Brenda Berlin, Supervising Attorney, Children’s Education Law Clinic, School of Law
Mark Dorosin, Supervising Attorney, Community Enterprise Clinic, School of Law
Andrew Foster, Director, Community Enterprise Clinic, School of Law
Carolyn McAllaster, Director, AIDS Legal Project, School of Law
Allison Rice, Supervising Attorney, AIDS Legal Project, School of Law
Alan Weinberg, Director, Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, School of Law
Jane Wettach, Director, Children’s Education Law Clinic, School of Law

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)

Share This

Linda Franzoni Professor of Practice, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Pratt School of Engineering
Jeffrey Forbes Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Computer Science, Arts and Sciences
Lisa Huettel Assistant Professor of the Practice, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Robert Malkin Professor of the Practice, Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Joseph Nadeau Associate Professor of the Practice, Civil Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Kathryn Nightingale Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Gary Ybarra Professor of Practice, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

Project description
During the 2006-2007 academic year, a group of faculty in Engineering investigated the use of tablet PCs in teaching, specifically to seeking to connect theoretical lecture material and practical applications that students need to be successful. The faculty hoped to build a knowledge base of best practices in teaching with tablet PCs by involving faculty teaching a variety of courses and sharing their experiences.

Faculty attended a day-long orientation with hands-on demonstrations of specialized software for teaching and sharing student responses by Dr. Beth Simon. Monthly meetings promoted successful tablet PC use, as participants discussed their experiences in the classroom, shared their experiments with different software and presentation techniques, and monitored student reactions. Students in the classes were regularly polled both formally and informally about their experiences, and these reactions were discussed. Faculty set goals for their classes, and assessed their efforts in reflective writings, which formed the basis for several presentations.

The group collaborated on a report “Transcending the Traditional:Using Tablet PCs to Enhance Engineering and Computer Science Instruction” to be presented at the Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2007. A link to the conference proceedings will be posted after the conference.

The team has identified excellent uses of tablet PCs in class, both for students and for instructors. Overall, the faculty use of tablets is a clear winner; faculty experimented with different presentation software and all like the ability to write while facing the students, to use color, and to save their notes. Even faculty members who state that they love blackboards now use a tablet PC as a presentation device. Everyone answered “positive” or “extremely positive” to questions about how the project improved teaching and student learning. When the students used tablets, there were definite gains in student engagement, and the majority of students responded positively. However, the hurdles to effective student use included logistical and technical problems that were not attributable to the tablets themselves.

An additional benefit of using tablets is that several faculty members stated that incorporating the technology encouraged them to rethink their course and their teaching objectives. Faculty indicated that they were more focused on student learning.

The fellowship group participated in a panel discussion at the Center for Instructional Technology Showcase in 2007. Watch and listen to Dr. Heuttel explain the goals of the tablet PC project. (Quicktime format)
Press release about Dr. Huettel’s course redesign: Innovative Intro Course Offers Depth, Breadth
Press release: Duke’s Pratt School Wins Second Hewlett-Packard Technology for Teaching Leadership Grant

Project start date: 8/30/2006
Funding awarded: $17,500

Share This

Queen Utley-Smith, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing

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

Share This

Kathryn Trotter, Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Nursing

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

Share This

Elizabeth Hill, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing

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

Share This

Anathea Portier-Young, Assistant Professor of Old Testament, Duke Divinity School

Project Description

Anathea Portier-Young enrolled in the CIT’s Spring 2006 Fellows program designed for faculty teaching large classes. In Fall 2006, Portier-Young was teaching the course “Old Testament Interpretation,” a core requirement of all incoming Divinity students, and she wanted to explore ways to approach learning activities and manage course logistics in a class expected to have close to 200 students.

During the Fellows program, participants were introduced to methods that could be used to enhance student learning, including approaches to lectures, group activities and grading with large courses. Portier-Young explored class activities including guided note taking to give her students a clearer picture of important topics in the course. She also tried use of a class wiki for communication and collaborative writing, and developed grading rubrics for essay assignments. In addition, Portier-Young looked at methods to improve her lectures for better student understanding and engagement.

Outcomes reported from this Fellowship included that students demonstrated better comprehension of material and more confidence in assignments with the grading rubric, and the wiki received participation from most students in the class. Portier-Young plans to streamline and improve the activities in the future.

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

Share This

J. Kameron Carter, Professor in Theology and Black Church Studies, Duke Divinity School

Project Description

As part of the CIT’s Spring 2006 Fellows program designed for faculty teaching large classes, J. Carter wished to find ways to increase student engagement in his “Christology” course and discover methods for improving basic understanding of concepts in his class.

In the program, Carter 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. Carter tried using polls to get feedback from students on class sessions and lectures so he might adapt his materials and lecture approaches for better student understanding. In addition, he developed a concept map for use in his lectures to give students a broad overview of complex historical trends they explored in the class.

Carter reported that the methods he explored were successful in engaging his students and giving them a deeper understanding of the subject matter. He hopes to continue using these techniques and expand their use in future classes.

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

Share This

Martha Reeves, Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology

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

Share This

Catherine Admay, Visiting Lecturer, Public Policy

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

Share This

Robert Malkin, Professor of the Practice, Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

Project description

Dr. Malkin 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.

Dr. Malkin’s students are required to design circuits in teams, as part of their training to be engineers in a technical, team-focused environment. His objective was to find a software tool to allow students to collaborative design a circuit, without having to be in the same physical location. He developed a set of criteria for the software.

Dr. Malkin found that the ideal piece of software did not currently exist, but tried Electronics Workbench. Most students reported some learning from the tool, but the level of frustration was high. The number of software bugs and crashes related to simulation was excessive. In general, the basic idea of group work for designing circuits is good, because students did begin to explore concepts that they had glossed over during the course. However, further experimentation will await the development of more robust software.

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

Share This