News from Component I

Component I activities concentrated on preparation for on line registration which will begin in April for the Fall 2005 term. To determine how the faculty views the process, Ethel Ragland convened a Focus Group on the Faculty Role in Online Advising. Members represented a cross section of faculty and academic staff and included Barbara Grabowski, Jane Crabtree, Ed Ferroni, Catherine Arnold, Manu Kaur, Jon Miller, Jon Lewis, and David Sonnenberger. The Focus Group's objectives were:
"to achieve the Title III goal of providing on-line registration to all students"
"to maintain the advisor/advisee relationship where appropriate"
" operationalize the faculty approved Statement on Advising"

To achieve those objectives, the group proposed ten recommendations regarding needed approvals, prerequisite procedures, and electronic documentation. The recommendations were presented to the Faculty Assembly, which voted to approve the proposal.

David Sonnenberger initiated meetings to determine the logistics of launching the Peoplesoft Student Administration Self Service module. Areas being addressed include timelines, student and faculty training on the new system, and on-site support during the pilot.

Geography Modules

In December, four faculty members participated in assessing the impact of online geography modules in the Cultural Heritage courses. Constructed with the Lectora software program, the modules now include five videos and self-grading quizzes for each of the first three courses in the Cultural Heritage sequence. Preliminary results indicate that the modules have had a positive impact on student geography knowledge. In April, Jon Lewis will be taking a demo version of the modules to the first annual Lectora Users Conference in hopes of identifying potential partners for a collaborative grant writing initiative.

Electronic Portfolios

Fall semester found COMM students producing electronic portfolios using Lectora. Students incorporated video, still images, documents, and other materials into their own, unique portfolios. Jon Lewis provided in-class instruction and assembled online tutorials to assist the students.

Personal Response System

Physics instructor Phil Schreiner expressed interest in using an innovative piece of technology in his classes. Called a personal response system, the product allows the instructor to poll students on the correct answer to a problem. Similar to the “ask the audience” feature of the popular television program Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, the software displays the group’s answers on an overhead projector. If the students appear to understand the material, the instructor moves on, but if there are a significant number of students giving the wrong answer, the instructor pauses, reviews the material, and poses the same question again. Students work together to improve their answers through the immediate feedback this device allows. Title III will purchase a personal response system and Phil Schreiner will pilot its use in the Spring semester of 2005.

Technology Survey

A faculty technology survey was distributed in order to determine changes in technology usage during the grant. With the support of the provost and academic deans, the response rate was extremely high. Results will be summarized in the next newsletter.

Faculty Projects

Three faculty were supported by Title III with release time to pursue a variety of projects. Summaries of their end-of-semester reports follow.

Joaquin Montero developed a website for The Mediterranean World (http://www.ben.edu/faculty/jmontero/humn220.htm). The site includes links to course-related websites, activities, images and course information. Prior to his involvement with this project Joaquin had compiled an extensive collection of course-related links. In previous terms he had distributed those links to his students on disk, and from that experience was confident that the students would use the technology. The new website includes an expanded collection of links and additional activities.

Student evaluations of the course included a number of positive comments on his use of technology. In one case a student wrote "I really enjoyed this class because of how you presented the material and your use of technology. You really kept me interested throughout the course, and I believe that I learned the most about the ancient times during your class." Another noted that presenting the materials for this class in an audiovisual-technology integrated way is pretty revolutionary for a subject about ancient times.

Joaquin feels that the best thing about his Title III project is that it will carry over into future offerings of the course, as he continues to enhance the website. Joaquin plans to make the website his most useful tool, to the extent that he will no longer require a textbook for the course. In essence the textbook will be his website.

The emphasis of Elizabeth Kubek's project was the development, evaluation, and use of technology resources for training future teachers of English Language Arts. The project began with the development of WebCT sites for two advanced courses, LITR 307, Modern English, and LITR 399, Senior Seminar. The two sites contained syllabi and other course materials, but their primary focus was the creation by students of web-based materials for research and teaching in Language Arts, as well as resources for students to perform on-line peer review of each other's writing.

One of the first things that emerged from this semester's classes was the discovery that students' technological savvy varied widely within both classes. The discovery that had the greatest impact was that the Education students, as seniors, had not had the new Technology for Teachers class, with the result that they did not know how to use Lectura, one of the resources Elizabeth originally intended to use. Instead, the classes focused in terms of technology on using and evaluating WebCT from a designer's perspective. While the class found the WebCT interface easy to master, we soon concluded that the program had limited functionality in terms of allowing students to design and upload web pages using the built-in web page tool. The class found a workaround, using the Presentation tool to upload web pages created in Dreamweaver, a powerful web authoring program. This allowed students to learn to use WebCT and to explore its advanced features, while also giving them some instruction in less "user-friendly" technologies.

By the end of the Fall 04 semester, students in both classes had created their own web sites, complete with individual home pages and links to their own research and writing (grammar resources for the Modern English students, the senior thesis for the Senior Seminar group). They had also used technology to engage in collaborative editing and research. This approach allowed them to pursue "authentic" learning projects in the same way that they would expect of their own students - technology resources were used and evaluated in the context of actual projects, and writing and grammar instruction was integrated with professional goals. Students did excellent work and seemed pleased with what they had learned. Judging by student response and work quality, the use of WebCT, Dreamweaver, MSWord, and other technologies allowed the successful integration of technology and content learning.

Lisa Townsley has been working with other Mathematics faculty since spring 2004 to revamp Calculus I computer laboratories. Lisa led department discussion on how the traditional four-day-a-week scheduling should be changed to adapt to University-wide scheduling changes. The department agreed to set up the fourth class day, traditionally computer investigations, to run independently of lecture. Previously the laboratory experience was integrated into the lecture course, with the same instructor serving both roles. Now students from different sections will meet in an independent laboratory format. Lisa is designing a lab curriculum that will work with the calculus lecture calendar, introducing new content as well as reinforcing and foreshadowing ideas from the lecture section.
Over the summer of 2004 Lisa worked with Manu Kaur under Title III support to see how WebCT quizzing will be a component of this new lab format. (Manu received Title III support in 2003-2004 to develop a database of WebCT quiz questions for Calculus I. Read about her project in Newsletter #11 and Newsletter #12.)

During fall 2004 Lisa formalized the content of the new labs. With departmental approval, the mathematics to be covered in the labs was determined, and synchronized with the lecture calendar. Methods of assessment were established, including lab writeup expectations, types of quizzes to be given (pre-lab, post-lab or both), and format of the lab final. The first three labs were developed in preparation for implementation of the new format in spring 2005.

The labs make use of several different technologies. The DERIVE computer algebra system, which has been used by the department since 1990, is the primary tool. The latest version 6.0 has new features such as a slider bar which allow emphasis of parameterization. The software supports the creation of dynamic worksheets, with student writeup of their observations as well as their computations. Additional technology will include calculator explorations, and possibly the CBL/CBR probe-to-calculator exploration tool. The course has a WebCT component, for documents, readings, calendar and online quizzes (where appropriate).

New Title III Personnel

In October, theTitle III Grant Program hired Kara Welda as its new Administrative Assistant. Kara will be working with Jonathan Lewis during the final phase of the grant. Additionally, she will be working with David Sonnenberger and David Striker on various projects.