
Students enrolled in multiple sections of the required technical communication course (RH 330) at RoseHulman Institute of Technology were the subjects of two research questions regarding the impact of tablet and penbased computing. This assessment project consisted of two parts. The first part included the development of a survey instrument that collected data regarding students’ perceptions of the usefulness of the tablet computer in learning, gathering information, and communication, as well as their preference for the tablet over a laptop computer. The survey instrument also provided students with openended response boxes where they could provide their comments regarding the tablet’s impact on classroom interaction, coursework, class research, communication, as well as the tablet’s functionality. The second part of the project included measuring the impact of tablets and penbased computing on students’ peer review strategies. Students were asked to conduct peer review of other students’ documents in three contexts: with hard copies of the documents, making comments in writing on the hard copies; with electronic copies of the documents, making comments using the inking function of Microsoft Word with the pen stylus or using the reviewing tools in Word with the touch pad of a laptop computer; and finally, with electronic copies of documents that had been submitting to the class via DyKnow Vision software.