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Cedric Lewis is an instructor in the Coggin College of Business. In his Principles of Managerial Accounting course, students acquire the conceptual foundation necessary to understand how to use accounting information to make decisions. Lewis holds regular office hours on campus, but found those hours were not always convenient for his working students.  In order to meet all of his student’s needs, he began a conversation with CIRT to discuss tools that could be used to achieve his goal. 

Lewis had specific requirements in mind; he wanted to be able to show students PowerPoint and PDF files and be able to demonstrate the use of formulas in Excel. Of the options discussed, Lewis selected Elluminate. Elluminate is a web-conferencing tool that provides voice and/or video over IP, a chat function, and application sharing, among other features. Lewis uses the VoIP, chat, and application sharing to offer extended office hours to students via Elluminate. His ‘virtual’ office hours are typically held from 9 - 10 pm twice a week and accessible via Blackboard. Lewis has received excellent feedback from students, who find this to be a convenient option and appreciate his time and extra help.

 "I wish other professors would use the same thing" --Brian.

Before he implemented virtual office hours in his courses, Lewis spent time in exploring the tool and making decisions about which features he would use. He invited friends to practice sessions and asked for their feedback on the participant experience. Lewis advises that Elluminate may feel complex at first, but by exploring options and whittling down the toolset he needed to ten features, he now finds it easy and convenient to use. Lewis created a checklist that he uses to prepare for his virtual office hours in Elluminate. It lists set up tasks that help keep the sessions running smoothly. He has generously shared that list with CIRT and we have it available here for faculty to adapt for their own use. Students in his course also received a first-time user’s guide created by Lewis based on the resources available on CIRT’s Elluminate page.  He always loads an image slideshow with background music into the session just before it is scheduled to start so that students can test their volume. Lewis reports that he has anywhere from 3-12 students show up for each session. He estimates that about a third use a microphone to ask their questions and the rest use the chat tool to ask questions, but they all use speakers to hear him.

Elluminate is available through Blackboard for courses in the School of Computing, the Coggin College of Business, all graduate courses, and all Distance Learning and Hybrid courses. If you are interested in discussing tools to address a particular need in one of your courses, or in learning more about Elluminate, please stop by and talk with us.

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Dr. Matt Gilg has used the CPS clicker system since Fall 2007. He adopted this technology as a means for engaging students and providing them with feedback on their performance in his large lecture Genetics course. The course covers the principles of classical and molecular genetics, including modes of inheritance at the individual, molecular and population levels. Students calculate observed and expected proportions of individuals with different genetic constitutions under assumptions of independent assortment, linkage and epistasis. Students are exposed to modern molecular techniques and use them to analyze genetic data.

Gilg uses the system for quizzing, which counts for 10% of the lecture grade. Students earn one point for incorrect answers on daily questions and three points for correct answers. This setup provides incentive for students to participate, but is low-stake to keep attention focused on the activity, rather than the scoring. In the student survey given at the end of the fall term, of the respondent’s from Gilg’s Genetics course, 76 % of students reported that the use of clickers made the class more interesting, and 71% reported that they were more likely to attend class because of the clickers.

In addition to daily quizzing, Gilg uses the clickers as a tool for employing Eric Mazur’s peer instruction method. This strategy for collaborative learning in large lecture courses is designed to engage students in critically applying the concepts of the course and expose common difficulties in understanding the material. The students are given a problem and have a few minutes to think about the question and formulate their own answers; they respond with clickers and a graph of the responses, usually with a wide distribution, is shown. They then spend two to three minutes discussing their answers in small groups, attempting to reach consensus on the correct answer. The students then respond again, and responses are typically now clustered around the correct answer, which is revealed at this point. The process compels students to think through the arguments being developed, and enables them and their instructor to get feedback on their understanding of the concepts during the class period. A student in Gilg’s class reported:

"Discussion time between peers really helped with understanding different ways to get the same answer and manipulate the data."

Gilg has found the use of clickers in his class to increase class participation and attendance. There has not been a significant increase in test scores in his Genetics course since implementing the system. The lack of difference may simply be due to the fact that Gilg has only used the system for three semesters and the difference is so small that it is imperceptible with the current data. Use of the system has also decreased the amount of material that is covered in class, but Gilg believes the increased attendance and focus of the students makes use of the system worthwhile.

If you are interested in learning more about using clickers in the classroom, we invite you to visit CIRT’s Clickers page or stop by to talk with us.

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Dr. Constanza López is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures whose recent exhibit in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library showcased the diversity of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community through oral histories created by students. 

