Rafael Jaen has taught Costume Design to Theater students for many years and is a long-time user of the Web and digital materials for teaching. This year, he decided to redesign his course Website with the Instructional Technology Group. Carefully re-thinking the course materials, the sequence, and learning exercises, the course Website was transformed from a resource hub to a learning space.

The site was redesigned according to the course process, reflecting the course objectives under three topical sections. Careful attention was paid to bringing out the costume design process visually and linguistically. Among several aspects of the Website, the most powerful is the animation of the analysis and conceptual stages of the costume design process.

Unlike the sketches and other tangible steps of costume design, the analysis and conceptual stages are abstract, making them more challenging for students to appreciate and comprehend. Thus we materialized these conceptual stages by visually demonstrating the steps emphasized by Jaen in class. They include identifying the key traits of a character, their emotional qualities, and their actions. We then demonstrated the connection of these characteristics with symbolic color based on color theory.

Further, we identified fabric textures that best fit their traits by displaying texture; a smooth, fine fabric or sometimes a rougher, coarse material. Finally, we displayed a wide variety of resources and photos of students discovering sources of inspiration for their own vision of an innovative costume.

Writing for Marketing Communication professor Suzy Im had an idea. She wanted her students to analyze each other's writing and provide suggestions for improvements. The writing would take place in the classroom and involve all students collaborating on press releases and editorials.

After considering several software options such as WriteWith, and Google Docs, Professor Im decided to try Etherpad because it allowed students to see the changes their peers were making concurrently. Designed for real-time collaborative writing, Etherpad was easy for the class to access and use. Within moments of sharing the link, the class began playing with Etherpad's rich features and intuitive interface. After her first class with the tool, Im reported, "we had so much fun!"

For assistance with selecting technology for teaching and learning - visit the Instructional Technology Group in Walker 403, or contact Monty Kaplan, x8496.

Etherpad's colorful interface

Professor Tim Riley's students in Interactive News are experiencing Twitter as working journalists. Students enter news as Twitter posts, which then appear on their news blogs. They recently reported on the Massachusetts primary election through Twitter and will rely on TWITTER as their only tool to report returns on primary night for the Massachusetts senate contest in December.

Prof. Riley says that professional journalists are still developing best practices with Twitter for reporting. He's both introducing his students to an emerging news-gathering tool and involving them in the serious discussion about how journalists can and should use it.

Eric Gordon, Assistant Professor in Visual and Media Arts, says gaming is both “an influence on, and a method of, education. It's about integrating things like role-play, which many instructors already use as a teaching device.”  Gaming adds “an element of play to the serious matter of learning. If we can do that, then we're engaging our students better.”

James Paul Gee, Professor at the University of Arizona, says computer games can teach students to work collaboratively and become better problem solvers. See a video of Prof. Gee

Katie Salens, Associate Professor and research faculty at the Parsons School of Design, says that games have always been developmentally significant. Digital games teach collaboration, team building and problem solving in complex spaces.See a video of Prof. Salens

Ian Bogost, Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says games are vehicles of persuasion, instruction, and activism. They allow students to build models of relationships between the parts of a system that let them see what happens when one variable or behavior is changed. See a video of Prof. Bogost . Listen to him interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation (17min)

Advocates of educational gaming say effective use of digital games requires thoughtful attention to teaching and learning issues. Students need to be prepared before they play the game to get the most out of it. After playing, students need help in understanding and processing what they experienced.

• Edutopia: Serious Games Examples
• Gambit: Singapore-MIT Game Lab
• Institute of Play: "Game Bucket"

Tim Edgar, Associate Professor Comm. Sciences & Disorders

1. Introduction

2. About Naturally Speaking
3. How It's Done
4. Streamlines Grading
5. Tips
6. Advantages for Student Learning

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In the Spring '08 semester, the Instructional Technology Group tested i-Clickers (www.iclicker.com) on campus with the help of four faculty members: Wyatt Oswald, Michele Johnson, Paula Child and Carole Simpson.

I-clickers are personal response system, and closely resemble a TV remote control. It wirelessly records student feedback to in-class questions. Faculty members may then display poll results, and follow with class discussions. As Wyatt says "I typically used clicker questions to foster interaction and discussion. My impression is that students liked using clickers, and were more engaged in the material than they would have been otherwise." Faculty members thought that i-Clickers were not only easy to use, but they also improved student participation and engagement with course subjects.

