2014-2015

Digital Exhibit on Multiculturalism in Medieval Italy

Project Team

Alexander Harper, Visiting Professor, Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow

Course Involved

ITAL 219/ HART 219: Multiculturalism in Medieval Italy

Timeline

  • Platform development: Winter and Spring 2015
  • Piloted in courses: Spring 2015

Goals and Description

Using , a website for exhibit building, students will create a digital exhibit entitled "Multicultural Medieval Italy: Objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art" throughout the course of the semester. They will examine 35 objects from the Met's collection in order to analyze the interactions between Italy and the cultures of the Greater Mediterranean (namely Byzantium and the Islamic World) in the diplomatic, violent, economic, religious, or personal context. The students in this class elected to keep their work private.

Classical Traditions in Science Fiction

Project Team

Benjamin Eldon Stevens

Book Cover

Course Involved

CSTS 238: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction

Timeline

  • Platform development: Winter and Spring 2015
  • Piloted in courses: Spring 2015

Goals and Description

Two professors, Benjamin Stevens and Brett Rogers, will teach the same class on Classical Traditions in Science Fiction in two different locations, Bryn Mawr College and the University of Puget Sound. They will use web conferencing to communicate and interact with the other class across the country as well as live twitter discussions. As technical difficulties are inevitable, they will use these opportunities to reflect on the role of technology today in a class blog. This digital humanities course will try to ask whether "a scientific understanding of the world [should] guide our social, political, and moral decision-making."

Digitizing Videos for Coding Gestures

Project Team

Marc Schulz

Course Involved

Psych 289: Clinical Psychology Lab

Timeline

  • Platform development: Winter and Spring 2015
  • Piloted in courses: Spring 2015

Goals and Description

In this new course that is set to develop clinical observation skills, students will learn to code videos of couple interactions for emotional expression. However, the clips are still in videotape form, so a large portion of this project is to digitize the videos through video capture software and video editing software. The pedagogical implications for this kind of project range from understanding the importance of observations within research and in the clinical setting as well as gaining practical skills in coding within the field of Psychology.

Geo-Mapping in ARCH B316: Trade and Transport

Project Team

Peter Magee

Course Involved

ARCH B316: Trade and Transport

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: Fall 2014, Fall 2015

Goals and Description

Stone Road

Peter Magee, Associate Professor of Classical and Near East Archaelogy, is using a Mellon Digital Curriculum development grant to re-orient the fall 2014 course, ARCH B316: Trade and Transport, around active, geographical inquiry and mapping. Previously he approached course material in a chronological fashion, discussing the relationship between developments in transportation technology and their impact on trade. In this re-envisioned version of the course, he and his students students will use Google Earth to map the travel of trade goods in the Near East from c.9000 to 300 B.C., in order to think critically about distances, rates of travel, and how technological developments impacted available to people during this time period. Students will also compare this research to modern travel routes to chart the changes in civilization and trade.

Google Maps, Peter's mapping program of choice, will supply students with skills in geo-tagging and mapping as well as becoming acquainted with the topography of the ancient Near East. Students will analyze the development of technology and how it has affected trade over time. This method will be especially helpful for visual learners, and will instruct about the human relationship with geography, how each altered the other, and changes brought on with the addition of technology.

Everything but the Table: Food and Culture in East Asian Literature and Film

Cartoon of Food

Project Team

Shiamin Kwa, Assistant Professor on the Jye Chu Lectureship in Chinese Studies
Elizabeth Reilly and Esther Chiang, Post-Bac Educational Technologists

Course Involved

EALC 345 Everything but the Table: Food and Culture in East Asian Literature and Film

Timeline

Platform development: Fall 2014
Piloted in courses: Spring 2015

Goals and Description

Shiamin Kwa hopes to incorporate digital learning into several classes in the East Asian Languages and Cultures department, allowing students to collaboratively design a course website that will feature mapping tools as well as spaces for online discussion. These mapping tools will help students track how indigenous food products have traveled and changed over time. The online forum would take the place of response papers, as well as showcasing the progress of group cooking projects and displaying artwork created throughout this class. In preparation for this endeavor, Shiamin has successfully incorporated the use of Tumblr for exhibiting student artwork in past classes in this discipline.

Students felt motivated and stimulated by the process of creating artwork to present online as a final project, and Shiamin hopes to bring this excitement to projects assigned throughout the year. Students will also be motivated by observing the living online archives of past students' work, demonstrating one of the many advantages to online projects. These efforts will be applied to future motivations to "flip" the classroom by utilizing online teaching in order to provide more time for student-led discussion in the classroom.

