To encourage students to read each other’s work, Prof. Stein created “blog collectives” and required students to comment on the blogs of students in their collective.  An additional site was set up for the course that aggregated posts from all student blogs using the FeedWordPress plugin.

Prof. Stein used WordPress for general information about the course including assignment descriptions (see: Assignments > Montage vs Long Take Wars).  These assignment descriptions then contained links to Moodle assignment “activities” where students could submit their assignments.  The WordPress site was also used as a place where students could blog about projects and share the videos they produced as part of their course work (see: Categories > Montage)

Prof. Stein used Moodle to distribute readings, collect assignment submissions and as a place for online discussion and used Moodle’s grading functionality to grade assignments and forum posts.

This screencast is the first in a series based on an interview Alex Chapin did with Louisa Stein in the spring of 2011. 

What: Constructing a Virtual Social Space for Language Acquisition

Who: Maria Woolson, Research Associate and former Faculty Spanish & Portuguese Department

Class: All sections of Spanish 210, Intermediate Spanish Language I

Technology Used: Second Life

Number of students: approx. 80

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/teaching 6/55/166/26/

What:

Who: Catherine Combelles, Assistant Professor of Biology

Class: BIOL0145 Cell Biology and Genetics

Technology Used: Personal Polling Devices (Clickers)

Number of students: approx. 70

Learning objective: To monitor the students’ understanding of concepts covered in lecture and promote peer learning and discussion.

Description of use: Catherine used the clickers for every lecture from day 1 to the last day of classes, and throughout the duration of each lecture. At the beginning of each lecure, she started with a question that tested their understanding of concepts from the past lecture or on their readings for the day. She would then pose between 3-4 more questions depending on the lecture content that day.

All of Catherine’s questions were prepared beforehand; she never created questions on the fly (although she would like to play with that in the future). She sometimes skipped a question if it became clear that it was not needed based on the students’ understanding. But typically, she asked all of the questions she had prepared. She would pose a question, let students answer on their own, then show the class how all students answered before showing the correct answer. If the answers were too spread out, without satisfactory agreement throughout the class, Catherine would have the students talk among themselves and convince their peers of their choice before re-answering. During the students’ discussion, she would walk around, listen, gauge what the learning issues may have been and answer or prompt further questions.  With the help of this peer learning, the goal was to get most of the class to re-answer correctly.

Catherine says that the toughest part in all of this was writing good questions. Otherwise, she felt it was a fantastic way to pace the lecture, break at key points, check on students’ understanding before moving on, and trigger discussion on tougher questions that might be subject to interpretation.

Assessment: This technology proved very effective and helpful. Catherine will use the clickers again next year. Students responded positively to clicker use in their evaluations.  They reported that the clickers were a fun way to stay engaged in lecture, raise quesitons and keep up with the material. There were criticisms about the quality of some of the questions, but the overwhelming feedback Catherine received was to continue using them.

This technology could potentially be used in a variety of lecture courses.  Catherine would be happy to be approached by anyone that would like to learn more about them.

Technologies

How Do I… » Data Collection and Analysis » Survey/Polls

Tools » Clickers

The “Computer Simulations and Evolution of Darwin’s Finches” lab lasts for 3 weeks. In the first week, students form groups, familiarize themselves with the model and choose a topic. For example, they might decide to test how well genetically diverse populations withstand environmental variation. The students will develop a hypothesis, load the model on a computer, adjust the weather with a slider bar, and watch for changes in the population over hundreds of years. In the second week, the students meet with their instructors to refine their topics and review their results. In the third week, they present their findings to the rest of the class.

Matt learned NetLogo on his own. He worked from a model that he had created using other software, and he adapted the lab assignments from an EcoBeaker lab. The NetLogo site has a collection of samples that demonstrate other potential applications of the technology, including chemistry (polymer dynamics), political science (voting patterns), and public health (epidemiology).

What:  Campus Tree Map

Who: Tim Parsons, Horticulturalist

Technologies used: Hardware: Dell Axim Handheld PC with a Bluetooth GPS; Software: Handheld PC running ArcPad; Desktop: ArcEditor, ArcPad, ArcPad Application Builder, Microsoft Excel, Access, and Visual Studio, Google Earth and Picassa 3.

Assistance Received: Tim received assistance with ArcGIS from Bill Hegman, GIS Specialist; and Katie Clagett and Chris Rodgers, former GIS Interns at LIS.  He also received some help from students in the Geography Department’s computer lab.

Courses: BIOL 1003, Trees and the Urban Forest, and other classes in the Biology Department.

Reasons for using the Technology: The tree map is used primarily as a management tool but it has been central to a number of curricular projects as well.  The map is viewable in Google Earth.  Many commercial software packages are available for urban forest management, but they cost thousands of dollars and are not open enough for sharing data.

