Team 5: Information Technology Initiatives
This space has been created for the exclusive use of Davidson College employees and students working on:
Team 5: Information Technology Initiative
Science-Math Overall
A growing number of schools are teaching their students how to write code on one language or another. Interdisciplinary training is growing and writing code is part of this training. The language does not really matter as much as the ability to think logically and write scripts to accomplish tasks. Currently, such courses are offered in Math and Physics. Laurie Heyer offers one course that is cross-listed in biology. All of these courses are populated by upper level students majoring in one of these few disciplines.
See this workshop as an example.
Biology
- clickers for in-class use
- iPod for bird call ID
- podcasts for news and protocols
- Tablets for field work
- It is worth noting that medical schools use PalmPilots (or equivalents) for all medical students when they go on rounds to track medications, test results, etc. The goal is to remove the burden and possible mistakes made when human memory is required to make diagnosis and prescriptions.
Chemistry
- clickers for in-class use
Math
- MatLab and Mathmatica are popular software tools.
- Programing in Java, R, STELLA, Phython, Perl, etc.
The Math Dept. would like a computer lab with 28 stations for a variety of classes. Having two computer labs with only 16 stations and students limits their ability to teach math and CS courses.
Physics
- clickers for in-class use
Physics education research is the most advanced in the sciences and math. They have led the way in many areas of education and assessment. Wolfgang and Mario are two world leaders in this area.
In two papers, Dancy and Henderson (2009) measured the extent of physics higher ed faculty's knowledge and use of research-based instructional materials. About 80% knew of these methods but only half used at least one, and very few used more than one. The most common reason given for not using these methods demonstrated to improve student learning was time it takes the faculty to learn and adapt the method to his or her classroom.
I think these two papers make an important point with regards to IT and learning. Just because we make something available does not mean faculty will use it. Furthermore, faculty time is the rate-limiting step, not technology or money. No matter what we do in this area, we need to make sure time is alloted for implementation.
Learning Spaces and Assessments
- NC State: SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs) - http://www.ncsu.edu/PER/scaleup.html
and white papers on the SCALE-UP project - http://www.ncsu.edu/PER/scaleuppub.html
- Duke: The Link (flexible, technology anchored classrooms for innovative teaching) - http://link.duke.edu/reserve-space#classroom1
and first year assessment of Link spaces - http://link.duke.edu/uploads/assets/link_report_f08.pdf
- Stanford: Wallenberg Hall (space for researching classroom learning) - http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/
and findings from classes taught in Wallenberg - http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/teaching/findings.html
VOIP Telephone System
The campus telephone system, a Nortel 81C PBX phone switch, is nearing end of life. The phone system provides telephone service to all campus buildings, excluding off-campus student housing and the Lake Campus. Much of campus telephone service is still provided by copper cables and some of these cables are direct-buried. The copper is aging, unreliable and is a source technical problems and great maintenance expense. Voice over IP (VoIP) is the next generation of communication service. VoIP phones plug into a network port instead of a phone port. Some of the benefits of a VOIP include:
- No need for separate phone wiring – significant savings
- Much easier to install & configure than a proprietary phone system
- Easier to manage because of web based configuration interface
- Allows users to hot plug their phone anywhere in the office - users simple take their phone, plug it into the nearest ethernet port and keep their existing number!
- Feature rich including “find me, follow me” calls can be diverted anywhere in the world
- Peer to Peer video
- Scalable
Upgrade to campus wireless to new "N" standard
Upgrade Campus Backbone from 1GB to 10GB
- Support the convergence of data, phone and CableTV into one common backbone to reduce cost
Robust Video Conferencing Facility
- Support campus goals of increased connections locally, nationally and globally
- Potential to reduce travel - guest speakers, interviews, meetings
Tiered Storage
- Tier 1 - high speed, highly resilient feature rich & expensive storage for high transaction systems such as email, Banner, data warehouse - reporting system, etc.
- Tier 2 - mid speed, highly resilient, medium cost storage for fileservices etc.
- Tier 3 - RAID only but (low cost) storage for backups, including desktops.
- Tier 4 - Tape - offline but permanent storage.
Digital Asset System
At the present time, there are multiple digital collections holding tens of thousands of images spread across academic and administrative departments. This includes images created and used for classroom use, photographs taken by College Communications staff and used by multiple departments, and historical images. The management of these requires significant staff time. Additionally, these collections exist largely in isolation, making it difficult to share, recover and preserve valuable images. A digital assets management system (DAMS) consists of both a workflow process and software application to manage the storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. The assets are typically images and related data, but also include audio, video, and documents. For our purposes, we are focusing initially on images and documents. Ideally the system would provide centralized and scalable storage for unlimited images with the flexibility to create multiple collections, each with its own access controls and the capability to search across all campus collections.
The following is a link to a chapter in The Handbook of Student Affairs Administration By George S. McClellan and Jeremy Stringer. The chapter is a pretty good summary of the type of concerns and interests for the student life area. A number of professional organizations have technology discussion groups which will be posted here when reviewed.
