Introduction In the era we live in, traditional teaching methods may not be sufficient alone to serve their intended purpose. Writing tablets have seen significant improvements in technology the past few years. The ability to record lectures and provide it afterwards will provide students with another form of review after class, at their leisure. This saves a lot of time for both the lecturer and the student. These recordings can then be uploaded to a server and made available to the students. Lecturers can also record examples and make it available for subsequent iterations of the module. In the new year, lectures can then work on new examples. As time passes, there will be a set of examples available for students to work from. Execution of the project The grant was used to acquire three medium sized tablets to be provided to three staff members to try out in class. They were instructed to obtain feedback from the students, and they were also asked to provide feedback on how they experienced this method of teaching. One lecturer, Dr Daniel Van Niekerk, mentioned that he is not too fond of its size and that he is not used to this kind of teaching method, the reason being one has to look at the computer screen and write on the tablet, which is somewhat disorientating since one writes and simultaneously reads on the screen one writes on. The other lecturers, including myself, were able to adapt quite quickly to this new method of teaching. Several recording software programs, as well as writing software programs are available. Emphasis was placed on quality, whilst keeping data rates low. In this project, the software programmes SmoothDraw and Zoom were used to make the recordings. At worst, a data rate of 3 Megabytes per minute was observed. For example, a 1-hour class/recording would be 180 Megabytes, which is acceptable, seeing that most students do not have the finances to purchase large amounts of data. A snapshot of such a recording is given below. The link to this video can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lxbYtC3u-l7O3D0XVbXWWVcwPBlZg68/view?usp=sharing This method of teaching will also assist any module that contains mathematics (not just in engineering). Other lecturers can easily benefit from this project after they have transitioned to this writing method. Students will and already have greatly benefitted from feedback received, since they can review work an infinite number of times. Several recording software programs, as well as writing software programs are available. Emphasis was placed on quality, whilst keeping data rates low. Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching Innovation Projects 2022 87
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