students’ view. Since I was sitting in the back row near the middle but slightly to the left, I was reminded of the student experience firsthand. It is likely worse in my class because I use the board more, and I write both smaller and faster. I do narrate exactly what I am writing as I write it down thereby allowing students who are listening to carefully to write things down even if I am partially blocking the view. However this is clearly far from ideal.

I was reminded of a demo last month where the creator of Learning Glass visited my institution (sponsored by our I.T.S. department) to show off his setup. Matt Anderson is a physics professor at San Diego State University, and his first prototype was built in collaboration with their I.T.S. department. The basic setup is a large glass studded with tiny lightbulbs at the edge. Behind the glass, the instructor writes using fluorescent markers. In front of the glass sits a video camera and mirror that flips the image so that the instructor can write normally (rather than “backwards writing”). You can watch a video (peppered with testimonials) to see how it works. The video feed can be projected to a screen for live classrooms, but it works particularly well for recorded lectures. The instructor has a microphone so there is simultaneous audio.

One key feature with this setup is that when the instructor is writing and explaining things, his or her back does not block what is on the screen. Furthermore you can see the instructor’s facial cues and expressions. In my opinion, this works much better than seeing writing and hearing a disembodied voice. In a live classroom, the instructor can also directly see the students while writing, and can therefore take cues from the students. I could see this also working in an online live classroom. When I first heard about Learning Glass several months ago, I did not think that turning my back to the student when writing on the board was such a big deal until my class observation this past week. Let me be clear – my colleague wasn’t doing a bad job at all. In fact, it was mainly a reminder to me that I am likely doing a bad job with my small quick writing given this particular classroom setup. (In the other larger classroom where I teach the majority of my classes, this isn’t as big a problem.) But now I see how something like Learning Glass could be very useful even in a live classroom. (I think it’s clearly superior for lecture recordings that use significant board-work in a “flipped” classroom setting.)

Those of us attending the demo had the opportunity to participate in Q&A with Matt Anderson after his demo. (Matt, if you’re reading this, I’m the one who proposed that the skier stuck on the frictionless frozen lake should throw his can of beer as hard as possible to get off the lake.) Interesting things that I learned: (1) The glass “boards” can be made larger but may require more illumination. (2) One needs glass of very low lead content otherwise the specks show up. (3) After a week of use, the glass needs a heavy “wash off” to clean off residue that would slowly accumulate from writing. (4) The video camera and mirror setup is relatively straightforward and does not require super fancy equipment.

If the data is of good resolution, it can be projected on to screens of different sizes obviating the need for glass boards that are overly large. As to some of the other issues, those should be solvable with improved prototypes. I can’t quite write as fast as I can on a whiteboard, but perhaps that is not a bad thing, and it simply takes practice. But the same is true the few times I’ve tried writing on smartboards. (Most recently I tried out the Sharp Aquos touchboard that was much better than previous generation SMART products.) Five or six years ago, one of my tech-savvy colleagues suggested that I record my P-Chem lectures. (He said there was a dearth of good P-Chem videos and even offered to help me with the video setup.) I was not sufficiently motivated to do it then, but with this new setup, I might reconsider the prospect!