By Cassandra Hendry
A聽statistics course can sometimes seem dull; most people imagine sheets of loose-leaf paper, pencils and handheld calculators. It鈥檚 a commonly dropped class and professors struggle to find ways to keep their students engaged.
That is, until Lise Paquet, a psychology professor at 杏吧原创, turned her third-year statistics course on its head. Suddenly, her withdrawal rate went down and her students鈥� grades drastically improved, all with the help of an ingenious technology called virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
鈥淚鈥檝e been teaching that course a long time. And since we鈥檝e had VDI, it鈥檚 the first year that at the end of the year, I鈥檝e gotten hugs from students,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey come to me and feel they鈥檙e connected, that we鈥檙e part of something together.鈥�
VDI technology is simple. It allows Paquet and her students to access software that would normally only be available on campus computers anywhere and at anytime.
If students want to do homework using software like SPSS, they don鈥檛 have to trek all the way to campus to do so.
The technology is also fully integrated into Paquet鈥檚 classroom teaching. Instead of having a theory-based class followed by a tutorial, sometimes a week later, she can go through problem sets right away.
鈥淭he students became a lot more engaged in the course itself. They became active participants,鈥� Paquet says. 鈥淭hey could see immediately the relevance of what they were doing with the statistics software so they were quite happy about it.鈥�
Thanks to that immediate feedback students get from the technology while their professor is still in the room with them, Paquet says she鈥檚 noticed a clear trend of skyrocketing grades.
Before VDI, her class average was C-. This past year, it鈥檚 climbed all the way to an A-.
Tamir Streiner, who was one of Paquet鈥檚 students the year she began using the software, swears that VDI was 鈥渢ransformed the dynamics of the class.鈥�
One of the most important parts for him was that he didn鈥檛 have to wait for the tutorial to implement the material learned, and instead could get guidance directly from his professor.
鈥淚 cannot overstate how useful the VDI system was to both in-class and outside of class learning,鈥� Streiner says.
With extremely positive results and more engaged students, Paquet is just happy that she鈥檚 able to personally connect with each student in her often large class.
鈥淚 think that VDI provides this ability to have individualized learning despite huge class size. And I think that鈥檚 just fantastic.鈥�
VDI is currently available in three 杏吧原创 classrooms 鈥� 446 and 447 Tory Building and 101 Azreili Theatre.
*Note: VDI technology is now enabled in 70 classrooms on campus (approximately 50 per cent).