Educational Technology Showcase

Submitted Concurrent Session Abstracts

(In alphabetical order by presentation title)

 

 

A Fresh Look: Adding a Touch with VR into a Freshman Course 

Renee Shaffer, Senior Instructional Designer, Division of Information Technology

The freshman seminar course is designed to foster academic success, to promote personal development, well-being, and social responsibility as well as to articulate potential pathways to academic success and employability. With recent studies showing that over 40% of employers want graduates with transferable skills, an explosion in virtual reality (VR) job growth of 800%, and the fact that many future jobs do not yet exist, it is essential that USC students be made aware of emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR). The VR industry covers most sectors of the academia from business to arts and sciences. Moreover, students need to be aware of emerging technologies which can assist them in their academic careers. Building on the need for engagement and skills attainment, the author will share the plan, some experiences and implementation of this experiment—virtual reality. To this end, students gain experience in Beyond the Classroom sessions on virtual reality, interact with academic content and develop their own educational VR experience. This is definitely “learning by doing” which is a hallmark of the constructivist approach.  Studies have shown that a high percentage of college students are visual as well as kinesthetic learners so it is hoped that encouraging play and activity will enhance their learning process. By becoming fully immersed in an academic topic, students can transform their learning through inspiring, impactful experiences. Adding the virtual reality component will assist students in demonstrating their ability to evaluate information sources and promote academic inquiry as well as realizing the benefit of academic exploration. Virtual Reality can be used in all academic fields from the STEM courses to the humanities. Components include inquiry, discussions, blogs and wikis. According to USC Connect, students need to be engaged in the creative process in order to “advance their intellectual and creative abilities.” To this end, the author hopes to engage and produce successful, information literate, 21st century learners through the transformative power of virtual reality. Faculty will take-away creative ideas that they can implement right away in the classroom, face-to-face or online, at very little expense.

 

 

Application for Managing and Storing Very Large Digital Files for Collaboration and Assessment in Blackboard

 Robert Ogilvie, Professor Emeritus, Adjunct Professor, Biological Sciences

 Roger H. Sawyer, Associate Dean, Arts and Sciences, and Professor, Biological Sciences

The presenters have directed, managed and taught a 500 level online course in histology offered from Biological Sciences for 20 semesters. The course facilitates learning microscopic architecture and function of the human body (histology) that requires a virtual laboratory for the inclusion of microscopy specimens. The virtual specimens were obtained using a whole slide scanner that creates a representation of thin sections using a microscope at various levels of enlargement. The specimens normally are viewed in a microscope but, thanks to the development of virtual microscopy, we are able to efficiently provide these specimens to students for learning structure and for our assessment of their comprehension. The specimens are digital files that range in memory size from several hundred megabytes to more than a gigabyte (e.g. pixel dimensions of 29,300 x 56,280). The algorithms included in the commercial virtual microscopy server software called Biolucida (www.mbfbioscience.com), allow the specimens to be viewed by zooming and panning over the Internet where only the area and zoom level requested is delivered rather than the entire image file. The advantage of these whole slide specimens is that students can zoom out and in while panning around to understand the context in which they are learning specific structures. The virtual microscopy software used integrates with Blackboard, providing links to the specimens directly within the questions of a quiz. Further, questions can be randomly delivered every time each student logs in to take a quiz. Since employing virtual microscopy, the presenters have seen the learning of structures enhanced, and the ability to assess student skill in recognizing structures has improved. This approach can lend itself to a variety of disciplines such as parasitology, microbiology art, geography, geology, and astronomy. Examples of images of paintings, rock specimens in geology, parasitology, microbiology and astronomy will be shared to demonstrate the potential of this approach to be applied in disciplines other than histology. Existing images that are very high resolution can be used or new images can be created by utilizing commercially available scanning services. The server software allows setting up collections for labs within which users can manage their own collections. This facilitates collaboration by educators and researchers.

