Project Description:
Giuliana Perco is using Second Life to explore new ways for her Intermediate Italian students to engage with Italian language and culture. Taking advantage of the many Italian cultural resources that already exist in Second Life, she is developing in-world activities for her Italian courses in order to study how effective Second Life is for language instruction with virtual “found” materials. CIT is providing Giuliana with pedagogical consulting on the use of Second Life for language teaching and learning, as well as Second Life workshops for her and her students.

Project start date: 6/9/2008

Funding awarded: $400

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Project Description:

Melinda Box and Anne Langley (Chemistry Librarian and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry) are working together to instruct chemistry students how to effectively find chemistry information on the internet (a chemistry scavenger hunt). They have created a video using Camtasia, a screen capture program, demonstrating how to use various online resources.  This video was used in the chemistry sections by the teaching assistants so that Anne does not have to visit all 38 lab sections to repeat the demonstration in person.   She has posted the video in Blackboard for student and teaching assistant use.

Anne says the final video is about 30 minutes long, 22 Mb in size.  She reports:

“I spent between 45 and 50 hours making a 30 minute video for the Chemical Scavenger hunt lab for General Chemistry laboratory. This includes the time I spent learning Camtasia and practicing with it. Next time it won’t take me so long cause I have had practice writing scripts, working the controls, handling the microphone etc. Steep learning curve, but then there is a plateau!”

Melinda and Anne are already planning the next video with content that can be taught effectively in a video format.  As well, they have planned for the next iteration of the video, and are already preparing a presentation at the CIT Instructional Technology Showcase in April, to share their lessons learned.

The video demonstrations have freed the instructors from having to do the exact same demonstrations for each laboratory section, while providing information that students can refer to later, and will allow the instructors to provide more personalized attention to students.

The instructors are looking forward to the student reaction: “… one of the TAs commented to me that they really liked it and that the students did as well. We’ll see after the evaluations come out though at the end of the semester. ”

Project start date: 6/18/2008

Funding awarded: $450

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Project Description:

To engage students in a large lecture class, Alex Glass will create a hands-on exercise mapping a potential oil field indicated by stations on Duke campus. Students will use GPS units to find and mark stations consisting of models constructed from wooden boards that provide information about the three-dimensional orientation of the virtual rock layers at each locality. Students will use data collected from stations marked by GPS coordinates across campus to reconstruct the virtual local structural geology and stratigraphy.

Project start date: 7/1/2008

Funding awarded: $1950

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Project description

The purpose of this project is to establish and pilot a Second Life (SL) learning environment for faculty and students in the Duke School of Nursing (DUSON). Constance Johnson and her colleagues will explore student perceptions of learning using three different environments; build a virtual classroom structure on the DUSON’s parcel on the Duke University SL Island. In addition to building a virtual classroom they also seek to identify, collate, and develop orientation resources and procedures that could be provided to students and faculty for DUSON and SL community. They plan to develop and test with the students policies and procedures that could serve as suggested ground rules for DUSON to adopt in their SL learning activities, to ensure that students are able to focus on the educational components of the activities, rather than the novelty of the application and the overwhelming social aspects of SL.

The short-term outcomes of this project are development of a DUSON infrastructure for faculty and student participation in SL, and the participation of students from at least two different nursing specialty areas and programs to assist with evaluation and tailoring of the infrastructure.

The expected long-term outcomes of this project are facilitated participation of faculty and students from across DUSON, the University, and practice, service, and educational partners with DUSON, in innovative, 3D learning activities.

Project start date: 6/16/2008
Funding awarded: $2,000

Additional information

There is a short overview on the Duke School of Nursing’s website about the work Constance Johnson is doing in Second Life.

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Project Description:

In Spring 2008, Lucy Haagen used cellphones to help shape learning communities that connected Duke students with Durham high school students. Haagen and the students used cellphones both as traditional devices (as telephones) and as capturing (audio) and advanced communication (text messaging) tools.

