Associated
Colleges of the South > 2001 Tech Fellows |
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Spring and Summer 2001 ACS-Mellon Technology Fellows
Paula Garrett, garrep@millsaps.edu, English Using the current syllabus for my class in basic writing, I propose to create web-based grammar tutorials as resources for these struggling students. While grammar help and on-line writing tutorials are available in abundance on the web, these tutorials are aimed primarily at students who know what they need help with. This is, however, counter-intuitive because basic writers rarely recognize the problems in their own writing. There is no systematic way in which basic writers can proceed through self-paced writing tutorials on-line. With this fellowship, I would like to pull together the available resources on-line, revise and supplement these resources with exercises from my own teaching, and tie them together in an on-line syllabus with exercises, tests, and essay assignments. I will use these tutorials in my writing class this spring. Proposal [PDF format]
William
W. Johnston, johnston@centre.edu,
Mathematics and Alex McAllister, alexmcal@centre.edu, Mathematics We are designing and developing a two-term freshman
level survey course in mathematics: All the Math: An introduction to
mathematics. The key innovation of this new course is the implementation
of a unified presentation of the many fields of mathematics. Technology
is an essential ingredient of All the Math; indeed, technology
is the reason we are able to complement the teaching of calculus with
further mathematical topics of broad interest and applicability. We intend
to utilize the computer algebra system Maple for the course and we need
to develop appropriate examples and exercises for a wide variety of topics.
The final product of this project will be "class planning modules" for
each of the following topics and will be available at http://web.centre.edu/~mat/acs0l/
by June 2001. The family of topics includes: We have also chosen the family of topics to enhance and complement Summer 2000 Fellow Warren D. Craft's Mathematica materials for introductory calculus and finite math. These planning modules will not simply be on-line versions of textbook material and will not be dependent on any particular text. Rather, they will provide a hands-on, discovery experience for the students in the Maple environment and make essential use of the symbolic manipulation and graphing capabilities of Maple in a highly interactive setting.
Robert A.
Morgan, morganb@southwestern.edu,
Biology It is possible to purchase CD ROMs with multiple views of anatomical structures most commonly studied in HUMAN anatomy courses. Likewise, there are a large number of web sites through which students/professors can access these materials. However, images of NON-HUMAN materials are scarce, expensive, and generally of low quality. Thus, student/professors of comparative anatomy have little access to web-, or CD ROM-, based materials. The current project will result in availability of images of dissected lampreys, sharks, and cats. These images should prove useful as professors present anatomical information to their students and as students prepare for examinations, especially practicals. Proposal
Samuel J.
Pezzillo, spezzill@bsc.edu,
Classics Creation of a digitalized library of images (initially, classical Greece and Italy) for web-based distribution from a database. The project hopes to establish a model for creating local teams to expand the database to include different geographic areas and disciplines.
Mark E.
Rush, rushm@wlu.edu,
Political Science We will develop course materials and technological applications for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course on the redistricting process. The timing is ideal because, with the release of 2000 census data in March, the states will embark on the decennial redistricting process. The goal of the course is to expose students to the literature and research on voting and redistricting and then allow them to undertake a redistricting project on their own. Working in small groups, students will first learn basic GIS skills using ArcView. They will then design a map of Virginia Congressional Districts using the AutoBound redistricting program. Thus, they will take away not only an appreciation for the intricacies of an ongoing political battle but also a basic, working knowledge of GIS technology. We will also maintain a course website which will demonstrate the development of the students' redistricting plans as well as diaries in which the students discuss the difficulties and successes they encountered in drawing district maps in accordance with carious legal and political restrictions. Proposal [PDF format]
