Faculty Success Stories
We are working to create stories that describe the success our faculty partners are having in and outside of their classrooms using technologies to enhance their learning environments. This page will provide you with pointers to the things we are working with faculty with to help them realize their teaching and learning with technology vision.
Each of the stories below will attempt to share a glimpse into just some of the stories emerging from our campus. Most of the stories will also point you to the resources and opportunities the faculty member being profiled has taken advantage of. The faculty profiled below are art of a growing group who have worked with us to build new and engaging ways to shift and shape the teaching and learning experiences on our campus. Please take some time to explore and do not hesitate contacting us so we can start working together.
Faculty Success Story: Greg Pierce
Greg Pierce in the Smeal College of Business reinforces concepts in his Finance 100 course by augmenting class meetings and textbook readings with podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts). This allows students to review course material on an MP3 player or computer at any time or place.
Pierce said he decided to create podcasts of his lectures out of a “a sense that students are always on the go and could use supplemental material to enhance their learning.” In summer 2006, he signed up for the Podcasts at Penn State and easily learned to use ProfCast software, allowing him to record narration and synch it with his class PowerPoint slides to create “enhanced” podcasts. He posted his podcasts at Penn State on iTunes U.
Pierce said, “These lecture podcasts are designed to enhance and embellish what’s in the book, and if students have to miss a class for an employment interview, for example, they have the lectures at their fingertips. It gives them great flexibility.”
This past summer, Pierce said, he had just returned from watching his son’s baseball game when he had a fresh inspiration for providing finance problem solutions to his active students. “I had the hat on, the jacket on, the whistle, and I just went up to the whiteboard in my office and started writing out the givens, the equations, and the solutions for assigned problems,” he said. As he did so, he videotaped himself. Thus the “Finance Coach” series was born. He created videos showing how to solve the problems from each textbook chapter.
As fall approached, Pierce said, he ran out of time to edit the videos into a useable format. He asked his Schreyer Honors College students whether any of them who knew iMovie software would like to earn honors credit by assisting with the editing. As a result, he obtained the help of sophomore Kylie Nellis, who spent about one hour editing each video in iMovie.
In each Finance Coach installment, Pierce works the same problem assigned to the students, who must then submit the solution in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. He said that way, “they can see how to do the math behind the problem and not worry about it so much. Someone might argue that we’re just giving them everything. My response is that I’m teaching them the mathematics on the board, then they have to take it up one level and figure out how to solve the problem by entering it into Excel.”
Nellis said, “If you’re not familiar with math or financial concepts, it’s not really daunting to sit down with your book and the Finance Coach. You know if there’s a problem, you have a resource right away.” She added, “I feel better if someone explains something to me as opposed to reading it in a textbook. I respond a lot better to that type of audiovisual interaction.”
“Coaching,” that’s really what it’s all about,” said Pierce. “Some students I encounter had a bad experience with mathematics in the past, so they just avoid math at all costs. The Finance Coach vodcasts makes it a little easier to at least approach the problem and say ‘This isn’t so bad after all. If you can do it on the board I can at least try to solve it in Excel.’”
Faculty Success Story: Christopher Long
Christopher Long in the College of the Liberal Arts teaches “Tragedy, Comedy, Politics” and “20th Century Philosophy” courses. To help students develop their critical thinking and writing skills, he asks each student to create a blog on which they post assignments. The blogs allow students to write for a broader audience than their instructor alone and encourage them to develop a unique voice. Long’s ability to provide regular, dynamic feedback helps students grow as writers and thinkers.
Long said, “I intentionally chose a decentralized model, where each student would have his or her own blog, because I wanted them to have a sense of owning their work. My main goal for using blogs is to get students actively involved in their own education.” The student blogs, as well as blogs Long set up for each course, were created using the Blogs at Penn State.
The course blogs provide a description of each blogging assignment, including a detailed grading rubric. Long also writes blog posts related to course topics as “food for thought.”
Students are often asked to relate current events to course readings. For example, after reading the Oresteia by Aeschylus, a trilogy of Greek tragedies unified by the theme of retributive justice vs. justice based on law and reason, students are asked to submit a blog post with an example of the tension between these two concepts of justice in modern society. Long explained, “One of my goals is to encourage students to make concrete connections between philosophical ideas discussed in class and events of contemporary social and political life.”
Having students post their thoughts on a blog can result in a less isolating experience, said Long. “Blogs get them writing with an eye toward a larger community. They now write not only for themselves and for me, but also for their colleagues and other online readers,” he said. “There’s a potential for broader exposure and feedback, which can’t happen when they’re just dropping assignments in drop boxes.”
As Long pointed out, blogs allow anyone to post content on the Web. He noted, “I think there’s something significant about what’s happening in the larger society and culture with the Internet and this technology. Students have to come out of Penn State with an ability to not only be creators of content, but also critics with good judgment.” Long added, “As creators of thoughtful, well-crafted content, they also learn to become analytically more critical of the content they encounter online.”
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