ITL 2011 Conference Abstracts

Session Two Session Three Session Four Session Five Breakout Session One: 10:10-10:45 a.m.

Sharing International Classroom Experiences Focused on Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Asher Epstein, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland has been active in creating new courses within the past three years that offer unparalleled opportunities for shared international experiences focused on global innovation and entrepreneurship in two of the worlds most dynamic economiesIsrael and China. These practical courses are unique in providing a total immersion experience in international business and technology entrepreneurship, putting students at the forefront of scientific discovery and equipping them with the latest tools to turn these discoveries into thriving ventures. In accomplishing these programs the Center has forged new ground in forming deep and meaningful partnerships with leading international organizations including the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and Peking University in Beijing, China. These partnerships give the Center a truly global reach and presence and support an integrated curriculum, sharing and transfer of Center best practices, as well as build a platform for research and broader institutional exchange. The key differentiator is the shared physical classroom experience where Chinese, American and Israeli students are able to learn collaboratively.

Beyond Classroom Speeches: Using TechnologyBased Assignments to Teach Communication

Steven D. Cohen, Rowena Briones and Andi Narvaez, Department of Communication Given the importance of communication in the workplace, it is vital that we help students master the art and practice of communication. But todays students need to know much more than simply how to craft and deliver effective speeches. They also need to understand how they can leverage technology to communicate their ideas and sell their perspectives. During this panel discussion, we will highlight three technology-focused approaches that we use to help students strengthen their communication skills. In particular, we will explore the use of technology to (1) assess student performance, (2) foster community and collaboration, and (3) enhance the transferability of skills to real-world contexts. After discussing these approaches, we will share our perspective on the importance of using technology in the 21st century classroom environment.

Blending Technology, Techniques and Teaching for Blended Learning

Ronald Yaros, Philip Merrill College of Journalism Mobile devices and laptops are welcomed in this session! Following up last year's presentation and his recent "teaching with laptops" study, Dr. Yaros will share research into how students engage with digital devices during lecture and in between class meetings. Can mobile apps enhance engagement and learning? Can laptops be used more effectively during some lectures and, if so, when? (Some answers from the research may surprise you.) Pursuing new insights into these questions may help to inform the future of not only digital journalism but also teaching and learning environments. As a certified instructor with the Sloans Consortium's "Blended Teaching and Learning" program, Dr. Yaros models innovative uses of Wimba, Twitter, and Pronto, and synthesizes "ePortfolios" with Blackboard. New this spring is a custom mobile app for the iPhone and Android. Come and learn tips you might wish to try in your courses to blend content and assignments with student engagement, networking and sharing. Breakout Session Two: 10:50-11:25 a.m.
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An Exploration of Faculty Perception on Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Scholarship in Practice
Lynne Heighton and Lenea Stocker, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Amanda T. Berger, Department of Family Science, Steve Buzinsky, Department of Social, Decisional and Organizational Sciences, Paul Dean, Department of Sociology, Terri Donofrio, Department of Communication, Abram Fox, Department of Art History and Ali Fuad Selvi, Department of Curriculum and Instruction The 2010-11 Lilly Fellowship project seeks to elucidate the current understanding at the University of Maryland about the pedagogy of several active learning approaches, pedagogical styles that become particularly important as the University moves to revise its general education curriculum. Questions exist as to how active learning is defined and how approaches such as service learning and civic engagement compare and contrast. A survey was distributed to instructional faculty in order to identify the characteristics that UMD instructors attribute to each term. Understanding current attempts at defining, valuing and incorporating civic engagement and service learning into pedagogical practice may help highlight specific needs for future resources and facilitate instructors, faculty, and administrators to identify areas of the curricula that can incorporate active learning approaches effectively in their curricula. Hopefully, the survey will generate an organic definition of two practices at UMD reading and assessing the views of different disciplines within the learning community.

Exploring How Peer Interaction Using Wikis Influences ELLs' Rhetorical Analysis Learning
Nabila Hijazi, Department of English With the shift from individual acquisition to artifact mediated collaborative participation, adopting a multimodal and multiliteracies approach to teaching academic writing can help undergraduate English Language Learners (ELLs) improve their English writing and rhetorical skills by making them articulate to one another what they are doing as they write. Furthermore, technological advances help composition instructors gain insights of the integration of research into instruction. Using wikis in teaching writing is a great opportunity to enhance students writing competency. Wikis promote collaboration, especially in group projects. By adopting this, I, as a researcher interested in issues related to teaching writing to ELLs, collected data from Introduction to Academic Writing course for ELLs. I analyzed students composing practices and presentations, paying particular attention to how the students draw on different modes to make meaning and to present their thoughts and arguments to their intended audience. I argue that wiki use improves students writing as it intellectually transforms them in ways that are not as prevalent in the traditional face-to-face classroom. The monologic and dialogic writing tasks that occur in wikis have important implications for student participation, motivation, and inter-cultural awareness. Students who are shy or reluctant to speak in class gain another vehicle to freely present their thoughts, become more interactive, and even assume a leadership role in presenting their ideas. I witnessed how the in-class and wiki collaboration can improve ELLs writing. The goal of the study is to allow research and practice inform each other in ways that help develop pedagogical practices aimed at engaging ELL writers in 21st century academic literacy skills. Results from this study and the collected data will contribute to a community of inquiry, discussion about curriculum design, reflection on teaching and researching, and making adjustments based on students feedback and progress.

