Nicholas Gessler, Information Science & Information Studies

What if you could create your own world, which followed your own rules, a world with agents whose perceptions and behaviors you designed, who lived in environments that you constructed?  What if you could put evolution to work inside that world?  How would that society change through time?  In ISIS (Information Science & Information Studies) 72, in LINK Classroom #6, and as part of the Visual Studies Initiative at Duke, we do just that.  We build highly interactive, visually compelling computer simulations that introduce participants to the philosophies and practices of the emerging “New Sciences of Complexity” and “Evolutionary Computation.”  Most students began with no previous programming and yet all of them have fashioned creative and imaginative experimental worlds relevant to the biological and social sciences, the humanities and arts.  Come see what we have done and where we’re going next.

Liliana Paredes, Romance Studies

The Spanish language program at the elementary and intermediate levels follows a task based approach to teaching (TBLT) and learning a second language.  One of the fundamentals for an effective second language acquisition class based on the TBLT approach is collaborative work and interaction of students. Peer work and group work is not only required, but is the basis for the onset of the acquisition process. However, neither students nor new instructors are completely sure of how to face the many challenges of group work.
The use of flip cameras in graduate student teacher training is meta-methodological in that it helps us reflect on our understanding of group work and its implications within the TBLT approach. Graduate students were recorded with the flip camera while doing group work for the methods class. Then, we used these recording to discuss the implementation of group work successfully to accomplish the task assigned to each group. Upon this reflection, graduate student instructors adjusted their expectations and understanding of collaborative work and group interaction. Ultimately, graduate student instructors associate second language acquisition principles with the approach used in the Spanish program.

John Biewen,  Documentary Studies

I’ll describe and demonstrate how we use iTunes U as a mechanism for students to have their documentary work heard by an audience beyond the class and the campus.

Jennifer Kim, Undergraduate Student

What makes some blogs successful and others not? Class blogging is a cool idea but often does not work. Students view it as a chore and students stop blogging when there is no response and the blog is not seen as relevant. On the other hand, there are successful and enjoyable class blogs. Jennifer will share her student perspective and talk about factors that keep students engaged, so that faculty can successfully use blogs in the classroom.

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PDF of presentation

Brenda Neece, Music

The teaching and learning of organology, or material musicology (the study of the physical artifacts of music-making, in particular musical instruments), lends itself to the use of video technology. This semester students taking Music 150S, the introductory course to Western musical instruments, used video technology in interactive assignments about musical instruments. Students have created individual and group video projects to explore and share with their classmates aspects of instrument technology, history, and performance. This presentation is a discussion of the pros and cons of using video technology in the classroom, with particular attention to the software and hardware used, problems encountered, and the overall outstanding results (with examples) produced by the students.

Laura Florand and Anne O’Neil-Henry, Romance Studies

In a multi-section fourth-semester language course thematically centered around film, students produced both short and long creative videos in order to build language skills and enhance understanding of writing, cinematography and important French film-makers. During the first half of the semester, students worked individually to create one-minute videos that integrated with their written work and invited reflection on films and techniques studied, while challenging language skills in a creative way. They interacted with each other’s work via wikis and VoiceThread. Then, over a period of three weeks during the second half of the semester, students collaborated in groups to write, produce, and act in a longer scene that engaged creatively with the films and texts studied during the course.

Sandra Valnes Quammen, Romance Studies

During the Spring 2009 semester, two third-semester French classes used VoiceThread to implement a three-part video journal project designed to enhance students’ skills in listening comprehension, oral expression, and their understanding of aspects of French culture. Over the course of the semester, students studied short French language video clips on topics related to the course curriculum (education, transportation, and cinema) and then used VoiceThread and webcams provided by a DDI grant to record their reactions to this material and to view contributions from their classmates. In this presentation, I’ll share examples of prompts and student work as well as student and instructor feedback on the project. I’ll also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the VoiceThread tool for this project.

Hugh Crumley, CIT and Graduate School

The mobile furniture in the Link classrooms allows instructors to easily reconfigure classroom spaces to facilitate different kinds of student activities. In this brief presentation, you can see a number of different arrangements and talk with other instructors about how to take advantage of this flexibility.

Deb (Deborah) Reisinger, Romance Studies

In this presentation Reisinger will demonstrate how she has used the unique space of the Perkins LINK to rethink course design in two courses she taught during Spring 2009. In one example, Cultural and Literary Perspectives (FR 100), she illustrates how access to instructional technologies has facilitated student training, time management, and the implementation of new technologies. In another course, Business and Culture in the Francophone World (FR 109), she shows how the physical space of the LINK allows students to work on team projects and complete group activities in innovative ways that echo real-world experiences.

Caroline Bruzelius,  Art, Art History and Visual Studies

I have been teaching for over thirty years, always in a closed space, “alone” with my students. Teaching has always seemed like a “private” enterprise between me and the students. Using Classrooms 3 and 6 in the Link meant that our course went public: people outside could see us, and we could see them: the wonderful topic of Gothic Cathedrals, and the development of the student’s projects (they work in groups to design their own) could become visible and exciting also to outsiders.