2011

Development Awards: The Arapaho Project: A New Hope for an Endangered Language

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Development Awards: The Arapaho Project: A New Hope for an Endangered Language Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/06/2011 - 00:00

Like some animal species, small languages must also thwart off the threat of extinction. In particular, the Arapaho language is at risk. Luckily, though, it’s receiving some help. Andrew Cowell, a professor in the Department of Linguistics, is here to ensure this language’s survival in the 21^st century.

Reflecting on his career, Professor Cowell noted that he always possessed an interest in small, endangered languages that waver on the edge of disappearance. Being hired at CU led him to document and research the Arapaho language, as Colorado is the heartland of the Arapaho community. As Professor Cowell’s work progressed and his eminence as an Arapaho linguist scholar spread, numerous people began contacting him for help. The problem, he noticed, was that hardly any resources existed for the instruction of the language and as a result of this insight, Professor Cowell created The Arapaho Project. This online multi-media platform teaches students the grammatical nuances of the language through interactive lessons that present both the spoken and written word. With The Arapaho Project, students develop their writing skills and, more importantly, they improve their speech capabilities.

According to Professor Cowell, there are three main benefits of this project. First, the website contains a considerable amount of detail, providing students with all the grammatical lessons necessary to acquire a more thorough understanding of the language. The second benefit is that the website has exercises, which “allows you to actually practice the language as opposed to a book that just presents the language.” Lastly, the audio recordings “are a way of allowing students to get more verbal ability so they can profit more from working with the native speakers.”

Although only the initial part of this project has been completed, Professor Cowell integrated the platform into his Linguistics 3220 course, Native American Languages in their Social and Cultural Context, this semester. Comparing the class before and after the website, Cowell noted that students “learned a lot more Arapaho than ever before. They did not just have to rely on classroom content.” The Arapaho Project empowers students to learn language at their own pace outside the 150 minutes classes meet each week. With the website, students can freely interact with the platform, exploring their questions on pronunciation, grammatical quirks, and confusing syntax. There are important benefits to using this type of technology in learning Arapahoe. As Professor Cowell stated, “language is something you speak, that is the fundamental thing, and with Arapaho that’s the only thing you do. Having the technology that allows a language to be spoken is absolutely crucial.”

CU undergraduates are not the sole beneficiaries of Arapaho Project as the website is also targeted at graduate students and the Arapaho community. Professor Cowell commented, “Grad students can use this website for better learning, for better research, and integrating it into the classes they teach.” More importantly, the online website is “an outreach project for the Northern and Southern Arapaho people themselves because they do not have anything online at all to learn the language.” For many centuries, the language did not exist in a written form as it was passed on from generation to generation orally. Over the years the number of native speakers has dramatically decreased, which is the reason the language faces the risk of extinction. Through this project, the Arapaho community now possesses an instructional device to teach the younger population, which helps to ensure the language’s survival.

Ten years ago, when Professor Cowell started to learn Arapaho, he remembers that “there were no language learning materials except for a short dictionary with a tenth of the words in it.” Since then linguists have made considerable contributions to transcribing the language and creating materials, but this website is the first learning tool of its kind for Arapaho. It follows a series of instructional steps that sequentially and pragmatically build up on one another as students advance through the course.

Professor Cowell foresees that “the immediate project should be completed by the end semester”, which involves having the basic 30 lessons with sound files, all the links and text files posted to the website. After the initial phase of the project is complete, more stories, jokes, speeches, song and other Arapaho anecdotes will be added to the Arapaho Project. These additions will “give more life to the language as opposed to just sentences because it is actual people telling actual stories”, according to Professor Cowell. Clearly, this work can never be truly complete as new materials can always be added to the website.

For now, the threat of extinction can be laid to rest as the Arapaho will not disappear anytime soon due to the creation of the Arapaho Project. Professor Cowell gave the Arapaho language the necessary tools to foster, survive, and thrive in the 21^st century. Without taking these steps to preserve these small languages, we one day may face the possibility of losing them all.

