Teaching at UK
Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring 1996)
For some, these words conjure up a utopian future; for
others, a frightening new world. Perhaps the question most
useful in navigating these realms is to ask how technology might
be used to supplement teaching and promote learning. An
expanding array of instructional technologies is available
ranging from computer applications which produce better overheads
for lectures to smart classrooms wired for Internet access. This
issue of Teaching at UK focuses on the experiences of several
colleagues who discuss both the benefits and limits of the
various instructional technologies they have used--a
computer graphics application, a microfiche/CD-ROM database, and
compressed interactive video for distance learning.
A new Re:Sources packet containing articles addressing the
interplay of teaching, learning, and technology is available from
the Teaching and Learning Center. Packets may be requested by
contacting the TLC via phone (257-2918) or e-mail
(tlc@pop.uky.edu)
Susan J. Scollay
University of Kentucky
Since joining the faculty full-time, I have taught in UK's
Distance Learning/Extended Campus Graduate Programs initiative in
six of seven semesters with eight of eleven courses involving the
compressed interactive video (CIV)technology. When I began
teaching with CIV, I shared some of my experiences with
colleagues not involved in Distance Education. After hearing
about several of my adventures, one gave me a notebook and said:
"Write it down, 'Professor Nintendo,' you need to remember these
things." The moniker references the high-tech character of CIV
instruction, and what follows is a preliminary analysis of my
jottings about Distance Learning teaching and learning at the
graduate level via compressed interactive video.
At this stage, the basic theme in my analysis is the
deceptively simple recognition that Distance Learning is
different and teaching and learning via interactive compressed
video are different. Distance learning, that is the key. The
distance is not neutral, and the technology employed to span that
distance is not neutral. Together they fundamentally affect
every aspect of the learning and teaching process. And as a
result, the instructional setting is different; and
faculty/student relationships are different.
The Classroom as Broadcast Studio
The CIV classroom is different because it is a broadcast
studio. In addition to traditional classroom accouterments, it
contains all the equipment necessary to broadcast and receive
"real time" audio and visual signals. Instead of individual
desks, the broadcast classroom is apt to have permanently affixed
bench tables or long tables tethered in place by microphone
cables. A high tech "command station" replaces the traditional
teacher's desk at the front of the room, and it too is immovable
for it contains a control panel, camera, microphone, and most
often a computer keyboard, and other such items. In essence, the
setting is defined by the equipment, and that has real
implications for what happens in the classroom.
For example, CIV has a slight, inherent delay as the audio
and visual signals flow along telephone lines. In class this
delay affects discussion as everyone attempts to be polite and
hesitates to start talking or stops talking if it appears someone
else is about to start. Beyond that, equipment transmission
capacity is limited. This is particularly important with three or
more sites because the equipment is unable to transmit more than
one site at a time. As a result, CIV classrooms tend to be more
formal and restrained than traditional ones because of reliance
on the equipment and its limitations.
Faculty-Student Interactions
Dependence on the equipment has implications for
faculty-student interactions and relationships as well. It takes
longer to get to know students and to develop rapport and trust
because interactions are mediated and muted by both the distance
and the equipment. For example, when using compressed
interactive video, the teacher in the broadcast studio is
physically separate and apart from much or all of the class
community. This isolation extends to breaks during the class
session and excludes the teacher from the informal and often
valuable interactions that occur during those breaks. In
addition, when a faculty member is not on-site with the students,
it is not possible for teacher and student to meet and talk
informally or privately. By necessity, every action is on camera
and therefore, quite public. Thus, student-faculty exchanges
tend to be formal and official because everyone at all site is
automatically a party to all interactions.
Distance Learning is also characterized by other differences
in the amount and kind of time student-faculty have to facilitate
communication. Distance education incorporates telephones,
faxes, e-mail, and overnight express to facilitate
student-faculty communication. These forms of communication
result in interactions different from those found in traditional
on-campus programs. Such technology-dependent interaction tends
to be more formal, planned, and constrained than the often
spontaneous exchanges around class sessions, chance interactions
in the hallway and library, or even scheduled, face-to-face
meetings in offices or over coffee.