 

 

Automated Assignment Grading for an Introductory Programming Class

John Gerdes, Associate Professor, Integrated Information Technology

This presentation discusses AppGrader, a tool that assists with the unique challenges of grading introductory coding assignments. Its features include:  assignment management, automated assessment, and two separate plagiarism checks. Also addressed is how AppGrader can assist grading in non-coding classes. Teaching introductory programming classes presents unique challenges, particularly in larger classes. Regular programming assignments are needed to reinforce programming concepts. Timely assessment of these assignments is important, but very labor intensive, and simply providing standard solutions will not necessarily address student’s questions. A better approach is for the instructor to analyze and understand the student’s logic and then provide individualized feedback. AppGrader automates much of this process, provides more consistent grading, and standardized feedback to the student which reduces grading load on the instructor. Plagiarism is also a big problem in coding classes. An Internet search will often return multiple solutions to typical assignments given in introductory programming classes. Students also often turn to their friends on homework assignments. If a student copies the code without understanding the logic, the learning objectives are not being met. Research into automated code assessment and code plagiarism detection has been done for over 40 years. Unfortunately the existing approaches are not effective in introductory classes where program complexity tends to be very low, and the degree of code similarity is quite high. To compound the problem, there is limited plagiarism detection literature dealing with Visual Basic code. This talk will review the basic issues associated with grading introductory coding work, and demonstrate the operation of AppGrader. After a programming assignment demonstration, the presenter will discuss how it can be used on non-coding assignments. Future directions will also be presented. Takeaways are three fold. First, it presents a new tool designed to automate static assessment of Visual Basic programs, analyzing code for required elements, and provide a compliance score. This is significant because there is little work that focuses on Visual Basic. Second, it provides two different plagiarism checks not previously discussed in the literature. These approaches are effective even when there is a high degree of similarity of submitted work as typically seen in introductory programming classes. Third, the tool can be utilized to assist in grading or non-programming course work. AppGrader has been used in other USC courses to facilitate file management of assignments involving multiple files per submission.  

 

 

Building Community and Interpersonal Skills with Technological Tools

Lara Ducate, Professor, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Lara Lomicka, Professor, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Nina Moreno, Associate Professor Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

This presentation will discuss the use of four different tools currently used in the presenters’ face-to-face and online classes:  Flipgrid, VoiceThread, Instagram, and Padlet. While each of these tools helps to build community among students, Flipgrid and Voicethread help to engage students in interpersonal communication outside of the classroom. Padlet and Instagram, visual and textual tools, provide students with a forum and opportunity to engage with and think critically about course material. During the presentation, the presenters will demonstrate how they have integrated these tools in face-to-face and online courses and provide other ideas for participants to use them. They have used Flipgrid and VoiceThread as tools that help students to introduce themselves in an online course and to discuss course content and presentations. As Flipgrid does not require a log in and offers a relatively short recording time, it is an excellent tool for students to quickly and easily respond to a question; however, they cannot easily respond to their classmates with anything other than emoticons. Therefore, while it is effective for encouraging responses and allows students to be introduced to their classmates, it does not necessarily encourage communication outside of the classroom. VoiceThread, on the other hand, allows for longer responses to prompts, can accommodate PowerPoint or other visuals, and allows students to respond to each other using written or spoken comments and therefore promotes more interpersonal communication and dialogue. Padlet and Instagram do not focus on speaking, but rather allow students to choose their own visual content to showcase and discuss. With Padlet, students, in addition to sharing visual content, can use the comment and like features to interact on boards shared by others in the class. Instagram allows students to engage in conversation outside of the classroom while building community; students can interact with each other by liking and commenting on posts. Students can showcase their own topics, respond to prompts and further conversation. All of these tools were used in the presenters’ classes as a way to draw students' attention to cultural features both in the university setting and abroad, and as a forum for them to categorize these features and discuss each other's posts. This presentation will also include examples of student output as well as successes and challenges associated with each tool. The presenters will then provide other ideas for how faculty in other disciplines could incorporate these tools into their classes.

