Category Archives: 2011 Projects

Enhancing Language Courses with VoiceThread

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Overview: Correcting pronunciation during class time is time consuming making classes slow and tedious and often discourages oral participation.

The goal of integrating the use of VoiceThread into the Intensive Portuguese course is three fold:

  • Increase opportunities for student practice of pronunciation and intonation.
  • Foster students’ awareness about pronunciation and intonation.
  • Provide opportunities for the instructor to provide more precise and individual feedback to students outside the classroom.

VoiceThread is a Web 2.0 tool that facilitates online group conversations around media and text.  As part of the course assignments, students contributed written and oral submissions based upon various stimuli including self-portraits/images, songs and poetry.

  • Course: PORT 001 Intensive Portuguese I (SP11)
  • Tool: VoiceThread
  • Resources: VoiceThread LibGuide
  • Faculty: Carlos Cortez Minchillo
  • Instructional Designer: Amanda Albright

Feedback: On the course evaluation, students reported enjoying the VoiceThread assignments. Months after the course, students note that they still consider the VoiceThread based assignments useful.

The Brothers Karamazov Site Rewrite

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Course: WRIT003 – Composition & Research II

Site Link: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazov/resources/

Overview: For this project we recreated the functionality provided in the Brothers Karamazov MOO and static website created for student exploration of the novel into an interactive blog. “Quick Chat” and “Digress.it” were used to replace the MOO functionality and Wiki tool and comment enabled blog pages replaced the old HTML4 table driven webpages. The WP Accessibility Access Keys plugin is used to make the site more accessible.

Tools: Snagit, WordPress, Audacity, Photoshop, Dreamweaver

Plugins: Custom Contact Forms, Digress.it, Quick Chat, Wiki, Accessibility Access Keys

Faculty: Karen Gocsik

Instructional Designer: JoAnn Gonzalez-Major

Other Support Services: Web Services

Project: Oral History Wiki

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Overview: The course focuses on the experiences of Latino-Mexican, Central American, Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican – transnational migrants living in the United States.  The main applied assessment instrument in the course is the creation of an oral history project.  While the students really enjoy the project, the instructor has a personal interest in also making the knowledge available for a wider public.

The Educational Technology Group worked with the faculty member to convert the traditional paper submissions for the oral history projects into a technology rich online activity. Each student was provided with a private wiki within the learning management system to develop his or her stories. Once the stories were finalized the student sites were made available to the rest of the class for review and comment. The students also used the wiki to present their project experience to the class at the end of the term.

The student wikis will be exported from the learning management system and posted to a departmental resource site that will be made available to the public.

  • Course: LATS 44/ANT 33 – Crossing Over: Latin Migrant Roots and Transitions
  • Tools: Blackboard, Learning Objects Wiki tool, Adobe Acrobat, Movie Maker, Audacity
  • Assessment Method: Individual student Wikis graded with a comprehensive rubric
  • Faculty: Lourdes Gutierrez Najera
  • Instructional Designer: JoAnn Gonzalez-Major
  • Other Support Resources: Jones Media Center