New Mathematica 8 and Course Assistant Apps

As you return to campus, we'd like to make you aware of two
technologies that will assist with your teaching and research
this spring.

Mathematica 8 was released in November and pioneers the concept
of free-form linguistic input by allowing you to give commands in
plain English, which are then translated into precise Mathematica
syntax and results. In addition, over 500 new functions and
enhancements were added, including the largest collection of
statistical distributions in a single system; built-in GPU
support; standalone code generation; and new functionality for
control systems, wavelets, finance, image processing, and
networks.

If you need help acquiring Mathematica 8, either through your
organization's site license or by getting an individual license
to use or evaluate, please contact me for assistance.

We have also released the first of our Wolfram Course Assistant
Apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. These interactive,
mobile Apps provide a custom interface for each subject to guide
students through their coursework.

Course Assistant Apps for algebra, calculus, and music theory are
now available in the App Store. And with an app planned for every
course, many more are coming soon. These apps are universal
learning supplements that are not tied to specific textbooks, so
they make an ideal recommendation for students who need
additional assistance. You can learn more about the Course
Assistant Apps or recommend them to your students here:
http://url.wolfram.com/MRsD6PO/

Best regards,

Michael Morrison
Academic Program Manager
Wolfram Research, Inc.
michael_morrison@wolfram.com

New Mathematica 8 and Course Assistant Apps

Ohio State University Program for Arts and Humanities Development

An Undergraduate Research Opportunity
Application deadline: February 21, 2011

The Program for Arts and Humanities Development (PHD) at The Ohio State University is currently recruiting students with sophomore or junior standing for its Summer 2011 cohort. The PHD is a research and mentoring program that serves Arts and Humanities majors from historically underrepresented groups from any U.S. college or university. The PHD focuses on providing developmental programming and support for students interested in pursuing graduate study in the Arts and Humanities disciplines. Over the course of the summer, the PHD provides guided coursework, research, mentoring, and cohort building. This unique structure provides students with the opportunity to gain foundational knowledge about graduate study in the Arts and Humanities and then build upon that foundation with discipline specific research.

Participating students will profit greatly from all facets of the PHD.

·Receive direction in navigating the transition between undergraduate and graduate study in the Arts and Humanities.

·Build strong bonds with faculty mentors and students through networking, mentoring, and cohort building activities.

·Receive classroom and one-on-one instruction from graduate students and faculty at the cutting edge of their discipline.

·Interact with students earning advanced degrees in various disciplines and experience graduate school from a student perspective.

·Receive hands-on guidance for preparation of graduate school application materials (personal statement, statement of purpose, writing sample, etc.).

·Earn 4 hours of college credit. Dillard students are advised to check with their advisors on the transferability of courses to their majors.

·$3000 monetary stipend.

·Receive free room and board.

Program Eligibility

·The PHD targets students from historically underrepresented groups with sophomore or junior status

·Interest in pursuing a MFA or PhD in the Arts or Humanities

·U.S. citizenship

·3.0 or better G.P.A.

TO APPLY: http://humanities.osu.edu/studentinfo/undergrad/phd

FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://humanities.osu.edu/studentinfo/undergrad/sahandbk/resopp.cfm


CONTACT:
Tiffani Clyburn at COH-PHD@osu.edu or 614-688-8346 with any questions.
Tara Polansky at polansky.7@buckeyemail.osu.edu
-----------------------------------------------

Lynn Y.R. Strong
Director, Undergraduate Research
Dillard University
Professional Schools Bldg., Rm. 250
2601 Gentilly Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70122
Tel: 504-816-4446 or 816-4877
Cell: 209-404-3472
Fax: 504-816-4313

Ohio State University Program for Arts and Humanities Development

Derek Bruff: Author of Teaching with Classroom Response Systems

Welcome to my home page. I’m Derek Bruff, author of Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments (Jossey-Bass, 2009). I’m also an assistant director at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching and a senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt University Department of Mathematics. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of Vanderbilt University.