 

 

Digital Storytelling - Back to the Future of Education

Michael Byrd, Director of General MPH, Arnold School of Public Health

Buz Kloot, Research Associate Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, Arnold School of Public Health

Early humans employed story-telling, music, theatre, song, dance, and the graphic arts to educate, to communicate and to transfer culture. In the Middle Ages, universities shifted to the lecture method now widely employed. While an efficient method to transfer information, this “sage-on-the-stage” method may be outmoded for the 21st century, and especially for distance education. The “Power of 3 Digital Story Telling Technique” (P3DST) helps students refine their presentation skills to increase clarity and conciseness. The student now becomes the teacher, enhancing the entire learning environment for everyone. This technique complements the pedagogical approach of storytelling, which has become a powerful instructional tool for both students and instructors. It works equally well in live and distance format classes. Using this method has improved the presenter’s teaching effectiveness and engages students. P3DST takes advantage of numerous software applications that support digital storytelling such as Photo Story 3, Movie Maker, and iMovie. Digital Storytelling has many definitions, but usually involves telling a story using multimedia components which include text, images, music, and narration. While digital video technologies are not the cure-all for improving the learning process, this technique engages students at the emotional level. This method takes the focus off the instructor, placing it squarely on the student. What sets P3DST apart from traditional presentation and teaching methods?  It is simple and straight-forward and applicable to any discipline. Using digital story-telling the students teach their classes. Student feedback is overwhelmingly positive.

 

 

Do my Students REALLY Understand me? Using Clickers for Formative Assessment

Francis Burns, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Math and Science, USC Salkehatchie

The didactic (“sage on a stage”) method of teaching provides lecturers with an efficient tool for transmitting concepts and illustrating skills. As a result, it is commonly used at universities. Students may or may not be following the logical progression of information. Lecturers cannot assess student learning without feedback. Tests and other summative measures provide information that may be too late for corrective action by either the lecturer or student. This problem can be a particular difficult for didactic lecturers. In contrast, formative assessment provides early feedback to both lecturers and students permitting corrective action. The addition of formative assessment to the presenter’s classroom was found to be transformative. Classroom response systems (“clickers”) provide instructors with an excellent tool for formative assessment. Lecturers can quickly collect real-time information indicating that students grasp concepts and skills during a presentation or classroom activity. As a result, an instructor can choose to review the current topic, return to an earlier topic, or move onto a new topic. Instructors can also query students for their level of confidence or questions. Using clicker technology, lecturers can become effective “sages” for their students.  Ideas will be illustrated through “hands on” use of clicker technology. Participants will use clickers as a “student” in order to experience the interactive nature of clicker-based lectures. In addition, the presenter will provide a list of potential questions that an instructor may use in the classroom or lecture hall. This presentation will provide useful ideas for both experienced and novice clicker users.

 

 

Increasing Student Engagement with Top Hat

Brie Dunn, Associate Dean for Outcomes Assessment & Accreditation, Clinical Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy

Literature on the use of audience response systems in the classroom has noted increased student perceptions of learning, engagement with lecture content, class participation, and exam performance. Since implementation of Top Hat in fall 2015, students have noted that faculty members are more effective at engaging students through active learning (strongly agree and agree increasing from 82.00% in 2014 to 89.67% in 2017). Feedback from end-of-year focus groups noted that Top Hat questions were helpful to reinforce content during the lecture, that it is an effective way to promote interactivity, and requested that more faculty adopt it in the classroom. Using participation averages available in the Top Hat grade book, faculty have been able to show that a strong correlation between class attendance and overall course performance. A variety of implementation strategies can be used when utilizing Top Hat in the classroom. A number of question types are available including multiple choice, multiple answer, fill in the blank, click on target, and several others. Additionally, the discussion board can be used in a variety of ways such as serving as a class backchannel, an anonymous chat, or even as an exit ticket at the end of the class. Homework and review features allow students an additional opportunity to assess their own learning. New product enhances continue to be made and now include interactive pages, secure attendance, and testing features. Overall, faculty and students have found the system easy to use. The downloadable presentation tool allows for a seamless integration within traditional PowerPoint lectures. Interaction with the system from outside the classroom still poses a challenge but several solutions have been implemented to help maintain academic integrity. During this session, the presenter will discuss lessons learned and suggest strategies for successful implementation in the classroom, as well as share best practices learned over the years.

