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

The Hart Leadership Program, directed by Alma Blount, is exploring different methods of assessment for their program.  The goals of this exploration include the following:

•    overall student work (yielded by improved and standardized assessment methods using rubrics and assessment technologies)
•    student engagement (measured by assessment technologies and past student ratings)
•    student and program exposure via eportfolio publishing and public press

Currently, program faculty and staff have chosen to use eportfolios as a means towards creating a standardized programmatic assessment by generating standard rubrics to assess writing samples (reflective pieces and full papers), along with a completed eportfolio presentation (public webpages generated by the students’ work).  The program has decided to use Chalk&Wire’s ePortfolio2 product to meet the aforementioned goals.

Project Started: Dec 2007
Funding: $4300

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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

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

Portier-Young applied to the CIT for funding to adapt a publicly available 3D model of the ancient Israelite Tabernacle and Temple for for viewing in the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE), by students in her course “Introduction to Old Testament Interpretation.” Portier-Young wanted students to better understand the design of the site and its use in worship activities by seeing the site on a full scale “virtual” tour.

The Virtual Tabernacle is a model of a key worship site used by the ancient Israelites; the model allows the user to see the layout of the site and explore it as a “walkthrough.” Since there is only minimal evidence in original texts about the site’s layout and construction, the model provided a starting point for discussions about interpretation of Old Testament texts.

Student assistants working with the DiVE director adapted the existing 3D model for the display equipment in the facility. In addition, funding was provided for a student assistant to handle the logistics of testing the model and taking the 170 students in the course on the tour in small groups.

All of the students in Portier-Young’s class viewed the tour and several faculty from the Divinity School examined the model to consider using it in their own courses. Portier-Young developed a survey instrument for individuals who viewed the model. The survey results indicated that the students felt the model increased their comprehension of the ancient site and how it was used; viewing the model in an immersive environment allowed the students to see the actual scale of the site and gain a deeper understanding of the site’s components and explore open questions about how worship would have been conducted, based on evidence in the Old Testament texts.

Project start date: 1/25/2007
Funding awarded: $3,325

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Project description

The goal of this project was to create several sections of an online open-access textbook for Multivariate Calculus. Undergraduates helped write exercises for a chapter on integration, to improve these exercises and make them more accessible to students. This project additionally provided the instructor with insight into student difficulties with multivariate calculus, improving teaching. Beyond this project, the ultimate goal is to create a freely available, accessible and downloadable textbook so that this resource can be shared widely and improved by multiple authors.

Project start date: July 14, 2006
Funding awarded: $2,500

Additional Information

Dr. Bray’s course information and additional teaching resources

Center for Instructional Technology showcase poster on this project

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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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Project Description

For the course “Introduction to Old Testament Interpretation,” Portier-Young proposed technology based activities to enhance student learning in this core course (enrollment 170), required for all incoming Divinity students. She wished to create a Blackboard-based group activity for students to collaboratively write about course topics, and to digitize a set of images for use in course materials and lectures. In addition, she wished to explore use of a personal response system in class lectures and use the DiVE visualization facility to view Old Testament-related locations.

Portier-Young sucessfully arranged the installation of a PRS in her classroom with coordination between the CIT, A&SIST and her local support staff. Her teaching assistants, with training from the CIT, successfully managed a group activity in which student groups collaboratively authored wiki pages about course topics that could be shared with and expanded by future classes.

Due to time constraints, image digitization was postponed, but the CIT researched several possible 3D models that could be viewed in the DiVE and Portier-Young learned about the facility and the process for converting models for viewing in the DiVE.

Portier-Young reported that the use of the PRS and wiki activity as successful. Encouraged by the potential of viewing 3D models in the DiVE, she submitted a follow-up Jump Start grant request to fully fund conversion of a model for the DiVE and its use in her class.
Project start date: 5/24/2006
Funding awarded: $0

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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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