Abstract:

The modern lecture with presentation slides (PowerPoint) is the successor of overhead projector and as such shares many of its pros and cons. Its advantages include independence of class size and easy distribution of teaching material. On the other hand, the format of the slides forces them to be short on detail and to use telegram style language, hence they are not very readable outside the context of the lecture. But most importantly they do not encourage student involvement. These are main motivations for the development of the Edbook teaching material environment which presents the teaching material as a webpage easily accessible from computers, tablets and phones. The goal of our project was to combine the details and readability of whiteboard lectures with the accessibility of the slides along with increasing students engagement.

Student engagement is obtained by embedding in the notes videos, interactive applets (e.g. Geogebra), boxes to write code (e.g. Python and R) and frames with other webpages (e.g. Google Maps) (Edbook, 2018). This is specially important in mathematics (the authors field) where interactive applets can play an important role in helping students understand threshold concepts, which can be quite alien to them (Mayer & Land, 2003). In important thing to consider is the language and even though students and teachers believe they are fluent in English, studies (Arnbjornsdottir & Ingvarsdottir, 2018) have shown that this is not always the case. This is of most importance when students start university, where the transition from their native Icelandic (the language they use in secondary school) to academic English (the language of their university textbooks) happens. The Edbook system takes this into account by providing notes in Icelandic with hoovering English translations of the main concepts.

The notes for all the courses and source code for is stored on an open web, and the result of this is that the usability extends beyond these particular courses. It is easy for students and teachers to see what material and its context was covered in previous courses. The result is an unexpected alignment of curriculum of different courses and increased curriculum coherence. Such coherence not only supports students learning but also encourages cooperation between teachers (Larson, 2016).

The author will present the Edbooks system and the results of a students survey of students attitude and usage of the system. The material for various courses can be found here https://edbook.hi.is/, and for the source code go to https://github.com/edbook.

References:
[1] Arnbjörnsdóttir, B., & Ingvarsdóttir, H. (2018). Language Development across the Life Span (Vol. 34). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67804-7
[2] Edbook (2018). Introduction to interactive course notes in Edbook. Retrived from http://edbook.hi.is/introduction2018/
[3] Larson, M. (2016). Curricular Coherence in the Age of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://www.nctm.org/News-and-Calendar/Messages-from-the-President/Archive/Matt-Larson/Curricular-Coherence-in-the-Age-of-Open-Educational-Resources/
[4] Meyer, E., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines. Occasional Report 4. Retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/142206.pdf

Keywords:

Teaching material, open education.