Campus Technology

Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology

Features

101 BEST PRACTICES >> Smart Classroom

11/21/2006

12 :: LISTEN AND LEARN

At Santa Clara University (CA), technology is freeing students from madly tapping out notes in the lecture hall. A lecture capture solution from Tegrity includes a special digital pen for noiselessly taking notes on regular paper during class; the system digitizes students’ handwritten notes as they are taken down, then automatically synchronizes the notes with the recorded instruction. Later, in front of a computer, students can view their notes online, exactly as they were written in class, and can click on any notation to hear the instructor explain a particular concept.

According to Santa Clara CIO Ron Danielson, the solution works well because it means that students don’t need a computer in class. “The students can simply come in to class and use the [Tegrity] pen to take notes as they usually do.” Danielson, who also teaches, likes the fact students can actively listen to lectures instead of transcribing. The technology, he asserts, “is a great learning tool.” More info here.

13 :: FACULTY HELPING FACULTY

When considering the costs of configuring “smart” classrooms, it’s important to look beyond the cost of maintenance, hardware, and furniture, and remember the soft costs as well. Peter Saxena, CIO of Roberts Wesleyan College (NY), found that as professors at the school started using smart classroom technology more heavily, there was a need for more support staff. But how to increase training resources without impacting costs? Saxena says his department found it helpful to enlist a faculty member to provide training, rather than someone from IT. An adjunct faculty member, for example, could effectively teach the faculty how to run the new classroom equipment, explains Saxena, because as a peer, an adjunct “could speak to them in an academic language as opposed to an IT trainer language.” More info here.

14 :: ‘SUPER’ RESEARCH IS ‘SMART’

At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (FL), a new supercomputer has revolutionized research technology. With the 131-node, 262-processor Beowulf cluster, Mike Hickey, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, is running simulations of acousticgravity waves propagating through the upper portions of Earth’s atmosphere. These waves ultimately impact flying conditions, which is why the research is of such value to a school like Embry-Riddle.

Such simulations used to take three or four days to run; with the power of the new machine, however, Hickey can run them in a matter of hours. Moreover, researchers in other departments are also able to tap into Beowulf’s processing power to speed up projects of their own. “Especially at an engineering school like ours, there’s a lot of numerically intensive simulation work on campus,” says Hickey. “The best way around [the demand for so much simultaneous simulation work on one campus] was to try and get a computer that serves everybody’s needs.” More info here.

15 :: REAL-TIME PALEONTOLOGY

What could be better than technology that allows students to observe, from their own classroom, actual field research in real time? Ozarks Technical Community College (MO) and MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network, are digging deep into the application of videoconferencing to learning and research. They’ve installed 1,600 feet of armored, direct-burial fiber-optic cable in the Riverbluff Cave in southwest Missouri, and have networked a field house where work is being done on discovered artifacts. Those finds include some of the oldest Ice Age fossils in North America. Polycom videoconferencing equipment will bring the field science into classrooms at various institutions around the state, while protecting the cave from some of the disturbances caused by human visitors. More info here.

16 :: RADIO AS LEARNING CONTENT

In a small pilot project begun in fall 2005, Duke University (NC) worked with news radio publisher Public Radio International to create a model for making relevant radio content available to universities. “We said, if [students] are carrying iPods and PDAs and using them all the time, well, radio is all about audio,” recalls Lynne O’Brien, Duke’s director of the Center for Instructional Technology. “So how can we make that relevant?” With the help of PRI, the school is examining issues such as how to make specific radio content available for selective download, what content should be offered, and what faculty and students might do with such content.

O’Brien says short clips of timely news programming seem most useful. Faculty members have used specific interviews tied to a subject under discussion; writing professors have had students listen to radio content about specific books, for example; and journalism instructors have found various broadcasts useful. Foreign language programming is also of interest, via the British Broadcasting Corp.. More info here.

17 :: NEW LEARNING SPACES

Temple University’s (PA) TECH Center (TECH stands for Teaching, Education, Collaboration, and Help) opened last February. The 75,000-square-foot facility (said to be the largest of its kind in the US) provides a variety of workspaces to enable students to work collaboratively or individually. Resources include: a student computer center with up to 600 fixed workstations and 100 wireless loaner laptops; a 24-hour help desk for students, faculty, and staff; specialized labs for video editing, graphic design, music composition, and software development; a faculty wing with a Teaching and Learning Center and Instructional Support Center; access to 150-plus software packages; a wireless internet lounge; collaborative learning spaces; and cable TV and music delivered right to the desktop. More than 38,000 students made use of the center in the first two weeks. More info here.

18 :: MAPPING THE MIND

The mind d'esn’t always work in a linear fashion; hence the interest over the years in “mind mapping,” a technique in which ideas and words are sketched out as interrelated items in a diagram. While mind maps have been drawn by hand for years, Mindjet’s MindManager digital mind-mapping tool brings the method to the computer.

And at the Harvard-MIT (MA) Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MindManager is helping make complex learning content more manageable. Dava Newman, professor of aeronautics, astronautics, and engineering systems, is using the program to deliver interactive lectures, incorporate student questions and feedback in real time, and provide an enhanced learning environment. She integrates visual maps with lectures on creativity, for example, including learning objectives and an outline of the lecture. Because she uses a tablet computer, she can display a mind map in class, then mark it up during the lecture. All of Newman’s lecture materials, complete with the notes she adds in class, end up on the web and are available first to students, then later to the public, through MIT’s OpenCourseWare program. More info here.

• Campus Technology |
• Education Plaza |
• EduHound |
• T.H.E. Journal

Copyright 1998-2008 1105 Media Inc.. See our Privacy Policy