UNI 105: Freshman Seminar

Jorge L. Figueroa, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Health and Applied Human Sciences

UNI 105 Integrated Freshman Seminar is a class offered to first semester incoming freshmen to help in a successful transition to the University environment.   These two-credit courses introduce students to campus resources, and provide instruction in a variety of academic and personal skill areas.

Through the use of the tablet PCs in class, students will have all the advantages of the tablet technology such as note taking, potential electronic text books, internet access, and integration of academic documents.  Additionally those students who were taking the Integrated Seminar will be able to cross reference all the resource materials and assignments that may be shared across all three classes.  Students would be expected to take notes with the tablet as well as to submit written assignments and participate in in-class participatory activities.  In class activities will include lessons on familiarizing students with the many relevant on-line resources on the UNCW website.  At this point student can watch while the instructor accessing various sites, but can not participate interactively.

Students can also use their tablet PCs in activities using their tablets to participate in Classroom Performance System (CPS) response pad (clicker) clicker technology.  The tablet can function as the “clicker” providing the advantages of the CPS technology without the cumbersome process of checking out the equipment and preventing loss of damage of the individual units.

The introduction of the use of tablet PCs in UNI is ideal because the class is already structured and designed with the objective of teaching students various skills that they can apply throughout their entire academic career across all classes.  The UNI class would be an excellent setting to provide direct instruction in the use of the tablet so that students could gain competence and confidence in the use of this cutting edge technology.  By having the students’ first semester at UNCW begin with three integrated classes utilizing the tablet, they would gain enough experience to enhance the generalizability to other classes.