All of the urban campus trees (trees managed as individuals) are mapped.  In classes, the map is used by students interested in finding and/or analyzing tree species.  In Facilities Management, the map is used to track tree maintenance and health issues, for example pruning and insect problems.  See Campus Tree Map Updated in The Middlebury Landscape blog for details.

In Tim’s Urban Forest class, his students took the tree population and ran it through modeling software called iTree to look at carbon sequestration, pollution abatement, etc.  Students in other classes have used the map for tree identification.  For example, a student recently contacted Tim because she was looking for Cherry trees to evaluate for a plant community ecology class.

Learning Outcomes: The tree map, at least in the Urban Forest class, turned out to be a good introduction to mapping for students without any GIS or Geography experience. In addition, Tim considers ArcPad a valuable learning resource; he sees it as ArcMap Lite, with much less of a learning curve than ArcView.

Description: The tree map of the campus was started years ago as a student project (see the Geography Department’s Student Projects page).  Tim picked up the project again in 2006. After successfully applying for an environmental grant for the hardware, Tim went out in the field to verify and correct the trees that had been identified and add more. With help from the Geography Department and LIS, Tim created a map in ArcGIS which included attributes such as sizes and health status of the trees.

Tim maintains and updates the map and accompanying file geodatabase as the campus landscape changes. Meanwhile, he also has exported the map from ArcView to Google Earth using a free ArcGIS add-on called Export to KML. He plans to revise his ArcPad  data collection forms so that they are are more specific to plant care needs.

The project has evolved through time. Last fall, Tim worked with students in a Plant Biology class. They mapped about half of the Bread Loaf campus trees, and he hopes to finish that project next fall. Tim’s future plan is to establish a virtual tree tour online, either with Google Earth or a static map.

Faculty will demonstrate their uses of technology and discuss their experiences in an informal setting.  The diversity of faculty ranges from Film and Media Culture to Chemistry, This fair is co-sponsored by the CTLR and Library and Information Services. Each presenter will have a poster created for him/her by LIS. A large monitor and internet connection are also provided to enable live demonstrations. If you are interested in participating, please contact Shel Sax at extension 5679 or send email.

Technology used:

The BlackBox Wireless Video Presentation System allowed the nine students in Professor Chris Watters’ Human Nutrition class to share their work as peers rather than as presenters at a podium.  Discussion continued seamlessly through PowerPoint presentations that students ran from their own laptops.

Chris can envision other uses for this technology, including collaboration and peer review, and more simply, large projector presentations.  He first saw the BlackBox server in action at an international visualization conference in 2005.  A group would demonstrate a project, take feedback, make revisions, and present again.  When Chris learned that the server was available in the US, he mentioned it to Dean Cadoret.  Dean found the server and helped configure it with other LIS staff.

Full configuration remained difficult despite adjustments to the server, the network, and even the students’ laptops.  Some of Chris’ objectives couldn’t be met (he had hoped students would be able to pull up nutrition web pages and evaluate them as a group), but overall Chris found this experiment with new technology worthwhile.

Receiving Assignments

Both Jason and James use email as the primary means of collecting assignments from students for the following reasons:

• emails are timestamped providing a simple way to ensure deadlines are met
• email provides a single place to archive records of all papers
• email ensures a definitive version of student work

Both ask students to simply attach their assignment to an email post and send it them. To help organize emails from students, they often ask students to include something in the subject line of the email that will flag the email as one containing an assignment.  For example they might ask students to put the name of the assignment in the subject line (e.g Assignment 1) perhaps even include the course code (fmmc0243).  This allows them to use “email rules” to filter these emails into a folder for later review. Both have similar workflows for compiling assignments for grading.  Each downloads papers to a single folder on their computer, opens the documents and does a quick check for the correct title and makes sure the word count was within the assignment guidelines.    For many classes, they would then send students an email confirming they received of the paper.

Grading in Microsoft Word/OpenOffice

Jason requires his students to submit their papers in .rtf format, a rich text format that is compatible with most word processing applications.  While Jason uses OpenOffice, similar features are available in Microsoft Word.  The document is opened and “track changes” is enabled (Tools > Track Changes).  Track changes allows Jason to add changes to the student’s paper in a way that preserves the original version for the student to compare.  Jason uses the commenting feature (Insert > Comment) to add comments inline.  For frequently used comments Jason has set up AutoText (Insert > AutoText) entries.  Jason will usually add additional comments as well as the grade at the end of the document.  Then he saves the document appending to its original filename “-comments-JM” and attaches it to an email to the student.

Grading PDF documents

James prefers to do his grading in .pdf format and has published detailed Essay Submissions guidelines.  James uses Adobe Acrobat, software that is not widely available on campus, but many of his techniques can be followed using freely available PDF tools.  For PC users he recommends Foxit Reader and for Mac users Skim (Macs also come with an application called Preview that is comparable).  Like Word, these tools also have commenting features that allow you to insert inline comments.  Some of these tools also allow you to create stamps of various colors and sizes that can be used for common comments. James has compiled a number of such stamps.