Spring and Summer 2006 ACS-Mellon Technology Fellows

[Spring 2006] [Summer 2006]

The proposals are in PDF format and you may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat PDF reader.

Spring 2006

Mark Rush and John Blackburn, Washington and Lee ( Politics & Instructional Technology)
GIS in the Classroom: Redistricting as a Politics Laboratory

In the course, we will anticipate the 2010 round of redistricting.  Students will work in groups to redraw the districts for the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates. They will also write a paper in which they research and summarize the last two rounds of Virginia redistricting history. We will have the student plans and datasets publicly available for other ACS institutions as well as the state legislature and press to see. 

The course will be an intensive, 36-hour introduction to ArcGis 9 and the law and politics of redistricting.  Lecture topics will include:

• The constitutional and mathematical background of reapportionment
• Redistricting Law and the One Person, One Vote Principle
• Virginia Redistricting Law and History
• The Voting Rights Act and Racial Gerrymandering
• District Cartography and Traditional Districting Principles
• Partisan Gerrymandering and Incumbency
• Alternative Electoral Systems

Proposal
Final Report
Class Syllabus
Project Home Page: http://itl.wlu.edu/gis/2006/

Dan Boye, Davidson College (Physics)
The human voice - computer interface

While the primary computer user input device is the keyboard and the output device is a visual screen, these interfaces may not always be available or the most practical and efficient. A great amount of communication between humans occurs through speech and hearing and so one might assume that such modes would find easy application in computers. After all, sound cards can readily record and play CD quality music. However, only in the most recent versions of Microsoft Office have speech tools been available to the general PC user and there are still many issues that need to be solved in order for the voice-computer interface to work seamlessly. This interface affords many opportunities for explorations by students because it is not a mature technology. Two-way communication occurs through Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-To-Speech (TTS) software routines. This Fellowship will provide support for the development of several exercises that will investigate the successes and shortcomings of current ASR and TTS routines. The exercises will be designed to help non-science majors explore concepts in much the same way that a scientist does.

Proposal
Final Report
Project Website: http://webphysics.davidson.edu/faculty/dmb/digitalspeech/digitalspeech.htm

Monique Head, Morehouse College (Instructional Technology Consultant)
The Pedagogy of Teaching On-line: A Hybrid Approach
(An on-line course and module)

The project, will create an on-line learning tool based upon research of the on-line learning process, along with its application in the classroom.  This interactive  user guide will facilitate the usage of a hybrid on-line learning system.  This guide will assist and direct users as to how to instruct classes using a combination of on-ground learning (face-to-face instruction) and on-line learning tools.  This tutorial will walk the user thru the process of teaching on-line and the unique challenges this may present.  The tutorial will address on-line learning in its broad sense and will allow institutions to adapt it to their specific E-Learning infrastructure.

Proposal
Final Report
Project Home Page: http://www.morehouse.edu/facstaff/mhead/

John Ore, Southwestern University (Theatre)
Using LED technology to teach Additive color mixing Theory

Using Coemar's I-wash, I will make use of its LED sources of light to teach/demonstrate the additive color mixing system.  The I-wash contains super bright LEDs in the three primary additive colors plus a white that is color corrected to 3200 Kelvin.
I envision a series of excercises in which students are asked to create a certain hue and saturation by mixing the four colors.  Eventually, I would make these lesson plans available to ACS institutions in the hope of starting an interest in the sharing of information on cutting edge theatre technology.

Proposal
Final Report
Presentation: "Coming Soon to a theater near you... LEDs"

Erland Stevens, Davidson College (Chemistry)
Interactive Web-Based Medicinal Chemistry Exercises

Two basic priciples of medicinal chemistry, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, consist of ideas and relationships that are best illustrated graphically. Unfortunately, dynamic presentation of graphical information is difficult or impossible with textbooks alone. The medicinal chemistry exercises built upon graphical applets allow students to immediately see the effects of changing equation parameters. In most of the exercises, multiple examples may be viewed simultaneously for side-by-side comparisons. The medicinal chemistry exercises will hopefully make the underlying ideas of the field more accessible.

