One Fox School instructor who has helped that advancement is Darin Kapanjie, an instructor of business pre-calculus and business calculus in the Statistics Department. At the beginning of this academic year, Kapanjie was appointed as faculty coordinator of Fox Online Initiatives, a new position created to help the school increase engagement via technology in both face-to-face and online courses. The Fox innovation grant Kapanjie received at the end of last year, to use web-conferencing tools in online courses, has also helped in his work to advance teaching technologies.

Class in your pajamas

It’s 6:59 a.m., Kelsi Wenner has a Business Calculus exam in one minute and she hasn’t even left her South Philadelphia home.

Time to panic? Not if going to class is as easy as opening your laptop.

For Wenner, a student who lives more than a few subway stops away and works, taking an online class was the only option. And with the use of an online tool called WebEx there’s nothing to compromise.

WebEx is an on-demand collaboration software for online meetings and desktop sharing that allows teachers to conduct classes online in real time as effectively as if they were right in Speakman Hall.

“Everything I can do in the classroom I can do online,” said Kapanjie, who teachers Wenner’s class. “And the way the trend is going with nontraditional students going to school, online makes sense.”

From the book to the board, everything on the WebEx interface resembles the classroom experience. As Kapanjie digitally writes out mathematical formulas on a background mimicking notebook paper, students virtually raise their hands and ask questions through their microphones and webcams at home.

Kapanjie got a grant from the Fox School’s Committee for Information Technology to buy WACOM tablets — digital notepads with a stylus to use in lieu of pens and paper. As students work out calculus problems on the tablet connected to a USB port, the equations appear onscreen.

And speaking of homework, there’s never a shortage of it on CourseCompass — at least, if that’s what students want. The program can generate an unlimited number of practice questions for any given equation. For example, if a student solved a rudimentary problem like 64 x 192, the program could give the student a new question with different figures but within the same expression — particularly valuable when you’re doing complex mathematics.

“It is so cool to get the same if not more information from your own home where you can sit in your pajamas and be comfortable,” Wenner said.

But that doesn’t mean students can doze off mid-lecture with Kapanjie none the wiser. Each student has a webcam attached to their computer, which Kapanjie can use to view them when they’re called on.

“Some people think online classes are a less intense and extremely passive,” Kapanjie said. “But not now with the technologies we have in place, I feel we can deliver a top-quality course online.”

Using the Tablet PC

Kapanjie predicts that pencils and paper will become mere relics of an earlier age, replaced by tablet PCs. If that comes true, then Fox School freshman honors students are getting a taste of the future. These digital tablets, which streamline homework and tests and allow increased interactivity, were distributed to freshman honors students in fall 2007.

Tablets are becoming increasing popular, Kapanjie said, and he estimates that about 5 percent of his students personally own one. That makes the most sense for a complex math course in which problems are not easily typed in a program like Microsoft Word. But the practicality extends to those studying any subject.

“Students don’t have to use 12 notebooks anymore, they just have one tablet laptop,” Kapanjie said. “It’s going to take over education.”

The possibilities for classroom integration are endless. By installing Microsoft OneNote, students were able to toggle between solving equations on a virtual notepad, working on PowerPoint presentations and browsing the Internet.

Taking class capture to the next level

With the program InternetVue, any work done on students’ tablets can be instantly projected onto a screen at the front of the class — a useful tool for sharing results from group problem solving.

The Fox School was one of the first schools to use Apreso Classroom to allow professors to visually record classes and save them onto Blackboard. With Internet Vue, the school is taking the technology further.

“Teaching is no longer one-dimensional,” said Kapanjie, who implemented InternetVue in the classroom with the help of senior technical support specialist Riu Baring. “There is a difference between showing and telling, and students now have the ability to share with the class, which increases involvement.”

Using InternetVue PC2TV software in addition to Apreso Classroom, an instructor can share a student’s work with the rest of the class, even as it is being captured. The instructor, working wirelessly, is free to move around the room, select any student’s work to be projected right from their seat, and capture it for review after class.

Kapanjie believes Temple is the first user of this software, with only his freshman honors business class incorporating the technology thus far. In the future, however, the software will surely play a role in daily teaching throughout the Fox School and Temple.

“Professor Kapanjie’s ease with the technology allows for a very energetic and efficient class,” freshmen accounting major Steve Doneson said. “As opposed to a blackboard, the use of a computer allows for infinite amount of space for students and professors to write notes and problems.”

Freshman accounting major Annie Brady agrees. “PC2TV is engaging because you know at any time the whole class could see your work,” she said, adding that she enjoys it when students are allowed to project their work. “It's like being allowed to write on the chalkboard when we were younger.”

According to Associate Dean for Information Technology John DeAngelo, these technologies will become part of the environment in the new $80 million Alter Hall, scheduled to open in January 2009. “Our goal is to make technology both ubiquitous and invisible to our users … part of a new 21st-century techno-rich environment,” DeAngelo said.

—Written by Andrew Thompson

For the Fox School of Business