=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2531/paper07
|storemode=property
|title=Tutoring with Stylus-enabled Tablets
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2531/paper07.pdf
|volume=Vol-2531
|authors=Bernd Westphal
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/seuh/Westphal20
}}
==Tutoring with Stylus-enabled Tablets==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2531/paper07.pdf
Tutoring with Stylus-enabled Tablets
Bernd Westphal
Department of Computer Science
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Freiburg, Germany
westphal@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Abstract—Since the advent of tablet computers with styluses, The research method that we use is an expert questionnaire
there is research on how to integrate such devices into teaching. including questions for percentage estimates, multiple choice
Previous work focuses on the students’ perspective, (visionary) fields, and open questions. We consider the tutors who an-
usage in the classroom, or efficient exam marking.
In this article, we consider the perspective of tutors (or swered our questionnaire to be experts in the following sense:
student teaching assistants) that are supposed to give feedback on All of our tutors are familiar with the usability of a broad range
students’ homework. We investigate the usability of a particular of software and devices (from PCs to touch-enabled, mobile
tablet configuration used by five different tutors in two years, devices). The majority of our tutors held similar positions
and the (often neglected) aspect of overall maintenance effort. beforehand and are thus familiar with different workflows, and
I. I NTRODUCTION they are, as senior computer science students, familiar with the
students’ perspective, i.e., with the form of useful feedback.
Our introductory course on software engineering employs,
like many other similar courses, exercises for homework and The article is structured as follows. Section II discusses
a discussion thereof in so-called tutorial sessions. A part of related work. In Section III, we characterise the role of a tutor
this activity is to mark the students’ submissions and to give in our correction process. Section IV describes the hard- and
in-place feedback on the submissions that enables students to software setup that our tutors used and gives rationales for our
improve their skills in problem solving and scientific writing. choices. Section V discusses the responses we received on our
Students’ submissions on exercises in our software en- expert questionnaire and Section VI concludes.
gineering course include a good amount of diagrams and
mathematical notation. We have the feeling that good feedback II. R ELATED W ORK
on such submissions needs the expressive freedom of hand- In summary, most related works address research questions
writing, which is perfectly available with a classical, paper- similar to (RQ 1) yet mostly in the case of exam marking
based submissions scheme (students submit paper and get the (which is different from homework feedback). Some works
paper back with annotations). For many years now, students address the student’s perspective, yet the administration effort
can (and are asked to) submit electronic documents using for providing each tutor with a stylus-enabled tablet (our
the e-learning platform offered at our university. The digital (RQ 2)), and usability and usage from the tutors’ perspective
workflow was broken when it came to the correction work by (our (RQ 3) and (RQ 4)) have received less attention.
tutors (or: student teaching assistants). By the means available Popyack et al. [1] proposed to prepare PDF forms to be
at our department, we could only offer to use ordinary PCs filled in by students to support a fully digital workflow, and
with keyboard and mouse for the annotations (which was experimented with one stylus-enabled laptop and one stylus-
reported to not be perfectly appropriate for diagrams and math- pad without display. Berque et al. [2], [3] point out the need
ematics), or print out the submissions (which was reported to for free-form writing in computer science due to the graphical
be annoying due to the necessary handling of the papers). and mathematical nature of many exercises. Their focus is
In this article, we argue for the opinion that the recent teaching in the classroom and they report on a classroom
generation of high-resolution tablets with styluses gives a good setup where teacher and students use a fixed, stylus-enabled
opportunity to get the best of both approaches. We report computer screen on their desks. Anderson et al. [4], [5] report
preliminary results on the following research questions to gain experience on using stylus-enabled tablets in the classroom. In
a better understanding of the costs, feasibility, and usability of their system, students can write down solutions using digital
stylus-enabled tablets in homework marking: ink on their tablets. Solutions can be evaluated by the teacher
RQ 1: In how far do today’s hardware and readily available as part of in-classroom teaching, e.g., to give immediate
software support stylus-based homework marking? feedback. They already point out that digital ink could even
RQ 2: What is the maintenance effort for stylus-based provide broader means of expression for both, students and
homework marking (pre-semester and in semester)? teachers, by freely using colour (not every student may bother
RQ 3: How do tutors use available hard- and software? to carry different colours in his or her pen and pencil case).
