Technology and the Academy

Posted on by

Three Video Case Studies from Dartmouth

The Computing Technology Venture Fund (CVTF) was created in 1992 by Kip Moore ’68, a member of the student team that created the operating system software for Dartmouth’s original time sharing system. Under the tutelage of John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, Moore and the other students wrote the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time Sharing System — a feat that’s nearly unimaginable in this era of proprietary operating systems like Windows and Macintosh OS, but that presaged developments like Linux and the trend toward open source software.

Moore’s intention in creating the fund was straightforward: to encourage venturesome and leading innovation and experimentation by faculty in the application of new technologies to the business of teaching. As a venture capitalist, Moore understood the challenges inherent in developing new tools and methods. Why not provide faculty with the means to realize and test their ideas?

Ten years later, the CTVF has funded more than two dozen projects in a diverse range of disciplines, including Art History, Biology, Chemistry, Classics, English, German, Government, Music, Spanish & Portuguese, Speech, Studio Art and the Hood Museum. A number have been incorporated into the curriculum in an ongoing fashion.

The three projects profiled in this video represent the breadth of projects funded, the diverse objectives that were successfully met, and the impact these classes had on the students.

Wireless in the Classroom

Professor Chris Jernstedt’s experience using wireless handheld devices in the classroom — now that Dartmouth has a campus-wide wireless network — has drawn widespread media attention, including a major profile done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The wireless units themselves were donated to Dartmouth by Handspring.

Support for integrating the units into the Learning 22 class itself was done by Computing Services staff working with Professor Jernstedt and his own support staff — team members included experts in faculty curricular development and in wireless networking technology.

Chemistry Lab: Night and Day

Another Computing Services team — including a postdoctoral level molecular biologist who is a member of Kiewit’s Academic Computing group — helped Professor Amy Anderson bring advanced research tools into her CHEM 160 class

Students used the exact same software and hardware as is currently used in cutting edge drug research by major pharmaceutical companies. The computers running this software were available for undergraduate use at all hours of the day or night as part of Computing Services’ standard array of publicly available workstations. A number of the compounds developed by students in the course of their lab work may have been worthy of further research as agents for treating various diseases.

Opera Sings Out Online

Steve Swayne’s Music 37 class, Opera, was transformed by a commonplace application of new technology to an old problem: How can we provide easier access to reserve materials? The answer to Swayne’s challenge seemed simple, in the post-Napster world. Let’s just put the material on the Web. But copyright law prevents such an easy answer. Computing Services staff spent many hours, working on behalf of faculty, obtaining copyright clearances for the content in these sorts of projects.

More than just opera music itself is available to students in Professor Swayne’s class. Students can listen to assigned music, follow along with the libretto in a foreign language or an English translation, and also use additional information pertinent to a particular opera or to the work of the class.

Personal Response Systems in Science Courses

Posted on by

Instructor: Roger Sloboda, Biology

Overview: This application is being submitted on behalf of a group of four faculty members in two departments (Amy Gladfelter, Elizabeth Smith, and Roger Sloboda in Biological Sciences and Jon Kull in Chemistry). Our group is requesting funds to equip several Dartmouth classes per term with personal response devises to be used in a number of courses throughout the academic year. These devices enhance interaction between instructor and students, especially in large classes, allowing students to engage in problem solving individually and as a group, and provide immediate feedback about the learning process to both instructor and students. The power of such devices is that they allow both instructor and students to obtain an immediate assessment of the students’ grasp of a topic just presented or discussed in class. The interaction provides openings for the instructor to engage the class in active learning. Students feel more involved in the learning process, their participation in the course is rewarded by the immediate feedback, and this translates directly into enhanced learning and retention of information for much longer a period of time after the course ends. We propose to use this technology in eight sciences courses in the next academic year.

Communicating Politics: A Campaign Communication Class Simulation

Posted on by

Instructor: Deborah Brooks, Government

Project: Many candidates and campaign consultants believe that politics can only be learned in the real world of applied political campaigning. Most professors of politics believe that politics can best be learned by studying politics in books. Both groups are about half right: politics — particularly political communication — can best be learned with a combination of both of those approaches. Across academic fields, studies have shown that learning is enhanced through a combination of traditional classroom learning and active learning through class simulations.

The requested project funding will be utilized for technology and technological support for the simulation component in a senior seminar in political communication offered through the Government Department at Dartmouth College. Specifically, Dartmouth Venture funding will allow for the acquisition of video technology that can allow for the production of television and radio advertisements, video newscasts, and media coverage for the simulated campaign. Moreover, the video equipment will be used for the taping of video segments of “advisors” (real candidates, journalists, etc.) that will be integrated throughout the course. The video equipment will also be utilized to capture footage that will be integrated into a short documentary of the simulation activities. This documentary can be used as a model for other professors or students engaged in these types of simulations in the future.

Earth Sciences Venture Fund Proposal: Extending Mobile Technology to the Field

Posted on by

Instructor: Carl Renshaw, Earth Sciences

Overview: We seek to address the growing disconnect between the technologically-rich learning environment Dartmouth students enjoy in the classroom and the relatively “primitive” environment we provide them during field training. This disconnect exists despite the ever-increasing technical sophistication of the instruments that we use in the field and that students later use in their post-Dartmouth careers. The fundamental pedagogic issues, however, go beyond the desire for our students to be technologically proficient. Currently, the instruments we bring to the field largely work in isolation and thus hinder the sharing of data between students and limit their learning. The promise of mobile technology in the field is to connect and share data and ideas in near real-time in a manner that fosters, rather than impedes, learning.

We are requesting Venture funding to purchase field portable computers and software to be used on our off campus studies program. Our proposal immediately involves all six faculty who co-teach the off campus program and, ultimately, other faculty in the department who teach field-based labs as part of their regular courses. The specific Dartmouth courses directly benefiting from this proposal include EARS 45, 46, and 47, all offered each fall term as the Earth Sciences Off Campus Field Studies Program (the Stretch). When not being used during the Stretch, the equipment and software will be available to all faculty in our department for use in field labs that are part of a number of our regular Dartmouth-based courses, including EARS 26 (Hydrology and Water Resources), EARS 28 (Environmental Geology), EARS 33 (Earth Surface Processes and Landforms), EARS 44 (Structural Geology), EARS 64 (Introductory Geophysics), and EARS 66 (Hydrogeology).

An Internet Case-based Radiology Curriculum

Posted on by

Instructor: Professor Petra Lewis, M.D., Department of Radiology, Dartmouth Medical School

Project: Imaging is becoming increasingly pivotal to diagnosis and management. All physicians must have a working knowledge of the field of radiology in order to appropriately treat their patients in a cost-effective manner. AMSER (the Alliance of Medical Student Educators in Radiology) has recently developed a National Medical Student Curriculum in Radiology, which aims to standardize medical student education in radiology as well as providing a framework for course development. One of the difficulties has been how to incorporate this curriculum into medical school education.

This project proposes to develop a internet-accessible radiology curriculum for medical students, using the AMSER curriculum and the case-based format that students seem to find more intuitive. As an initial project, we aim to develop 10 cases, which would cover critical areas of most of the subsections of radiology and implement these for the radiology elective students.