Bryan Alexander, balexand@centenary.edu, English The purpose of this grant is to enable the author to study and develop applications of hypertext in the teaching of writing. Hypertext is a form of writing consisting of multiple sections (also known as "lexia", reading-unit), whose relations are nonlinear, multiple, and partially constructed by the reader. The most prominent example of hypertext writing is the World Wide Web, where links between pages and sites are created partly by the user. Different readers create varying combinations of lexia and links. Other hypertext forms exist as well, ranging from Web-based stories (such as the British trAce project, http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/) to narratives such as Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden (http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/VictoryGarden.html) and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. Most recently (2000), Mark Amerika's multimedia hypertext Grammatron (http://www.grammatron.com/) was awarded a showing at the prestigious Whitney Biennial. My work will begin with a full survey of recent and current work in hypertext studies, building up a bibliography and set of materials aimed at student research usage. I will then study a series of hypertext works in different forms, from Storyspace texts to HTML-based narratives. Lastly, I plan to explore the possibilities of hypertext multimedia, starting from full-range Web sites (such as Grammatron) and ending with ActiveWorlds. These three-dimensional interactive environments easily enable hyperlinking and narrative (users become point of view characters, as in Myst), but have as yet not been developed for writing and "reading"purposes. My summer work will end with a set of teaching materials for the next academic year (2001-2002): selected hypertexts; critical readings; lesson plans; units within syllabi; assignments; at least one sample ActiveWorld text. Proposal [PDF format]
Jeffrey
C. Barnett, barnettj@wlu.edu,
Spanish VISTAS is a Web-interfaced, database that will allow the user to access a digital library of images relevant to the history, culture, and civilization of Spanish-American nations. As its primary purpose, VISTAS will provide copyright-free images of Spanish-America that will serve as a pedagogical tool for scholars and students alike from a number of disciplines. Among other users, its intended audience will be Humanities and Social Studies classes that deal with Spanish America, Latin-American Studies Programs, 9-12 and College-level Spanish Language Classes, and Internationalization initiatives, such as study abroad opportunities. The subject matter or focus of the images includes a wide variety of issues pertinent to Spanish-American life. In terms of multi-disciplinary interests, the images correspond to the following topics: Agriculture, Archaeology, Architecture, Art, Ecology, Eco-tourism, Ethnicity, Festivals, Film / Cinema, Flora / Fauna, Folklore, History, Housing, Military, Music, Politics, Popular Culture, Religion, Sports, and Transportation. Proposal
Mario Belloni, mabelloni@davidson.edu, Physics, Larry Cain, lacain@davidson.edu and Wolfgang
Christian, wochristian@davidson.edu We propose to develop curricular material in support of a one-semester, intermediate course in quantum mechanics. This curricular material uses the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) technique and, where applicable, Physlets to actively engage students outside of the classroom to enhance their in-class experience. Twenty such JiTT exercises will be developed stressing visualization of quantum mechanical concepts with the goal of achieving better student understanding of these concepts. Proposal
Michael
E. Dorcas, midorcas@davidson.edu,
Biology To increase the consistency and accuracy of data collection for student-based long-term projects in our Integrative Herpetology Program, I propose to develop two new methods that will help to ensure consistent and accurate data collection. First, I will develop procedures that will enable students to use handheld computer technology (Palm Pilots and Pendragon Forms) rather than traditional paper datasheets to collect data in the field. Data forms on the palm computers will be developed to provide accurate and consistent data entry and data transfer to databases will be done automatically when the handhelds are synchronized with the computer. Second, I will develop a web-based, amphibian and reptile observation report that can be filled out by students from remote locations. Web-based forms will be developed using Java that will allow students to enter reptile and amphibian observations via any web browser. Like the handheld procedures, constraints will be implemented that will restrict data entry to increase data accuracy. Both of these advanced data collection systems will enhance teaching and student learning by streamlining and improving data collection for our Integrative Herpetology Program. Proposal
Patricia
Gray, gray@colleges.org,
Music ACS summer technology workshops have provided the
ground work for the creation of the multimedia project proposed here.
The Flash 4.0 workshop in summer, 2000, led to the creation of the early
music animations. The workshop in July, 2000 explored the possibilities
of using the ACS video streaming capability to serve Quicktime movies.
