 |
multimedia instructional project. Left to right: Zak Ham,
Cathleen Leué, Garron Hale.
Joyce Winslow
jwins@uoregon.edu
Ten years ago, Social Sciences Instructional Lab (SSIL) director and economics professor Cathleen Leué saw a growing need that promised to revolutionize the mission of computer labs. The demand for web-based teaching was increasing, and many students craved the flexibility of fulfilling course requirements online. In Leué's own department of economics, students often had difficulty fitting core curriculum undergraduate courses into their schedules in time for graduation--especially if they lived far from campus.
The challenge was to design courses that could be effectively taught and graded entirely online. Leué and her programming team began by helping the economics and political science departments build websites and set up and test online courses for select introductory classes. Initially, SSIL specialized in designing online testing, developing tests in either multiple choice or true-false formats. In 2002, however, a linguistics professor presented them with what Leué calls "our first really complex project," and the SSIL team had to dig a bit deeper into their bag of programming tricks. This particular project required designing an online exam that had matching component, short-answer, and fill-in-the-blank questions. "What impressed me about this project was the interaction between the programming team and the faculty member," Leué recalls. "The programming team was able to quickly envision what the faculty member wanted and delivered it in a way that was completely satisfying to her."
This linguistics project marked the beginning of an increasingly innovative and creative period for Leué and her team, which by this time included assistant director Garron Hale, who came on board in fall 2000, and a student programmer who has since graduated (beginning in 2004, distance education administrator Zack Ham has filled the student programmer position). In the past four years, they have completed a wide variety of individualized projects, including online placement tests for math and Spanish, a web-based master's level training course in geography, web resources for high school geography teachers based on the Atlas of Oregon materials, a Canadian studies website, and dynamic online graphic homework and grading models for Leué's Economics 202 course that features a toolbox of drag-and-drop shapes for drawing graphs electronically.
Increasingly, the projects reflect both the evolution of web technology and the artistic talent of Garron Hale, a graphic artist and designer who is webmaster for some twenty different websites both on and off-campus. Aside from aesthetic appeal, most strikingly demonstrated in the interactive educational CD "Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan" (http://ssil.uoregon.edu/lanterns/), Hale's work makes a very practical contribution to pedagogy. Most recently, this was evidenced in the multimedia components of the distance ed economics course he designed in collaboration with instructor Leué and student programmer Ham, a project funded by UO Ed Tech fees.
Weekly homework for this course required students to draw graphs charting economic trends. Using Flash, Hale created drag-and-drop shapes that could be individually placed on a grid to produce a finished graph electronically. With Ham's collaboration, Hale's work also streamlined the grading process, because the instructor--also working online--could easily overlay students' graphs onto the master graphs, quickly revealing any errors.
Another handy feature SSIL's course sites provide for distance ed instructors is a statistics package that shows a percentage breakdown of students' answers to each question, allowing faculty to analyze student performance on midterms. The statistical data is also designed to allow diagnostics after the test is administered." We also offer the instructor summary statistics for each test, including the average score, the minimum and maximum score, and the average, minimum, and maximum amount of time it takes a student to complete each test," Leué explains. "The instructor also has, for each student, the amount of time it took for that student to complete the exam, a time and date stamp for each test, and the name of the exam proctor."
Devising a system for proctoring the online exams is another service SSIL pioneered for distance ed instructors. Exams are held in the SSIL lab on the fourth floor of McKenzie Hall, and a student proctor is always present to monitor the proceedings. Each student receives exam questions in a slightly different order, making it difficult for students to cheat by copying what they see on a neighbor's computer screen.
Other notable customized courses the SSIL team helped develop include two geography courses, Geography 607 (Preparing to Teach Advanced Placement Geography) and Geography 410 (Historic Geography of the U.S.). The 607 course, which was funded by the National Geographic Society, is taught by Susan Hardwick, who recently won highest honors from the Association of American Geographers for her work. "We worked collaboratively with Susan," Leué says. "Susan began developing a pilot last summer (2005) and then began offering the course (in the summer of 2006) to teachers across the U.S. Susan used the SSIL lab for the pilot workshop, and Garron helped develop the first website and revised it for the 2006 class. So we provided a meeting place for the summer workshop, and the web development for the site."
The other course, Geography 410, is taught by Don Holtgrieve. Working with Holtgrieve, "we designed an entirely new structure for Geography 410," Leué says. "Garron designed the look of the course website and helped plan the structure of the site. We worked with Don to create a modular structure for presenting course materials, helping him build a large gallery of maps and photos from the content Don provided. Students could upload papers, take quizzes, and engage in threaded discussions from this website."
SSIL currently serves more than 1000 distance ed students per quarter. Its reputation as a distance ed facilitator has ensured it a steady stream of requests from UO faculty. Each new project brings with it a special challenge, and the SSIL team seems energized by the variety. "The aspect of my job that I love the most is tackling new, more challenging projects and working with my team to find solutions," Leué says. "The increasing level of challenge makes the job fresh and exciting."
Some Notable SSIL Projects...
- Center for Asian and Pacific Studies: http://ssil.uoregon.edu/caps/
- Asian Studies at the University of Oregon: http://asianstudies.uoregon.edu/
- Preparing to Teach Advanced Placement Human Geography: http://ssil.uoregon.edu/geog610/
- Historical Geography of the U.S. http://ssil.uoregon.edu/geog410new/
- Foundations of East Asian Civilization: http://ssil.uoregon.edu/hist190/
- Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan (interactive CD project): http://ssil.uoregon.edu/lanterns/