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)

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Project description

In Advanced Geospatial Analysis (ENVIRON 359), students used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to understand environmental processes and how to protect and manage environmental resources. Students were required to work with large, complex databases and satellite images.

In support of these goals, students used iPods as portable storage to complete labs and projects with datasets too large for the classroom server. They also subscribed to podcasts from commercial GIS companies (e.g. Environmental Systems Research Institute) and from GIS practitioners to add these perspectives on cutting edge GIS technologies not yet documented in their textbooks.

Project start date: August 1,  2006

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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

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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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EOS223S is an open, interdisciplinary elective in Nicholas School which satisfies a seminar requirement of Trinity undergrads; it includes topics in geology, engineering, energy, environment, and policy. The course focused on the actual conditions and plans for a US national high-level nuclear waste deposit in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, through a guided field trip to the Yucca Mountain site. Pre-field trip classes included lectures on Yucca Mountain geology and student-prepared seminars/posters on specific aspects of Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal. Geology requires students to visualize both scales and complex three dimensional relationships from 2 dimensional maps, which is particularly difficult for non-majors. The Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE Tank) provided three dimensional visualization of the geology and subsurface engineering, and an interactive way to explore the scale of the field site.

By the end of the course, students stated that the use of the 3-D Visualization before the field trip helped to frame the spatial relationships between sediment layers, faults, and topography. The students were asked write a position paper on the integrated geological, economic, and social aspects of the proposed site and state their position on its licensing using the graphical evidence. Their papers showed that they achieved most of the following goals: they referenced appropriate data bases of existing documents, and related these materials to the actual scales lengths, including time, space, economic, social, and political dimensions associated with the potential site and its use.

Project start date: May 26, 2006
Funding awarded: $5,000

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Project description
This introductory undergraduate course (BAA 120) used a multidisciplinary approach to explore the role of food in primate (including humans) evolution. The goals were: 1) to highlight different types of animal foraging patterns, with an emphasis on non-human primates and humans; 2) discuss the emergence of major dietary changes in evolution and throughout recent history; 3) evaluate the “facts” and “myths” surrounding foods (example: feed a cold and starve a fever), and 4) introduce students to the complex and often subtle ways in which an organism’s diet influences everything from physiology and intelligence to health and genetic differences. The approach used is a diverse perspective including ecological, archaeological, economic, demographic, historic, and cultural. This approach provides a comprehensive view of primate diets and how food has shaped and continues to shaped human cultures and values. Students collected and analyzed their daily food intake, calculated their metabolic rates and predicted the impact of a change in their diet by comparing their current diet with the changed diet. They also evaluated short popular press articles and food myths and discussed articles in class.

Students showed a consistent improvement and comfort level in the written work and class discussions as the semester progressed. Most of the class members said that they now have a different view their own diet and no longer accept any dietary statement without applying some or all of the litmus tests they learned in class.

This project was presented at the 2007 Center for Instructional Technology Showcase as “Food and Technology: You are What You Eat”

Project start date: May 26, 2006
Funding awarded: $5,000

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