Survey study training is an important practicum in our department, but there is a serious problem in its implementation. Students in this course are required to process the data obtained by survey, and such processes include mathematical calculations. Though these calculations are mostly simple, students tend to lack note-taking skills, and so they often try to process the data without understanding calculation processes well. This problem can be clearly observed from many of the reports they submit.
As an attempt to solve this problem, we started to have students buy note PC two years ago, and have them use the spreadsheet of Excel. According to our observation, this helped students understand calculation processes better, because it was no longer necessary for them to spend too much time carrying out mathematical calculations by hand on paper.
In this academic year, we introduced tablet PC instead of Note PC. We found that the use of tablet PC can be more effective for students to understand calculation processes, because it makes it easier for students to input the data on site and share them with each other.