 

 

Leveraging Office 365 for Collegiates and Beyond

Charity Nix, Manager of Knowledge and Digital Strategy, Division of Information Technology

Critical thinking, communication, collaboration/team building and innovation/creativity have been consistently articulated as top skills and competencies organizations desire, yet some graduates lack proficiency in these skills.  To prepare for successful entry into the workforce, college students want faculty to leverage more technology for engagement. Many faculty are ready to use it meaningfully for coursework, yet it somehow gets lost in translation. Office 365 and tools such as Office Online, OneNote Class Notebook and Microsoft Teams can help faculty incorporate technology strategically so students will be prepared to keep up with the fast pace of change in businesses and to compete in a global society. Content creation is made simpler for everyone with Office 365's built-in tools and Office Add-ins feature, so you can deliver for all students and their diverse learning needs. The Accessibility Checker checks your file against a set of possible issues for people who have disabilities, like vision impairment. Each issue is classified as an Error, Warning, or Tip, such as if a photo does not have captions or alternative text. If a student were using the speech recognition device, he would not know what the picture represented if no caption was included. Use special fonts that provide the needed spacing for students with dyslexia. Add a translator to learn the content without be restricted due to language barriers. Additionally, use templates that provide students structure and a starting point when creating new Word documents or PowerPoint presentations. Try Read-mode to provide students a distraction-free reading experience. Think of Microsoft Office 365 as an "un"-LMS that allows faculty to manage learning, engage learners, deliver content seamlessly and complete administrative tasks associated with college courses.  

 

 

MYMA Calculus: A Comprehensive e-Textbook and Online Homework System

Douglas Meade, Associate Professor, Mathematics

Technology has advanced the presentation of many mathematical topics. Instead of static figures on the printed page, e-books can have an animated figure with specific content controlled by the user. (Imagine the calculus textbook used by Harry Potter at Hogwarts School.) While the number of online homework systems continues to grow, all of them fall short in capturing the essence of the mathematics: problem solving, particularly when it involves multiple steps, some of which can be done in different ways and with different intermediate answers.   Over the last decade Professors Meade (UofSC) and Yasskin (TAMU) developed Maplets for Calculus (M4C) , a collection of customized user interfaces (maplet) for more than 200 topics in the three-semester calculus sequence (and a few to review precalculus topics). Each maplet presents an algorithmically-selected problem to the user, who has to solve the problem step-by-step. The result of each step is graded separately, with subsequent steps activated only when all of the preliminary steps have been answered correctly. Feedback specific to each step is provided. Numerous hints, as well as the correct solution, are available as needed. In this format, the M4C have been used in lectures and labs for demonstration, and by students to develop confidence with new concepts and solution processes. The Meade-Yasskin Math Apps (MYMA) Calculus project is a full electronic textbook in which a new generation of maplets (but written entirely in JavaScript and HTML5, not Java) are embedded directly in the text as tutorials and examples. In addition to having an integrated “text” in which the exposition, examples, and exercises are all implemented in the same style, and from almost any device: desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. While the MYMA Calculus content is specific to mathematics, the basic principles involved in the creation of a fully-integrated interactive electronic textbook are immediately applicable to other disciplines in which graphics and visualization are used to introduce new ideas and to build conceptual understanding and in which exercises involve multi-step problem solving. Classroom testing of MYMA Calculus is still in its infancy, but a significant portion of the “book” is complete and can be experienced by participants in this session.

 

 

Simple and Focused: Creating Online Critical Thinking Exercises with Blackboard’s Testing Tool

Alicia Ribar, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies, College of Nursing