Blog Categories
Assessment (1)
CFT Blog (21)
CRS Blog (53)
Educational Technology (11)
Evaluating Teaching (2)
Games in Teaching (1)
How People Learn (5)
Meta (4)
Pedagogical Change (7)
Presentations (3)
Productivity (2)
Social Media (9)
Student Motivation (12)
Teaching Cryptography (9)
Teaching Math (2)
Teaching Writing (3)
Visual Thinking (10)

Derek Bruff: Author of Teaching with Classroom Response Systems

The New York Times: President Obama's Internet Plan Sounds an Awful Lot Like a National Internet ID

By CURT HOPKINS of ReadWriteWeb
Published: January 10, 2011

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt announced to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research on Friday that President Obama intended to turn over development of a national Internet ID to the Commerce Department.

Pursuant to the Orwellian-sounding National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which the administration is currently writing, Commerce will create a program to provide and administer an allegedly voluntary interoperable verified online IDs.

An early draft makes the case for such an ID.

"(A) secure cyberspace is critical to the health of our economy and to the security of our Nation. In particular, the Federal Government must address the recent and alarming rise in online fraud, identity theft, and misuse of information online. One key step in reducing online fraud and identity theft is to increase the level of trust associated with identities in cyberspace. While this Strategy recognizes the value of anonymity for many online transactions (e.g., blog postings), for other types of transactions (e.g., online banking or accessing electronic health records) it is important that the parties to that transaction have a high degree of trust that they are interacting with known entities."

According to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, as reported by CNET:

"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

We are talking about a government-controlled system. That is exactly what we are talking about. In fact, the presentation of what few facts exist is vague enough as to be good for nothing but worry.

Here are the few facts on the program that are available.


The government will enable the creation of verified identities
The government will create an "Identity Ecosystem"
Getting a verified identity will be elective
Verizon, Google, PayPal, Symantec and AT&T support the program
A user would be able to use one login to sign in to all of their sites

So, a user would have one, "verified" ID, which would be known by the government, and a set of large corporations. Given the periodic outbreak of governmental and corporate shenanigans, we fail to see the benefit of such a system.

Further, the "Identity Ecosystem" sounds strangely like the national intranet the Chinese government has been working on, as an alternative to the Internet as a whole, and more controllable.


"The Identity Ecosystem is the embodiment of the vision. It is an online environment where individuals, organizations, services, and devices can trust each other because authoritative sources establish and authenticate their digital identities."

We write frequently here about Facebook's efforts to become the source of a universal verified online ID system, but a campaign by the US government to do something similar is another matter. It would be niave to assume that either party is motivated by nothing more than convenience on the part of users.

Tags: commerce department, internet id

Copyright 2011 ReadWriteWeb. All Rights Reserved.

The New York Times: President Obama's Internet Plan Sounds an Awful Lot Like a National Internet ID

The IDEA Center: Feedback for Administrators

We are currently conducting research on each of the feedback systems. Updated forms, improved reports, and optional features, including a self-reflection and gap analysis, will be announced soon. Please contact the Center for the current project status.

Every learning institution needs great leadership — from presidents to vice presidents of student affairs, business, and external relations, to all the competent individuals reporting to them. The IDEA Center’s web-based Feedback for Administrators system solicits input on 10 pivotal characteristics, representing five distinct administrative roles. The administrator survey tool gathers impressions on administrative styles, ratings of confidence, and job performance, while also identifying areas for improvement as observed by core constituents. Confidentiality permitting, the respondent sample can be stratified on the basis of a number of roles and relationships, providing a useful demographic breakdown of responses.

This instrument is intended to serve many types of administrators and distinct constituencies and is unique in higher education today. Both the Administrator Information Form and the Survey Form are administered through the Internet for convenience, speed, efficiency, and confidentiality.

Features of the System
Supplies valuable information — via the Administrator Information Form — to enhance the research efforts of The IDEA Center
Provides ratings of 10 characteristics representing 5 administrative roles
Assesses strengths and weaknesses associated with administrative style and personal characteristics and is designed to offer suggestions for improving administrative performance
Summarizes ratings of overall job performance and confidence in the administrator
Provides impressions of several types of constituents, for example, colleagues, staff, student, and faculty
Option to add up to 20 custom questions

The IDEA Center: Feedback for Administrators

The IDEA Center: Student Ratings of Instruction

Our flagship service, the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction system, factors out extraneous circumstances, focuses on student learning of 12 specific objectives, and can be administered online or on paper. Research has shown there is no single, correct way to teach. As a result, The IDEA Center tailors each report to fit the instructor's selected learning objectives and offers recommendations for improvement based on our vast national database. In essence, IDEA builds in objectivity — while accommodating the creativity and artistry necessary to facilitate student learning.