How do they rate overall usability? Bloomfield et al. [6], [7] investigate the particular use-case of
RQ 4: How do tutors use the stylus in homework marking? a digital marking process for exams on paper. Their approach
S. Krusche, S. Wagner (Hrsg.): SEUH 2020 44
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
employs a sophisticated design of exam sheets to connect the The course we report on here is an undergraduate introduc-
scanned exams to students, and a web-based software system tion to software engineering [15]. The exercises in our course
that lets graders add annotations to the scanned exams. They include modelling tasks with visual formalisms and a good
point out that the system may also be applied to homework amount of mathematical notation as our course emphasises the
correction and state that the web-based, online approach may formal (syntax and semantics) view on software description
be better suited to “marking parties” [8] where all users of languages. Software engineering is, in our opinion (also cf.
the system are located in one room. Our approach supports [16]), to a good amount about (written) communication. In
offline work by keeping all submissions in a revision control our experience, good feedback on students’ submissions needs
system. In 2016, a whole workshop was dedicated to stylus- the freedom of handwriting: Marking parts of a diagram,
enabled tablets in teaching [9]. The research more related to correcting a diagram, suggesting mathematical expressions.
our work focuses on the overall student perspective [10], or With this regard, we found the existing process unsatisfac-
the particular aspect of retention [11]. Hammond et al. [12] tory: Using paper is tedious, preparing the annotations that we
briefly mention the, in our opinion highly relevant, aspect of need with keyboard and mouse is cumbersome, and only hiring
administration effort. tutors with a private tablet was not an option. To obtain a more
Closer related to our work are [13], [14], the most closely satisfactory, completely digital process, we started to provide
related one may be [3]. Chang [13] presents a generic e- each tutor with a tablet with stylus for the whole semester, so
homework for a fully digital workflow, as it is, we believe, to combine the advantages of paper-based correction with the
today in operation at many universities. Singh [14] reports benefits of a digital workflow.
on experience with an e-assessment system. Their focus is
IV. H ARDWARE AND S OFTWARE C ONFIGURATION
the students’ perception. Both works seem not to consider
stylus-based devices for the marking process. Schneider [3] Regarding hardware, we are limited to the market offerings.
reports experience from two years of teaching where two For the software setup, previous work seems to have a slight
different teaching assistants used a stylus-enabled tablet and preference for newly built, dedicated tools [4]–[7], [17] or, in
a commercial annotation software to grade homework. The particular for in-classroom applications, commercial products
positive feedback they collected informally from their teaching [2], [3]. For (RQ 1) and (RQ 2), we want to investigate in
assistants is similar to our findings, their second subject how far readily available, actively maintained, and at best free
reported the drawback of the need to keep the device connected software is sufficient to reach our goals.
to a wireless network (which, they say, can easily be over- When we needed to choose devices, there were three
come). The focus of their study is the students’ perception of broad options: Tablets designed for the Android operating
handwritten, digital feedback. While the majority of students system, iPads coupled with iOS, and PC-like hardware in
found the feedback of comparative quality or more meaning- tablet form. Android devices with stylus are available from
ful, a minority of 6 % and 25 % of the students, respectively, different vendors, predominantly with 10′′ screen and with
found the digital feedback less meaningful. An explanation of a weight of 500-600g (without keyboard). iOS devices are
this outcome may be that the teaching assistant in the second available with 10′′ screen (and a weight of about 500g without
year seems to be partially discontent with the new procedure. keyboard) or with a 13′′ screen (and a weight of about 700g
They do not investigate the teaching assistants’ perspective without keyboard). We early on decided against Android or
further and do not report on administrative effort, which may iOS devices for privacy reasons: To be useful, these systems
be neglectable with a single device. almost need a registration with the respective OS provider
and our time resources didn’t allow to investigate further how
III. BACKGROUND : T UTORING ROLES AND P ROCESSES exactly our student employees would be tracked and whether
In the case of our course, the tutor role participates in the tracking is allowed by labour laws. Another aspect that
the following activities wrt. homework assessment: Download needs to be cared for are the privacy interests of the students,
the PDF submissions (possibly handwritten and scanned by whose individual-related data is necessarily processed by us.