Professor Cowell received an ASSETT Development Award for the Spring 2011 semester. This grant helped fund the creation of the “The Arapaho Project”. 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, ASSETT Reporter, CU '13

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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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CU Denver Professor connects through Adobe

Anonymous — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 06:00:00 +0000

CU Denver Professor connects through Adobe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/15/2011 - 00:00

A growing number of academic professionals are switching from traditional classroom lectures to online classes. Online learning and in person lectures are now becoming a popular combination of learning tools in academia. At the 2011 COLTT (Colorado Learning & Teaching with Technology) Conference held at CU �鶹ӰԺ, Storm Gloor, an Assistant Professor in the Music and Entertainment Industries at University of Colorado, Denver, expressed the need to focus on this combination of online and physical interaction. His presentation highlighted the importance of hybrid classes by specifically focusing on a feature in Adobe, Adobe Connect, that provides students the option of being physically in the classroom or attending remotely or even both, in real time.

What is Adobe Connect and how does it work?

Adobe Connect is a program that supports virtual online meetings and the use of multimedia and collaborative tools as a part of its features. Professor Gloor claims that he has adapted it to the classroom and given his students the ability to attend and participate in real-time remotely. In his classroom, students attending online can take part in discussions, watch and listen to the professor, or view any presentations or documents that are being presented in the physical classroom. He said, “I’ve used the technology in ‘hybrid’ courses I’ve taught, but have experimented with it in an offline class as well.” He also utilizes this program for virtual meetings with student groups and presenting the study guide.

The ability of students to log in from any internet-connected device makes this software crucial for its utilization by Professor Gloor’s students. In addition, this program also enables the course sessions to be recorded and archived by the instructor.

Some of its advantages and disadvantages

For Professor Gloor, the use of this program is experimental so far. However, among a few of the advantages of using this software is the increased level of attendance and participation by the students. He says, “They may simply find this type of learning environment more suitable to the way they learn or communicate or it may simply be a more practical option for their situation.”

The disadvantages of using this program however are obvious. Some of the common reasons range from technical issues to distractions. “Student attending remotely could obviously be easily distracted from the session, depending on the environment from which they are attending, “said Professor Gloor.

What kinds of classes will benefit from using this program?

Professor Gloor mentions that any discipline can utilize this technology. However, he is also doubtful of the use of this program in large classroom halls where students are prone to distractions. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, Professor Gloor encourages using this program to record classroom sessions as they are being conducted. He says, “A teacher can also pre-record presentations that could be shared online as supplemental content that may not be able to logistically or practically fit into the course curriculum.” He added, “For instance, an overview of Chapter Five of the textbook or a recent news article, or further explanation of a content presented there, could be created.”

Professor Gloor agrees that the way students learn is ever-changing. Thus, he believes in improving teaching techniques and effectively communicating with the students. Experimenting with Adobe Connect is his way of enjoying studying, learning and utilizing tools that might make students’ education more effective.

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Lights, Camera, This is What Beautiful Looks Like!

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Lights, Camera, This is What Beautiful Looks Like! Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/30/2011 - 00:00

,“If only I were four inches taller…,” “If only I were skinnier….,” “If only I had bigger breasts...,” “If only I had a smaller nose…,” “If only if only…”. For many young women, these thoughts accompany them in their daily lives and can even lead to harmful behaviors. From childhood to womanhood, a woman’s body is monitored constantly to fit a certain stereotype. Through the media, a woman is told how she should dress, look, and act. It becomes hard to reject these images the media tries to feed us. Dr. Kayann Short, a professor at CU �鶹ӰԺ in the Farrand Academic Program, realizes how media can be influential in shaping a person’s identity and confidence. She also sees the danger involved in exposure to stereotypical images bolstered by the media. In response to such threatening images, she developed the Women’s Wellness Service Learning practicum for her ‘Coming of Age in Multicultural Women's Literature’ class. This is course is offered at the University of Colorado-�鶹ӰԺ, where students find innovative ways to reject the unrealistic and degrading images of women found in the media these days.