The Future?
In essence, Distance Learning using compressed interactive
video is profoundly and fundamentally different from traditional,
on-campus classroom teaching and learning. Elements of
difference such as those just noted contain the potential for
both success and failure. If the University of Kentucky is truly
committed to providing graduate programs to placebound students
in the Commonwealth, it is incumbent upon both administrators and
faculty to face directly the challenges of CIV-based Distance
Education. Administrators must understand and appreciate the
differences and provide the time and other resources necessary
for faculty to adapt instruction, courses, and programs to the
technological media and context. And faculty must view the
challenges of CIV as an opportunity to reflect upon and to change
the teaching-learning processes--perhaps in fundamental ways--so
that differences inherent in CIV do not become deficiencies that
distract from the quality of educational experiences being
offered to our students.
About the Author
Susan Scollay has faculty appointments in both Administration &
Supervision and Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation, the two
departments in the College of Education using compressed
interactive video technology to offer their Doctorate of
Education programs through UK's Distance Learning/Extended Campus
Graduate Programs initiative. Combined, these departments serve
over 100 off-campus, Ed.D. students virtually all of whom are
full-time, mid-career, practitioners and part-time doctoral
students. Classes meet in local community college facilities in
Ashland, Owensboro, Prestonsburg, and Paducah and on the Northern
Kentucky University campus in Highland Heights. |
Panel Discussion:
Gurney Norman (English) and Susan Scollay will discuss the
possibilities and ramifications of Distance Learning using CIV
technologies on Wednesday, March 6 at 2:30 p.m. in Room 228 of
the Student Center Addition.
Experiencing CIV instruction first-hand:
Raymond Forgue, Family Studies, and Donald Case, Library and
Information Science, have graciously agreed to welcome visitors
into their classrooms. If you are interested in visiting a
class, please contact these colleagues directly regarding time
and place.
Computer graphics presentation programs like Microsoft PowerPoint are becoming
increasingly popular for creating visual support materials for lectures. I have used the program for several semesters in classes ranging in size from 15 to nearly 100 students, and find it helpful in both small and large classes.
If you are not familiar with graphic presentation programs, here's a brief
introduction. The principal benefit of PowerPoint and its competitors (Harvard Graphics, Aldus
Persuasion) is to provide the presentation creator with a relatively simple, easy-to-use and fast method of developing crisp, attractive visuals.
PowerPoint is available in Windows and Macintosh versions and is actually a
combination of programs in a single, integrated package. It offers a number of options at the click of a mouse:
- Drawing. The program offers a selection of art creation tools and templates
generally reserved for dedicated drawing programs. It is not CorelDRAW, but
in most cases it is all you need. It comes with an extensive clip art library
which can be easily expanded. Inserting, sizing, and editing clip art and other
graphics is quick and simple, even if you've had no prior experience with a
drawing program. (I didn't.)
In the Drawing program you have your tool box and
auto/shapes maker palette to help you customize and colorize the images.
-
Graphing. PowerPoint has a flexible, multifeatured charting and graphing
capability. You type the numeric data you want to present into a simple
spreadsheet, then choose from literally dozens of chart styles. Alternatively,
you can use spreadsheets or graphs created in a program like Excel or Lotus
1-2-3. You can even link the files so that if the data changes in the spreadsheet,
your presentation is automatically updated.
In the Graphing program you have access to a datasheet to create and edit
your data, color selection for your bars, lines or wedges, and a
selection of line charts, pies, and 3-D graphs.
-
Outlining/Word Processing. A very intuitive outline feature is available
that allows you to add text, choose fonts and type sizes and quickly create
bulleted lists. You can create an entire presentation as an outline, which can be
quite helpful in organizing (and reorganizing) the lecture. Spell checking and
Search and Replace are provided.
-
Pre-defined Graphics. The program comes with hundreds of preset color
schemes and graphic backgrounds specifically designed for each possible
output. If a predesigned scheme isn't right for your presentation, it is
remarkably easy to create one of your own.
