Project Archive

Marina's project stems from an advanced level spanish course where students are required to conduct an interview with a spanish speaking faculty member. She's taken that interview format, made a few minor changes, and now has her intermediate spanish students interview returnees from abroad as part of two month project that ends with a cultural presentation.

Collaboration Across the Arts (Fine Arts, Music and Speech & Theatre), is taught annually in the fall and is designed to bring out the best in students as creators of new knowledge using digital technologies. The primary pedagogical goal of the course is to empower students as active learners who also assume the roles of teacher and creator of course content through the experience. Chris uses two primary software tools to facilitate this process: Apple's iMovie and Boinx Software's iStopMotion. Students use these and other tools while working in small groups to create their own artworks, which arediscussed in the context of current and historical multimedia art.

Students in all Chinese classes were invited to combine a digital image of their choice with an original composition in Chinese, and to perform at the Poetry for Peace event held in early March, 2006. Five students accepted the challenge. Of the five students, four had been to China; of those, three used images they personally captured in China. Students used standard technology -- PowerPoint and digital projection -- as well as Chinese writing software (Microsoft Input Method Editor) to compose their original work of poetry. This project was inspired by the Poetry for Peave event and unattached to any syllabus. Although no credit was awarded for the assignment, students who participated were interested in the idea from the start, worked on it with impressive focus, and all realized rich rewards in their efforts.

Dr. Lock was in the process of developing “ConceptTests” to supplement Calculus textbooks. These multiple choice questions are designed to test for understanding, so it made perfect sense to mesh the development of this pedagogy with the Personal Response System technology. Dr. Lock launched a PRS pilot project with thirty-one students in Calculus I and nineteen students in Calculus II during the fall of 2005. Students used their “clickers” routinely in class to respond to multiple choice questions carefully constructed to assess student comprehension of course material.

As a member of the Advising Advisory Subcommittee, Dr. Rediehs has been thinking about advising from various perspectives for some time now.  Most recently, Dr. Rediehs has been inspired by SLU’s holistic vision for advising as extension of teaching and an opportunity for guiding students in their discovery of the big questions about liberal arts education, and intrigued by features specific to our online learning management system.  As a faculty member of the First Year Program, advising first year students and as-yet-undeclared second year students in addition to philosophy majors, her needs were complicated by a fairly high advising load. Eventually, however, it all came together. In searching for a way to facilitate best practices in advising while better meeting the perceived needs of students of the net generation, she discovered a previously untapped use for ANGEL community groups.