Facilitating and Promoting Collaborative Learning:
- Romantic Poetry--for his English 321/521 course in Romantic Poetry, Dr. Waqas Khwaja encourages his students to work in small groups to design a set of web pages showcasing their perceptions of major themes, ideas, and concerns of writers from the Romantic era. As a final project for this course, the assignment is expected to reflect an educated engagement with works from the period and an awareness of critical responses to them. The exercise hopes to develop over the years a community of scholars, teachers, and students who have taken the course at Agnes Scott and continue to stay in touch with the subject, and with each other, occasionally contributing fresh material and ideas to the website. To view the Romantic Poetry website go to http://romantic_poetry.agnesscott.edu
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Ireland and Film—the topic of Dr. Christine Cozzens' course is Ireland through film, particularly films made in Ireland and by Irish directors. The final project is to make a film, using iMovie software, about a place that interprets or shows the significance of that place. Students work in groups of two to four to plan, write, direct, and produce the films. Cozzens included this assignment because she wanted the students to have a concrete understanding of what it means to tell a story on film so that they will be better able to view critically the films that play such an important role in contemporary culture. How does a camera angle reflect an attitude? How does a close-up or shadowy lighting or the framing of a shot contribute to the film’s meaning? How do the visual and the aural work together to make meaning? All semester long students study the vocabulary of film analysis and apply it to films about Ireland; producing a film of their own takes this learning to another level.
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Art History--Katherine Smith, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, utilizes Blackboard not only to post all digital images discussed in the classroom (and thus make possible a semester-long “visual essay” assignment), but also to facilitate a monument inventory project. Because the course was designed in response to the Beth Griffin Memorial underway at Agnes Scott, a large segment looks at the ways that monuments and memorials produce and preserve memory through their iconographic idioms, historical contexts, materials, and settings. Each student has located and is researching a local monument or memorial, and chosen examples stretch from the Agnes Scott campus throughout the Atlanta area. With a Blackboard discussion board dedicated to this project, students are able to share information in multiple ways, initially through a text document and a digital image. As members of the class complete their required visits to all selected sites, they can add information to, and comment on, this collected material as their ideas change during the semester, making this a collaborative and evolving project.
- Investment and Macroeconomics--Dr. Rosemary Cunningham (Professor of Economics) uses a variety of features and tools in Blackboard for her economic courses. In her courses on Investment and Macroeconomics, she requires each student to read The Wall Street Journal and complete a weekly quiz online. Each quiz is tailored to connect the material in the course with real-world events. The students have two weeks within which to take any one quiz.
- Global Awareness--Dr. Waquas Khwaja and Dean Rosemary Zumwalt have their students design a web site where they can post photos, research papers and share reflections about their global awareness trip to India. http://india.agnesscott.edu/
- Mathematics- -Dr. Larry Riddle created the web site Biographies of Women Mathematicians as part of a project by students in mathematics classes to illustrate the numerous achievements of women in the field of mathematics. There are biographical essays and profiles on many women mathematicians, some discussion of the mathematics they did, prizes and awards won by women mathematicians, and a list of additional resources. The site will continue to expand as more biographies are added. http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm
- French --Dr. Phillip Ojo created Pages Francophones. It is a website aimed at promoting the understanding and study of French and Francophone cultures worldwide. This online project supports and complements the efforts of the French department to teach, disseminate and share ideas about the multicultural community called Le monde francophone. This association totals approximately 500 million people and includes 56 governments, states, territories, and provinces ranging from Europe , Africa , the Caribbean , South-East Asia and North America . http://french.agnesscott.edu/pagesfrancophones.htm
- Astronomy— Amy Lovell, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy, uses Blackboard extensively in her courses. The Blackboard layout follows the outline of the course, with folders for each topic covered. Each folder includes lecture notes and all visual aids (images, animations, powerpoint, web links) used during the lecture. This way students can feel free to participate during class without worrying about taking extensive notes, because all materials remain available throughout the semester. Reading assignments are posted in advance of the lectures, with study questions the students can submit as an online survey. Lovell uses the collated results of the online surveys to assess the level of understanding the students have after doing the reading. This way, lecture time can be devoted to those things which are problem areas or are of particular interest to the class.
Chemistry-- Lachele Foley develops students’ critical thinking skills by selecting and posting information about key chemistry topics that students must examine and use to practice their critical evaluation skills. She posts targeted questions that examine the methodology and analysis of each study. Students work individually to answer key questions about the literature and then post their answers on the Blackboard website. She also gives extensive tests online using the quiz feature in Blackboard.
Philosophy--Dr. David Behan had several audio cassette tapes of recorded material that he needed all of his students to preview. The tapes were digitized using a sound editing software program. The sound files were stored in the digital drop box on Behan’s Blackboard course site so students could access the audio when it was convenient for them.
- Economics —Dr. Rosemary Cunningham uses the discussion board in most of her courses to promote discussion about problems that she has assigned on the material. On the night before tests, Cunningham is available during a specified time to answer questions posted on the discussion board. Even though there is a chat room, the discussion board allows for a more structured discussion -- all questions about one topic can be grouped together.
History, English, and Psychology—several faculty have collaborated with the library to produce web-based resource guides for their courses. These sites are easy to get to and they are tailored to help students find journal articles and books specific to their research topic. The sites also guide students on how to conduct research and provides links to course-related websites. http://library.agnesscott.edu/help/courses/index.htm
Using multimedia to enhance or clarify the presentation of material in the classroom:
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Latin America on Film--Dr. Rafael Ocasio, Professor of Spanish, edits together a series of film clips from a collection of films that highlight Latin American Culture. Using Windows Movie Maker and Plato DVD Ripper, he is able to extract movie clips from a DVD and incorporate music and digitized images to augment the meaning of the film segments. Ocasio embeds text in the clips to get students to analyze and highlight specific details and perceptions about Latin American Culture and Film. These documentary styled segments are shown and discussed in class, and they are available to students outside of class as study guides. Ocasio is no longer relegated to show one scene at a time from individual DVD’s, but weaves together a multimedia presentation that takes film studies to a more meaningful level.
Enhancing students' understanding of complex theories and techniques by giving them hands-on experience
- Chemistry – Dr. Lachele Foley has her students use software to illustrate mathematical concepts and techniques. Students occasionally use Maple to solve mathematical problems. More often, they use Excel to perform numerical solutions of some of the simpler systems studied numerically by chemists. They also use software written by Dr. Foley or that is commercially available to handle more complex tasks. Some of these concepts and techniques are just too "big" to do without the technology.