Awardee: Hudson Gould
Semester of Award: Fall 2018
Materials Awarded: two Google Chromebook Plus touchscreen laptops for the Q-Center, along with two microphone headsets
Project Description:
What did you hope to learn or achieve with the hardware and/or software you received?
The Fergusson Technology Exploration Fund grant was used to purchase two Google Chromebook Plus touchscreen laptops for the Q-Center to be used as part of a volunteer online refugee tutoring program along with two microphone headsets. The program focused on STEM tutoring, and the purpose of the Chromebooks was to enable the tutor to be able to draw sketches and diagrams of quantitative situations that would be prohibitively difficult to draw using a traditional mouse or touchpad as well as to write complex mathematical equations that would similarly be difficult to write with a mouse or touchpad or to type with a standard keyboard. A drawing tablet was not ideal given the physical distance between where the hand writes and where the writing or drawing appears, which often causes the drawing/writing to be difficult and messy. We hoped this would save time and, ultimately, frustration amongst both the tutees and tutors. The microphone headsets were simply to help reduce noise and disruptions.
We had hoped to develop a robust online tutoring program that would serve recent refugees to the area and to give students on campus more opportunities to interact with a wider community of people and to improve their tutoring and related skills. A variety of factors slowed our growth in Fall 2019, but the pandemic completely stalled the program. We hope to continue with it in some manner once things return to something resembling pre-pandemic normal.
Were you able to put it to the use that you had planned?
We were not able to put the technology we received into use exactly as we had planned; however, we came close and possibly better than as planned. An unexpected complication was that, at the time, Zoom did not support the built-in whiteboard feature on ChromeOS (despite my checking the features several times). When we discovered this, we quickly transitioned to using a free, web-based whiteboard that we could share on screen through Zoom. This whiteboard allowed us to save our work between sessions and the volunteers told me they would often refer back to formulas or drawings that they had put on the board at previous meetings to help the tutees remember topics they’d previously covered. Besides this small hiccup, the touchscreens did exactly what we expected them to; they saved us time and frustration. It only could have been better if our tutees had access to similar technology so that they and the tutor could collaborate in the same space.
For at least one volunteer tutor, using the touchscreen to write on in a natural, horizontal position was jarring to use while the camera was on. It gave a bad angle that made her self-conscious and distracted her. She ended up pointing her camera at a physical whiteboard and using that, instead. That, of course, came with its own challenges, particularly readability from a distance.
What have you learned from this experience that would be useful for other faculty members to know?
It’s hard to say what I’ve learned from this experience. Perhaps it’s not exactly what this question is after, but the importance of flexibility was reaffirmed for me. We had the hardware we needed, but the software wasn’t what we expected it to be. We were able to work through this by considering alternatives that ended up working just as well, if not better, than expected. If we hadn’t been flexible with how we enacted our plan, we may not have been able to use the technology as we had expected at all.
What impact would you say this grant has had on your students or your research?
The tutors who were matched with refugee tutees told me they enjoyed the experience and they felt that they’d made a positive impact on their tutees’ mathematical achievement. They were able to tutor a different audience than they had prior to this experience, which required them to make use of a wider range of tutoring strategies and increased their communication skills.
I anticipate that the greatest impact from the tech we obtained through this grant is yet-to-come. In the post-COVID world, I expect that we’ll continue to maintain at least some online presence for Vassar students seeking tutoring in quantitative fields. With this technology, we will be better equipped to handle this expected need.