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 will create an effective molecular model of drug action to engage students and teach basic chemical and biological principles, like oxidation, enzyme action, and genetic polymorphisms. An interdisciplinary team of students in Pharmacology 197 and 198 (Research Independent Study in Science Education, Fall 2007 and Spring 2008) has selected, planned, and created a three dimensional, interactive, immersive animation of molecules interacting. In the Duke immersive Visualization Environment (DiVE), students can see and manipulate the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase as it binds to NAD+ and alcohol molecules to oxidize alcohol. Over the summer of 2008, student Marcel Yang is perfecting the model, with input from students in the Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) and LEAP (Launch into Education About Pharmacology, a science enrichment program for rising 10th & 11th grade students) program.

During the Fall of 2008, another team member, Dave McMullen, will test whether freshman chemistry student learning of basic concepts is enhanced when exposed to the interactive model either in the DiVE or on a flat screen, compared to the “textbook” style of content delivery.

When this project is completed, it will be entered into the NSF Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

photo credit:  Les Todd

Project start date: 5/4/2007
Funding awarded: $ 6,500

Additional information:

Duke University Visualization Technology Group

RISE (Raising Interest in Science Education)

Other projects by Pharmacology 150

Duke Center for Science Education

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Instead of assigning a final paper in his Organizations and Global Competitiveness course, Duke Professor Gary Gereffi has teams of students develop Web sites that analyze global industries. In a 2001 paper on Teaching Website Design in Business Classes, Gereffi explained the assignment’s goals: “integrate theory and empirical research … create, analyze and present information for a general audience (and) develop teamwork skills.” When he first gave the assignment in 2000, he never dreamed these projects might influence international policy. But they have.

Yerbol Orynbayev, a native of Kazakhstan, was a Public Policy graduate student at Duke in 2002 when he took Gereffi’s course and helped create the Vegetable Oil Industry Web site pictured below as part of an online report for Professor Gary Gereffi’s Organizations and Global Competitiveness course.

Orynbayev was so impressed with the course, that when he returned to Kazakhstan and became the country’s deputy minister for economy and budget planning, he asked Gereffi to travel to Kazakhstan during his sabbatical to help implement the country’s new economic strategy. Gereffi agreed and, as part of that work, taught a short course on industry analysis to Kazakh businessmen and government officials.

At the end of that course, the participants turned in PowerPoint presentations (similar to the Duke students’ Web sites) that analyzed various industries in Kazakhstan and proposed economic development plans. Below are two examples: Electric Power in the Oil and Gas Sector of Kazakhstan and Pipe Line Value Chain & Pipe Market Analysis.

“[Gereffi’s] class offers practical tools and instruments to use the value chain concept for real-life industry analysis,” says Orynbayev, now the CEO of the Center for Marketing and Analytical Research in Kazakhstan. “The Web site assignment is a salient example of such an instrument.”

Challenging students to create a Web site with up-to-date industry analysis “gets them into this research mode,” Gereffi says. “You’re not just absorbing material that the instructor is giving you, but you’re creating resources that can actually be useful to people.”

Support for Gereffi’s global industry Web site assignment came from Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) and a GE Foundation grant. For more examples of technology being used in the classroom at Duke, see CIT’s project examples.

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Project Description

As part of the CIT’s Spring 2006 Fellows program designed for faculty teaching large classes, Dr. Elizabeth Hill wished to find solutions on how to keep approximately 50 students with hugely varying backgrounds engaged in a course that requires understanding and applying concepts that are often new to them and can be quite complex.

In the program, Hill and the other Fellows were introduced to a wide range of methods to enhance student learning and engagement in large courses including new approaches to lectures and effective use of student feedback and groups. She tried to encourage and monitor attendance, promote active class participation in a classroom where students have full wireless access to the internet, and encourage group work and independent learning. The particular technologies she used were:

• Students were provided the link to SmartDraw: Students are required to develop timelines for their projects, and this free download gave them the opportunity to experiment with electronic versions of timelines, charts, and graphs.

• As students are required to do several group projects, she set each group up with a discussion board in Blackboard, so they could communicate and send information back and forth via Blackboard. They were also set up to use virtual classroom.

• As their final project, students will be required to do a PowerPoint presentation of their proposed health care program.

Project start date: 1/2006
Funding awarded: $1,250

Additional Information

Dr. Hill’s poster for the CIT showcase 2007

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