A brief insight on the Coming of Age Multicultural Women’s Literature course

This course approaches students’ learning by incorporating different literary genres to examine coming-of-age experience in works by women writers. Dr. Short states, “In this course, we analyze works of fiction, poetry, memoir, film and essay to study how girls from diverse backgrounds confront the social expectations regarding gender, race, class, religion, and sexuality that determine their transition from girlhood to womanhood.” It also explores ways in which students see themselves in the future in a society that doubts young women’s potential. She explains, “From classics like Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi to the award-winning young adult novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, we examine how the discursive strategies of women writers create possibilities for artistic expression and social agency.”

Additionally, this course includes a service-learning practicum. Dr. Short and her students work with CU’s Community Health program to organize outreach events on topics such as breast cancer, nutrition, eating disorders, and the impact of body image on women’s health.

How it all started

Note to Self: This is What Beautiful Looks Like, a digital story about students’ positive representations of themselves, emerged spontaneously when Dr. Short and her students were brainstorming ideas for potential outreach projects for the Women’s Wellness service learning practicum. She states, “As the theme for the digital stories emerged organically from our conversations with CU’s Community Health about body image and their Rock Your Body Day event, I realized that each student’s input would be powerful when combined with the others in a collaborative digital story.” Consequently, her students seemed interested in making a digital story that rejected unrealistic and degrading images of women found in the media. They began with the question, “How can I feel good about myself when everything else tells me to feel bad?”

Students taking the course, 'Coming of Age in Multicultural Women's Literature,' express their love for womanhood through digital story telling.

Each student wrote a scene from their own experience that reflected an answer to that question. Dr. Short then recorded their voiceovers as one script and added a musical soundtrack. After compiling all these scenes, she illustrated them with personal images picked by each student. She also included images from advertisements and from Community Health’s Rock Your Body event in March. The title came from visual “notes” that appear throughout the story. “For each scene, the students created a “note to self” that illustrated their own positive ideas,” said Dr. Short. She adds, “Given the short amount of production time, I edited the piece in Final Cut myself but we screened it as a class to make final editing changes together.”

Challenges faced while creating the digital story

According to Dr. Short, the students worked well together while creating the digital story. “Students were excited about creating something they could share not only with friends and family, but with a larger audience through social networking and public campaigns like Love Your Body Day,” she said. She mentions that the only challenge they faced was finding a quiet place to record since the location in which their class meets is a busy place.

The importance of technology in her class

Dr. Short is aware of the important role of technology in teaching. According to her, the technology we use today is another tool that helps us accomplish some of the central goals of higher education: to think critically about facts, concepts, and ideas; to research and write about that knowledge; and to share findings with others. She states, “Because students today are immersed in media and understand its ability to communicate widely with a shared audience, it makes sense to use communication technologies as a mode of inquiry into course topics as well.” According to her, technology in the form of digital storytelling has allowed students to view and evaluate their experience in a new, multi-modal way.

Should other professors adopt digital story telling too?

Dr. Short recommends that other professors integrate digital storytelling into their teaching. She has used it in other classes both for student assignments and service-learning projects with community members.

One feature of digital storytelling that Dr. Short highlights is its ability to foster collaborative work. Dr. Short adds, “When the course doesn’t allow time for individual projects, having the students work collaboratively is wonderful because it involves them in group discourse, debate, and decision-making.”

Future goals and plans

'The National Organization of Women' selected the video created by Dr. Short’s students for their 'Love Your Body Day' campaign.

The National Organization of Women selected the video created by Dr. Short’s students for their Love Your Body Day campaign. Students will be glad to hear that this video is also available on the CUs’ iTunes and YouTube. In addition, students are sharing this video on their social networks as well.

Dr. Short strongly encourages women of all ages to adopt alternative definitions of beauty rather than rely on corporate media sources. “Our class also wants young women to examine the role appearance plays in their lives,” says Dr. Short. She adds, “We hope that Note to Self: This is What Beautiful Looks Like will inspire all of us to create messages reminding each other that beauty is not defined by what we don’t have, but rather by what already exists in our own hearts and minds.”

Written By Manaslu Bista, ASSETT reporter

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CU Professor Spotlight: A Mathematical Challenge

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:00:00 +0000

CU Professor Spotlight: A Mathematical Challenge Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/26/2011 - 00:00

Keith Kearnes is sitting in his unlit office in the second floor of the Department of Mathematics building. In his hand is a set of stapled yellow sheets jotted with formulas and numbers.