Student i-Clicker survey results from Michele Johnson's course and Wyatt Oswald's course revealed the following:
- 90% of students indicated that clickers increased their level of engagement in class
- 70% students thought clickers increased their engagement with the course subject
- 92-100% students expressed that they would like to see clickers used in other Emerson courses.

Overall, students enjoyed anonymous class participation, instant poll based questions, and viewing and comparing results. Also faculty members found that clickers were very useful for gauging student opinions on controversial or sensitive issues. Wyatt believes that clickers would work best in relatively large classes, as well in situations where students may be hesitant to share their opinions on the subject matter. He looks forward to using them again in his Ecology course next fall.

The Instructional Technology Group has purchased 100 clickers, including several Braille clickers, for upcoming semesters. For clicker use and training, please contact the Instruction Technology Group at: itg@emerson.edu.

Ever teach multiple sections of the same course? It's a confusing process -- all those students, all those assignments, all those different dates and times.

Krista Wilkinson, associate professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department, has devised a simple way to keep her sections straight: she color codes them within WebCT. Her "A" section features a yellow background while "B" is marked by light purple.

Here's how you can edit the background colors for your own courses:

1. Log in through webcms.emerson.edu
2. Select your course. Click the Build tab at the top of the browser.
3. Click the Page Options button on the right side of the screen. Select Customize Page Display.
4. Scroll down and look for the Background Color area. Click the Select Color button. A color palette will appear. Click a color and then click the Select button.
5. Click the Apply button. WebCT will reload your course home page with the selected color.

Note: This process changes the background color on your course home page. It does not change the color on additional pages.

Visual Media Arts professor Jayson Baker is putting Marxism to the test in VM400: Marxist Media Criticism. He's basing 20 percent of each student's grade on the class' overall average.

"Marxism relies -- in theory -- on the collective needs over the individual needs," Baker says. "When I started thinking about what I wanted students to do in this class, I realized that if my assessment is individualistic, I'm not really modeling anything."

This fall represents the first time Baker will try this technique, so he's curious to see how it plays out. Students could seize the opportunity to collectively develop a unique learning process, Baker notes, or they could artificially manipulate the class average.

"They could all collude and give each other As in the course," Baker says. "But does that give them a rich and rewarding learning experience?"

Baker hopes transparency and peer evaluation will encourage students to deliver their best work. All papers and assignments will be posted through the course's WebCT discussion board, making every piece of work visible to every student in the course. "I want everyone in class to know what everyone is thinking at all times," Baker says.

Students will also be able to monitor the class average through WebCT. Baker plans on updating it after each assignment so students will have a clear sense of how they -- and the collective -- are progressing.

For important deadlines, assignments, and to assist with student time management, Janet Kolodzy of Journalism uses the calendar tool in WebCT, which augments her syllabus by providing a visual depiction of calendar weeks and months.

Taking advantage of rich online resources while encouraging student engagement, Journalism's Melinda Robins designates a page in her WebCT course to post links to student-recommended websites.

Dan Kempler of Communication Sciences and Disorders uses streaming video for Voice Disorders to demonstrate the diagnoses of different types of voice disorders in class. Students then reference the video clips as study aids for examinations.

OPC's Phil Glenn uses audio files in Conflict and Dispute Resolution. He has digitized recordings of dialogues and posts them as MP3 files alongside transcripts of the dialogue formatted as PDFs, allowing students to listen while they study the dialogues in written form.

WLP's Flora Gonzalez uses WebCT in Politics, Film and Literature in Latin America to provide a visual connection among her course materials, emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of her course. She weaves video clips from films essential to the course subject with Library e-reserves and specific discussion threads for each scene.

For his History of Media Arts class, David Kociemba asks students to submit their assigned papers on the discussion board for peer evaluation. He finds it rewards students who do exemplary work by allowing them a chance to showcase their work to the class. He also finds it helpful for students who do not excel at writing by providing model papers for them to examine before posting their own. It also provides a venue for students to connect one-on-one with a common purpose. Students learn something new by doing peer evaluations. "Teaching something is an excellent way to learn," says Kociemba.

Former Emerson faculty member Robert MacDougall often printed out student posts (dubbed TOWS -- Thoughts of the Week) from his online discussion boards and brought them to class to weave into, or sometimes prompt, classroom sessions.

Cara Crandall implements what she calls Quotation Central. She posts a quotation from a text the class is reading, and students must respond to texts 10 times during the semester. Out of 14 weeks, they are responsible for only 10 postings; they can choose to post when they want. Students debate texts online, and she monitors the site so she can reference their comments during class.