Project Description

Julie Reynolds and her colleagues Paula Lemons and Ahrash Bissell are developing a methodology for designing valid and reliable, discipline-specific, critical-thinking questions and grading rubrics that simultaneously measure student’s content knowledge and specific critical-thinking skills (e.g., application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). Using this methodology, they are generating questions and grading rubrics, and beginning to use these questions to gather data on student learning of both content and critical-thinking skills.

To share their work and allow others to contribute, they are looking for a web-based tool that can manage this type of collaborative assessment design and modification. This grant funded an assistant to assess web sites that might be suitable for a critical thinking assignment repository. The ultimate goal is to find an appropriate on-line tool to build a scholarly community around critical thinking assignments and rubrics for grading. Criteria used to assess websites:

1. free
2. user friendly
3. contains a downloadable database of critical-thinking assignments related to the teaching of biology
4. allows for collaborative writing of critical thinking assignments
5. claims to measure critical thinking in student responses
6. actually can measure critical thinking in student responses

Of the 13 software or websites assessed, none met the criteria. Investigated software/websites included: CPR, FLAG CDT, LE3, InsightAssessment, CornellCT, 2Mpower, SmartPrim, Theseus, Trackstar, DevelopingCTSkills, Critical Thinking Co, Writeboard, and CLAQWA.

The assistant suggested designing a new system to meet the needs of the project.

Project Started: August 20, 2007
Funding: $2000

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Project Description

In Gereffi’s Marketing and Management capstone course, undergraduate students collect and analyze data involving several key North Carolina industries, helping Gereffi and his team (the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness) create visualizations like value chains and maps for the public and highly-visible North Carolina and the Global Economy website.

CIT is providing funding and support to help Gereffi and his team develop interactive representations of value chains using tools like Flash, and to explore the use of mapping tools like Google Earth to rethink the way industry data can be presented visually in a more global context. The resulting developments will in turn create more and varied projects for undergraduate students in Gereffi’s capstone course.

Project Started: May 4, 2007
Funding: $11,000

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Project Description

CIT is providing Trudi Abel with funding and student support to create and integrate several historical maps of Durham into a set of Google Earth files that will increase the integration of real-world research into her courses. Additional development will be done on Google Earth files to prepare them for students to add audio pieces (collected via iPods, many of which have already been created as a result of a DDI project) and create geotagged photography with standard GPS equipment, digital cameras, and geotagging software.

Abel also plans to incorporate the resulting developments into the Digital Durham website/project, Ultimately, Abel would like to see several old maps of Durham (including several fire maps) located in Google Earth and presented in a timeline/tour to illustrate the changes/changing of Durham. For more on Digital Durham, see this Duke article.

Project Started: May 4, 2007
Funding: $1650

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Project description

This project will support the development and exploration of teaching and learning in Second Life. Objects are being developed and explored during the summer for use in Fall courses. In the Fall, Second Life will be used in Focus 99.09: Special Topics in Focus: Virtual Realities. Students will explore the tool to build a gallery environment consisting of work done in the four courses of the cluster. In the course of this project, the value of Second Life as a teaching and learning tool will be assessing in three specific areas:

• Second Life’s effectiveness as a project display medium
• Second Life’s value as a hands-on exploration of metaverses and virtual worlds
• Second Life’s as agent for collaborative work among students.

The Second Life environment for the class will be demonstrated to the Parent and Students Weekend fair in the Bryan Center and available as a semi-permanent gallery space for others to visit when the semester ends. Second Life will continue to be explored in several courses during Spring 2008.

Project start date: 5/4/2007
Funding awarded: $ 2,500

More information:

Focus Cluster on Virtual Realities

Course descriptions

Project wiki

Second Life at Duke

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Project description

To introduce authentic research methods and give students practice in research, students in the Methods Primate Field Ecology course will use a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit and accelerometer unit to track primates at the Duke University Lemur Center. The data will be collected and analyzed, and students will producing visual representation of time and space occupation of wild animals.   Current technology is being developed to be able to track the lemurs using collars to record position and acceleration.  When results are obtained, students will present the project both at Duke University and professional meetings.

The research experience will continue benefit the students, as they are gaining first hand experience in the challenges of field work and cutting edge technology.  When the visualizations are complete, they will encourage other students to participate in research experiences.

Project start date: 5/4/2007
Funding awarded: $3,200

The Center for Instructional Technology Web site has more information about visualizations and Google earth

Duke University Lemur Center

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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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