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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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

Teaching a Freshman Focus course for the first time, Amy Laura Hall received a CIT Course Design Grant to design class activities that would introduce the students to collaboratively researching and analyzing images and would allow her to integrate her research with teaching.

Students in the course investigate the development of views about ethics and science and how they are reflected in popular culture. Hall wanted students to learn how to research and analyze images from magazines, advertisements and other sources and wanted students to share images for class discussions and use in papers and other projects. Hall explored how she could best organize and present the student images and projects using blog, wiki and discussion board tools in Blackboard, and located resources students could use through the Library to find and scan images.

Hall had mixed results in using Blackboard for the activities, since the software is not designed for easily sharing and sorting images for student use. She continued refining the syllabus and activities, eliminating aspects of the course where the students assembled metadata concerning the images and the redesigned course was taught in Fall 2007.

Project start date: 4/2006
Funding awarded: $5,000

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Project Description

As part of the CIT’S Spring 2006 Fellows program designed for faculty teaching large classes, Dr. Queen Utley-Smith wished to be more creative in her use of teaching strategies to keep her students interested and engaged.

In the program, Utley-Smith 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 use Blackboard’s blogs in her Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (N502) class for guided student reflections. She also used “opinion polls” to determine student attitudes about health promotion and to then use their responses as a starting point for facilitated discussion, which worked well for her.

She reported that some strategies she applied to her N502 course were successful in keeping her students interested and engaged and she would be certain to use in the future a number of ideas that were presented during the Fellows program.

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

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Project Description

As part of the CIT’S Spring 2006 Fellows program designed for faculty teaching large classes, Kathryn Trotter particularly searched for ways to keep learning as interactive as possible in her classes. By working to provide multiple ways to learn the content (visual, audio, progressive recall, case scenarios with discussion threading), she hoped her students would all complete the course with adequate content knowledge to both become practicing clinicians in women’s and men’s reproductive health, as well as pass their certification exam.

In the program, Trotter 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 used individual blogs to allow the students to write their weekly personal clinical journal. This served the requirement to keep a log, and also allowed the students and the instructor to read the blogs, and offer support and clarification to the individuals. The students liked the variety of perspectives as well as clinical case scenarios provided by the blogs.

In the blogs, the students discussed how they felt, how they measured their own progress, what they liked and didn’t like, without being graded. Trotter was able to pick up on site issues, such as preceptor difficulties, and types of patients seen, which her School uses to determine appropriate sites to use in future.

Trotter also found it simple and helpful to use Blackboard’s survey tool to gather feedback about the value of students’ on-campus experiences in this distance education course.

Trotter reported that the methods she explored were successful in helping her interact with her students, engaging her students, and giving them a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

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

Additional Information
An article about Trotter’s and Dr. Jane Blood-Siegfried’s experience using Blogs, in the Inside, the Duke University Medical Center and Health System Employee Newsletter.

A poster presented by Trotter at the CIT Showcase 2006

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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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Project description

Reeves 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.

Reeves explored the use of the Blackboard discussion board to obtain student feedback about their learning in the class and for student engagement. Group presentations where students explained how and why specific advertisements were effective, and team activities in which students investigated ethical issues in marketing and advertising products in specific industries. Reeves reported that the activities were successful and she would use similar activities in future classes.

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

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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

Mazumdar created a rich set of course materials, including images and film clips, to complement the lectures and readings for the courses (History 172B, China and the West, and History 172C, China from Antiquity to 1400). The project also explored evaluation tools as a method to gauge student background knowledge about China at the beginning of the course, how much they learned during the semester, and ways in which the course affected their perceptions of China at the end.

Project start date: 05/01/04
Funding awarded: $1,250

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Project Description

Gold received funding to explore Blackboard as a means to improve access to materials and increase student participation in her course Sociology 164: Death and Dying. Using group features in Blackboard, students accessed different sets of readings based on their exposure and interests, making the course material more meaningful. Blackboard discussion boards were used to encourage student participation, while timely feedback was generated via a class service journal assignment.

Project Start Date: 05/01/04
Funding awarded: $1250

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