Project Description:

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) offers a certificate for Duke students “interested in documenting their expertise and coursework focused on the region.” CIT is providing funding and consulting to enable CLACS to design and implement a process for evaluating their program with Chalk&Wire’s ePortfolio2 assessment software. By adding papers, videos and other ‘artifacts’ (examples of their learning) to a structured portfolio, students will benefit from receiving more feedback and guidance from faculty and program staff. Arce hopes that this evaluation process will help to “re-structure the certificate offerings, track student progress, and measure the impact of our curriculum and extra-curricular events on the learning outcomes of our students.”

Project start date: 12/15/2008
Funding awarded:  $2750

Project Description:

Currently, archiving of dance performance for study by students is done on an ad-hoc basis with limited impact.  While video has been used to some extent, a two dimensional representation of dance has limited value when multiple performers are involved or when the views recorded do not provide essential information for students to study certain types of movement.

This project will create the initial stage of a prototype archive of basic ballet vocabulary using 3-D dance recording and archiving.  RFID tags, accelerometers, infrared emitters, and stereo video are among the technologies that will be explored for recording.  The use of virtual reality environments for archive access will be investigated, along with conversion to formal dance notation.

Tyler Walters, using advanced students in Dance at Duke, will collaborate with undergraduate students of Martin Brooke in the ECE undergraduate project class ECE 51, where the students will assemble the basic technologies for capturing and generating the dance data.  The initial prototype of the archive, first using video and later 3d representations, will be used as a teaching aid for Ballet Fundamentals, Ballet I, and Ballet II.

The Center for Instructional Technology is providing funding for the project in addition to loaning four high definition hard drive camcorders that will be used in the dance data capture process.

Project start date: 1/12/2009

Funding awarded:  $6,300

Caroline Bruzelius and faculty colleagues Mark Olson, Rachael Brady, Raquel Salvatella de Prada, and Sheila Dillon have developed a new gateway course, “Wired!”, that will integrate new technologies into the teaching of historical disciplines to prepare advanced undergraduates and graduate students to actively engage with and create new media in their scholarly work.  Students in the course will collaborate with faculty at Duke in Computer Science, Engineering and historical disciplines, as well as staff at the Nasher Museum and partners at an archaeological site in Italy to create projects that integrate scholarly research with multimedia documentation and presentation of their work.  The course will be taught for the first time in Spring 2009, with plans to make the course a regular part of the Visual Studies curriculum.

As part of the Strategic Initiative grants program, the Center for Instructional Technology is providing funding to purchase licenses for Strata Foto 3d software for use in the course.  In addition, the CIT is loaning the instructors a professional level SLR digital camera for the class.

Project start date:  1/12/2009

Funding awarded: $1,826

Richard Lucic, Associate Department Chair and Associate Professor of the Practice, Computer Science, Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS) Curriculum Director

Project Description:

ISIS students explored handheld devices for collecting data to create annotated maps. Students investigated GPS-enabled camera technologies and tracking software to determine the best tools and practices to create maps for a remote community. They created a toolkit, with a variety of devices and documentation, and an associated website, ISISmapping.  This toolkit will be used in DukeEngage project in Muhuru Bay, Kenya in the summer of 2009. 

The ultimate goal of this project is to create information-rich maps to be used in school and community center planning, fund raising, outreach, and education, in collaborate with DukeEngage, WISER, and members of the local Kenyan community.

Victoria Szabo and Sherryl Broverman will present this project at the 2009 Educause conference.

Project start date: 12/3/2008

Funding awarded: $10,040

Project Background

In Spring 2008, Lucy Haagen, Visiting Lecturer in the Program in Education, used mobile phones to develop learning communities connecting Duke students with Durham high school students and mobile-learning resources. Haagen and the students used mobile phones both as traditional devices (i.e., as phones) and as capturing (for example, to record audio essays) and advanced communication (podcast broadcasting) devices. Based on the initial success of this program, CIT provided resources for Haagen to use mobile phones to facilitate ESL service-learning activities with DukeEngage in Vietnam during Summer 2008. Using the multimedia capabilities of the phones, Duke students used mobile phones as communication, documentation and instructional tools to enhance their work as English teachers in two villages outside Hanoi.

