Faculty Spotlight
February - March 2002
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Collaboration and Teamwork
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Picture a large classroom filled with 150 students. The subject is EF101, Engineering Fundamentals, and the content covers such areas as vectors, acceleration, force and mass. How do you cover the subject matter, engage the students, and empower them to go on with their engineering studies?
Richard Bennett and Raj Raman accepted the challenge, and form one of the key teams in the Engage Freshmen Engineering Program. Richard Bennett volunteered for the program three years ago, and when his original partner rotated out, Raj Raman joined the team and is now in his second year. Together, they have created a technology-enhanced program which models how IT can be used to communicate difficult material effectively, while freeing instructors' time for substantive contact with students.
Before the Fall of 2000, Dick and Raj had labored over PowerPoint
presentations. In order to communicate the dynamic nature of
such subjects as Newton's Law and "force and mass," they
had to annotate, animate, and add arrows to PowerPoint slides.
They then printed the individual slides as overheads. In addition
to the time spent elaborating each concept, they found drawing
on an overhead to be awkward. When the SERF 307, the room where
the Engage Science Lectures are delivered, received a Smart Board,
they eagerly adopted the new tool. At a lunch meeting with ITC's
Michael Burke, they received an overview of the Smart Board,
tried one lecture with it, and as Dick Bennett said, "We
were sold."
Using the Smart Board's advanced capabilities, they could add animations as well as digital images and scanned materials. Instead of drawing awkwardly on an overhead, they could draw and annotate directly on the Smart Board itself. Enhanced screen size and the fact that the Smart Board could capture and store these additions made it an effective delivery tool for their large classes. They could now create a "barebones" PowerPoint presentation, place it on the Web in PDF format for students to print prior to class, then add the dynamic content during lecture.
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