Caroline Bruzelius and faculty colleagues Mark Olson, Rachael Brady, Raquel Salvatella de Prada, and Sheila Dillon have developed a new gateway course, “Wired!”, that will integrate new technologies into the teaching of historical disciplines to prepare advanced undergraduates and graduate students to actively engage with and create new media in their scholarly work.  Students in the course will collaborate with faculty at Duke in Computer Science, Engineering and historical disciplines, as well as staff at the Nasher Museum and partners at an archaeological site in Italy to create projects that integrate scholarly research with multimedia documentation and presentation of their work.  The course will be taught for the first time in Spring 2009, with plans to make the course a regular part of the Visual Studies curriculum.

As part of the Strategic Initiative grants program, the Center for Instructional Technology is providing funding to purchase licenses for Strata Foto 3d software for use in the course.  In addition, the CIT is loaning the instructors a professional level SLR digital camera for the class.

Project start date:  1/12/2009

Funding awarded: $1,826

Project description
During the 2006-2007 academic year, a group of faculty in Engineering investigated the use of tablet PCs in teaching, specifically to seeking to connect theoretical lecture material and practical applications that students need to be successful. The faculty hoped to build a knowledge base of best practices in teaching with tablet PCs by involving faculty teaching a variety of courses and sharing their experiences.

Faculty attended a day-long orientation with hands-on demonstrations of specialized software for teaching and sharing student responses by Dr. Beth Simon. Monthly meetings promoted successful tablet PC use, as participants discussed their experiences in the classroom, shared their experiments with different software and presentation techniques, and monitored student reactions. Students in the classes were regularly polled both formally and informally about their experiences, and these reactions were discussed. Faculty set goals for their classes, and assessed their efforts in reflective writings, which formed the basis for several presentations.

The group collaborated on a report “Transcending the Traditional: Using Tablet PCs to Enhance Engineering and Computer Science Instruction” to be presented at the Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2007. A link to the conference proceedings will be posted after the conference.

The team has identified excellent uses of tablet PCs in class, both for students and for instructors. Overall, the faculty use of tablets is a clear winner; faculty experimented with different presentation software and all like the ability to write while facing the students, to use color, and to save their notes. Even faculty members who state that they love blackboards now use a tablet PC as a presentation device. Everyone answered “positive” or “extremely positive” to questions about how the project improved teaching and student learning. When the students used tablets, there were definite gains in student engagement, and the majority of students responded positively. However, the hurdles to effective student use included logistical and technical problems that were not attributable to the tablets themselves.

An additional benefit of using tablets is that several faculty members stated that incorporating the technology encouraged them to rethink their course and their teaching objectives. Faculty indicated that they were more focused on student learning.

The fellowship group participated in a panel discussion at the Center for Instructional Technology Showcase in 2007. Watch and listen to Dr. Huettel explain the goals of the tablet PC project. (Quicktime format)
Press release about Dr. Huettel’s course redesign: Innovative Intro Course Offers Depth, Breadth
Press release: Duke’s Pratt School Wins Second Hewlett-Packard Technology for Teaching Leadership Grant

Project start date: 8/30/2006
Funding awarded: $17,500

Project description

This project adapted AudioScrobbler to build a Duke Scrobbler site and associated Java client. This site enables to users to track their music listening habits and to find other users with similar tastes and habits. Users will be able to see neighbors, experiment with different collaborative filtering algorithms, and view statistics on listening history.

DukeScrobbler was used to conduct a workshop on social networks and computer science as part of an outreach program to high school teachers. It is part of a developing project that will use social networks and the science of networks in general as a lever to introduce computer science. DukeScrobbler is used in Computer Science 1 (Principles of Computer Science).

Project start date: 6/15/2006
Funding awarded: $1,000

Center for Instructional Technology Poster