IT works: student perspectives

Alysha Chan '08, Catherine Magee '10, Carol Toro '10, and Nancy Townsend '09

Overview - What do students value in instructional technology (IT) used on campus today? How do students use IT in and outside of the classroom? What do students think works best in their learning environments?

Carol (foreign languages major)
Carol finds Sakai, the college's online learning and collaborative environment useful. Some Sakai tools have made her life easier:

• Announcements - an effective way to reach everyone in the class so students from all of the colleges get the info. This doesn't always work with email.
• Gradebook - helps me track my progress all semester, not just at the end.
• Resources - articles, course notes, etc., are accessible from anywhere, like Starbucks. It's our choice if we want to waste paper.
• Syllabus - never gets lost.
• Wiki - a lot of professors don't use this tool. It's helpful for group projects, to delegate assignments and see progress - like a digital white board.
• Discussion - a more comfortable environment for a shy person because you can think about what you want to say and then formulate your answer.

Question: How did your professor encourage you to use the Discussion tool?
Answer: It was graded. We had a discussion question every two weeks.

Kate (Biochemistry major)
Kate described two creative uses of IT:

1. Prof. Poon's ochem.com website has an exam archive with detailed answers, Quicktime tutorials: 23-30 minutes - with pre-lecture information that helps. It's a lot easier to see electrons bond in a video. There are other resources there.
   
2. Prof. Poon also has a remote control clickers. They encourage participation because it's worth 7% of our grade. It's interactive. And it lets the professor judge how well students understand the materials.
   

For more information about classroom response systems, see "Keeping Clickers in the Classroom."

Alysha (3/2 Engineering major, Hispanic Studies minor)

Most professors don't do anything that great....Two things I find interesting:

1. Document camera - allows you to zoom into documents and project on a screen.
2. Integration of other media into PowerPoint (i.e., a YouTube video in a Spanish class)

Nancy (Studio Arts major)
What IT works:

• Resource tool in Sakai and other electronic resources
• Document camera with art books
• PowerPoint or slides
• AV Department: access to video, photo, and audio equipment
• When professors allow different mediums for projects, like digital collages and websites, instead of only written papers
  
• Video presentations

Next Steps - What would you like to see in the future?

• More consistent websites
• More electronic communication from professors to students
• Wish more professors would use Sakai, and more tools in Sakai
• Scanners in the library

Commenting on student papers with Sakai & MS Word editing features

Cecilia Conrad
Vice President and Dean of the Faculty

Overview - For several years, Cecilia Conrad has asked her students to submit their papers electronically. In the beginning, they submitted via email and that was hard to manage. However, with Sakai, students use drop boxes to submit papers. She write comments on the papers using the MS Word editing features and return them to their drop box. No paper need exchange hands and she has a portfolio of each student's work available for her review even after they graduate.

Electronic papers never (ok, rarely) get lost, you know exactly when a paper is submitted, and the paper can be reviewed, even years later, if a student requests a recommendation. For these and other reasons, for the past 4 or 5 years, Dean and economics professor Cecilia Conrad has only accepted electronic paper submissions.

Sakai

She sees Sakai, the campus' online learning and collaboration environment, as a godsend. Sakai allows her to easily manage and organize student writing assignments. Unlike email (with disk quotas and no inherent organization), Sakai provides faculty and students with a built-in evaluation environment. Conrad uses Sakai extensively. She uses a Sakai project site to collaborate on a writing project with a colleague at Yale. In her course sites, the drop boxes store all drafts of student work, the grade book keeps students informed about their progress, the syllabus tool assures that course information is up to date, and her class announcements reach students on 5 campuses instantly.

Once she got used to it, Conrad found it faster to grade papers electronically. It is also convenient. She can download papers from Sakai into a file on her laptop and grade them on a plane.

How to grade electronic paper submissions with Sakai

1. Have students submit their paper in Sakai using the dropbox.
2. Open student papers in Microsoft Word. "Save to Disk" in a specific location is ideal.
3. Make sure the document is set to do Track Changes.
   
4. Students write drafts for most classes. For these, use a two stage reading process. The first reading is a cursory overview, a quick read and look at the overall paper structure. For the second reading, go back and focus on a particular section.
5. Tracking changes let students see how you edit the draft/paper. Use the "Insert Comment" tool from the Track Changes tool bar to explain why you have made suggested changes, and other comments.
   
6. Change the document title when you save a copy of the reviewed paper, for instance by adding your initials to the document title and/or a version number.
   
7. Upload the saved commented document with the new file name to the student's drop box.

If you have students revising their draft and re-submitting, you can use the Compare Documents feature in Word. The Compare and Merge Documents feature takes 2 documents and highlights what is different, a way to spot changes that have been made between drafts.

Beyond grading papers

• This process is particularly useful when faculty and students have an on-going project, for example with a senior thesis. With a slight change of file name, the commented files do not replace the originals.
• Peer editing: You can set up Resource folders and assign access to student groups so they can comment on each other's papers. This also works well for group presentations.
  

Comfort
When grading electronic papers, a comfortable reading position is important. Sometimes it's useful to zoom up to 200% for easier reading.

Student reactions
Conrad's students seem to like this grading approach. It keeps their professor organized. Comments are always legible. Submitting papers through Sakai gives some flexibility for the submit time. And it save students money on printing. Most students also look at comments online.

Online resources

• Collaborate Effectively with Track Changes (Mac)
  
• Tutorial on Tracking Changes with Microsoft Word (Windows)
  
• Electronic Grading Tutorial (for Blackboard but useful information for Sakai users too)

Scripps Faculty - Please contact IT-FITS for assistance with Sakai and/or Microsoft Office.