Online Teaching Technologies: ScreenFlow and NoteTaker and Their Advantages

Bernard Cooperman, Department of History Online teaching appears to me both tantalizing and off-putting. Perhaps because I am old enough to be painfully aware of the limitations of the classroom lecture format, I am tempted to try any new technique or technology that offers new solutions. But I am also old enough to remember endless expensive technological "fixes" that ended up as nothing but costly equipment stored in back closets. Why give up everything I have learned about how to engage students and deliver information in favor of what seems like a time-consuming variation of the old correspondence course? I will present several pieces of software that have allowed me, after a very short learning curve, to present (a) improved lectures, and (b) better organized and more

engaging instructional material to students online. Specifically, I will be speaking about ScreenFlow (a video editing program) and NoteTaker (an online organizer), both for the Macintosh, but my methods can easily be transferred to many other similar programs. Breakout Session Three: 11:30 a.m. - 12:05 p.m.
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The EDMS Instructional Training Mentorship Program

Youngmi Cho, Brandi W. Weiss, Ming Li and George Macready, Department of Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation In Fall 2008 the EDMS department began the early stages of implementing a Instructional Training Mentorship Program in which an upper-level graduate-student serves as a mentor-instructor for prospective future instructors. The mentorship program is a four-stage program in which graduate students who have expressed an interest in teaching an EDMS undergraduate course progress through a hierarchy of four levels of teaching including: a trainee working closely with a mentor instructor for one or two semesters, a first-semester instructor, an instructor, and then finally a mentor-instructor. The goals of this program are to, 1) prepare graduate-student instructors for teaching courses at the college level, 2) guide them through their first experience as an instructor, 3) provide them with opportunities for self reflection as an instructor, and 4) provide them with a learning community of other graduate-student instructors. This presentation will focus on the problems and challenges that lead to the implementation of the Instructional Training Mentorship Program, the early stages of developing the program, the current stages of developing the program, future directions of the program, as well as the benefits and limitations of the program.

An Innovative Use of Technology to Improve Spatial Translations in the Organic Chemistry Classroom
Panelists include: Bonnie Dixon, Bryna Kumi, Richard Wroblewski and Matthew Kennelly, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry A significant portion of mastering organic chemistry hinges on the ability to comprehend the three-dimensional nature of molecules. Chemists have developed many two- and three-dimensional molecular representations to understand this science at the molecular level. In the classroom and in organic chemistry texts, two-dimensional representations are used to communicate the three-dimensional organization of molecules. To aid in the instruction of three-dimensional structure of molecules, physical models are often used in the classroom. To be successful in organic chemistry, students are expected to be able to translate between the two- and three-dimensional representations with ease. The current study explores the use of two specific types of models in the classroom: lecture-sized models and the projection of personal-sized models via a document camera.

Using Clickers and Other Technologies to Teach with Student-Generated Content

Ryan Curtis, Department of Psychology How do you get your students to care about what you are teaching? This is a common dilemma for every instructor. One solution is to collect information from the students themselves and use it to teach your class. This is student-generated content. Teaching becomes so much more enjoyable and effective when you use students' natural curiosity about their peers as your ally in the classroom. New technologies, such as clickers and surveys on Blackboard, make it easier than ever to collect the opinions, beliefs, and behaviors of your students. There are many different ways that this data can be used to teach content, improve the classroom environment, and improve your own teaching. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how to use clickers, Blackboard, and other technologies to gather data from students. The kind of data collected and the way it is analyzed and presented can be modified to fulfill a wide variety of goals. I will explain several techniques of how I use this data to improve teaching and the classroom experience. I will also discuss with the class how this can be applied to teaching in different courses. Breakout Session Four: 2:00 - 2:35 p.m.
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A New Model for Connecting UM-Study Abroad Students

Catherine Donohoe and Natasa Duricic, Education Abroad One of the potential benefits of an in-country semester-long study abroad experience is increased cultural competence. Cultural competence is part of the new (2012) UM General Education program. Education Abroad in partnership with the Center for Teaching Excellence is piloting UNIV 269: Connecting Across Cultures. UNIV269 is a required on-line 1-credit course for students in semester-long study abroad programs in Barcelona, Alcala, Rome, London, Nice, Haifa, and Shanghai. The goal of the course is to promote student engagement with the host cultures and the development of cross cultural competence skills. The course connects students from the various education abroad programs through guided on-line discussions and reflections, which are overseen by UM graduate teaching assistants. All the UNIV269 sections use the text "Maximizing Study Abroad" as a focus for the course. The course content guides students through the elements of cross-cultural adjustment by complementing required pre-departure preparations, assisting with the transition to the host culture, and promoting effective post-program transitions. In the presentation we will provide an overview of the project, describe lessons learned and present an update of what is next.