Haagen plans to expand on the success of this pilot through the use of ’smartphones’ in Hanoi, Vietnam. Working with several Duke students participating in Duke Engage, Haagen will use smartphones to assist with ESL activities in the rural Hanoi environment. In addition to using the phones to connect Duke students with students from Vietnam, the phones’ multimedia capabilities will allow students to connect through video, audio and text-based messages. Students will also be able to document teaching and learning moments with built-in video capabilities, as well as use internet connectivity to acquire and provide additional content.

Project start date: 5/07/2008
Funding awarded: $5,630

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As Duke works to ensure that its students develop into active learners and involved citizens, an
increasing number of undergraduates will undertake independent research.  Mentoring these apprentice
investigators, while worthwhile and rewarding, will increase demands on Duke faculty.  Engaging students as competent and ethically aware researchers is necessarily time-intensive, as students require careful and ongoing advice to effectively plan, implement, and complete research.

With this in mind, this project will develop a series of multimedia modules to aid faculty in efforts to educate students about ethical conduct in researching human subjects. Several modules will be tailored to meet needs as identified by faculty, such as: cultural sensitivity, private versus public information, subject rights, risks and information consent, and vulnerable subjects. The modules will also emphasize the global reach of students’ activities and draw attention to the need to craft research protocols so that they are appropriate for the particular cultural context in which they will be undertaken.

Project start date: 4/21/2008
Funding awarded: $$19,860

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Project description

This project will provide geographically dispersed online Duke nursing informatics graduate students with collaborative tools that will help them acquire, critique, summarize, and disseminate available HIT studies and evidence reports. Linda Goodwin will utilize informatics experts, mobile technologies, and remote (virtual) teamwork that enable both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration to compile HIT evaluation resources, critique them for level of evidence, and make them available to a world-wide audience. The project will be focused on immersing students, both Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program and Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) in real-world informatics issues and projects in health care.

Linda Goodwin and her students will experiment with different types of mobile tools and web-based citation tools, explore whether mobile technologies that permit student access to synchronous teamwork tools from anywhere they can gain wireless Internet access will improve both the process and the products of remote online teamwork.

Project start date: 6/2/2008
Funding awarded: $7,500

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Project summary

Julie has found that students with very little prior knowledge of science can participate in authentic scientific research, can be trained to collect meaningful scientific data, and can develop a better understanding of ecological processes and the interconnectedness of nature through these experiences. Building on this success, she is expanding a current project to engage members of the community in an authentic scientific study. She is developing educational activities around invasive species at the Eno River State Park, and training the public to be involved in monitoring these species. She plans to include the general public as well as service groups at high schools, colleges, and in the community (such as through botanical societies) that would encourage sustained participation in scientific research.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Increase public understanding of threats to the environment and to biodiversity
2. Educate the public about the scientific method
3. Foster a sense of environmental stewardship within the community
4. Monitor the spread of invasive plant species within the state park

Visitors to the Eno River State Park will be trained to monitor invasive plants using GPS and gathering data in Google Earth. This project at the Eno River could serve as a pilot to be adopted throughout North Carolina.

See Julie’s Citizen Scientist website for more.

This project is funded by Duke Center for Science Education.

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Project Description:

Alyssa Perz-Edwards uses her class time in Cell Biology to work with students on critical thinking and problem solving skills, while the students learn terms and facts outside of class. She motivates students from a wide variety of backgrounds to quickly learn a large amount of complex information, and to apply this information, by using Team Based Learning and a tablet PC. Students come to class prepared for tests taken individually and then repeated as a team. The tests are graded immediately, so that Alyssa can use her tablet PC for just-in-time teaching to address student misconceptions revealed by the tests. The tablet PC allows her to sketch and label during class, so that she can immediately address student requests for more explanation and context during class. The students work in teams for rest of class time to apply their new knowledge to solve problems in Cell Biology using skills they will need if they are to be successful in medical school.

Alyssa teaches cell biology in a six-week summer academic enrichment program that offers freshman and sophomore college students intensive and personalized medical school preparation in the Summer Medical and Dental Summer Program at Duke University School of Medicine.

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