About the technology

Haagen’s project used Nokia N 72 handsets. Many mobile phone brands can be purchases as ‘unlocked’ and/or ‘international’ – meaning they’re not tied to specific carrier, and can be used in foreign countries by purchasing a ‘pay as you go’ SIM card after arriving in the destination country. In contrast to the US, where calls and text messages are most often charged to both callers and receivers, receivers of calls and text messages are not charged in Vietnam and many other Asian countries. Increasingly, even affordable mobile phones are equipped with cameras (still and video), voice recorders and messaging systems that don’t require internet connectivity.

Teaching strategies

1- Mobile phones as portable documenting tools

Multimedia-capable phones often include cameras that can take photos or even capture video. Built-in microphones can capture and record audio as well. Depending on the type of phone, these files can be shared between phones or downloaded onto a computer later. Some phones even include software for editing audio and video within the device itself. For ESL activities, audio/video recording is especially helpful, as students can record themselves trying phrases, and immediately listen to and/or view the results. In Haagen’s proejct, for example, one student created an audio diary by recording messages to a close friend. Other students used the mobile phones’ cameras along with audio narration to document various aspects of the culture.

2- Mobile phones to create ad-hoc networks

Mobile phones that are enabled to send and receive text messages can be used to communicate between smaller groups to arrange meetings, or even accept answers to short quiz questions. The cost of text messaging (SMS) in many foreign countries is far less than the cost of messaging in the US. Faculty Director on the Vietnam project, Erik Harms, used text messaging on a week-long field trip where students were trusted to explore on their own as long as they met up at appointed times and places. Program Assistant Duc Ho used text messaging to run an ad-hoc “admissions office” for one of the projects involving a 3-week English class for gifted high school students. Faced with more applicants than available spaces, Duc used text messaging to manage a waiting list and communicate with applicants as information became available.

3- Mobile phones as teaching devices

Throughout rural Vietnam, electricity is rationed. In summer, electricity rations (about 10 hours/day) are reserved for lighting and for running electrical fans at night – crucial to sleeping in a tropical climate without air conditioning. With power in such short supply, mobile phones took the place of laptops as presentation tools. English lessons were enhanced as small groups of students crowded around the instructor’s mobile phone, viewing pictures and listening to downloaded American songs and podcasts.

4- Mobile phones and teacher workshops

Haagen used her mobile phone to capture images, video and audio connected with English teaching in Hanoi and the two villages. With assistance from staff in Hanoi University’s new media lab (a gift from the New School (NY, NY), she used Apple i-DVD to create interactive DVDs. These DVDs were then used in a series of teacher workshops funded by the US Embassy in Hanoi.

Project start date: 5/07/2008
Funding awarded: $5,630

As Duke works to ensure that its students develop into active learners and involved citizens, an
increasing number of undergraduates will undertake independent research.  Mentoring these apprentice
investigators, while worthwhile and rewarding, will increase demands on Duke faculty.  Engaging students as competent and ethically aware researchers is necessarily time-intensive, as students require careful and ongoing advice to effectively plan, implement, and complete research.

With this in mind, this project will develop a series of multimedia modules to aid faculty in efforts to educate students about ethical conduct in researching human subjects. Several modules will be tailored to meet needs as identified by faculty, such as: cultural sensitivity, private versus public information, subject rights, risks and information consent, and vulnerable subjects. The modules will also emphasize the global reach of students’ activities and draw attention to the need to craft research protocols so that they are appropriate for the particular cultural context in which they will be undertaken.

Project start date: 4/21/2008
Funding awarded: $$19,860

Project description

This project will provide geographically dispersed online Duke nursing informatics graduate students with collaborative tools that will help them acquire, critique, summarize, and disseminate available HIT studies and evidence reports. Linda Goodwin will utilize informatics experts, mobile technologies, and remote (virtual) teamwork that enable both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration to compile HIT evaluation resources, critique them for level of evidence, and make them available to a world-wide audience. The project will be focused on immersing students, both Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program and Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) in real-world informatics issues and projects in health care.

Linda Goodwin and her students will experiment with different types of mobile tools and web-based citation tools, explore whether mobile technologies that permit student access to synchronous teamwork tools from anywhere they can gain wireless Internet access will improve both the process and the products of remote online teamwork.

Project start date: 6/2/2008
Funding awarded: $7,500

Project Description:

Merrill Shatzman is in the early stages of creating a new course, “Personal Geographics: Mapping Self Identity”, that will be taught in Spring or Fall 2009. The course, based on traditional printmaking techniques, will focus on combining digital techniques with printmaking and involve faculty from other science and social science disciplines to encourage students to consider new ways that data visualization and mapping are used in personal inquiry and expression.