Vera Polyakova-Norwood, Director of Online Learning, College of Nursing

Simulation has firmly established itself as an effective teaching practice in nursing and medical education as a controlled, safe and authentic environment for learning a complete skill set expected of a healthcare provider. Although mastering many of these skills requires high fidelity simulation with sophisticated manikins or standardized patients, the thinking processes – diagnostic reasoning and clinical decision-making – can be successfully learned in low fidelity contexts using case studies and role-play. Course instructors and instructional designers can use widely available and easy-to-use technological tools to develop simulation type critical thinking exercises based on authentic scenarios. For example, we used a testing tool in the Blackboard course management system to create a series of exercises simulating patient encounters for nurse practitioner students in order to develop diagnostic reasoning skills. Each of these exercises titled “Online Patient Visit Simulations” was based on a complex unfolding scenario. • Each question represented a step in the patient-provider encounter, requiring role-play, analysis and synthesis of available information, and decision-making. New information about the patient was placed into the stem of each question. • Exercises had a time limit and questions were presented to students one at a time. This low-tech approach kept students within a familiar technological environment, thus eliminating barriers and distractors associated with richer and more sophisticated programs. It allowed students to focus entirely on clinical reasoning and problem solving in situations with limited data. By having students describe and demonstrate the thought process behind clinical decisions, these exercises allowed the faculty to monitor the development of clinical decision-making skills and pinpoint areas needing improvement. From the student perceptive – the unfolding, step-by-step nature of the case, provided immediate feedback allowing for self-correction and reflection as they progressed though the scenario. In the first two semesters of introducing these exercises, 96% of the students felt that this approach helped them improve their advanced clinical thinking skills. In their comments, students expressed appreciation for the rigor and authentic nature (“just like seeing patients in the clinic”) of these exercises. And, finally, there was no additional cost for the institution or program associated with these exercises. The presenters plan to visualize presentation with screen captures; discuss evaluation data collected over three semesters, and engage the audience in a discussion about applicability of this teaching method to other learning contexts.

 

 

The Good, Bad and Ugly of Educational Technology: The Student's Perspective

Karen Patten, Senior Instructor, Integrated Information Technology

Student Panelists

Educational technology provides students with enhanced opportunities for learning. University students today are considered to be very technologically savvy, but this often is an illusion when it comes to educational technology. This presentation will be a panel discussion by undergraduate and graduate students on their experiences with a variety of educational technologies. They will address such topics as:

• How have they been able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by educational technologies?   

• What impact have the technologies had on their learning?     

• What barriers have they experienced in using educational technologies? 

• Do they experience resistance to certain technologies? 

• How supportive are their instructors and university staff?

• What recommendations do they have for more effective educational technologies? 

The panel will be facilitated by Dr. Karen Patten from the Integrated Information Technology Department, who has taught various online and hybrid courses at several universities since 1997.

 

 

Using an Augmented Reality Sandbox to Teach Spatial Topics in Earth System Science and Beyond

Katherine Ryker, Assistant Professor, School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment

Raymond Torres, Professor, School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment

Jeff Jefferson, IT Specialist Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences

Spatial thinking is an essential skill for academic programs like Earth, ocean and environmental sciences, the arts, and programs like the Army ROTC. Topographic and geologic map reading and interpretation are examples of tasks that require spatial thinking. When a student first looks at these maps, they have difficulty connecting the 2D depiction with 3D landscapes. Eventually, a “geointuition” emerges from those contour lines, allowing students to interpret landscapes and landscape dynamics. An augmented reality sandbox (ARS) facilitates real-time qualitative and quantitative analysis of model “landforms,” which can help students make connections between 2D and 3D surfaces. The ARS consists of a closed loop 3-D camera, projector, monitor, and free powerful simulation and visualization software from an NSF project to the University of California, Davis (Reed et al., 2016). Contour lines are projected on the sand surface in real time to fit students' landforms, enabling them to see the topographic map as the sandbox landforms are created and modified. Students can also make it virtually "rain" over the display. The real-time element of the ARS combined with the action of flowing water or “wind” makes such a system well-suited for classroom teaching at all levels of Earth system sciences. The UC Davis team has provided the community with technological support, including the open access code. Advancing technologies have dropped the cost of an ARS from over $40,000 to under $3,000 (Ryker et al, 2016). Two of the authors took advantage of that, building an AR Sandbox for the SEOE in 2017 (Horn, 2018). Limitations of the system include a 4:3 aspect ratio, with maximum sandbox dimensions of 36 x 27 inches. This is problematic for direct student use of ARSs in laboratory exercises in that only four students can participate at a time. A typical lower division geoscience course with lab will have 15-24 students.  Hence, 4-6 ARS systems or a rotation strategy will be needed per lab. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the use of the ARS in highlighting fundamental principles relevant to the study of Earth surface dynamics. We will also share the impact of the ARS on student ability with and interest in interpreting topographic maps in face-to-face and online environments (e.g. Clark and Ryker, 2016; Giorgis et al, 2017; Ryker et al, 2016b; Soltis et al, 2017). The audience will discuss other ways the AR Sandbox could be used and tested.