Project description

This project will develop series of short video lectures taped via a desk-top, Flip-video on a tiny tripod. A “Video Workbook” will be created for the N220: Nursing Care of the Childbearing Family, upon finishing all recordings.

These recordings will be uploaded to Blackboard, iTunes U, or other media for students to view and download to their iPods. Students will receive a designed workbook with objectives, lecture highlights and worksheets and directed to the lectures which will be numbered on Bb, iTunes U, or other media. Students then can load the lecture on a video iPod for mobile studying, or view the lecture online. This will accompany the regular course materials. But instead of the course coordinator lecturing via PP slides, class room time can be spent processing critical nursing content as it relates to nursing care of the childbearing family.

Helen Gordon foresees how the project makes different: “I spend HOURS lecturing on small segments of content that consume valuable class time. Now students will spend this time, hearing me and seeing me via video mini-lectures. They will have the satisfaction of receiving the content they want….and I will have the class time back to focus on nursing actions of the material… This format will appeal to the audio learning styles of many of the students. The organization and creation of the workbook will be a key shift in how I have taught this before.”

By the end of the summer 2008 semester, Helen Gordon will randomly select about 7 representative students from her over 60 students to form a focus group for evaluating the project.

Project start date: 2/1/2008
Funding awarded: $ 500

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Project Description

Cary Moskovitz has been using the concept of “think aloud” responses in his writing courses, getting professionals in various fields at Duke to record comments and feedback on student papers. Students gain valuable insight from a reader familiar with the subject area of the paper and gain a better sense of ownership of their writing in a “real world” situation.

To build on the success of this approach in his own courses, Moskovitz is now cooperating with the Duke Alumni Association to introduce this method into Writing in the Disciplines courses, by locating Duke alumni residing around the United States to serve as readers in three classes in Economics, History and Chemistry in Spring 2008.

During Fall 2007, Moskovitz will use CIT funding to explore the technologies which will be used to implement the full project in Spring 2008. Readers will use a webcam-assisted teleconference to virtually “meet” with their student partners, and web-based audio recording software to record a “think aloud” response on a student paper in the course. Students will be able to use the readers’ feedback to edit and improve their writing based on this professional input. The CIT is consulting on technology approaches, documentation for the volunteer readers and students, and evaluation of the project.

Project Started: 8/15/2007
Funding: $1,000 (Fall 2007)

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Project Description

For Brenda Neece’s course on Musicology, a requirement of all incoming PhD candidates in the Music Department, Neece and her students experimented with the use of small form factor Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) for field research. Neece, during her own research, used a handheld Psion in her work to take notes, dictation, keep track of sources and even make sketches as she travelled in many locations researching musical instruments. With this project, Neece introduced the students to new methods of integrating technology with field research.

The UMPC is a new form factor computer - essentially a small tablet PC - giving the students access to a full Windows Vista computer in a small package. The project allowed the CIT to gain an understanding of ways that students and faculty might use this novel new portable computer.

The CIT loaned Neece and her two students Sony UMPCs during the Fall semester. The UMPCs have a stylus and could be used much like a tablet to create quick sketches and music notation. The computer includes a built-in webcam and digital still/video camera, as well as wireless capabilities, built-in microphone and other features. The computers were pre-loaded with productivity software, such as MS Office, and Endnote for creating and using citations. The Music Department provided licenses for the music notation software Sibelius for use on the computers during the project.

Neece and her students used the UMPC’s for common tasks, such as web browsing and editing of Word documents, but focused primarily on using the devices for research.  They used library electronic resources using WiFi access, made notes using the writing input-based Windows Journal, created and edited short musical examples with the stylus in Sibelius, and used the built-in camera to take quick images of sheet music or instruments for reference.

Despite some technical problems due to the emerging nature of the UMPC platform, the reaction was positive.  “It is fantastic to have the power of a full computer in one’s pocket,” Neece said at the end of the project.  “This is exactly what I would have loved to have had when I did all of my fieldwork and library research for my doctorate instead of my little Psion.”

Project Started: 8/30/2007
Funding: $5,400

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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

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This project created video series that demonstrate a specific adult physical examination taught in N332 Physical Assessment. The various formats of the videos were integrated to online courses posted in Blackboard, to self-paced web tutorials for online learning and to video iPods for mobile learning.