A variety of output options is available. You can produce traditional black and
white transparencies, color transparencies, color slides or complete on-screen multimedia
presentations including simple animation and video clips. The program also produces
some useful ancillary materials including speaker's notes pages and thumbnail versions of
your presentation slides which can be used as handouts.
I use on-screen presentations that are essentially slide shows. Our classroom in the
Grehan Building is equipped with a computer and a large monitor. In the Classroom
Building, I must request a special projection unit and provide a computer, such as a
Macintosh Powerbook. Students tell me they find lectures using PowerPoint presentations
to be more involving and easier to follow than lectures using more traditional visual
methods. They say they take better notes and in general get more out of the lecture. A
few have commented that they are stimulated by the more "high tech" approach.
As a professor, I have observed that using PowerPoint helps maintain student
attention as well as keeping the lecture on track while still allowing a great deal of
flexibility. Developing lectures in this format forces one to think carefully about not only
content, but how the content is organized and presented.
PowerPoint lectures are not for every course or every instructor. Course content
and educational objectives come first, of course. If you are looking for a way to add more
stimulating and illustrative visuals to your lectures, you might consider trying it.
The Teaching and Learning Center pooled resources with the FACTS Center this year in order to be able to award approximately $25,000. in instructional innovation grants to faculty at the University of Kentucky. Faculty from across campus submitted proposals aimed at improving undergraduate as well as graduate education in ways ranging from creating computer software to fostering rapport in the classroom. The TLC Advisory Board collaborated with the Instructional Computing Committee to sort through the impressive number of quality proposals submitted.
The following colleagues were awarded Faculty Associate Grants:
- Jim Applegate (Communication), Gail Cummins (Writing Across the
Curriculum), and Enid Waldhart (Communication) plan to establish
a center for the improvement of oral communication skills
improvement.
- Johanna Badagliacco (Sociology) will develop an undergraduate
advising Web site.
- Ruth Beattie (Biology) will purchase software to enhance BIO
102, Human Ecology.
- Raymond Betts (Director, Gaines Center for the Humanities,
History) is developing an experimental humanities course
comparing cultural development abroad.
- Suketu Bhavsar (Physics) and Jim Holler (Chemistry) plan to
create a Web site for the Modern Studies science course.
- Gail Cummins (Director, Writing Across the Curriculum) has
created technological literacy exchange experiments, i.e. peer
tutors via e-mail.
- Janet Eldred (English) will create materials to address the issue
of poor classroom rapport between instructors and students in
writing classes.
- Robert Geneve (Horticulture and Landscape Architecture) is
developing software development meant to provide color digital
images illustrating important aspects of anatomy.
- Larry Grabau (Agronomy) will enhance a new undergraduate program
in Plant and Soil Science with new software.
- Thomas Greider (Sociology/Agriculture) plans to use a consultant
to help train faculty in methods of facilitating student-driven
learning.
- Stephen Hart (Spanish) and Mary Lynne Flowers (Language Lab) are
piloting a project looking at the use of multimedia in lower-
level Spanish classes.
- Chris Havice (Art History) and Alice Christ (Art History) will
continue to transfer art images onto CD-ROM.
- Elizabeth Lahm (Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling)
is researching the most effective and efficient active learning
strategies and materials in a computer lab course.
- Eduardo Kac (Art) will begin building a holography laboratory.
Karen Petrone (History) and Cynthia Ruder (Russian and Eastern
Studies) will purchase films to enhance the interdisciplinary
course on the Culture and History of Pre-War Stalinism.
- Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (Russian and Eastern Studies) and
Cynthia Ruder (Russian and Eastern Studies) plan to write scripts
and produce videos demonstrating Russian verbs in action.
- Karen Tice (Educational Policy and Evaluation Studies) and Eric
Anderman (Educational and Counseling Psychology) will conduct a
needs assessment of graduate instructors as part of the process
of developing a seminar on college-level teaching.
