Laptop Enabled Active Learning in the Software Engineering Classroom: An Experience Report

Over the past four years the University of Hawaii has been steadily moving towards an "active learning" approach to software engineering education by replacing passive slide-show lectures with a series of short lectures followed by in-class exercises, enabled though the use of wireless networked laptops. In this paper we report on our experiences and early results with this approach. The results suggest that students like this approach more, do better, and evaluate the courses more positively.