Creating Online Animations as a Tool for Teaching Preparation and Development in Mathematics
Hagit Sela and Rick Hollenbeck, Center for Mathematics Education How should a teacher deal with a situation where students come up with four different answers to a mathematics problem? Should all the solution methods be addressed? Should class time be devoted to learning the correct answer only? These questions represent an example of decision-making that a mathematics teacher needs to address in class. In order to reason about the complexities of teaching, it is important that teacher educators find ways to represent classroom interactions so they can analyze and discuss it with their students/teachers. In this presentation, a piece of technology will be demonstrated that provides teacher educators opportunities to construct animated representations of teaching that can be used to highlight specific classroom interactions. LessonSketch is an online environment that was developed by an NSF funded project awarded to the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. It allows for the creation of animated scenarios around teaching interactions and provides the opportunity for users to engage in online conversations around these scenarios. Teachers and prospective teachers can watch the scenarios on their home computer, suggest an alternative scenario that reflects a better set of teaching moves that allow for deeper learning, and remotely participate in discussions about the teaching. The facilitator can manage the online discussion as a forum and guide the discussion to directions they choose.

Expanding the Boundaries of the Language Classroom Using Web-based Tools: Three Case Studies
Roberta Lavine, Ana Patricia Rodriguez and Mary Ellen Scullen, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures This panel will present three different classroom projects at the University level that focused on expanding the boundaries of the language classroom by using web based tools such as Twitter, Google Maps, Wimba Live Classroom and Skype. Each tool was used to produce collaborations, enhance learning, and create communities. Dr. Roberta Z. Lavine and Julian Chen and Yi-Ti Lin of the Tamkang University in Taiwan co-taught a graduate class called Methods of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Students worked both asynchronously and in real time exchanging cultural and pedagogical information and developing materials useful to their partners. They used several electronic media including Moodle, Skype, and Wimba Live Classroom. This portion of the presentation will discuss both the positive aspects and the challenges involved in this type of high stakes formal cross-continent exchange.

Dr. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, in collaboration with the National Park Service and the students in U.S. Latina/o Studies I: An Historical Overview to the 1960's, developed a Latin@-theme tour of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The tour featured landmarks, monuments, memorials, community centers, and organizations. The students individually wrote narratives about selected sites. In groups, they produced a marketing plan, brochure, Google map and website, and post-tour evaluation on SurveyMonkey. In a 300-level class on advanced oral expression in French, Dr. Mary Ellen Scullen used Twitter as a medium for creating a virtual world in which members of the class communicated via Twitter. Half the class played the role of Francophone students studying at UMD and the other half were friends and family in their home countries/regions. The students gained insight into Francophone culture and practice communicating with peers in French, thus strengthening their expression in French all without thinking that they were engaging in writing in a foreign language. Breakout Session FIve: 2:40-3:15 p.m.
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A Successful Developmental Mathematics Program at UMD

Denny Gulick, Department of Mathematics The Developmental Mathematics Program (abbreviated DMP) instituted in 2001 took the top 50-60% of those freshmen who did not pass the Placement Test, and allowed them to attend a 5-week, 5-day-per-week intensive, abbreviated arithmetic and algebra review course. After 5 weeks an equivalent Math Placement Test was given to those students. If such a student did not pass, then the student was automatically shifted back to the non-credit Math 003 course for the remainder of the semester. However, if the student did pass the test, then the student transitioned immediately into a special class of credit-bearing course for the remaining 10 weeks of the semester. We will discuss in more detail the structure of the DMP, and its formidable success since 2001.

Before Class Meets: Pre-class Worksheets as a Key in Unlocking Active Engagement and Student Performance
Steven Buzinski, Scott Roberts and Ryan Curtis, Department of Psychology I refuse to ever teach another class without them. I dont know how I did it before. UMD Psychology Instructor. Without a firmly established foundation of information to call upon during the intense periods of debate, reflection, and integration in class, a student will struggle to move beyond the perfunctory memorization of facts and concepts to the application, analysis,

and creation of knowledge that we, as instructors, hope for them to achieve. This session will provide instructors with a pedagogy designed specifically to engender the foundation of information their students need to be active and productive during class meetings, and more successful overall. Specifically, we will discuss the incorporation of online, pre-class worksheet assignments into the curriculum, the potential for their integration with new teaching technologies, preliminary evidence of their influence on student learning, and how members of our audience can begin to use these assignments immediately. Preliminary analysis has demonstrated that they do far more than simply force students to read. Even when the points attributable to these assignments are excluded from final point-totals, pre-class worksheet assignments are nearly as predictive of final grades as combined exam scores. Take 35 minutes to discover a pedagogy that can make your class more productive, active, and enjoyable for yourself and your students.