“Some students will submit it on paper; the other solution was submitted electronically,” he says as he holds the papers. The collection of sheets is a solution for a mathematical problem.

He takes another look at it, flipping through the pages. “This person, looks pretty good,” he says with a nod. “Their answers is the correct answer, I just have to check the arguments.”

Kearnes is a professor of math at CU, and while he specializes in algebra, logic and combinatorics, he is also one of four members of a committee of math professors who construct a Problem of the Month as a monthly contest open to all CU students. The paper he is holding in his hand is a solution for April’s problem.

Other members of the committee including three more math profs: Janos Englander, Sergei Kuznetsov and Alexander Gorokhovsky. All three work together to formulate problems for undergraduate math majors at CU and then post it on the departments website.

The program will celebrate its 10th anniversary in the fall. Kearnes says the program was initiated in 2001 when Kearnes was hired by the math department. “In my first year here, I noticed that we didn’t have anything like that. I don’t even think we had a math club,” he says. “We didn’t have a lot of interaction between undergraduates.”

Kearnes decided to speak to the chair, who accepted the idea and found a source of money as a prize to those who correctly answered the problem. He also asked for help in creating the problems.

He would soon find Kuznetsov, a Russian mathematician who arrived at CU two years before Kearnes and who also had led a similar math competition at the national level in his native country. “He had a lot of experience in organizing these kinds of competitions and producing problems,” Kearns says.

During the fall of 2001, Kearnes added another member to his troupe in the form Gorokhovsky. Gorokhovsky’s path to CU included a fascination with the developing problem of the month program, and Kearnes says Gorokhovsky told him it ultimately influenced his decision to work at CU.

“(Gorokhovsky) said if they have a problem of the month competition, it must be a civilized department,” Kearns says.

Creating the problem, discovering a solution

Creating the problem of the month takes brainstorming sessions involving all four professors. Kearnes says at times other faculty members suggest a problem, but it usually falls on the foursome to create the mathematical puzzles.

The four gauge the difficulty of a potential problem by attempting to solve them; if they all solve it quickly, the problem is deemed to easy. If none of them can solve it, it is turn deemed to difficult.

“If one of us proposes a problem and none of the other ones can solve it, we don’t use that problem,” affirms Kearnes. “Usually if one of them proposes a problem, and in a day or two everyone has figured out how to do it, that’s a candidate.

Once a candidate is chosen, it is posted on the math department’s website.

“We announce at the beginning of the year that we are going to have a competition and then we send it to undergraduate math majors and applied math majors and we send it to the instructors who teach math courses and ask them if they can announce it to their classes.”

Solutions are accepted all month long, but Kearnes says most solutions are in by the first week, evident by the solutions he was holding in his office during the first week of April. He says that students can work individually or in teams to solve the problem.

The prize for cracking the problem? Besides a certificate and the praise by math professors, winners receive a $50 prize. A second place finisher receives $25.

To keep others from sharing answers and attempting to win both prizes, Kearnes says that the participants are not informed if their solution is correct until the end of the month.

“So we don’t even tell people if a solution has been turned in yet, because sometimes students will think ‘oh they already have 3 solutions, some of those are probably right, there is no point in trying to solve it,’” he says. “So we don’t tell anybody if there are any solutions at all, or if any are correct, so that students can keep trying through out the month.”

At the end of each month, the professors will gather and grade all solutions. Winners are chosen by a first-come, first serve basis, so even though they may receive several correct answers, the prize is given to those who give the correct answer first.

“First of all, it has to be correct, and then we find when it was turned in. Whoever turned in the first correct solutions gets first place, and the who ever turned in the second correct solution gets second place,” Kearns says.

Kearnes admits that there are not generally many participants each month, and he says usually the number is less than 10 solutions. But it can vary. “Some months we get a lot, in fact this month we had two within the first two days of the month,” he says. I’m hoping we get more through out the month.”

Two months earlier, Kearnes and co. were able to stump everyone, as they received no solutions.