CIT Strategic Grant funding has been awarded to Shatzman to assist with development of the course. The funding will be used for a student assistant and other expenses to help Shatzman learn more advanced methods with digital graphics tools such as Photoshop and InDesign and to develop help materials, such as short video screen captures, that can be used for reference by students as they use computer graphics and visualization tools in conjunction with more traditional printmaking techniques.

Project start date: 5/22/2008
Funding awarded: $1,800

Project Description:

Vicki Russell, Director of the Duke University Writing Studio, is investigating innovative ways that tutors can work with students on writing assignments, and students can collaborate on writing projects. Russell, using 3d virtual worlds software, has created a virtual Writing Studio – an online, 3d “space” where students, faculty and writing tutors can collaborate in real time.

The goals of the project are to use the extensive resources for writers available on the Writing Studio Web site as a foundation for creating an interactive virtual learning environment, demonstrating for writers that writing is a dynamic rather than static process. Allowing access to these resources during a tutoring session with students in a real-time virtual environment will provide interactive ways to facilitate writing as recursive rather than linear process. In addition, by creating a virtual environment space for collaborative writing that is expandable and reproducible for other units at Duke, the project will focus on helping writers improve individual written texts and become more self-reflective better writers and provide faculty with tools to help their students become more effective writers and critical thinkers.

Promoting a larger “culture of writing” on the Duke campus, the resource will include spaces for exploring writing resources in non-linear ways to help students during the writing process. The online presence will be a meeting place where writing tutors can assist students with writing assignments and spaces where student organizations can collaborate on writing projects for publication.

Russell was awarded a CIT Strategic Initiative Grant to facilitate the early stages of her project. Russell used funding from the CIT grant to learn more about virtual worlds applications, to investigate different virtual worlds tools determine technical suitability for the project and to survey students about current and potential virtual worlds interest and use.  The grant was also used to develop a plan and paper-prototype as a blueprint for implementing the future development of the virtual Writing Studio.

During the grant term, Russell, working with Writing Studio tutors and graduate students Richard Musselwhite and Jen Walsh, compared different virtual worlds tools (Second Life, Protosphere, Cobalt, and Qwak) and their possible suitability for the project.  Based on factors such as the ability to custom program objects in the application, ease of use, suitability for an academic environment and the facilities for text collaboration, the team choose Qwak, a commercial product built on the Croquet/Cobalt engine, for initial development, with a plan to port the Virtual Writing Studio to Cobalt after testing in courses.

Finally, Russell and the team surveyed students about their prior use of virtual worlds software and the types of features they might find useful in a Virtual Writing Studio.  While only a small number of students had tried some type of virtual worlds software in the past, they expressed interest in chat with tutors, access to help materials and collaborative spaces.

The team built some sample spaces in Qwak based on a paper prototype developed during the grant term.  The CIT provided additional funding to license Qwak for creation of spaces for the Virtual Writing Center so that it could be tested in Spring 2009.

During the semester, Holly Ryan and Jennifer Welsh used the virtual world in their course.  Students in Welsh’s class used Qwaq to create learning rooms that students can visit to discover a wide variety of topics.  In Ryan’s course, students revised writing studio handouts into materials that would be effective for visual kinesthetic and aural learners.  The materials included videos, virtual rooms, PowerPoint slides and additional handouts that are housed in the Virtual Studio for use by future students.  In March 2009, Russell presented at the College Conference on Composition and Communication about the project.

The Virtual Writing Studio was used for sessions between students and writing tutors during the semester to a limited extent.  “The handful of experiences we had were well received and successful, with both students and tutors feeling the medium offered a different and ultimately richer way of interacting with the text under consideration,” Russell said.  Welsh noted in that one student “was able to take as much time as needed to go over the paper, and really work through it”; She also noted that “It’s also clear that working in a virtual space contributed to how they were able to work through the paper– reading through it on a panel, scrolling up or down, highlighting, etc.”

While the Virtual Writing Studio is still a “work in progress”, Russell reports that it has been well received by students.  They plan to continue to explore the most effective ways that students can be aware of the resource and ways to encourage them to try it out.  The Virtual Writing Studio will be continued in Qwaq in the fall and spring.  Faculty interested in trying the Virtual Writing Studio are encouraged to contact Vicki Russell via email for more information.

Student survey questions (PDF)
Student survey results summary (PDF)
Comparison of virtual worlds software (PDF)

Project start date: 5/13/2008
Funding awarded: $4,000