Course Enhancement Projects
We have worked with several faculty members to develop strategies or materials that have a large impact on one or more of their courses. We commend these faculty members for striving to be the best teachers they can be.
Integrating Tablet PCs into the Undergraduate Classroom: We are currently working with Lisa Mangel from our Biology department to integrate Tablet PCs into her anatomy and physiology courses (BIOBD 129 / BIOBD 141). We worked with Lisa to receive an HP Technology for Teaching Grant, which provided her with a class set of tablet PCs. We believe that having students use tablet PCs in the classroom will result in more substantial interactions with material and experiments in and out of class.
See the poster we presented at the 2006 HP Higher Education Technology for Teaching conference (PDF).
Interactive Teaching in a Large Computer Science Class: We worked with Ron DelPorto from our Computer Science department to develop an interactive and engaging way to teach upper level programming in his traditional lecture course.
Renewable Energies Virtual Field Trips: BI SCI 003 is a large lecture course focusing on Environmental Science. Lola Deets, the faculty member who teaches this course, was interested in making the course more engaging so that it would be more interesting and would have a higher likelihood of impacting students' attitudes towards the environment. She wanted to do field trips to various places throughout the state, but with a class of over 100 students, this was not possible. We worked with Lola to develop virtual field trips that would give students that engaging, interactive experience.
Mastery Learning in a Computer Science Class: With Ron DelPorto, one of our faculty members in Computer Science, we developed a way to utilize the techniques of mastery learning in his classes. One of the premises of mastery learning is that students reach a given level of mastery with a concept before the next concept is presented. This is difficult in the traditional college environment, but we devised a solution using our course management system. Students felt they came to class better prepared and Ron found them more able to work with concepts in class.
Algebra Project: Our math faculty were finding that many students in Math 140 and 141 (Calculus 1 and 2) were rusty with their algebra skills from past prerequisite courses. With Amos Ong, Andy George, and Rich Stankewitz from our Math department we developed a testing approach to assess students' readiness for Math 140 and 141 and created interactive online review materials to assist students in becoming better prepared for the class.
Courseware for Observational Research: In this project we worked with Dawn Blasko and Vicki Kazmerski in our Psychology department to create learning materials that students can use to better learn observational research skills. Students practice several key concepts and work through a large interactive case study in the interactive multimedia program we developed.
Open the original version of this page.
Usablenet Assistive is a UsableNet product. Usablenet Assistive Main Page.