the students) from the ILIAS e-learning platform, add the The market offering on PC-like tablets started at slightly
submissions to a revision control system (accessible by (staff) higher prices at the time of our market research (around
teaching assistant and tutor), assess the submissions, provide 1,000 e), and easily reached regions from 1,500 e to over
feedback and preliminary markings, discuss the markings with 2,000 e which was outside our budget. The devices that we
the teaching assistant, and finalise the marking and upload a report on here, have been acquired in two phases. In 2016, we
PDF to ILIAS (or hand out a marked printout to the students). acquired one tablet (a 2016 model) that we refer as ‘Device L’
This workflow has been used for many years for our course in the following, and in 2019, three ‘Device M’ tablets (a
(and is, we believe, used at many other universities), yet 2017 model) from a different brand. Both devices have a 12′′
we had to leave the means to be used for annotations and high-resolution, touch-enabled screen, support a stylus and
markings to the discretion of the tutors. Some tutors preferred wireless networking, and come with a detachable keyboard.
the classical approach of working on a printout, some used We have chosen similar, rather low-end configurations wrt.
PCs with keyboard and mouse, and a few had private tablets memory, CPU, and Solid State Disk (cf. Table I). In addition,
with stylus that they deliberately used on their job. we acquired one set consisting of a wireless keyboard and
S. Krusche, S. Wagner (Hrsg.): SEUH 2020 45
TABLE I V. H OW D ID THE T UTORS U SE THE S TYLUS -TABLETS ?
D EVICE S PECIFICATIONS . A ND D ID T HEY L IKE T HEM ?
L 12.2′′ , 1920x1200, i5-7200U/2.5 GHz, 8GB, 128GB SSD, We have selected the devices so that our tutors can experi-
900 g/1.2 kg (with(out) keyboard), 2016, 999 e (incl. stylus) ment with different setups for their workplace: The keyboards
M 12.3′′ , 2736x1824, m3-Y730/2.6 GHz, 4GB, 128GB SSD, are detachable, the screen can be rotated to support landscape
768 g/1.1 kg (with(out) keyboard), 2017, 899 e (+ 110 e stylus)
and portrait views, and one tutor was provided with external,
wireless keyboard and mouse.
After finishing the summer semester of 2019 (and after the
mouse to experiment with their usability (around e 30), one
jobs had been completed), we conducted a survey among the
set of adapters (HDMI and VGA (for projectors), and LAN)
four student teaching assistants that used the tablets with the
to be borrowed as needed, and one sleeve bag (made of thick
Linux setup and one who used Device L with the Windows
felt) for each device (ca. e 35).
setup in the season of 2018. The data points interestingly do
Both devices support different operating systems. The data not differ much for the setups: With the setup of 2018, only the
we report on here refers to two setups: One data point from stylus has been reported to be lagging in a slightly annoying
2018 is from a tutor who used some Windows 10 edition, way for almost all annotation software and, not being well
and four data points from 2019 are from tutors who used a familiar with this system, we had some difficulties to get all
Linux-based setup. In the following, we describe the Linux- configuration settings to our needs.
based setup. As base system, we use Xubuntu, i.e. the Ubuntu The survey questionnaire asks for feedback on four areas:
distribution with the XFCE desktop environment, in an LTS The way the device as such is used and how the workplace
(long term support) release. Our hope is that the installation is set up, the workflow for the marking and which kinds of
media and configuration files can be re-used over many years. annotations are used, satisfaction with the device and setup,
Device L is fully supported by the standard distribution, De- and free text questions on the overall experience. In the
vice M uses some non-standard hardware that needs dedicated following, we report the collected data from these areas.
kernels and drivers (that are freely available). We will continue
A. Device Usage in the Workplace
to offer the tablets with this setup for the following reasons.
