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

As a fellow in CIT’s Flexible Learning Spaces Fellowship (2008), Susan Wynn participated in meetings, mini-workshops, and other fellowship activities centered around the concept of ‘flexible learning‘ – specifically focused on the uses of the technology and space arrangements made possible by Duke’s new teaching and learning space, the Link.

Course overview

During Fall 2008, Wynn co-taught EDU 214 (”Society, Schools and Technology”) with Hugh Crumley in Link Classroom 3. The course was designed for undergraduate students enrolled in the Secondary Teacher Preparation Program and for graduate students enrolled in the Masters of Arts in Teaching. Wynn and Crumley created course goals based on the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) and Performance Indicators for Teachers. Students need to demonstrate proficiency in these standards as a requirement when earning their North Carolina teaching license.

The core goals of the course were to prepare students to:

• be able to design lesson plans that demonstrate “best practices” in teaching
• use technology to support student learning
• explore technology applications typically not utilized in a high school classroom setting

Uses of technology and flexible learning spaces

Wynn’s and Crumley’s plans for using the Link’s technology and spaces included:

• using classroom technologies to teach basic HTML skills
• enabling students to create presentation files
• demonstrating uses of interactive technologies to support instruction in each student’s discipline (including Web2.0 resources)
• developing and refining an electronic portfolio (eportfolio) centered on a ‘teaching with technology’ statement
• script, storyboard, film and edit a digital story
• explore other teaching tools, such as wikis, blogs, digital images, etc

Creating digital stories

In the following video, Susan Wynn talks about class activities.

Learning about Flip cameras and YouTube

In this video, Hugh Crumley shows students how to use Flip cameras, then sends them out into the Link’s open spaces to film introductions.

Using FlipCams, students produced short video interviews and pieces that showed artworks around campus, asking questions that centered around how important art is at the university, potential spaces for artworks and how students in the campus community create and experience art.

The videos were uploaded to a public blog for the course; most of the student videos can be seen in the November postings of the blog.

ARTSVIS 54 Blog:  http://artsvis54.blogspot.com/

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

Students in the new course “Preparing the Portfolio for Preliminary Certification” author and publish web based electronic portfolios. This course supports an innovation in the history department’s approach to preliminary certification of PhD candidates. In place of the conventional written or oral exam, students are required to submit portfolios of work that display the student’s engagement with their three or four fields of specialization as well as their teaching expertise; the portfolio is modeled on the tenure dossier. This course is optional in this, its first year, but it will be required of all graduate students in either their second or third year. The objectives for the course are for students to:

• learn how to write a dissertation prospectus and/or grant proposal
• learn how to revise papers produced in classes and independent studies for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
• learn how to display their work in a web-based portfolio format

A CIT consultant worked closely with Thorne to develop a portfolio template and to provide training for students in web authoring.

Project start date: 5/10/2006
Funding awarded: $5,000