What does it do?
Any assessment is only as good as the feedback it provides. The Student Ratings of Instruction system distinguishes itself by soliciting students' feedback on their own learning progress, effort, and motivation, as well as their perceptions of the instructor's use of 20 instructional strategies and teaching methods. In addition, the system surveys instructors regarding their overall goals and highlights for them in the analysis and report.

A focus on learning
The IDEA Student Ratings system looks at instruction in terms of its endgame. Rather than emphasizing teaching style or personality, the IDEA system focuses on student learning and the methods used to facilitate it.

A wealth of normative data
The Student Ratings of Instruction system is unique in its emphasis on using data-driven results constructively. In addition to measuring instructional effectiveness, the system draws upon a wealth of research from The IDEA Center’s growing national database. This crucial comparative data provides a firm basis for identifying strengths and diagnosing areas in need of improvement, while factoring out variables beyond the instructor’s control, such as student work habits, student motivation, and class size.

Useful and constructive reporting
Reader-friendly faculty reports not only summarize teaching success, but also provide insight on how to improve. These reports gain even more currency when combined across classes or years using the Group Summary Report. No other evaluation service offers such comprehensive, longitudinal reporting.

Learn More
Read more about the Benefits of Student Ratings of Instruction
Pilot Program
IDEA Online
Fee Schedule
Sample Forms
Sample Reports
Student Ratings Knowledge Base
Student Ratings Support

The IDEA Center: Student Ratings of Instruction

The IDEA Center: Feedback for Department Chairs

This one-of-a-kind system is the only nationally available tool for evaluating chairpersons and providing a basis for their further development. The IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs system recognizes that different management styles and strategies come into play when addressing different responsibilities. The system measures effectiveness by soliciting faculty input on how well the chairperson has used different administrative methods to meet identified goals for the department. Combined with the Chair’s self-assessment, the resulting gap analysis can further guide the chair’s personal reflection. Chair and faculty responses are collected online and analyzed by The IDEA Center. The resulting report provides direction on specific areas of strength and strategies for improvement. Custom questions are available to further assess unique departmental and personal goals.

While the instrument’s feedback is useful at any time, ideally its first administration would occur early in ones’ appointment (at the conclusion of the third or beginning of the fourth semester) to provide formative feedback. Then, it can be used in later terms to address both formative and summary evaluation questions (see Best Practices for IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs). The system combines ratings by both faculty members and the chairperson to yield reliable and relevant information. It is unique in higher education today and provides specific feedback to guide professional reflection. Both the Chair Information Form and the Faculty Survey are administered through the Internet by The IDEA Center for convenience, speed, efficiency, and respondent confidentiality.

Once the IDEA Feedback for Department Chairs instrument has been completed, The IDEA Center provides several coaching options to extend and enhance self-reflection and leadership development, through consultation with respected and experienced higher education administrators. The IDEA Department Chair Coaching Service guides chairs through an individualized process of professional discovery and reflection, with flexibility in pricing and structure.

Features of the Survey System
Allows the chairperson to identify the relevance of 21 responsibilities in his or her role as chair, identifying 3 to 6 as highest priority
Provides faculty ratings of administrative responsibilities, personal characteristics, and administrative methods
Includes opportunity for chair to provide self-ratings on performance, personal characteristics, and administrative methods
Results in a gap analysis allowing chairs to reflect on comparisons of their self-ratings to that of their faculty
Assesses strengths and weaknesses associated with success for each duty
Highlights specific recommendations for areas of improvement
Includes detailed statistical information about how faculty responded to each question, permitting an in-depth analysis of specific concerns
Summarizes faculty ratings of overall effectiveness
Provides a report of responses to open-ended comments
Includes the option to add up to 20 custom questions

The IDEA Center: Feedback for Department Chairs

Free Technology for Teachers Blog: Tips for Teaching Online

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

My ISTE 2010 roommate Cory Plough teaches all of his high school social studies courses online. If you're just starting out teaching online or you're considering doing it in the future, Cory has just written a post that you must read. Cory's latest post on his blog The Next Step points out some things that people new to teaching online might not think about when designing and conducting online courses. Read 4 Tips for Teaching a Course Online.