Related Links

Using Everything But the Table to Look at East Asian Literature and Film

"From Bordellos to Cybersex": The History of Sexuality in Modern Europe

Statue of a Female with a Penis

Project Team

Anita Kurimay, Assistant Professor of History and Elizabeth Reilly, Post-Bac Educational Technologist

Course Involved

HIST 238, "From Bordellos to Cybersex": The History of Sexuality in Modern Europe

Timeline

  • Platform development: Winter 2014 and Spring 2015
  • Piloted in course: Spring 2015

Project Link

Omeka website

Goals and Description

In place of a final exam, Professor Anita Kurimay assigned a multimedia digital project that students will complete in groups of four or five. Each student will make a selection from a wide array of historical or contemporary primary sources and conduct their own research on one of the themes of the class. After consulting with Professor Kurimay and Elizabeth Reilly, students will be grouped together by common interest. Using a platform of their choice, the group will then create a digital presentation that synthesizes and brings the individual students' contributions together to form an overall narrative.

The project provides an opportunity for students to hone their analytical skills, gain historical insights to contemporary debates surrounding sexuality and foster insightful class discussions. Additionally, the experience of group collaboration and working within digital mediums will be invaluable to students' future careers.

Apart from the final project, students will be responsible for 8 reading responses over the semester, posted to the (only available to class participants). They will also comment on their peers' posts. The WordPress site serves to ease students into working with an online blogging platform as well as encourage them to think critically about their own and others' engagement with the readings.

Flipping the Library Classroom at Â鶹ÊÓƵ

Update May 2017: This project led to a peer-reviewed article by Olivia Castello and Alex Pfundt: in The Journal of Creative Library Practice.

Project Team

  • LITS Staff members: Christine Boyland, Olivia Castello, Alex Pfundt, Arleen Zimmerle
  • Faculty partners: Leslie Alexander, Margo Campbell, Kim Cassidy, Rebecca Laster, Betty Litsinger, Laurel Peterson

Courses Involved

  • SOWK B503: Research Informed Practice I (two sections)
  • PSYCH B203-001: Educational Psychology
  • ENGL B126: Workshop for Multilingual Writers
  • PSYCH 231: Health Psychology

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: AY 2014-2015

Goals and Description

A Pilot Project for Humanities and Social Science Information Library Instruction

Library and Information Technology Services (LITS) staff members will partner with faculty to improve library instruction at Â鶹ÊÓƵ. The project uses self-guided online tutorials, deployed via Â鶹ÊÓƵ's learning management system, to "flip" library skills instruction, leaving more class time for interactive activities and synthesis.

The online tutorials cover basic library skills like searching the library catalog, finding research articles and requesting items via InterLibrary Loan. The modules will be available to students to reference and review throughout the semester. This will allow students with different backgrounds and learning styles to complete the tutorials at their own pace, and as many times as they need to feel confident about the material.

The librarians will then use the in-class time for a game-based interactive lesson that builds on and goes beyond the information covered in the tutorials. Students will have the chance to practice their research skills, ask questions, and get feedback from the librarians. Student learning will be assessed via brief post-tutorial/post-session quizzes with questions based on

After the semester-long pilot project, LITS aims to develop publicly available versions of the self-guided tutorials that can be accessed anytime by Â鶹ÊÓƵ students, other members of the Tri-College consortium, and the general public.

Education and Literacy in a Technological Age

Project Team

Alice Lesnick, Heather Curl

Courses Involved

  • EDUC 200: Critical Issues in Education
  • Education Minor sequence

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: AY 2014-2015

Goals and Description

In an increasingly media-powered world, Alice Lesnick and Heather Curl have conceptualized several reinvented education courses to include Twitter, the observation of changed technology in the education world, collaborating via Serendip Studio, and the opportunity for students to use many different kinds of media in their arguments. This project will culminate in an e-portfolio to demonstrate how students have mastered these new, tech-savvy methods of self-expression. Through this model, Alice and Heather hope to provide students with the opportunity to question structure and freedom, especially in curriculum development. While both professors already teach courses that focus on the role of technology in teaching, Alice and Heather believe this curriculum will be worthwhile in the application to other, more entry-level courses in an education minor's career.

The e-portfolios will serve as living documents of learning and assessment of educational technology. The success of this endeavor will be measured by observing how much students take advantage of these digital resources and recognize their use in teaching more broadly. Students will be encouraged to link this portfolio to classes outside the primary education class they are currently taking. Lastly, students will challenge themselves to consider through this model whether or not technology can measure learning, especially in this capacity.

VoiceThread for Online Oral Language Practice

Project Team

  • Agnès Peysson-Zeiss (French), David Kenosian (German) and Manar Darwish (Arabic)
  • Chris Boyland, Senior Educational Technology Specialist
  • Jenny Spohrer, Director of Educational Technology Services
  • Esther Chiang and Elizabeth Reilly, Post-Bac Educational Technologists

Courses Involved

  • FREN001 Intensive Elementary French
  • GERM B001 Elementary German
  • ARAB B003-001 Second Year Modern Standard Arabic

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: AY 2014-2015

Goals and Description

Agnès Peysson-Zeiss, David Kenosian and Manar Darwish collaborated with Chris Boyland and Jenny Spohrer to expand the opportunities students in language classes at all levels have to practice and get feedback on their oral speaking skills. These 3 faculty members are creating assignments on a platform called VoiceThread, which allows faculty and students to create narrated online multimedia slide presentations and orally discuss them. It functions much like a traditional discussion board, except that faculty or students record the questions or comments they wish to post, and others play them back and then record answers. Faculty plan to structure the assignments to provide opportunities for students to practice speaking, to listen to themselves speak and compare their speech to both peers and native speakers, and to get better feedback on some of the more nuanced aspects of pronunciation and usage. The team hopes to evaluate the impact these assignments have on students' speaking skills though pre- and post-tests scored by outside evaluators. The VoiceThread that the students made are private.

