2005 Awards
Agriculture and Life Sciences
Jonathan Russell-Anelli
Science of Soil: A Web-based Soil Instructional and Information Resource
A challenge in teaching the introductory soils course, CSS 260, has been to give students access to an assortment of soils and help them understand complex processes that take place over broad temporal and spatial scales. This project uses web-based multimedia animations for virtual "tours" of soil profiles and landscape processes designed to enhance student learning.
John Sipple
Public Education through the Lens of Popular Movies, Documentaries, and TV
News: A catalyst for classroom discussion and debate.
In “The Social and Political Context of American Education” course, the project implemented two strategies to enrich and stimulate class discussion and enhance student assignments. The project created a collection of video clips from movies, documentaries, and television news dealing with public education themes for use in the classroom. A system for cataloging and storing student “audio reflections” and field interviews with educators such as teachers, counselors, and administrators was created.
Deborah Streeter
Expanding e-Clips video database on Business, Entrepreneurship, and Leadership
for use in Large business class settings.
Over the last 10 years, Professor Streeter has developed a large on-line database of digital video clips on issues in business, entrepreneurship, and leadership. This project will enhance the e-Clips interface and create a set of instructional tools to make the collection easier to use in large classrooms.
Arts & Sciences
Jeevak Parpia
Interactive distributed learning and flexible testing for autotutorial introductory
physics
Annelise Riles
Using Technology to Enhance Individual Participation and to Develop Critical
and Creative Analytical Faculties
The goal of this project is to use new technologies to create an interactive classroom atmosphere, to engage every student personally and intellectually, creating an active, forumlike setting despite the fact that class size precludes daily oral class participation. An interactive personal response system was implemented in conjunction with active lecture techniques and interactive presentations in this large class.
Elizabeth DeLoughrey
Islands of Globalization
Islands of Globalization is designed to enhance our understanding of the origins, nature, and consequences of globalization from the perspective of small island societies. This projectwill establish collaborative relationships with educational institutions in the Pacific and Caribbean to explore historical and contemporary links between the regions and to develop shared pedagogy and curriculum, faculty and student exchanges, journal and book publications, and multimedia products.
Architecture, Art, and Planning
Elisabeth Meyer
Printed Matters
In this project, a new kind of print shop will be developed to expand pedagogy in the fine arts and more comprehensively engage students from a variety of disciplines. By incorporating broad-access equipment, beginning with a laser cutter, we can promote interdisciplinary activities for undergraduates, incorporate technology in artistic practice, and, in conjunction with traditional methods, permit instruction for more students through the use of computer-driven equipment.
Computing and Information Science
K-Y. Daisy Fan
Improved lecture hall experience for CS100M students using Personal Response
System and Mobile Presentations.
CS100M is an introductory computer programming class taken by 180–300 students each semester. By implementing a personal response system, this project permits students to participate actively and give the instructor real-time feedback on their learning, and to improve the instructor's mobility in the lecture room. Two technologies that would support this proposal are the personal response system, in which the instructor receives real-time feedback on students' responses to a multiple-choice question transmitted through hand-held response units, and wireless technology with a tablet computer to give a mobile, dynamic presentation.
Engineering
Peter Jackson
Electronic Textbook for Applied Systems Engineering
An electronic textbook and associated exercises for the course "Applied Systems Engineering" will be developed for web-based delivery. The project will create a system to create an interactive multi-media electronic textbook.
FABIT Faculty Advisory Board of Information Technology
Richard Burkhauser
Improving Student Feedback and Teacher Interaction in a Large Classroom
Setting
Student-teacher interactions are difficult in large classes. This project improves real-time student-student and student-teacher interactions in Economics 101 class using Turning Point' s radio frequency personal response system. This system allows the faculty to gauge student understanding in class, and to introduce new problems and receive responses quickly in a large class setting.
Billie Jean Isbell
A Virtual Tour Through Time And Space: Lessons From Vicos, Peru On
Sustainibility
This project introduces students in three courses to the history of Cornell's efforts in international development in the 1950s and 60s using a digitized archival collection. Using images, audio and video clips developed with the grant, a “virtual tour” of the region, the history, the people, biodiversity and ecotourism of the region will be created. Interactive exercises with the tour will enable help students to explore issues in testing for water management, reforestation, sustainable agriculture, and community-based ecotourism.
Barry Perlus
Playing with Space and Time: An interdisciplinary approach
to creativity in the arts and sciences.
Playing with Space and Time is a studio course using computer-based media to create experiences of space and time. Exercises and studio assignments lead students through the use of different technologies, media, and formal systems. The course emphasizes the use of new media technologies, but it will draw on media practices from both high- and low-tech sources.
Rachel Prentice
A system to make video content available on the web (Histories
of the Future).
This project will develop a system for creating video content for instructors and students via the Web, and to create a methods for students and instructors to annotate video content.
Hotel Administration
Erica Wagner
Using technology to Support Critical Systems Thinking: Educating
hospitality leaders to think outside the box.
In information systems courses with large enrollments, it is difficult to support student activities that promote "systemic thinking" about different perspectives on information technology decisions. HA275 is designed to evaluate analytical skills while teaching systems thinking. This project developed technological tools for use in decision-making, the development of critical thinking, and the use of library information sources for completing research-based assignments.
Human Ecology
Jeffrey Haugaard
Innovations to HD/PSYC 371 and HD/PSYC 313
This project supports two large courses: Child Development and Psychopathology (HD/PSYC 371) and Problematic Behaviors in Adolescence (HD/PSYC 313). Both courses aim to acquaint students with (1) research on disorders, (2) critical thinking about issues relevant to children and their families, and (3) appreciating children with disorders and their families. The technological innovations in this project will expose students to “real-world” multimedia vignettes of children with disorders, and to interviews with family members, health practitioners, and students acting as adolescents with disorders.
Industrial and Labor Relations
Michael Gold
Teaching Critical Thinking with Interactive Exercises and
Machine-scored Homework Assignments.
This project is a continuation of enhancements to a labor law course that teaches critical thinking to a large undergraduate class. The project will implement a personal response system that will lead students through a series analytical techniques and provide immediate feedback to students. The project also include the development of online interactive exercises.
Johnson Graduate School of Management
Eric Eisenstein
Tracking individual progress, identifying gaps in learning,
and enhancing the curriculum in a large class setting
A general-purpose Web content delivery shell that would allow a faculty member to present problems, have students answer the displayed questions, and provide real-time feedback to students about their answers will be created in this proejct. Faculty would be able to track the progress of individual students and relate performance to each student ' s background. With background information about students acquired during registration, instructors could determine which techniques, concepts, or analyses are most difficult for different groups to master.
Law School
Robert Hockett
Financial Institutions e-Coursebook and Support Site
The law school curriculum needs a unified course on financial institutions, but producing such a course is difficult because financial concepts, procedures, and regulations are extraordinarily complex and change frequently. An electronic web-based coursebook that is easily updated and linked to supportive diagrammatic and explanatory sites will be developed in this project.
Veterinary Medicine
Richard Rawson
Computer-generated Cases for Fluid Therapy
In VTMED 642, Management of Fluid and Electrolyte Disorders, students currently learn important concepts using a limited number of static (unchanging over time) paper-based cases. These cases, however, lack key components of genuine clinical cases, which are diverse, dynamic, and respond variously to intervention. This project will develop computer-generated models of cases that will require students to apply basic principles of assessment, diagnosis, and therapy and to demonstrate flexibility in applying those principles.