Student Government’s Voice at Notre Dame

A colleague at Purdue just tweeted this question, “How much power do you give student government at your campus?”

I’m not exactly certain where Kimberly Arnold is going with this (maybe she’ll comment?), but since I’m taking part in the student orchestrated “Tech Week” that’s happening in dormitories around campus right now, I thought surely it qualifies as an example. Student government created its own campus technology committee in 2008 in order to have a greater say in the technology and usability of technology at Notre Dame. Check out their list of accomplishments to date!

What has been the Office of Information Technologies reaction? Very positive. The people I talk to are elated. We now have a direct line, so to speak, to our students opinions.

Educause Keynote: ‘You geeks have to become radical militant activists’

“Mr. Lessig, the Harvard Law School professor, was giving a keynote address at Educause 2009. He argued that intellectual property in education had been taken over by an exclusive-rights model represented by Ms. Spears, the pop diva. That model has pushed out another one based on community collaboration—represented by the composer of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” who longed for music created by neighborhood singalongs.”

Read here The Wired Campus reporting on how copyright should work.

Open source calculus with interactive applets

When Alex Himonas agreed to publish his course materials on Notre Dame’s Open CourseWare (OCW) website he had three goals: 1) help students decide which calculus course to take, 2) enrich the learning experience, and 3) reach outside of Notre Dame. MIT started the OCW movement in 2002, but they had not published a business calculus course, so this would be something new.

Steven Broad was enlisted to work on the project; a grad student at the time, Dr. Broad now teaches at Saint Mary’s. He incorporated java applets that allow students to visually interact with concepts on the computer screen. Sites like Thomas Downey’s calculusapplets.com offer hundreds of these mini-programs for free or under a Creative Commons license, and over seventy are now mapped against the content of “Elements of Calculus I.” Interactive visualizations like this are also available in other disciplines, notably in the sciences and engineering.

The illustration at right shows the “Instantaneous Velocity” applet. In a face-to-face course, Dr. Broad has students first imagine the concept in their heads. then gives a visual demonstration. Now for the fun part: he asks, “What if we change this?” Students use the applet to test lots of possibilities and receive instant feedback, and their understanding of the concept grows quickly. Some people explore the course online without benefit of an instructor. A “Try the following” section below the applet leads them through a similar exploration.

21st Century Campus: students unimpressed

According to Campus Technology’s interpretation of a recent report, students are unimpressed with faculty usage of educational technology. Pointers for campus action include:

• Reach out to students and recent grads to see how they use technology.
• Use the same technologies in classroom/on campus that students now at home.
• Work with faculty to offer targeted professional development.
• Help students/faculty connect with their counterparts around the world.

The chart below shows student responses to:  How important is it that your college offers you the following?

Read more here: 2009 “21st Century Campus” report

Pecha Kucha – presentations in under 7 minutes

For the past six years, people around the world have been gathering to share PowerPoint presentations for fun. Yes, you read that right … PowerPoint.

In 2003, two designers developed a presentation technique called Pecha Kucha, (pe-CHAK-cha, Japanese for “chit-chat”) where one may present only 20 slides, with 20 seconds to talk about each. The idea has spread quickly, and the simple rules allow for creative twists. Its evolution into performance art has reached the point where “Pecha Kucha Night” is probably a lot of  fun!

Pecha Kucha has been successfully used in a number of college courses, although I see no evidence of its having been tried at Notre Dame. It sounds like a useful strategy for avoiding “Death by PowerPoint.”Anyone care to give it a try? How about a Pecha Kucha night at Notre Dame?

To learn more: Our friends at ProfHacker posted a good article on this recently,  “Challenging the Presentation Paradigm“. There was also a good article in Wired magazine a couple years ago, and it was even written up in Time magazine. The definitive authority appears to be pecha-kucha.org.