“We get a lot of solutions that are not correct, and last month for the first time we got something that wasn’t a solution; a student did a computer simulation of the problem to try to help him discover the solution,” he says. He did not submit a solution, but it’s on the department webpage.”

Validating a student's interest

Kearnes says the problem of the math competition helps foster a competitive nature for undergraduates as well as helping those with a fondness for math meet. “It may be that this is a way that people with interest in math can find other people interested in math,”

As the saying goes, to the winner goes the spoils, and in this case, Kearnes feels the reward extends beyond the $50 check. He feels the motivations his students gain is a valuable teaching method.

“One of the things is everybody has whatever their interest are, but some small amount of positive encouragement goes a long way and it could just be I have a certificate that says I was the best this month,” he says. “And there is something about that, you can read math problem on the web, but if you know you’ll get a certificate, you’ll get recognition, you’ll be able to tell your friends I made money doing month, that’s kind of a validation of your interest and I think it kinds of helps focus your interests.”

Then again, the monetary prize is always a delicious icing on the cake. As to what the students do with the prize money, Kearnes has no idea. But he knows what we would do.

“If I were the one, I would take my friends out and say we are paying for this beer with that math solution. Somehow, that’s such a nice feeling,” Kearnes says.

-Written by Esteban L. Hernandez, CU 12', ASSETT Reporter

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CU professor spotlight: A virtual expedition

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:00:00 +0000

CU professor spotlight: A virtual expedition Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/22/2011 - 00:00

Elspeth Dusinberre poses insider her office in the Eaton Humanities Building on the campus of the University of Colorado at �鶹ӰԺ on Monday, April 4, 2011. She was instrumental in creating a video game that helps her students learn about archeology, specifically Egyptian. (ASSETT/Esteban L. Hernandez)

A scholarly expedition to the archeological paradise of Egypt would cost thousands of dollars and require hours of arduous labor. Keen on offering a similar experience to undergraduate students, this quest turned into an expedition all on its own for professor Beth Dusinberre.

Dusinberre, an associate professor in the Classics Department, is a teacher specializing in Greek and middle Eastern archeology, but frequently teaches Egyptian archeology classes.

Her fondness for archeology led to the development of Expedition: Osiris, a computer-based video game allowing anyone to start an archeological dig in the Egyptian city of Amarna.

“The original genius behind doing this is John Bennett, who is the director of ATLAS now,” Dusinberre said. “I was participating in a work shop on integrating technology in teaching in ways to help students learn by incorporating more technology in classes and setting things up well.”

The idea would flourish into a full-scale video game experience, and with the help of junior and senior computer science majors working on a senior project, the video game developed.

“And I thought well, I could try this. So I looked into it, I wrote up a proposal for making a video game with some help from my chair and submitted it where it was jumped on,” she said.

After her proposal was quickly and enthusiastically embraced by the chair of her department, she was helped by what said were five extremely talented young men. That was 2003.

“They spent the entire year working with me to put together this video game,” she said. “Then the following year, one of them who had been a junior, put together another group of people who in connection with a video game class debugged it and it added a few more sophisticated things.”

Over the course of about a year and a half, Dusinberre said she met with the students every week for one to three exciting hours. The game would be complete in 2004 with members from the original five-person senior project, who had been juniors at the start of the project in 2003.

She now regularly uses the video game for class at CU, including an introductory survey class called Trash and Treasures, Temples and Tombs and a for a survey of Greek archeology. Both are undergraduate core classes and the game is only available for use through these two courses.

Beginning the virtual expedition

The video game is set in the sandy grounds of the city Amaran, which Dusinberre said was once the capital of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Set in modern-day, a player takes on the role of dig director.

“You pick a name, institution, personality type,” Dusinberre said. Among the choices for dig director types are scholars, big wigs and team leaders. “You start out with grant money and permit dig.”

After an initial grant award of $20,000, a player builds a team that must include a foreman, security guards, workers and grad students. A player must also choose housing options, from tents to five-star hotels, and meal plans. These two factors contribute to how the team works, stays motivated and develops throughout the dig, reflecting a realistic behavior.

A dig can last anywhere between 4 to 12 weeks and are available during all four season.