- Enid Waldhart (Communication) and Joachim Knuf (Communication)
are redesigning COM 181, Public Speaking, to include computer-
based and presentation media.
In support of the Academic Mission
The Faculty Academic Computing and Technology Center, 100 McVey
The FACTS Center is designed to support faculty in their
efforts to enhance he quality of education through the creative
uses of technology. The FACTS enter staff orients faculty in
either short courses or one-on-one consultations to vailable
hardware and software resources as well as a variety of
specialized equipment, including a digital camera, a flat-bed
scanner, a slide printer, and a CD-ROM maker. Software targeted
at instructional use include: presentation packages or hypertext
software; packages to digitally capture and edit photographic,
audio, and video materials; as well as software for
word-processing, spreadsheet creation, graphics generation and
desktop publishing.
The creative use of computer technologies fosters student
learning by making it more engaging, more effective and/or
easier. The FACTS Center staff can partner with faculty in the
development and implementation of technology-based solutions to
instructional issues. This partnership can take many forms
ranging from individual guidance to a more collaborative team
effort which may involve the Teaching and Learning Center. In
some cases, existing courseware can be easily customized for a
client; in other cases, it may be necessary to design and
develop a project from scratch.
Experience shows that most faculty prefer to start with a
small project such as revamping a lecture or creating a homework
assignment enhanced by audio or video files. More extensive
projects might include digitizing a collection of slides
for easy computer-controlled access, creating a multimedia CD-ROM
for class or commercial distribution, or making an interactive
and hyperlinked course available to students on the World Wide
Web.
FACTS Center consultants in computing, multimedia, and
instructional design are available to work with faculty. For
more information call 257-2275 or send e-mail to
facts@pop.uky.edu.
Susan Abbott-Jamieson, Department of Anthropology
Background
A departmental curriculum review indicated that faculty wanted a new survey course designed to introduce our undergraduate majors to anthropological research methodology while deepening their understanding of the principles of social scientific enquiry. ANT 490, Introduction to Anthropological Research, was created as a response to this need. I have just completed teaching the course for the second time and want to share some of the strategies I have developed in the context of this course to encourage active learning both inside and outside the classroom. The experience I gained in the National Science Foundation-sponsored Summer Institute on Cross-Cultural Comparative Research at the University of California-Irvine during July/August 1993 served as the foundation for what I am attempting in Introduction to Anthropological Research.
The NSF Summer Institute on Cross-Cultural Research offered training to anthropologists interested in strengthening their ability to carry out cross-cultural comparative research --whether doing primary data collection in field settings or utilizing the substantial archival resources that exist, the most systematic of which is probably the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). These files, composed of published ethnographies and other primary sources on more than 320 of the world's contemporary and historic cultures as listed in Outline of World Cultures (Murdock 1983), have been organized and given codes so as to make specific content areas readily accessible to a researcher. Originally published and updated in microfiche form, the files are now arriving on CD-ROMs which will be particularly useful when our new electronically friendly library is completed.
During my three weeks at the NSF Institute I had carried out the preliminary work for conducting a HRAF-based research project which was to examine the relationships between the patterning of parent/child co-sleeping in infancy and childhood, and parental emphasis in children's socialization. The theoretical basis for the study was drawn from a body of work reviewed by Ellis, Lee and Petersen (1978). I decided to adapt this personal research project for pedagogical use in Introduction to Anthropological Research.
Preliminary In-Class Activities
The class research project was integrated into the entire semester's work. It became an extended example for illustrating the principles of social scientific enquiry which were covered during the first four weeks. The class read the Ellis et al. article as well as a textbook on social scientific research methodology. As we reviewed different aspects of the research process (e.g., what is a theory? what is a concept? what is a variable and how can you measure a variable?), we could turn to our own research problem for illustration.
The class was divided into five work groups--each composed of three students. These groups were used as problem-solving groups within the classroom. For example, when the syllabus called for learning about how to identify concepts and create hypotheses, I would first give a short lecture on the topic. The students were then provided with a portion of the literature review article by Ellis et al., and instructed to read it in their group. They were then asked to identify the concepts being used, and to generate a possible hypothesis based on one or more of the theories described in their reading. Students could participate in a small group, share their understandings with each other, and clarify what they did not understand.
