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

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

Project summary

Julie has found that students with very little prior knowledge of science can participate in authentic scientific research, can be trained to collect meaningful scientific data, and can develop a better understanding of ecological processes and the interconnectedness of nature through these experiences. Building on this success, she is expanding a current project to engage members of the community in an authentic scientific study. She is developing educational activities around invasive species at the Eno River State Park, and training the public to be involved in monitoring these species. She plans to include the general public as well as service groups at high schools, colleges, and in the community (such as through botanical societies) that would encourage sustained participation in scientific research.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Increase public understanding of threats to the environment and to biodiversity
2. Educate the public about the scientific method
3. Foster a sense of environmental stewardship within the community
4. Monitor the spread of invasive plant species within the state park

Visitors to the Eno River State Park will be trained to monitor invasive plants using GPS and gathering data in Google Earth. This project at the Eno River could serve as a pilot to be adopted throughout North Carolina.

See Julie’s Citizen Scientist website for more.

This project is funded by Duke Center for Science Education.

Project Description

Faculty in the Law School’s Clinical program sought to use their new facility’s video equipment to enhance clinicals and facilitate student self-evaluation as the students work with actual clients on real cases.

Students in the Law Clinics gain their first experiences with clients under the guidance of faculty. As part of this program, the students are trained in interviewing techniques and given practical legal instruction by the faculty as they work through cases. The faculty were seeking ways to use video recording of these student-client sessions to evaluate student interviewing skills, and to allow students to self-evaluate their performance.

Through a year-long Faculty Fellows program, faculty learned about using the classroom video systems in their facility, and practical ways to integrate video technologies into the student interaction observations. The Fellows met with other faculty from Duke who had used video for student performance evaluation, and had a campus visit from Larry Farmer, a Law faculty member at Brigham Young University, who has considerable experience in the use of digital video in student observations.

During the Fellowship year, faculty developed a rubric to evaluate student performance in interviews and logistics for recording material, including processes for obtaining releases from clients and access and disposal of video recordings to protect client privacy. In addition, the faculty, using local multimedia support staff, developed video examples of model client interviews used in training students in the orientation to the Clinical program.

Faculty noted improvement in interviewing skills of the students who used the rubric, and surveys of students showed that many students found the rubric helpful to examine and improve their own performance. The model video encounters created for training were helpful, allowing the faculty to use excerpts to make key points about interviewing and make the training more focused, improving on “live” model interviews done during student training in the past.

As the technology changes, the Fellows continue to explore the best ways to improve video for student performance evaluation, examining new technologies such as DVD recording and portable video recording on laptops, in addition to methods for easily marking and retrieving video segments for student discussion.

Project start date: 12/2005
Funding awarded: $19,000 (includes $2,500 stipend for each faculty member)

For an hour the students — Katie Tiedemann, Dana Edelstein and Sarah Weber — observed committee members, a city councilman and staff from the Durham Department of Housing and Community Development stumble through the meeting. The students recorded the conversation on a couple iPod devices equipped with microphone attachments.

“That was the most inefficient meeting I’ve ever been to,” Weber said after the students stepped out of the meeting.

To turn the unfocused hour into a newspaper story, each student researched the stipulations of the development grant, reviewed the notes they took during the meeting and listened to the recordings they made.

In their articles, all three homed in on comments by the same committee member. Weber recounts the scene in her paper: “‘We don’t necessarily have a prescribed goal or mission at this point,’ said committee member Aaron Cain between bites of a grilled cheese sandwich. ‘I’ve been coming since June, and it seems to me that every meeting we have a long discussion about why we’re supposed to be here, and nobody’s really sure.’”

Students in Ken Rogerson’s “Newspaper Journalism” course use their iPods to listen to examples of radio journalism and to record interviews for their own stories. Three students covered a wandering local committee meeting. Listen to a portion of the meeting.

For this “Newspaper Journalism” course, the iPods are “glorified tape recorders,” says instructor Ken Rogerson, Ph.D. But, he says, the iPods are a step up from tape recorders because the iPods allow students to more easily retrieve quotes and store their interviews. The iPods also support another assignment he gives: listening to radio segments, such as a National Public Radio show on interviewing techniques. Rogerson gets permission to distribute the segments through his class Web site. The students can then download the segments and listen to them on their iPods.

Rogerson says about two thirds of the students use their iPods as recorders for the short newspaper stories he assigns each week. Compared with previous classes that didn’t use iPods, he says, “the number of sources and variety of sources [in students’ stories] have increased, and that’s been really nice.”

Listen to a portion of the meeting.



Listen to the Cain’s remark

Project Description

William Noland redesigned his photography course in order to improve methods for introducing students with varying levels of experience to the basic concepts of documentary photography and image authenticity, and integrate the use of image manipulation tools in the course.

In Noland’s course, students learned about the history of documentary photography and applied methods learned to creating their own digital photographs; students used the images to create their own photography book using iPhoto and other tools. Noland addressed issues such as the authenticity of photographs by having students examine and discuss images, including examples from Flickr. Noland designed group activities to allow students who had taken photography courses in the past to help new students get familiar with concepts. CIT provided support by consulting on possible classroom activities, pointing to copyight and Fair Use resources, and helping plan training for the students on software used in the book project.

The redesigned course was taught in Spring 2007. Noland felt that the students were successful in the activities, including gaining a better understanding of documentary photography concepts, and that the book project was better organized [better organized than in prior semesters? better organized than it would have been if CIT hadn't been involved?] and a good learning experience for the students.

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