Once these characters and options are chosen and a dig duration for the expedition is chosen, the fun begins.

A player is in charge of keeping workers working and making grad students create trench layouts and fix broken artifacts. The goal of the game is to unearth artifacts by laying out trenches. The more artifacts, the more likely a player will receive an additional grant to continue their research at the end of the dig.

Also of importance is keeping all these individuals safe.

“It is also important to hire protective specialists (for) natural and supernatural dangers,” she said laughing.

Some of the threats to a dig included: a thief who will loot unearthed treasures; a cursed mummy bent on destroying workers; mutant, man-eating scorpions and crocodiles; and a spirit that glides above ground, laughing manically as it refills dug out trenches.

During the end of each week, a player is given an overview of their team’s morale and what they found. High moral means more findings, while less usually spells a disastrous dig effort with few items discovered.

Its value as a tool for education

While it’s all fun and games, Expedition: Osiris is still an educational goldmine. Dusinberre explains why.

“What matter from an archeological perspective, and the reason that it’s a worthy intellectual game, is that at the end of each season you need to interpret the functions of each of the rooms that you excavated based on the finds that you excavated from within it,” she said.

And just like the real world, the game expects players to publish their findings. And just like the real world, there are ramifications on how the educational community views a finding.

“You get feedback on the reaction of the scholarly community,” she said. “You’re stats change when you’re applying for grants on the season. Your success fringes on how accurate your interpretations were.”

“It’s been the most wonderful, useful technology for teaching for me,” she said.

She said students are responding with universal enthusiasm to the game.

“The interpretation aspect really helps students think like archaeologist, and the game itself is actually just fun,” she said. “It’s a way that you can, from your own dorm room, be an archeologist and get that practical experience.”

Dusinberre said the game helps enhance a student’s educational experience at CU by engaging students in their own learning.

“This is not an assignment which says, ‘here’s a bunch of artifacts, what’s the room?’ It’s a project that says, ‘here, actually be an archeologist.’ Even if only virtually.”

“Having the virtual, practical experience I think is something which brings education and learning alive.”

Adding to the authenticity of the game, during game play players can view photographs of the items they excavate thanks to Digital Egypt, an image server form the United Kingdom.

“The team of students linked this database to all of this stuff that you find, so you may be excavating in a room and find a whole array of artifacts which you then interpret: is it a drover’s house? Is it the workshop of a sculpture? Could it be a brother? All of these things might be options,” she said.

Dusinberre said the game is built in a manner that may allow for future expansion, and she said she’d be interested in crating a similar game for Athens, Machu Picchu, Rome and Troy among other cities.

For now, students will continue enjoying a virtual experience based on some of the real-life adventures embarked on by their archeology professor.

"Having someone who’s picking and someone who’s shoveling and someone who is wheel baring, that’s all part of my experience. It’s really fun,” she said.

-Written by Esteban L. Hernandez, ASSETT Reporter, CU 12'

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Whiteboard Animation to be used in Comm Courses

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Whiteboard Animation to be used in Comm Courses Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/30/2011 - 00:00

Many professors at CU are motivated to find new and creative ways to teach. Among them is Matt Koschmann, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, who has plans to use Whiteboard Animate as a creative way to orient students to his future courses.

If you are not familiar with the Whiteboard animation, this is a technique of capturing with a camera a sequence of images, drawn onto a whiteboard. You simply take pictures of every completed drawn image and convert the pictures into a sequence. Koschmann plans to make his own animated sequence available online to his students in the form of videos. He explained that animation is a great tool for conveying a framework for thinking about an important topic for an entire semester. Professor Koschmann elaborated that this tool is a wonderful way to get students to focus on the content of a message in a very visually stimulating way. To see for yourself, watch this example of a whiteboard animation video.

The two classes in which he plans to develop whiteboard animation videos are Organizational Communication and Persuasion in Society. Since these classes required him to develop online content such as PowerPoint notes, he got motivated to explore various alternatives for delivering course content to students. During this process, he realized that whiteboard animation could be an excellent alternative for exploring and learning concepts in his course. Koschmann explained, “I think that this tool helps you facilitate learning because it hits a lot of different learning styles.” The end product is visual, audio and animated, so it provides an element of novelty. He also explained how video animation is a flexible resource for students. “This tool is codified, it’s accessible, and students don’t have to be in class to see this. It is accessible in ways that other things in class may not be.”

