The Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education's (VPUE) Academic Technology Specialist (ATS) Program continues to engage in a variety of collaborative, innovative projects as indicated by their most recent activities:
Undergraduate Research Programs
(ATS, Lina Yamaguchi)
In the fall of 2004, Undergraduate Research Programs (URP), in conjunction with the Office of Development, sponsored the third annual Symposium of Undergraduate Research in Progress (SURP). For this event, URP offered several hands-on workshops on poster design. The first part of the workshop focused on principles of good poster design. Students then designed their posters with URP staff and fellow students on hand for instant feedback. Finally, the student presenters were able to print out their results on the VPUE plotter, purchased this past summer for the purpose of presenting undergraduate research. In addition to the Symposium of Undergraduate Research in Progress, URP will host a Parents' Weekend Undergraduate Research Symposium in late February of 2005, as well as another symposium over Admit Weekend.
The How I Write series continued this fall. Host Hilton Obenzinger conducted conversations with English Professor Eavan Boland, Gildre Professor of Latin American Studies Terry Karl, and Professor of Comparative Literature Richard Rorty. The How I Write web site has moved to a new web space. Currently, 16 conversations are available as streamed videos on the site.
In addition to providing resources and tutoring for students and instructors, Undergraduate Research Programs has completed online systems for students, faculty and departments to apply for grants online. Using this system, students may apply for Quarterly, Major, Chappell-Lougee, Angel, and Conference Travel grants. Faculty and Departments can apply for VPUE Faculty and Departmental Grants for Undergraduate Research. Once they have received positive grant notification, they may now also go online to sign their grant contracts.
For more information about URP grants
Freshman and Sophomore Programs
(ATSs, Carlos Seligo and Dena Slothower)
Over the past few years Carlos Seligo has been photographing, audio- and videotaping the Introductory Seminars and Sophomore College. In addition, he began interviewing senior professors about the challenges they face, teaching freshmen and sophomores who are often unfamiliar with the basic methods and concepts of their disciplines. With some careful editing, a real server, and a bit of SMIL, what began as a drawer full of DV tape and minidisks has developed into a web site of streaming video, divided into short clips organized by topic and question, where faculty can watch and listen to their colleagues talk about their work.
Although the influence of technology on pedagogy (and vice versa) has been a constant theme in all these interviews, the emphasis has always been placed on the more immediate interaction between the faculty and their students, and in particular, on the strategies for teaching content, with politically controversial (e.g., The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons) or potentially personal consequences (e.g., Traumatic Stress). Dena Slothower deserves credit for coming up with its name, "Teaching Tough Subjects," and they hope to develop this into a colloquium this spring in which the participants can share their insights about teaching in Freshman and Sophomore Programs. Note that this summer our own Dena Slothower was the Chair of Siggraph 2004, the pre-eminent computer graphics conference in the world. Congratulations to Dena for a vast "extra-curricular" job well done.
Introduction to the Humanities
(ATS and ATA, Victoria Szabo and Galen Davis)
In keeping with the IHUM program's ongoing efforts to expand the conventional idea of the text, as well as to enhance critical thinking and argumentation skills through close engagement with core texts, this year's September Teaching Fellow training included segments on Teaching with Technology in IHUM that focused on real-life teaching challenges and opportunities in the program, and how technology use enriched and enhanced course goals.
Led by Victoria Szabo, "Bodies in Place" veteran and other IHUM instructors, the sessions addressed such questions as how to enhance the links between lectures and sections, how to ensure participation from the full class, how to benefit from group projects, and how to encourage students to think critically about genre and form as well as content. The sessions ranged from authoritative do's and don'ts from veterans to speculative possibilities for group assignments, multimedia projects, and oral components as media tools become more accessible and easier to use. IHUM looks this winter to develop its Digital Library to include sample assignments and materials for colleagues to share.
Galen Davis, IHUM's new Academic Technology Associate, will help make this and other program technology goals possible. A graduate of Stanford's Modern Thought and Literature graduate program, Galen brings experience with machinima and computer games theory as well as plenty of hands-on technology experience to the IHUM staff. Currently, in addition to working with individual teaching fellows to develop their technology skills, Galen is developing documentation and resources for instructors and curriculum development assistants to use in the Meyer 144a media production lab adjacent the IHUM "smart" classroom in Meyer 144. Galen is also coordinating IHUM's new "Tech Coordinators" program, whereby instructors receive additional training from the Registrar's office to become the local "tech expert" for their teaching teams so that teaching with technology in lectures remains as glitch-free as possible.
Program in Writing and Rhetoric
(ATS, Corinne Arraez)
The Program in Writing and Rhetoric continues to ramp up the Sophomore Writing Requirement (WR2), which includes Oral Communication, and often multimedia, in its coursework and assignment sequences. ATS Corinne Arraez continues to work tirelessly along with VPUE IT staff to develop the popular Wallenberg Hall writing classrooms as well as other resources for PWR's innovative instructors.
This summer PWR held its First Annual Summer Institute designed to gather the expertise of instructors teaching the WR2 course and to develop assignment sequences and recommendations for future implementation of the new requirement. The Institute sessions included PWR instructors and staff, as well as CTL staff involved in supporting the requirement. Corinne and the rest of the Institute staff led the instructors in hands-on practice in doing the types of projects they planned to assign their students to get real-world practical experience using the tools available as well as to understand more deeply the media forms involved.
Underlining Stanford's leadership in the field of writing instruction with technology: Corinne will Chair and host the Computers and Writing Conference for 2005 at Stanford this year.
Center for Teaching and Learning
(ATS, Jeremy Sabol)
Over the past year The Center for Teaching and Learning has developed an Oral Communications tutoring program under the direction of Doree Allen and John Bilderbeck. Clients include students in both PWR2 courses and introductory seminars that fulfill the second-year writing requirement.
Challenges the ATS team faces here have included developing procedures for digitally videotaping and distributing practice sessions, and figuring out how students can share works-in-progress on line for peer review and collaboration in PWR and other courses. ATS Jeremy Sabol has been particularly active in developing quick and effective ways for students to take away their video rehearsals and projects as CDs, and to streamline production techniques for consultants to endorse.
As a veteran Structured Liberal Education (SLE) instructor, Jeremy is also leading efforts to think about how the tech aspects of the new requirement affect students and instructors both in departmentally-based courses that fulfill the requirement, and in the specialized, intensive SLE curriculum.
VPUE ATS Team Challenges
The ATS team looks forward to further collaboration within VPUE, as well as with Academic Computing and ITSS, in figuring out solutions for questions such as multimedia training for students and instructors, how to handle scratch and storage space needs in developing media-based projects, and long-term storage and retrieval of student projects. (For current projects from Academic Computing's Academic Technology Specialist Program, see Academic Technology Specialists Program: Expansion and New Projects in this issue.)
In addition to academic challenges, The ATS team is working actively on several big administrative challenges for the VPUE: upgrading a vast, often web-driven, Filemaker infrastructure to version 7, shifting the unit to Sundial calendaring, and integrating lecturers IHUM and PWR into the VPUE Windows domain. The latter has involved extensive collaboration with VPUE IT specialist/wizard Neil Harris, as well as windows server administrator Pratul Kant. As the use of domain space ramps up, VPUE staff look forward to increasing mobility and collaboration for IHUM and PWR instructors working all over campus on both their teaching and research.