Students also read materials on the HRAF Files and attended an orientation session on the HRAF Files in the library. This provided an initial introduction to the research project database. Students thus improved their understanding of the class research project which began to take on an identity as a "real" research project, not just "made-up" busy work for the purposes of the classroom.
The Research Experience
In the fifth week, students began coding the first variable. A random sample of 60 societies was divided into 5 sub-groups. Each working group of students was given a set of coding sheets for the variable reflecting the structure of the house. Working independently, each student in a group coded 12 cultures for that variable. Since each culture was coded by at least three different coders, we were able to look at the issues of reliability and comparability between coders.
We used class time to discuss issues that arose as the students proceeded with their task. Class sessions were always lively; the students were obviously stimulated by their work. Students coded one additional variable on the same subset of the sample societies.
The last week of the semester was devoted to an assessment of the research experience. Each working group met outside class and prepared a presentation for the rest of us in which they addressed these three questions:
- What issues did they face when they used processed ethnographic data (published ethnographies) to code for particular variables of interest to their own research problem but not necessarily of interest to diverse ethnographers?
- What patterns did they observe in the variables they coded for the cultures they coded?
- What could they say about historical shifts in the style of ethnographic reporting and theoretical assumptions made by the ethnographers among the resources they examined?
They did a good job. The groups put work into their presentations and they were thoughtful and usefully critical of the experience. They were able to identify most to the pitfalls and shortcomings inherent in using the HRAF for this kind of research, and they also saw value in using the HRAF within its limits. They described the variation they had encountered in house structure and complexity of household composition. They all concluded they had gained much in going through the experience, though it was sometimes tedious in the extreme.
Evaluation of the Project
My students judged it a successful pedagogical experiment the first year I tried it--the students gave me outstanding marks in their evaluation of the course including comments such as, "I thought the course was extremely helpful in understanding research methods in anthropology," and "This is a new course but it is one of the best anthro classes I have taken because you get hands on experience in doing research in the future." They also highlighted the quality of classroom exchange, a direct result, I feel, of the use of this more "active" approach to learning. One enthusiastic student wrote, "The communication that occurred between the instructor and the students in this class was about the best I've ever experienced. This kind of dialogue is much needed in a lot of courses." I haven't seen the evaluations yet from Fall 1995; however, I expect them to be good.
Among the modifications I made this past semester is organizing interested students in the course to take their project to the next stage and present their results at a professional meeting. At this time, five or six students have decided they want to do so, and I have made arrangements for these students accompanied by me to make a joint presentation at the Society for Cross-Cultural Research Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh in February 1996. These students will be meeting with me in January and early February to finalize their paper. This is a particularly exciting outcome for the course because it encourages students who are interested in going on for professional training in anthropology or related disciplines to begin gaining professional experience beyond the classroom.
Will I continue to use this model for this class? Almost certainly. The class research topic will change in the future, however, to reflect my own changing interests because I think it is important for the instructor to communicate enthusiasm about the research project. This is best done if it reflects a professor's own current research interests.
This approach could be adopted in a variety of disciplines. One can see immediate extension to the other social sciences, and with some thought, others might find ways to adapt the approach to their own disciplinary situations.
REFERENCES
- Ellis, Godfrey J., Gary R. Lee, and Larry R. Petersen.
- 1978. Supervision and Conformity: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Parental Socialization Values. American Journal of Sociology 84: 386-403.
- Murdock, George Peter.
- 1983. Outline of World Cultures. 6th Edition. New Haven, CN: Human Relations Area Files, Inc.
- Murdock, George Peter, et al.
- 1987. Outline of Cultural Materials. 5th Revised Edition. New Haven, CN: Human Relations Area Files, Inc.
Posted July 1, 1997
http://www.uky.edu/UndergraduateStudies/tlc/news/newsltr2-3.html
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