Free Technology for Teachers Blog: Tips for Teaching Online

Smashing Magazine: Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How To Use It

Almost every new client these days wants a mobile version of their website. It’s practically essential after all: one design for the BlackBerry, another for the iPhone, the iPad, netbook, Kindle — and all screen resolutions must be compatible, too. In the next five years, we’ll likely need to design for a number of additional inventions. When will the madness stop? It won’t, of course.

In the field of Web design and development, we’re quickly getting to the point of being unable to keep up with the endless new resolutions and devices. For many websites, creating a website version for each resolution and new device would be impossible, or at least impractical. Should we just suffer the consequences of losing visitors from one device, for the benefit of gaining visitors from another? Or is there another option?
Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.

Smashing Magazine: Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How To Use It

Faculty Focus: Short Answer Questions: A Great Middle Ground

Short Answer Questions: A Great Middle Ground
By Susan Condone, PhD

Stronger than multiple choice, yet not quite as revealing (or time consuming to grade) as the essay question, the short answer question offers a great middle ground – the chance to measure a student’s brief composition of facts, concepts, and attitudes in a paragraph or less.

The University of Wisconsin Teaching Academy calls short answer questions “constructed response”, or “open-ended questions that require students to create an answer.” The Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that short answer questions allow students to present an original answer.

Like all assessment items, a short answer question should clearly assess a specific learning objective. It should ask students to select relevant facts and concepts and integrate them into a coherent written response. Question 1, below, is a typical example of a short answer question requiring such a constructed response.



This question sets up a scenario with an expert role, a community history, and an environmental problem and asks the students to use a specific problem-solving strategy — the 4 A's — to frame a response, which can most likely be completed in one paragraph.

Question 2 is slightly more problematic because of a very common error in constructing short answer questions.



This question, while well-intended, actually asks two questions. This likely will leave the student confused as to which question is more important. Additionally, the student will have to write a longer response to answer both questions, leading this particular test question more toward an essay response than a short answer. Short answer questions should always ask one clear question, rather than confusing the issue with multiple queries.

Finally, one strategy professors use is to post a rubric in the test so that students will know how points will be distributed. Question 3, below, both shows such a rubric and demonstrates another common problem in short answer question development.



Note in this question, a scoring distribution is provided to the students — not only do they know the question is worth six points, but they also know immediately that three points will be awarded for fully answering the question and two points for legibility, with the final point for spelling and grammar. Question 3 also demonstrates another common error — writing questions that close off a student's potential answer. A better question would ask "How might two accidents be an acceptable level of risk...", in order to promote a more meaningful answer.

Short answer questions are a great middle ground for professors. They are easier to develop than multiple choice and generate a more in depth answer. Because of their brevity, they are easier to grade and they encourage students to integrate information into a coherent written answer. They can measure many types of knowledge when phrased correctly — even divergent thinking and subjective and imaginative thought. Best of all, they can provide professors with an open window into student learning — the real purpose of assessment.

Susan Codone, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Technical Communication, School of Engineering at Mercer University.

Faculty Focus: Short Answer Questions: A Great Middle Ground

The Chronicle of Higher Education: For Many Historians, Use of Technology Remains Stuck in the Past

January 9, 2011 By Peter Schmidt

Historians are less likely than other scholars to apply new technologies in their work, even if many have made big strides in this area in recent decades, suggests research presented here Saturday at the annual conference of the American Historical Association.

One study presented here found that historians stand out among scholars in the humanities and other fields in having substantial reservations about college libraries switching from print to online-only journal subscriptions.

The Ithaka group, a nonprofit organization that promotes technology in higher education, conducted the analysis by teasing out the responses from 198 historians who took part in a 2009 survey of about 3,000 faculty members of four-year colleges in the United States. It found that faculty members in the humanities, as a whole, were less willing than were scholars in other areas to embrace the use of new digital media in their work, and that historians were slower than others in the humanities to do so.

Along with being less likely than other scholars to think colleges should switch from print to online-only journals, historians also stood out from other scholars in being much more likely to oppose the idea of scholarly publishers producing only the electronic versions of what had once been print journals.

