Many of the new tools that are capturing faculty attention in Medford, Boston, and Grafton can trace their origins or support to a UIT-AT project. Instructional and research technology collaborations with faculty and staff through pilots and/or tool creation has added value to student learning. I want to do a little bragging here about my colleagues and the efforts that went into these and other collaborative projects.
Zora
Zora, an interactive, multi-user, 3-D environment "explicitly designed to help young people explore issues of identity and to promote positive development through the use of technology." It has been in the Tufts' news lately because Marina Bers, Zora project leader and researcher and an assistant professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, was one of 20 scientists to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, "the highest award the U.S. government gives to promising young researchers for her own groundbreaking work in the field." Zora was developed by UIT Academic Technology to support Bers and her project team in the Department of Child Development and we are all extremely pleased that this work seen such recognition. Read more about Zora at the UIT-AT project page http://uit.tufts.edu/at/?pid=20
Turnitin
Turnitin, an Internet-based anti-plagiarism program that checks student work against a database of previously submitted student papers and published articles, is now available to all Arts, Sciences and Engineering faculty. A pilot in the Biology Department was initiated through UIT-AT when Ross Feldberg, a biology professor, attended the 2004 UIT-AT sponsored Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning with Technology and became intrigued with the tool's possibilities. The pilot was such a success that Tufts decided to broaden access to the tool as part of new plagiarism policy: Academic Integrity.
eInstruction Classroom Response System
Last academic year, UIT-AT also supported three pilots of eInstruction's Classroom Response System (CRS) in French, Economics, and Astronomy classes. As a result of that successful pilot CRS is now available to the entire Medford campus through the bookstore. Another pilot use of CRS is occuring on the Grafton campus. A big Kudo to Tina Reidel, Senior Web Editor and Technical Writer, for leading last year's project. For more information, http://www.tufts.edu/tccs/r-crs1.html
WebDiver
WebDiver, a web-based video annotation tool created at Stanford http://diver.stanford.edu/, was piloted last fall 2005 at Tufts with James Glaser, Dean of Undergraduate Education and professor of Political Science, in his Political Science 76 course. An off-shoot of UIT-AT's ePortfolio pilot project, this tool was piloted with the idea that in the future Tufts students might be able to create ePortfolios of their performances and presentations. The tool enabled the analysis of videotaped class presentations and offered students the opportunity to view their performance and to have "real-time commentary on both substance and style." I
New Case Study Tool in TUSK
A case study tool in TUSK was co-developed with UIT-AT and TUSK developers over a two year period and is now available to all faculty TUSK users. This tool helps meet the needs of faculty to create online simulations of patient cases in the medical, dental, nutrition, and veterinary schools.
Crime and Punishment in New Virtual Decisions Book
Kent Portney, professor of political science, has co-edited a new book to be released soon Virtual Decisions: Digital Simulations for Teaching Reasoning in the Social Sciences and Humanities published by Lawrence Erlbaum. Featured prominently in the book is the Crime and Punishment multimedia simulation of the criminal court sentencing process for use in college courses on criminal justice, criminology, judicial politics or process, law, and related courses. This was another successfu multi-year collaboration with UIT-AT and with the publication of this book may find a larger audience in the world of simulations and education. You can visit the simulation at http://at.tccs.tufts.edu/apps/candp/.
Visit our project page at http://at.tccs.tufts.edu/projects/overview/ to look at these and other UIT-AT projects.
