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Holly Gayley Earns 2013-2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award

Anonymous — Tue, 27 May 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Holly Gayley Earns 2013-2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/27/2014 - 00:00

When it comes to incorporating technology into teaching, Holly Gayley has run the gamut. Gayley, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at CU �鶹ӰԺ, has harnessed several of ASSETT's resources over the past few years to help make her teaching more effective. She first participated in ASSETT's 2012 Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar, which provided a framework for her to build upon her digital storytelling course about Ritual and Media. Later, she took the ASSETT Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminar in 2013. Gayley says, "ASSETT has been helpful in learning about which kinds of pedagogical goals these technologies are best suited for." In recognition of her efforts, ASSETT has awarded Gayley both a student-nominated Fall 2013 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award and also the 2013-2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award, which was presented to her at the 2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium in May this year.

For Gayley, technology is a tool that can facilitate independent and critical thinking among students. She says, "I can't imagine giving a lecture without interaction," and she uses technology to create opportunities for student participation even in large lecture classrooms. For example, in the large course, Foundations of Buddhism, Gayley splits students into smaller groups to discuss potential morals for the multivalent tales of Buddha's past lives. The groups come to their own conclusions about the morals of the story that the class is reading. Gayley inserts their answers as choices for an entire class clicker question about the best moral of the story. Then, the class has the opportunity to vote on and discuss the messages in the tale and how they serve Buddhist ethics. In addition to empowering students to come to their own conclusions, this exercise, "... teaches students that such tales are multivalent and can have layered ethical messages," Gayley says.

Students as Knowledge Generators

Gayley says she sees students as knowledge generators, and she recognizes the potential of "Students [to] harness technology to express knowledge." In that spirit, Gayley assigns students the task of becoming documentary film makers themselves in her Ritual and Media course. She encourages students to use the technological resources that CU provides on campus to support their work; in particular, "The ATLAS media lab has been terrific [in supporting students]," Gayley says. When students complete their original 3-5 minute documentary shorts, they upload them to a course blog that she created. There, students can comment on and respond to one another's work. Through her efforts to incorporate technology into her teaching, Gayley has found that not all attempts are always well received. For example, she has observed that while students are generally enthusiastic to comment on online discussion boards on their own time, they may not be as willing to attend live online discussions at scheduled times.

Gayley stresses that a course on Buddhism would be incomplete without inclusion of visuals. She explains that throughout pre-Modern Buddhist Asia, the general population was often illiterate, and intricate visuals were therefore essential to convey symbolism and myths. Gayley has recently collaborated with Ariana Maki, the Associate Curator of Asian Art at the CU Art Museum, to apply for a GAMM interdisciplinary teaching grant to teach a class about Buddhist Art and Ritual. If the grant comes through, Gayley would use Voicethread to facilitate online discussion of Buddhist images. Students would record their own impressions and participate in interactive online discussions about works of art in relation to their ritual contexts. I asked her, Why would you use Voicethread instead of just having students type in their comments on an online discussion board? Gayley responded that hearing the voices of other students makes the dialogue more personal and dynamic, as opposed to reading a typed opinion. Such understanding of the opportunities technology offers to facilitate learning has earned her awards and progress.

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Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar

Anonymous — Tue, 20 May 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/20/2014 - 00:00

Faculty members Giorgio Corda, Dave Rickels, Holly Gayley, Janet Casagrand, Elena Kostoglodova, and Jen Lewon participated in both the Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar and the Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminars this past 2013-2014 academic year. These faculty presented at the Second Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium at the UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom in May. Audience members at the Symposium were invited to browse their demonstrations of use of technology in teaching.

Giorgio Corda of the Italian Language Department presented his hybrid and online foreign language course models. He said that he feels that teaching online provides a more fulfilling language learning experience than just in-the-classroom. Corda ascribes to a cooperative learning pedagogy and uses VoiceThread and other programs so that students can comment throughout a video while they watch it. Students' comments on videos are visible to the entire class so that students can help each other. Corda stressed the flexibility that online learning provides makes a more equitable playing field for more students with outside responsibilities to participate. He provides a weekly fifteen minute one-on-one session with students to assess their progress and allow time to answer questions.

Dave Rickels, PhD, uses the Coach's Eye Tablet app that is traditionally used in sports coaching to coach future music teachers with synchronized video feedback. With the app, he can record his own voice over a video of a student giving a sample lesson. He said, "It's very real to the students because they have to watch themselves."

Janet Casagrand, PhD, of the Integrated Physiology Department presented her use of "Screencasts for Student Review."

Elena Kostoglodova, PhD, of the German and Slavic Languages and Literatures presented, "Integrated Camtasian and Voicethreads Tutorials for the Hybrid Language Classroom."

Jen Lewon of the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department presented how she encouraged a student community through social media.

Holly Gayley, PhD of the Religious Studies Department presented, "Documentary Storytelling in the Humanities."

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Development Awards: New Tools for an Ancient Language

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Development Awards: New Tools for an Ancient Language Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/18/2011 - 00:00

How often have you heard someone say, “I speak Tibetan.” Maybe once, possibly twice, though for most of us, the answer is probably zero. For students attempting to learn this difficult language, there are a limited number of materials available to them for instruction. Buddhist Studies Professor Holly Gayley is striving to offset the lack of resources for the study of Tibetan language through the creation of an online digital library containing prerecorded materials.

The Digital Library contains recordings from a native Tibetan speaker, Lhoppon Rechung of the Mipham Shedra in Bouder, who first reads aloud a short passage and then explains it in colloquial Tibetan. As the course that compliments the library progresses, the difficulty of material increases throughout the semester. Students begin with simple children’s stories then end with passages from religious texts covering advanced topics such as ethics and philosophy. The purpose of this library is “to create a whole bank of resources so that students can go back and review the material to improve their listening, comprehension, and speaking skills.”

Traditionally, instruction in colloquial Tibetan has been restricted to general conversation related to everyday activities like greetings or going to the restaurant. But this project, according to Professor Gayley, “seeks to improve the scope of language learning” by preparing students for the type of in-depth conversations necessary to conduct successful and engaging field research. The Digital Library bridges the gap between reading texts and speaking about them in Tibetan.

Professor Gayley sees this project as “a building block for developing a strong Tibetan language program at CU” that could eventually be used as a prototype for other universities and languages. The Digital Library is a work in progress that is continually evolving and adapting as students advance through the course. Next, Professor Gayley seeks to incorporate clips from Tibetan news programs, television, music videos, and variety of other media sources.

Although the Digital Library is still in its early phase, Gayley says, “The program has been really successful” as it is “getting Tibetan language instruction off the ground in an innovative way.”

Professor Gayley received an ASSETT Development Award for the Spring 2011 semester. This grant helped fund the creation of the “Digital Library of Tibetan Language Recordings for the ALTEC Website”. Development Awards are given out each semester to CU professors using technology to enhance education in the 21^st century.

-Written by Mark N. Sytsma, CU '13, ASSETT Reporter

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