This demo session of the physical examination was taught each year to about 150-200 students in N332 Physical Assessment and Diagnostic Reasoning at Duke University School of Nursing. Faculty, actors, models who were involved in this demo had to repeat the same live demo to show many different sections of students before doing a laboratory practice.

This shift to ‘in house material’ videos and the subsequent movement of the clips to iPOD has changed instructors’ teaching in a major way. Because instructors not longer have to use live demo or non Duke specific video material the content drift for the course is much reduced. It has also very significantly affected the teaching style of at least 7 faculty and their respective courses. In addition, after instructors were able to fully utilize the videos this semester, the students have been so enthusiastic that they are moving ahead with this resource and influencing and enhancing their applications.

“The huge student enthusiasm for this product has convinced me that convenience and portability is very valuable to our students…likely to others…The university could do more to support these initiatives. They are time and resource intensive to start but the payoff is very good.” Dr. Susan Denman, the project primary investigator said when she evaluated this project.

Project start date: 4/20/2006
Funding awarded: $ 3,250

Additional Information

Center for Instructional Technology showcase poster on this project

Duke University Media Services was funded by CIT for field production

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Project description

Admay participated in a Faculty Fellows group focused on teaching large classes. This fellowship group discussed a number of techniques, described in McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers and Classroom Assessment Techniques.

In the Spring 2006 Fellows program, Catherine Admay introduced multimedia materials and more effective use of Blackboard into two courses, Arts and Human Rights and a Capstone Seminar for professional graduate students. Admay surveyed the students and found that the use of images, sound and video in her course very enriching and challenging and encouraged her students to upload material. Monitoring of discussion board posts displayed a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Admay also explored the use of wikis and surveys in the Blackboard course web site.

Project start date: January 1, 2006
Funding awarded: $1,000

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Project description

In this advanced Hindi language course, Professor Satendra Khanna includes a wide variety of film and literature examples to increase student engagement with authentic language and culture. With the addition of iPods to the course, students in the course expanded their contact with authentic language even further by using their iPods to record weekly samples of actual Hindi in use at various South Asian diaspora sites in the Triangle. The language samples were analyzed in class to allow the incorporation of important locutions and vocabulary in student coursework. The introduction of iPod assignments allowed students to encounter the real language in real use, which required them to adapt to this Hindi-using environment rather than using language that is pre-filtered and simplified. Such exposure to Hindi in current use in the diaspora has dynamic consequences for Hindi instruction in the classroom.

Project start date: August 1, 2005

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Project Description

In this ongoing Service-learning project, students explore issues of cultural assimilation, literacy, and access to educational opportunities for the growing Latino community in the United States. They used iPods with microphone attachments to record observations from their service learning experiences. Students in this course will also be asked to listen to archived interviews with Spanish-speakers in the community, which will facilitate listening comprehension practice, provide exposure to authentic speech patterns and accents, and also disseminate content to the students outside of class.

In the Fall 2006 semester, the project involved Duke students interviewing Latino/a students and parents at Jordan High School about their experiences within Durham Public Schools. These testimonials provided additional information to further the insights gained last year with a written survey. The video and audio components of the iPods were used in the production and editing of the interviews. Duke students also continued to use their iPods to record their own audio journals reflecting on their service at the high school.

Project start date: August 1, 2005

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Project description

Russian isn’t more difficult to study than French or Spanish, it just takes longer. Beginning Russian students face the challenge of learning about 1,000 words, most of which do not resemble any word they have heard before. These realities form the background of Prof. Van Tuyl’s project to create “Audio flash cards” to speed up and significantly strengthen students’ mastery of basic Russian vocabulary. In this project, each vocabulary word or phrase is recorded in its own audio file which students can include in their own playlists for parts of speech, words from the same chapter, or according to the student’s personal “rating” of difficulty level. Vocabulary files can also be accompanied by a relevant video file, or photo.

With their exposure to Russian no longer limited to classroom time and textbook reading, students have the ability to hear and practice the language while riding the bus, lying in bed or doing their laundry. Prof. Van Tuyl has found that, by increasing their exposure to spoken Russian with iPods and audio flashcards, students gain basic Russian lexical proficiency more quickly and with less stress than was possible before.

Project start date: August 1, 2005

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