Antonio Arce, Academic Program Coordinator, Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies

Project Description:

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) offers a certificate for Duke students “interested in documenting their expertise and coursework focused on the region.” CIT is providing funding and consulting to enable CLACS to design and implement a process for evaluating their program with Chalk&Wire’s ePortfolio2 assessment software. By adding papers, videos and other ‘artifacts’ (examples of their learning) to a structured portfolio, students will benefit from receiving more feedback and guidance from faculty and program staff. Arce hopes that this evaluation process will help to “re-structure the certificate offerings, track student progress, and measure the impact of our curriculum and extra-curricular events on the learning outcomes of our students.”

Project start date: 12/15/2008
Funding awarded:  $2750

Victoria Szabo, Program Director, Information Science + Information Studies

Richard Lucic, Associate Department Chair and Associate Professor of the Practice, Computer Science, Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS) Curriculum Director

Project Description:

ISIS students explored handheld devices for collecting data to create annotated maps. Students investigated GPS-enabled camera technologies and tracking software to determine the best tools and practices to create maps for a remote community. They created a toolkit, with a variety of devices and documentation, and an associated website, ISISmapping.  This toolkit will be used in DukeEngage project in Muhuru Bay, Kenya in the summer of 2009. 

The ultimate goal of this project is to create information-rich maps to be used in school and community center planning, fund raising, outreach, and education, in collaborate with DukeEngage, WISER, and members of the local Kenyan community.

Victoria Szabo and Sherryl Broverman will present this project at the 2009 Educause conference.

Project start date: 12/3/2008

Funding awarded: $10,040

Giuliana Perco, Senior Lecturing Fellow, Romance Studies – Italian

Project Description:
Giuliana Perco is using Second Life to explore new ways for her Intermediate Italian students to engage with Italian language and culture. Taking advantage of the many Italian cultural resources that already exist in Second Life, she is developing in-world activities for her Italian courses in order to study how effective Second Life is for language instruction with virtual “found” materials. CIT is providing Giuliana with pedagogical consulting on the use of Second Life for language teaching and learning, as well as Second Life workshops for her and her students.

Project start date: 6/9/2008

Funding awarded: $400

Robert Duvall, Lecturer, Computer Science

Melinda Box, Instructor, Chemistry

Project Description:

Melinda Box and Anne Langley (Chemistry Librarian and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry) are working together to instruct chemistry students how to effectively find chemistry information on the internet (a chemistry scavenger hunt). They have created a video using Camtasia, a screen capture program, demonstrating how to use various online resources.  This video was used in the chemistry sections by the teaching assistants so that Anne does not have to visit all 38 lab sections to repeat the demonstration in person.  In addition, the lab sections do not have to be scheduled in a computer lab.  The video is available in Blackboard for student and teaching assistant use.

Anne says the final video is about 30 minutes long, 22 Mb in size.  She reports:

“I spent between 45 and 50 hours making a 30 minute video for the Chemical Scavenger hunt lab for General Chemistry laboratory. This includes the time I spent learning Camtasia and practicing with it. Next time it won’t take me so long cause I have had practice writing scripts, working the controls, handling the microphone etc. Steep learning curve, but then there is a plateau!”

Videos created for the second semester help present more thorough, uniform, and re-watchable instruction, which was previously presented exclusively by TAs without the help of the librarian.  Videos give students the opportunity to re-watch all or part of either presentation.

The video demonstrations have freed the instructors from having to do the exact same demonstrations for each laboratory section, while providing information that students can refer to later, and allow the instructors to provide more personalized attention to students.

Project start date: 6/18/2008

Funding awarded: $450

Constance Johnson, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing

Project description

The purpose of this project is to establish and pilot a Second Life (SL) learning environment for faculty and students in the Duke School of Nursing (DUSON). Constance Johnson and her colleagues have explored student perceptions of learning using three different environments, and built a virtual classroom structure on the DUSON’s parcel on a Duke SL Island. In addition to building a virtual classroom they have also identified, collated, and developed orientation resources and procedures that could be provided to students and faculty for DUSON in the SL community. They develop and test with the students policies and procedures that could serve as suggested ground rules for DUSON to adopt in their SL learning activities, to ensure that students are able to focus on the educational components of the activities, rather than the novelty of the application and the overwhelming social aspects of SL.

The short-term outcomes of this project are development of a DUSON infrastructure for faculty and student participation in SL, and the assistance of students from at least two different nursing specialty areas and programs with evaluation and tailoring of the infrastructure.

The expected long-term outcomes of this project are facilitated participation of faculty and students from across DUSON, the University, and DUSON’s practice, service, and educational partners, in innovative, 3D learning activities.

Students’ positive feedback and comments in a recent evaluation have proved value of virtual environments: promotes distance education, allows simulation of scenarios, real time interaction between students and professor, interactive with 3 spaces, and self-directed study.  Future directions: to build autopsy rooms and simulation labs.

Watch the YouTube video below to see Dr. Johnson and her students use of virtual world Second Life as a teaching and learning tool:

Project start date: 6/16/2008
Funding awarded: $2,000

Additional information

There is a short overview on the Duke School of Nursing’s website about the work Constance Johnson is doing in Second Life.

Lucy Haagen, Lecturer, Program in Education

Project Background

In Spring 2008, Lucy Haagen, Visiting Lecturer in the Program in Education, used mobile phones to develop learning communities connecting Duke students with Durham high school students and mobile-learning resources. Haagen and the students used mobile phones both as traditional devices (i.e., as phones) and as capturing (for example, to record audio essays) and advanced communication (podcast broadcasting) devices. Based on the initial success of this program, CIT provided resources for Haagen to use mobile phones to facilitate ESL service-learning activities with DukeEngage in Vietnam during Summer 2008. Using the multimedia capabilities of the phones, Duke students used mobile phones as communication, documentation and instructional tools to enhance their work as English teachers in two villages outside Hanoi.