I hope to combine these techniques to create an online Bach chorale project
that will contain the following:
John Kaltner, kaltner@rhodes.edu, Religious
Studies This project makes use of the resources of WebCT to introduce students to Islam. The various features and capabilities of the WebCT technology allow for the design of a course that moves beyond the traditional methods of lecture, discussion, and assigned readings from text books and articles. This wider approach greatly enhances the students' experience in the course and exposes them to a variety of resources and learning models that are currently unavailable to them. The course web site extends the opportunity for learning about Islam beyond the classroom through the use of links to relevant Internet sites, audio and visual resources, daily on-line quizzes/writing assignments, a chat room and student access to the PowerPoint presentations that are part of the classroom experience. Proposal
Anne Leen, anne.leen@furman.edu,Classics
and Richard Letteri, richard.litteri@furman.edu,
Communication Studies We are developing a team-taught course entitled "Reading the Rhetorical in the Classical Age" to be offered at Furman in the spring term, 2002, in which we will supplement traditional teaching methods and materials with computer technologies to examine classical rhetoric as the original techne exercising a demonstrable influence on various modes of civic presentation in antiquity. This project requires technological support to develop instructional materials which will aid us in examining the ways in which classical rhetoric can be used to read the form and meaning of the literature, art, architecture, and public and private spaces of ancient Greece and Rome, specifically fifth-century BCE Athens, the late Roman Republic, and the early Roman Empire. The ACS funding will enable us to employ a student assistant in the summer of 2001 to help us in such tasks as building a course web site that will store the course's syllabus and course materials, creating links to lists of essential terms and images and/or texts, and developing a hypertext timeline of the major historical and cultural developments of each period. Before building our web site, we will work to design a plan that abstracts, as much as possible, the data we hope to present from the site's interface. While we do plan to work mainly in straightforward HTML, we will try to build a repository of images and texts that will be useful to our course, and courses like ours elsewhere, that is manageable, extensible, and accessible to others apart from the HTML pages created for our immediate needs. Proposal [PDF format]
Barbara
Lom, balom@davidson.edu,
Biology The four-dimensional brain: A tool for teaching developmental neurobiology Effectively communicating how three-dimensional tissues change shape over time is significant challenge to understanding developmental biology and embryology. Both my developmental biology course and my research provide students with opportunities to use the tadpole visual system as an accessible experimental model system to investigate neuronal development. In particular, student focus on the development of retinal ganglion cell axons. Retinal ganglion cells are the only neurons that connect the eye to the brain. Thus, retinal axon wiring must be executed with extreme precision. Both the timing of retinal axon extension and anatomical trajectory of the axons from the eye to a specific region of the brain have been well-documented. This documentation, however, is currently limited to two-dimensional, static representations that do not thoroughly convey the dynamics of how neurons develop in time and space. I propose to use animation software to transform information from static anatomical brain images into interactive animations that present the tadpole brain in three dimensions and also include time as the fourth dimension. By visualizing axons growing within the 4D brain, students will visualize and understand a fundamental and dynamic developmental process. Proposal
Vadim Ponomarenko, vadim@trinity.edu, Mathematics Modern calculus and pre-calculus education attempts to teach students three major skills: mechanical computation, modeling, and mathematical maturity. DRILL is proposed to supplement or substitute the traditional model for the first of these skills, mechanical computation. It is a web-based system for automatically generating problems, accepting student solutions, grading, and reporting scores to the instructor. Its widespread adoption would revolutionize mathematics education and give unprecedented freedom to those teaching it. Proposal
Margaret
G. Richey, richey@centre.edu,
Biology I am going create a set of Flash-animated tutorials that encompass the major molecular biology processes covered in most undergraduate Introductory Biology courses. This set will include DNA replication, transcription, translation, and an example of gene regulation (the lac operon model). This Molecular Biology set will be used in 2001-2002 in my Bio I I (Introduction to Biology) class. I am also going to create an on-line quiz for each tutorial that each student can complete and send to me. I will create this quiz in the Flash environment so that the student can easily be referred back to the tutorial when s/he chooses a wrong answer. This quiz will allow a student to assess his/her understanding of the material, and, with the results that are sent to me, I can determine the areas that students are having difficulty understanding. In addition, I can use the reported scores as a measure of how many students are using the tutorial outside of the classroom. Once I have created the "basic" tutorials and quizzes for DNA replication, transcription, translation, and the lac operon, I will use them as the foundation for the creation of a set of tutorials for our sophomore-level Cell/Molecular Biology course (BMB 21). These tutorials will be more detailed than the introductory tutorials, as befits an intermediate-level course, and the on-line quizzes will reflect that as well. I wil I assess the usefulness of these tutorials and quizzes through student evaluations and feedback from colleagues who use these tools in their classes. Proposal
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