Although whiteboard animation is a fun and creative way to teach and learn, it is too time consuming and expensive to create for daily teaching. Professor Koschmann aims to limit the use of whiteboard animation to deliver preliminary lectures for his classes that introduce the course and overview the main topic. He recommends his students watch the videos as a supplement to the lecture and the reading materials. In other words, they are not replacements for coming to class or reading the text.

Professor Koschmann has plans to work with animators at the Rocky Mountain College of Arts and Design to develop the whiteboard animations and produce the videos. Currently he is communicating with the animator at the Rocky Mountain College of Arts and Design. Professor Koschmann recently received an ASSETT Development awards. This award will support the development of these whiteboard animation video lectures.

Written By: Manaslu Bista,CU’11 ASSETT Reporter

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Developmental Award Spotlight: A photo lab for art students

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Developmental Award Spotlight: A photo lab for art students Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/08/2011 - 00:00

When Lia Pileggi began conducting workshop classes for photographing artwork she noticed something. With a little help from the people she was helping, she realized her department was missing a resource of potential value for students.

“In every single workshop, someone would ask, ‘Ok, this is great, now I know how to photograph, where can I photograph?’” Pileggi said. “Every single workshop, that was a question that came up.”

Pileggi, a digital imaging and technology coordinator at the Visual Resource Center in the Department of Art and Art History, shared an idea sparked by those questions with Elaine Paul, the director of the Visual Resources Center. Her plan consisted of building a photo lab complete with a high quality camera and table for placing artwork.

With the help of an ASSETT Development Award, the two are developing this digital photography studio for the Department of Art and Art History at CU. The lab will give art and art history students a chance to photograph their work in a professional manner to help build a professional portfolio.

“Once Elaine and I started talking with faculty and realizing there really isn’t a space, that’s when we knew…we just had to help make this a reality,” Pileggi said.

On the third floor of the vibrant Visual Arts Complex, a few steps from their offices, their vision is slowly coming to form.

In a plain, almost empty room the digital photography studio is under construction. It houses a shooting table that when complete will be shaped like a pinball machine. In front of the table a black Nikon camera fitted with wide-scope lens sits atop a tripod.

The lens is capable of capturing the depth while adding a sense of space to its photographs, a necessity considering the small size of the room.

Paul called the room a flexible space, as students will be able to use the entirety of the room to place artwork for photographing. It will serve primarily small for medium sized two and three-dimensional works.

Other resources in the lab will include a MacBook laptop for real-time photographing, a high-storage memory card, an ultraviolet glass filter to protect the camera and a portable, three-piece fluorescent light kit to help illuminate the artwork.

A centralized course resource

One of the key factors behind Paul and Pileggi’s idea was how the lab could benefit students. The pair suggested some 1,000 undergraduates could potentially benefit from the lab.

“Students need to be able to photograph the creative work that they produce in order to document it for their portfolios, for applying to graduate school, for applying to the BFA program, scholarships, grants and residencies,” Paul said. “So it’s really important that they can take high-quality photographs of their work.”

As far as the number of courses that can utilize the studio, Pileggi made a suggestion as to how many classes could benefit from the lab.

“Every course!” she said laughing.

The two did identify a few courses they though would benefit the most from the photo lab like painting and drawing classes and undergraduate ceramic and sculpture courses.

An exciting faculty response

Anticipation for the lab is already in place.

“People are already asking about it,” Pileggi said, “because we’ve told people, ‘it’s coming!’”

The lab may enhance a students learning experience, as Pileggi said the ability to produce high quality, professional images will help students present themselves and their work better.

“Already this semester I’ve been approached by an instructor who wanted me to add training of the new room in her curriculum and was asking, ‘Okay, when is the room going to be ready, I want to put you in the syllabus!’” Pileggi said.

The lab is expected to be complete before the end of the spring semester.

-Written by Esteban L. Hernandez, CU 12’, ASSETT Reporter

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