Category Archives: 2001 Projects

Improved Efficiency in Elementary Anatomical Learning

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Instructor: Professor Martha D. McDaniel, M.D., Department of Anatomy, Dartmouth Medical School

Project: Medical education is in a period of dynamic change worldwide. Students of medicine in the 21st century need both to learn and to integrate more factual information than their predecessors, and to acquire skills that will facilitate their continuing learning after they leave medical school. Historically, medical students have attempted to learn human anatomy by cadaver dissection, supplemented by utilizing a variety of atlases and textbooks and faculty guidance in the form of lectures and small group sessions. We at Dartmouth feel that this is still a fundamentally sound approach. However, we also feel that the time spent procuring atlases and other learning materials (e.g. radiographs), assembling them in a location that is conducive to thoughtful assimilation, and searching for the appropriate pages is not time well spent. We believe that posting of well cross-indexed (linked) materials (including the use of rollover-images, pop-up text windows, and image links to enlargements) on a web site would greatly improve learning efficiency for our students.

Resources will include photographs of prosections, anatomical models, bones, radiological images, appropriately credited atlas drawings, and short videos outlining the steps to be taken in the assigned dissections and covering selected topics in a more advanced or detailed manner than can be done in class. Still images will be made interactive by using mouse-over scripting to create various textual messages that will explain and identify structures and allow linking among relevant images. The site will be searchable by category. We also plan to incorporate on-line image-based quizzes. Required material will be clearly delineated from optional, supplemental material.

Project Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~anatomy/

Field work utilizing global positioning systems

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Instructor: Francis Magilligan, Department of Geography

Project: With the ever-expanding sophistication of satellite imagery and other remote sensing technologies, it becomes increasingly critical to expose our students to these new styles of acquiring, expressing, and analyzing spatial data sets. Our department wants to expand our use of spatial imagery. Funding from the Venture Fund for the acquisition of four Global Positioning Systems (GPS) units is critical for our expansion. GPS provides specially coded satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver, enabling the receiver to compute position, velocity, elevation, and time. GPS can be used in at least eight different classes within our current curriculum, from the introductory to the advanced level, including our human and physical geography classes. These GPS receivers are mobile, hand-held units that can be used in the field for single node mapping (e.g., a ground control point (GPC) for geo-rectifying an aerial photograph, location of a single tree or house, etc.) or for three-dimensional mapping of topography and other geomorphic applications. For human geography courses, these spatial data from the GPS receivers can be linked to existing data sets, such as TIGER files and other Census Tract data, and can also be integrated into a GIS.

The Brothers Karamazov Web Site

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Instructor: Karen Gocsik, Director of Composition and Chair of English 2-3

Overview: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov is often taught at Dartmouth. In English 2-3, the program which I chair, three out of six professors use the book to teach our first-year students reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. One first-year seminar (ENG 7) teaches the book as its primary text, and several courses in the Russian department list it as required reading. We have long felt that we would like to create a Web site in which we could consolidate existing materials and develop new ones that will assist our students in their writing and research. We also plan this site to be an evolving teaching tool. Students taking courses in which the Brothers Karamazov is required reading would have the opportunity to assist in developing materials for the site. We envision a Web site that would grow to be the definitive site on the novel, linking to other relevant sites, providing a bibliography, and excerpting and annotating sections of the text, both in Russian and in English (akin to what Tom Luxon has done on his Milton Web site). Finally — and perhaps most important to meeting Venture Fund requirements — is that we will attach to the site a MOO that professors and students can use to enhance their understanding of the novel.

Instructional Designer: Barbara Knauff

Digital Linguistics Analysis

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Instructors: Ioana Chitoran and Lindsay Whaley, Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science

Overview: Any student of linguistics can attest to the gulf that separates an understanding of linguistic theory and the ability to undertake one’s own analysis of language data. For this reason, the stronger linguistics programs around the world include significant hands on experience in carrying out linguistic analysis for their students.

To date, most of these opportunities have come in the form of doing problem sets in various classes. While these exercises are valuable, they are impractical to create for some sub-fields of linguistics (e.g. acoustic phonetics), and even when they can be created, they are extremely artificial. The solution to these shortcomings is for students to be doing their own linguistic fieldwork and dealing with data that they themselves collect from native speakers, in its ‘raw’ state. We want to be able to assign class projects which employ computer-based tools, and make the tools available to all of the students who take these classes, rather than just the self-selected few who choose an independent study or an Honors Thesis. Support from the Computing Technology Venture Fund permits us to increase our laboratory capabilities, which in turn enables us to take these next steps.

Kanji Practice

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Instructor: Mayumi Ishida, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures

Overview: The Japanese language utilizes three writing systems. Two are phonetic alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana, and a third known as Kanji. Dartmouth students are introduced to all three writing systems in the introductory language sequence (Japanese 1, 2, and 3). Students are required to learn to read and write both phonetic alphabets and 375 Kanji by the end of Japanese 3. In general, they master the phonetic alphabets quickly – usually by the sixth week of Japanese 1. Kanji, on the other hand, are more complicated and, therefore, more difficult to acquire. Introducing Kanji is the responsibility of the drill instructors. The students are required to practice them on their own. Typically, students make flash cards. This method helps them recognize Kanji, but it is not an efficient way to learn to write them. It is also important for students to learn how to pronounce Kanji.

The purpose of this project is to provide students with a better tool with which they can learn to read, write and pronounce Kanji more efficiently and effectively. “Kanji Practice” will be a web-based Kanji character practice tool designed to meet the needs of Dartmouth’s introductory language sequence. “Kanji Practice” will contain QuickTime movies which show stroke orders of Kanji. By viewing the movies several times, students will learn how many strokes the Kanji has and how it is written. This will also help them remember the kanji for reading purposes. Audio accompaniment will help students master the two pronunciations used for each Kanji.

Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kanji/