One of our concerns is administration effort (which is often The majority of tutors used the tablet on a large desk (so
neglected when acquiring new technology (with [12] as an there would be space for an external keyboard and mouse),
exception)). The commercial operating system turned out to some also squeezed it onto a smaller desk or use the device
need a significantly larger time to be re-installed for new in another setup (‘lounge style’), cf. Figure 1(a). In the
users. In addition, it is, to the best of our knowledge, an open questionnaire we asked for the percentage of the net correction
question whether this operating system is at all admissible in time, i.e., excluding the time when the submissions were down-
German public service due to privacy issues. or uploaded, or when taking notes in tutoring meetings. The
For the re-installation, we follow a 2-page, step-by-step in- percentages are estimates and recalled from memory, we are
struction sheet that we did prepare with the initial installation.1 not aware of measurements being taken.
The initial installation and the preparation of the instruction The preferred orientation was landscape, where some tutors
sheet took about two to three working days net (plus about one used a mixture of landscape and portrait, hence to suit all
day in total to choose and order the devices). We mostly use tutors’ needs, devices should support screen rotation (cf.
the setup proposed by the standard installer (with encrypted Figure 1(b)). The free text responses indicate that the preferred
disk), add some pre-downloaded software from a prepared orientation may depend on the workplace setup: Some tutors
memory card, copy over a few prepared configuration files, and kept the correction instructions on the tablet screen and some
change a few aspects of the setup, e.g., for the high-resolution tutors reported to have used a separate screen.
screens. For our course, we need the following software: There seems not to be a strong correlation between the
Xournal (the PDF annotation tool); Make; Subversion (file screen orientation and keeping the keyboard attached or not:
versioning); Vim (text editor); Xpdf, Zathura (PDF viewers); The tutor who gave the top-most response in Figure 1(b)
Xscreensaver; Florence (onscreen keyboard); Arandr (screen kept the keyboard attached 90 % of the time, and the second
setup); Acpi (battery information); TeXlive (LaTeX); a Java response in Figure 1(b) reported only 30 %. Of the three tutors
Runtime Environment; and Gimp (raster graphics editor). who preferred landscape, two kept the keyboard attached 0 %
Students are allowed to install further software if needed. We or the time and one of them 90 % of the time. We would have
copy over a configuration file for Xournal, and for the window expected the attached keyboard to come in one’s way in the
toolkits to, e.g., let scrollbars appear wider and hence easier landscape setup; again, a stylus-enabled laptop would not suit
to hit with the pen. A complete re-installation of the tablets all tutors’ ergonomic needs.
then takes about 15 minutes (some of the time unattended). There was no clear preference on whether to put the tablet
flat on the table or to use the built-in kick-stand, which allows
1 All media (for one bootable USB flash drive and one microSD memory
different angles between a steep, laptop screen-like setup and a
card) and the instruction sheet could be made publicly available on popular flat-angled, desk-like setup (cf. Figure 1(c)). Almost all tutors,
demand, since our setup does not rely on any non-free software. though, had a personal strong preference. Free text feedback
S. Krusche, S. Wagner (Hrsg.): SEUH 2020 46
100 % 70 % 30 % 100 % 100 %
100 % 40 % 60 % 90 % 100 %
80 % 20 % 100 % 20 % 80 % 90 %
60 % 30 % 100 % 100 % 100 %
40 % 60 % 100 % 50 % 50 % 100 %
(a) large desk, smaller, lounge (b) portrait, landscape (c) flat, upright, lap (d) by task, by team, other
Fig. 1. Workplace environment (a), device orientation (b), device position (c), and marking strategy (d). Each horizontal bar gives the values of one response to
questionnaire, the topmost bars are not necessarily from the same questionnaire. Note that each horizontal bar refers to the overall correction time throughout
the semester, i.e. the effort for marking about 70 submissions in total.
35 % 60 % for the whole project was that software engineering exercises
5
3
25 % 15 % 60 % are often graphical or mathematical in nature, and hence
1
20 % 70 %
tutors need a way to include graphics and mathematical
80 %
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)
symbols in their annotations. To investigate this hypothesis,
85 %
(a) Kinds of annotations. (b) graph., math., other the questionnaire asked for the percentage of annotations in
graphical or mathematical form. Figure 2(b) shows a clear
Fig. 2. Kinds of annotations (a) and extents (b). need for graphical and mathematical annotations for the kind
of tasks in our exercise sheets.
indicates that the flat-angled setup was much appreciated, a
setup that is not easily supported with stylus-enabled laptops.
