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.

Summary of Poster Session: James Morrison explained how he uses podcasts to record his lectures so that after class, students can review the lectures. “Students can double check difficult, complicated concepts; Overcome language barriers; Get Missed Material. ** Note: My podcasting had no noticeable influence on lecture attendance! **“.   Additionally, anyone from around the world can listen to his lectures. The lectures can be found on his course website: http://sites.middlebury.edu/ipespring09/

How to Podcast:

(1) Record the Audio
(2) Upload the Audio
(3) Publicize the files’ location

Advanced Podcasting:

Create Podcasts with Album Art & Meta Data
Integration with Middblogs
Distribute via iTunes Store

Technologies:

Uses » Audio » Record/edit/format audio, Share series of audio files (i.e. podcast)

Tools » Audacity, Voice Recorders, Microphones, iPods

Summary of Poster Session: Quinn Mecham and Alex Russo (a student from his course) demonstrated how they used Second Life as one of their tools to simulate how political parties and governments form.  Students had avatars (simulated characters) in Second Life that could interact with each other and campaign, form parties, propose legislation, and experience how politics play out.  A blog and wiki connected to their virtual space was also used to allow proposals to be vetted.

Actual Learning Outcomes: “Students learned the effects of different types of electoral systems on political outcomes.  They also learned how to test their own political ideology, form political parties, create political platforms, choose between competing parties, draft and vote on legislation.”

Conclusions and Reflections: “While some students were averse to using the technology, many were active participants in the simulation and enjoyed it very much.  I believe that the simulation greatly enriched students’ understanding of different types of democracy than what is found in the United States.   I am not yet convinced that second life is the best possible platform for this experiment, but it was the best platform we could find without developing our own from scratch.”

Caveats to Colleagues: “It is largely a positive experience, but requires high levels of support and faculty investment to make it work successfully.”

Technologies Used: website: www.SouthChinaSea.org, Google Earth, Google Map, Google News Search, CD
Course: PSCI 214 – International Environmental Politics
Number of Students: 45
Objectives: “To integrate research and teaching, to promote student-faculty collaboration.”

Summary of Poster Session: David Rosenberg and several of his students showed the website that is a resource for students in David’s class as well as the world.  Students helped identify content to link to and contributed content themselves, such as maps.

Anticipated learning outcomes: “Research project reports worth publishing beyond the  classroom.”
Actual learning  outcomes: “a  5-star internet resource on the South China  Sea .”
Conclusions and Reflections: “This is an on-going  process of building a network of interested students, scholars and  policy-makers.”
Will you use this technology again ?: Not  necessarily. If so, what would you do differently?:  Rss feeds and  blogs to facilitate dialog

Technologies Used: ArcGIS; Stata (Statistical Analysis Software)
Course: Economics 1008 Deconstructing Discrimination (Winter Term 2009)
Number of Students: 20
Assistance: Jack Cuneo, a tutor in the media lab (ArcGIS help)
Anticipated Learning Outcomes: Experience with  collecting data and performing empirical analysis, familiarity with the  capabilities of ArcGIS software, ability to use  Stata software.

Summary: “My winter term class “Deconstructing Discrimination” carried out an empirical research project to examine whether retail gasoline prices are correlated with the racial and income characteristics of neighborhoods.  The project required obtaining, manipulating, and combining data from a variety of sources.  We purchased gasoline price data from Oil Price International (OPIS), used ArcGIS to identify the census tract for each station, and then obtained neighborhood characteristics from the 2000 Decennial Census using Geolytics software.  Finally, the students also conducted telephone surveys of the stations to collect information on station characteristics.  We used Stata software to combine all of these data sets and to perform the analysis.”

Learning Outcomes: “The students, many of whom were early in their college careers, experienced  the challenges of conducting original research and gained an overview of data  sets, several types of software, and statistical analysis techniques.   The resulting paper “Retail Redlining: Are Gasoline Prices Higher in Poor and  Minority Neighborhoods” will be coauthored with four students and submitted to  a scholarly journal for potential  publication.”

Recommendation to Colleagues: “Although this was a winter term class and did not  have formal “labs,” I found it to be helpful to hold class in the computer lab often so that we could all work together.  The students also worked in groups, and I made certain that each group had a similar distribution of  backgrounds and at least one member who had extensive prior experience with  Stata.

Photo by Carrie Macfarlane
Text by  Chris Fastie and Carrie Macfarlane

For ten years, Chris Fastie, Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Biology, had been laboring to map the geomorphology of a four-mile stretch of Upper Plains Road in Salisbury, Vermont. As time allowed, he would venture out to survey the landscape, and sketch his findings on aerial photos. Last summer, he used a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver to map some newly discovered kame terraces, installed Google Earth Pro on his computer and learned that there was finally an effective way to share his findings with others. When he received a request to lecture for a Winter Term course at Middlebury, technology and opportunity had merged to give new impetus to the mapping project.

The challenge was to illustrate a geologic process that took place across a large swath of land over a long period of time. Chris wanted the students to see the extant landforms in the field, puzzle over the processes that could have created them, and then see a visualization of the glaciers, lakes, and pro-glacial rivers that shaped the land 13,500 years ago.

The incorporation of technology streamlined the project. Chris walked the margins of glacial features while his GPS recorded a tracklog, then overlaid the data in Google Earth. Using Google Earth, he traced the tracklogs to make three-dimensional polygons representing kame terraces, deltas, and the retreating glacier. Chris said, “The ubiquity and ease of use of Google Earth make struggling with traditional GIS programs unnecessary for many simple mapping projects.” The Pro version of Google Earth was required to output digital video files of flying tours of the reconstructed landscape. These video files were edited together in Adobe Premiere Pro. Later, he added camera footage from a class field trip, narration and music.

Chris believes the video allowed the students to synthesize what they learned during the field trip, and he plans to use the technology again. “Animated visualizations of complex spatial processes are increasingly easy to produce and therefore increasingly common in the classroom,” he says. “This trend should be encouraged.”

His video documenting the class field trip and incorporating the visualizations can be found here: Old, Flat, and Unconsolidated: Salisbury’s Gravelly Past

Photo by Carrie Macfarlane

When Professor Jeff Byers, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, was looking for an online discussion tool for Organic Chemistry 2 (Chem 242) and Advanced General Chemistry (Chem 107), he wanted to find a tool that was student-centric.  “I did not want this to be ‘top down’ — the students get enough of me,” he says.  His students were already on Facebook, so he opened a forum there (see Middlebury Orgo Spring 2009).

Through conversations on “The Wall,” students were able to work together to answer simple questions and solve complex problems.  If they participated regularly then at the end of the semester, their quiz grade (5% of final average) was replaced with a perfect 5/5.

The students worked collaboratively, which was exactly what Professor Byers had hoped.  Advancement of science depends upon collaboration, and Professor Byers wanted the students to get plenty of practice. In addition, posting quick questions to a large pool of students, instead of bringing all inquiries to one professor, can be faster and more beneficial for everyone — including the students who take the time to answer and explain. Finally, because students can work together on complex “thought” problems, these types of problems now can be incorporated into exams.

Professor Byers estimates that about one-third of each class participated regularly.  Another one-third joined in only when they had a pressing problem, and the rest “lurked” when an exam question was posted. He was pleased with these results, and he will use the technique again.

Photo by JoAnn Brewer

Sixteen faculty and staff members from across the College presented their work at the first-ever Pedagogy and Technology Fair on Thursday June 4, 2009, in the Harmon Reading Area of the Main Library.