Computational Notebook

Project Team

Douglas Blank

Course Involved

EMLY022: Humanity and Technology

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: AY 2014-2015

Goals and Description

Through Mellon funding, Douglas Blank has created a computational notebook for liberal arts education. Blending reading, computation, and writing, this innovative project provides students with a new way to express themselves through multiple kinds of media. Students are learning coding while experiencing first-hand how data is transformed into paradigms. Students will be able to incorporate computation-generated timelines into their writing as well as map portions and tables, showing opinions and data in different ways. Douglas has incorporated this system of expression in an Emily Balch Seminar, and hopes to potentially continue in future courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Collaborative Online Spaces in Writing, Education, and the 360 Program

Project Team

Anne Dalke, Jody Cohen, Ann Dixon, Emily Maroni (student intern), and Rebecca Cook (student intern)

Courses Involved

  • EMLY001: Doing Justice: Nature and Culture (two linked sections)
  • EDUC 270: Identity, Access, and Innovation in Education
  • Identity Matters 360°: Being, Belonging, Becoming (includes 3 classes: ENGL 293 Critical Feminist Studies; ICPR 207 Disability, Identity, Culture; and SOWK 556 Adult Development and Aging).

Timeline

  • Platform development: Summer-Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: AY 2014-2015

Goals and Description

This project, Collaborative Online Spaces, responds to the need for more inviting and usable spaces for online discussion. In-class conversations develop organically, branching off in multiple directions, looping back, moving sideways, and so on. Online, however, the tools we use struggle to capture the complexity of face-to-face discussion. The innovation of made it easier to visualize the organization of online conversations, those conversations are still largely linear, chronological and hierarchical discussions. With this project, Anne Dalke, Jody Cohen and Ann Dixon ask, "how might we envision a non-linear, non-hierarchical conversation space, which can capture elements other than chronology in displaying responses?" and "how might such a conversation tool open up new problem spaces or sites of inquiry within a course?"

Over the summer they will work with Mellon summer interns to develop and test the tools for the Drupal-based collaborative space, Serendip Studio to support non-linear, branching conversations, tags for indicating the nature of a response (e.g., support, rebuttal, complication, expansion, etc.), and support for collaborative authorship and feedback. They will then pilot these new tools in their courses, challenging students to grow, challenge, and collaborate in new ways outside of the classroom. Students will be invited not only to analyze the impact of the new collaborative spaces created by these tools, but also to compare them to other writing spaces on Serendip Studio, and to other collaborative online tools such as Moodle, GoogleDocs, or Wordpress, to identify which systems work best for them as individuals and to help us improve and better use these systems for future learners.

Blending Abnormal Psychology

Project Team

Marc Schulz, Rachel C. Hale Chair in the Sciences and Mathematics, Chair of the Psychology Department

Course Involved

PSYC 239: Abnormal Psychology

Timeline

  • Platform development: Fall 2014
  • Piloted in courses: 2014-2015

Goals and Description

This course, Abnormal Psychology, incorporates blended learning to engage students in new, rewarding ways. With the addition of regular online quizzes, online video segments, and online lectures, students will employ the reading in thought-provoking ways, be exposed to practical case scenarios, and have more time in the classroom to discuss reform, philosophical concepts, and challenge what they've learned. These improvements will be demonstrated by student participation as well as test results from the class.

A Flipped Classroom Model for Information Literacy Instruction

Â鶹ÊÓƵ librarians Olivia Castello and Alex Pfundt used a Blended Learning seed grant to flip library instruction and make it more active. Their assessment of the efficacy of the flipped classroom model was recently published in the .

Snapshot from a Website

Abstract

With the help of a Curricular Development Seed Grant, funded by the Mellon Foundation, librarians from Â鶹ÊÓƵ’s Library & Information Technology Services redesigned our model for one-shot information literacy instruction. We created self-guided, interactive online tutorials that allowed us to flip traditional demonstrations of skills, such as searching the library catalog, requesting books and articles, and finding empirical research.  As a result, we were able to revise our in-class lesson plans to focus on active learning activities. We also conducted a research study in three academic courses to assess the efficacy of our flipped classroom model. This paper highlights the development of the online tutorials and instructional model, the assessment study, and ideas for future directions.