About the technology

Haagen’s project used Nokia N 72 handsets. Many mobile phone brands can be purchases as ‘unlocked’ and/or ‘international’ – meaning they’re not tied to specific carrier, and can be used in foreign countries by purchasing a ‘pay as you go’ SIM card after arriving in the destination country. In contrast to the US, where calls and text messages are most often charged to both callers and receivers, receivers of calls and text messages are not charged in Vietnam and many other Asian countries. Increasingly, even affordable mobile phones are equipped with cameras (still and video), voice recorders and messaging systems that don’t require internet connectivity.

Teaching strategies

1- Mobile phones as portable documenting tools

Multimedia-capable phones often include cameras that can take photos or even capture video. Built-in microphones can capture and record audio as well. Depending on the type of phone, these files can be shared between phones or downloaded onto a computer later. Some phones even include software for editing audio and video within the device itself. For ESL activities, audio/video recording is especially helpful, as students can record themselves trying phrases, and immediately listen to and/or view the results. In Haagen’s proejct, for example, one student created an audio diary by recording messages to a close friend. Other students used the mobile phones’ cameras along with audio narration to document various aspects of the culture.

2- Mobile phones to create ad-hoc networks

Mobile phones that are enabled to send and receive text messages can be used to communicate between smaller groups to arrange meetings, or even accept answers to short quiz questions. The cost of text messaging (SMS) in many foreign countries is far less than the cost of messaging in the US. Faculty Director on the Vietnam project, Erik Harms, used text messaging on a week-long field trip where students were trusted to explore on their own as long as they met up at appointed times and places. Program Assistant Duc Ho used text messaging to run an ad-hoc “admissions office” for one of the projects involving a 3-week English class for gifted high school students. Faced with more applicants than available spaces, Duc used text messaging to manage a waiting list and communicate with applicants as information became available.

3- Mobile phones as teaching devices

Throughout rural Vietnam, electricity is rationed. In summer, electricity rations (about 10 hours/day) are reserved for lighting and for running electrical fans at night – crucial to sleeping in a tropical climate without air conditioning. With power in such short supply, mobile phones took the place of laptops as presentation tools. English lessons were enhanced as small groups of students crowded around the instructor’s mobile phone, viewing pictures and listening to downloaded American songs and podcasts.

4- Mobile phones and teacher workshops

Haagen used her mobile phone to capture images, video and audio connected with English teaching in Hanoi and the two villages. With assistance from staff in Hanoi University’s new media lab (a gift from the New School (NY, NY), she used Apple i-DVD to create interactive DVDs. These DVDs were then used in a series of teacher workshops funded by the US Embassy in Hanoi.

Project start date: 5/07/2008
Funding awarded: $5,630

Alexandra Cooper, Associate Director, Education and Training, Social Science Research Institute
Lorna Hicks, Associate Director, Office of Research Support

Project Description:

As Duke works to ensure that its students develop into active learners and involved citizens, an
increasing number of undergraduates will undertake independent research.  Mentoring these apprentice
investigators, while worthwhile and rewarding, will increase demands on Duke faculty.  Engaging students as competent and ethically aware researchers is necessarily time-intensive, as students require careful and ongoing advice to effectively plan, implement, and complete research.

With this in mind, this project will develop a series of multimedia modules to aid faculty in efforts to educate students about ethical conduct in researching human subjects. Several modules will be tailored to meet needs as identified by faculty, such as: cultural sensitivity, private versus public information, subject rights, risks and information consent, and vulnerable subjects. The modules will also emphasize the global reach of students’ activities and draw attention to the need to craft research protocols so that they are appropriate for the particular cultural context in which they will be undertaken.

Project start date: 4/21/2008
Funding awarded: $$19,860

Merrill Shatzman; Associate Professor of the Practice; Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies

Project Description:

Merrill Shatzman is in the early stages of creating a new course, “Personal Geographics: Mapping Self Identity”, that will be taught in Spring or Fall 2009. The course, based on traditional printmaking techniques, will focus on combining digital techniques with printmaking and involve faculty from other science and social science disciplines to encourage students to consider new ways that data visualization and mapping are used in personal inquiry and expression.

CIT Strategic Grant funding has been awarded to Shatzman to assist with development of the course. The funding will be used for a student assistant and other expenses to help Shatzman learn more advanced methods with digital graphics tools such as Photoshop and InDesign and to develop help materials, such as short video screen captures, that can be used for reference by students as they use computer graphics and visualization tools in conjunction with more traditional printmaking techniques.

Project start date: 5/22/2008
Funding awarded: $1,800

Alma Blount, Director, Hart Leadership Program, Sanford Institute of Public Policy

Project Description

The Hart Leadership Program, directed by Alma Blount, is exploring different methods of assessment for their program.  The goals of this exploration include the following:

•    overall student work (yielded by improved and standardized assessment methods using rubrics and assessment technologies)
•    student engagement (measured by assessment technologies and past student ratings)
•    student and program exposure via eportfolio publishing and public press

Currently, program faculty and staff have chosen to use eportfolios as a means towards creating a standardized programmatic assessment by generating standard rubrics to assess writing samples (reflective pieces and full papers), along with a completed eportfolio presentation (public webpages generated by the students’ work).  The program has decided to use Chalk&Wire’s ePortfolio2 product to meet the aforementioned goals.

Project Started: Dec 2007
Funding: $4300