"There is a cult of print that is hard to diminish," said Francis X. Blouin Jr., a professor of history and of information at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor who took part in a panel discussion of the research results.

A second study presented here, which was based on a survey of nearly 4,200 historians conducted by the American Historical Association, found that just 4.3 percent of respondents were quick to adopt, and make significant use of, multiple digital technologies in their work.

On the other end of the spectrum, 2.4 percent of the respondents described themselves as very reluctant to use new technology. And nearly a fourth limited their use of new technology mainly to word processing and online searches, and relied heavily on others to teach them now to use new technologies and computer programs.

Just over two-thirds tended to adopt new technologies somewhat regularly, by teaching themselves how to use them, and reported employing a variety of different technologies in their research and teaching.

In describing the study's findings, Robert B. Townsend, the association's assistant director of research and publications, took a positive tone, saying the field of history had undergone "a remarkable transformation" in its use of technology since he began working for his organization 21 years ago. Just 14 years ago, he noted, a survey of the association's members found that 70 percent rarely, if ever, read articles on the World Wide Web.

"We can all see that scholarship is fundamentally and rapidly changing," said William G. Thomas III, chairman of the history department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who described in detail how electronic data banks and other online resources have drastically reduced how long it takes him to research historical records.

Mr. Townsend observed, however, that while the younger faculty members in the association's survey tended to be more receptive to new technology than the older ones, his analysis found enough resistance to new media among young historians to suggest "the problems of technological resistance in the discipline will not be solved simply by the passing of one generation into the next."

The Chronicle of Higher Education: For Many Historians, Use of Technology Remains Stuck in the Past

Magna Online Seminar: Concept Mapping: How Visual Connections Can Improve Learning

Event Date: 1/18/2011
Time: 12:00 pm Central

By using a concept map, you have a visual tool to depict a set of ideas by linking them and explaining the connections. Concept maps provide a powerful way to help students organize, represent, and understand knowledge.

First coined by Novak and Gowin in 1984, concept maps now have many updated uses in classrooms to help students grasp the connections between key points.

Concept mapping may be applied in any academic discipline to make better sense of a reading, document learning or thinking, or brainstorm a project. Used expertly, they can substantially increase student understanding of difficult topics.

There is growing recognition of the value of using a variety of formats and styles in teaching and facilitating. With concept maps, faculty members can broaden their teaching repertoire while showing students how to learn in authentic and active ways.

In Concept Mapping: How Visual Connections Can Improve Learning, Alice Cassidy, Ph.D. will introduce the idea of concept mapping and explain how it can be used to facilitate explanations and raise achievement in the classroom.

This audio online seminar will cover:

•Examples of concept and mind maps
•How and why to use concept mapping in your courses
•The appeal of concept maps to visual learners
•Where to find concept mapping software online
•Drawing concepts maps by hand or by using software applications
•Different types of maps: spokes, trees, center-focus and visual metaphor
•Using concept maps to increase engagement and foster creative connections
•Which model of concept map works best in your discipline
•An overview of the research support for this learning method
•Multiple suggested uses for concept maps
•Important Do’s and Don’ts when using concept mapping
In this hands-on seminar, you will complete your own concept map and learn strategies for incorporating maps into your daily professional activities.

Who should attend?
This seminar is designed for those involved in college instruction, including:

•College and university professors
•Adjunct and distance education faculty
•Academic affairs
•Faculty developers and trainers
A great value!
Professors and students in every discipline can benefit from the application of concept mapping. For one low registration fee of $229, you can offer this live, 75-minute audio online seminar with Adobe Connect to faculty members and academic trainers across your entire campus. This offer applies to a single, sign-on location only; to take full advantage of this opportunity, reserve a large meeting room or conference center in advance.

Your presenter
Alice Cassidy is Principal of Alice Cassidy In View Education and Professional Development. For the past fifteen years, she held leadership roles at The University of British Columbia’s Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth and the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Her areas of focus include active and participatory learning, professional development for organizations, use of self-directed learning, problems and cases in real-world settings, instructional and narrative skills, and students as active collaborators in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Discover one of the most dynamic ways of getting students involved with course material. Learn how to use concept mapping in your courses by enrolling for this upcoming seminar today.

Now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Magna Online Seminar: Concept Mapping: How Visual Connections Can Improve Learning