Proposal
Final Report
Project Home Page: http://www.chm.davidson.edu/erstevens/stevens_med.html

Summer 2006

De Ting Wu, Morehouse (Mathematics)
Teaching Limit Concept in Calculus with Technology

This project supports two goals: 1)To investigate how to incorporate computer technology into the teaching and learning of the limit concept of functions in one variable, vector functions and functions in several variables, and 2)To develop new instructional material to enhance the teaching of the limit concept with the aid of computer technolopies and to assist students in learning the limit concept.

Proposal
Interim Report

Timothy S. Cutler, Austin College (Music) [NITLE Southern Region]
Internet Music Theory Database

Like most music teachers, I spend a great deal of time finding appropriate examples of harmonic and contrapuntal techniques for my courses in tonal music theory. Presently, there are few sources that offer help. The purpose of this project is to create an internet database of music theory examples to remedy this situation. Such a database could save teachers hours of preparation time, and it also would be useful to music students wanting to further their theoretical studies independently. The database consists of score excerpts in Finale notation accompanied by sound files, organized into specific harmonic and contrapuntal subjects. There will be approximately thirty chapters, each devoted to a specific harmonic or contrapuntal technique. Each chapter will include both typical and atypical examples of the topic.  A few examples will include a brief comment about an unusual or interesting feature, but the majority of excerpts are not analyzed, thus allowing teachers and students to use them in a variety of different ways. I will supply the initial excerpts, but eventually I would like others in the music theory and music education community to contribute their favorite examples. Thus, the Internet Music Theory Database will be an ever-growing resource for music teachers and students.

Proposal
Final Report
Project Home Page: http://musictheory.austincollege.edu

Milton Moreland, Rhodes College (Religious Studies)
Integrating Historical Archaeology into the Curriculum: material culture at the Ames Plantation

The project will create a photographic (virtual) database of the surface artifacts at one of the 19th century plantation sites at The Ames Plantation in LaGrange, TN. This photographic survey will be integrated into a website that can be used as a launching point for faculty and students who are interested in historic archaeology and plantation life, and the site will serve as the initial database for upcoming excavations. This photographic survey will examine all extant building and other material culture remains associated with the plantation (the big house, slave cabins, root cellars, out buildings, church sites, cemeteries, etc.). The photographic survey will locate and record the relevant historic remains at the plantation, plot these on the land plat map, and integrate this material into a well notated website.

Proposal
Final Report

Aaron Prevots, Southwestern University (Modern Languages and Literatures)
Teaching French through Songs and Singing

The "Teaching French through Songs and Singing" project intends to make available on the Internet original recordings of public domain songs, in multiple versions to facilitate in-class use. This audio material will feature a mix of French traditional songs, French-Canadian folk tunes, and originals written and arranged by Aaron Prevots, Assistant Professor of French at Southwestern University. A devoted web site will make the song files and related pedagogical information accessible to ACS users and allow for free on-demand use.

Proposal
Final Report
Project Home Page: http://www.southwestern.edu/~prevots/songs/

Matthew Weeks, Centenary College (Psychology)
Interactive Learning Tools and Demonstrations for Behavioral Statistics Courses

In the behavior sciences, the abstract nature of methodological and statistical issues make course material in these areas particularly challenging for many students. To the extent this material can be made more concrete, many students benefit as these abstract concepts are demonstrated via interactive visual displays. The goal of the proposed project is to develop interactive demonstration and learning activity modules for behavioral statistics and methods courses. These modules will include a) demonstration tools for instructors to use in class as well as b) `student versions of these demonstrations that provide context-relevant explanations for individual study. By providing interactive demonstrations for instructors to use in class and related activities providing students interactive learning tools, students’ comprehension of the material should improve.

Proposal
Interim Report
Final Report

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