C. Device Specifications and Setup
B. Marking Strategy and Kinds of Annotations
For each exercise sheet, each tutor received between 10 An important aspect when using styluses is the feeling of
and 15 submissions (about 12 in average over the semester). the handwriting. We asked for two characteristics: Whether
Each exercise sheet includes multiple tasks with subtasks. The the cursor lagged behind the tip of the stylus and whether
majority of our tutors prefers the strategy to mark by task (cf. the device faithfully captures the strokes. Four out of five
Figure 2(a)), i.e., first consider one task in all submissions, responses considered the lag good, one response was ‘okay, but
then the next task, etc. One tutor went team-by-team, i.e., first not disturbing’. The strokes were considered good by three and
consider all tasks of one submission, then the next submission, ‘okay’ by two responses, the latter for two different devices.
etc., and one tutor employed a mixture depending on the task
A free text question on the provided setup and software
(whether the task is more technical or more open).
suggested a very broad range of computer system aspects to
Regarding screen orientation, the tutors who preferred task-
consider (like speed, display resolution and brightness, etc.)
by-task used 100 % portrait, and 70 %, and 60 % landscape,
The tutors seem to very satisfied with the setup, since the
respectively, the tutor who preferred team-by-team used 100 %
remarks were all related to the form of the styluses (shape,
landscape, as well as the tutor with a mixed strategy. We would
ergonomics of the button), and the stylus holder on Device L.
have expected a stronger correlation between task-by-task and
Regarding the screen size, our respondents have the feeling
landscape (because a smaller area of the submission needs to
that 12′′ displays have a good size (they would not want to
be visible), and team-by-team and portrait (because it could
trade smaller size and lesser weight for a smaller screen), if
be useful to have a larger area of the submission in sight).
at all, they would recommend a 14′′ device, but not larger.
The questionnaire offered seven choices for the kinds of
annotations that tutors used at least once: (i) short, handwritten The felt cover was considered to be a good addition to the
‘okay’/‘not okay’ annotations (like check marks), (ii) high- overall setup, and the responses indicate that the covers are
lighting (underlines, circles, etc.), (iii) lines, arrows, circles, considered to provide a good protection for transport.
etc. to refer to different parts of the considered document, (iv) The questionnaire also asked for an opinion on whether
short, handwritten comments, (v) long, handwritten comments, the tutors would prefer to obtain their tablet in a pre-installed
(vi) typed comments, and (vii) others. Figure 2(a)) gives fashion (including all necessary software and useful config-
the total numbers of responses for the seven options. Each urations), or whether they would prefer to install an own
tutor used at least three of these, the median is at four (two working environment. In contrast to common prejudices (that
responses), the maximum at six (one response). Hence, each computer scientists are reluctant against devices set up by
of our tutors used the stylus, some of the tutors seem to have other people), all tutors prefer the pre-installation approach.
almost always used the stylus due to low number of responses Free text comments name ‘economy of thought’, ‘laziness’,
for case (vi), the typed comments. Responses to questions on and state that they prefer to dedicate their working hours to
mouse, touchpad, and touchscreen usage indicate that these tutoring. Some responses raised the strong point that a similar
input devices have almost never been used for annotations. setup for all tutors allows everybody to share experience and
The previous data only indicates that the tutors have used help each other (which we did observe during the semester,
non-textual annotations. Recall, that one of our hypothesis in particular via a dedicated forum on the ILIAS platform).
S. Krusche, S. Wagner (Hrsg.): SEUH 2020 47
D. Free Text the use with styluss on high-resolution displays, that some
What did our tutors dislike about the tablets? We have space keyboard shortcuts are at inconvenient places, and we see a
to quote all answers: ‘depends on battery’ (two times; both strong potential in complementing the annotation software that
times not causing inconveniences), ‘nothing’ (three times). we use with ‘stamps’ (cf. [6]), that is, with a set of predefined
What did our tutors like about using tablets? The feel- annotations that re-occur over and over during correction, to
ing of handwriting was named twice (once in comparison improve efficiency.
to personal experience with stylus pads (without display)). R EFERENCES
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