When López  visited El Museo Latino in Omaha, Nebraska in 2011, she was touched by the stories told in its oral history exhibit, History of Latinos in Omaha: 1900 to present.  She was further inspired by the NPR special project, Story Corps, that provides Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives. As a new Jacksonville resident, López became aware of how dispersed the Hispanic community was here and became interested in developing a vehicle to collect these voices and present a picture of Jacksonville’s Hispanic communities and their stories.

Around the same time, the  Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures was developing a new class for native speakers , and López worked with the department chair, Dr. Jorge Febles, to create Communications and Communities for Speakers of Spanish (FOL3930). The course emphasizes the development of techniques for conversation and public speaking in Spanish. Students examine the implications of bilingual and bicultural identities and study regional linguistic variations.  López  taught the course in Spring 2012, and through the coursework, students developed a common set of interview questions and began identifying and interviewing members of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community to develop oral histories.  The students recorded, translated, transcribed, and digitized the interviews and these profiles became the project Voces y caras (Voices and Faces): Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville. 

The interviews focus on the rapidly growing Hispanic community of Jacksonville, which – as this project makes evident – is very diverse. The interviewees come from, or have connections to, fourteen Spanish-speaking countries. They occupy different roles in our community; some are doctors, business owners, teachers, architects, engineers, students, parents, grandparents, etc. Some have been here for many years, and others came recently. Some escaped political repression and violence in their own countries, others came looking for a better future, and some came following their loved ones. They all represent a happy, vibrant, family-oriented, hard-working community whose members strive to achieve their goals and dreams. They have assimilated to American society while maintaining a strong cultural identity. This desire to keep their own culture, or to become bicultural, is non-negotiable, because this varied group is extremely proud of its customs, food, music, language, and above all, of its families. 

Excerpt- http://www.unf.edu/~constanza.lopez/entrevistas/ 

The Voces y caras: Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville exhibit was exhibited in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library during the month of October, and represents the library’s first exhibit in honor of Hispanic Heritage month. The exhibit was composed of interview posters that included photographs and interview excerpts, in both Spanish and English. These posters and digitized recordings will become part of the library’s Special collection.

López and her students faced many challenges during this project: identifying community members to interview, learning how to approach people, learning how to ask questions, and personally processing the traumatic experiences many interviewees had faced. They see these challenges as wholly worth the end result:  “Teaching this class was a learning experience in every way.  I was touched by so many wonderful stories and it was very rewarding for me to witness the growth that took place in the students as they did the interviews and, in many cases, as they discovered a part of their own history”.

Her students are also very proud of what they achieved, “First of all, I would like to say that I am so thankful for having been able to be part of this amazing project.  I enjoyed the opportunity to discover more about where a person comes from and what it’s like to start over in a new country. It was such a humbling experience and one that I will take with me wherever I go in life” - Brian Dunbar.

The class and project have been so successful that the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures applied for and received a Community Engaged Department grant  and plans to continue the project next year.

CIRT provided assistance with the project website and publishing the interview recordings. Mike Boyles, in particular, designed the posters and assisted with the library exhibit installation. Boyles also took many photographs of the exhibit and by sharing them on Facebook, spread the word about this project through the community.  In fact this social media dissemination has already resulted in the identification of additional members of the Hispanic community who will be included in next year’s interviews.

 “It was a delight to work with Professor Lopez on this project and learn so much about the diverse Hispanic community in Jacksonville. The real joy arrived with seeing the overwhelming pride in the face of one of the students involved, who so politely asked if he could take a photo to share. His smile and pride expressed a gratitude that words could not convey.” - Boyles 

If you are interested in developing an oral history project or another project along these lines, please stop by to talk with us. We’d love to help.

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For a recently accepted book chapter, “Prevention of Shoulder Injuries in Overhead Athletes,” Dr. Thigpen needed to illustrate how body positions change to produce and reduce forces across the different phases of the throwing motion. He brought a draft to CIRT, where staff used Adobe Illustrator to create a publication-quality illustration.  The draft was scanned and used as a reference to draw each figure of the five phases of the pitching cycle. Once the figures were drawn in Illustrator, they were refined to ensure that the position and scale was accurate. The final step added labels, lines and arrows indicating the force production and reduction during each phase of the throwing motion.  When the illustration was complete, CIRT provided Dr. Thigpen with a copy in Adobe Illustrator for the publisher, and a PDF copy for his records.  Individual figures were created for each phase, allowing for adaptation in future projects.

Dr. Thigpen’s research surrounds injury prevention in youth sports. Specifically, his focus in ongoing projects is identifying risk factors for shoulder and elbow injuries in adolescent, college, and professional pitchers as well as the effectiveness of an exercise program on preventing Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries (ACL) in high school basketball players.

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Dr. Jonathan Pabalate is an instructor in the Nurse Anesthetist program in the School of Nursing and teaches a Technology in Anesthesia Nursing course in the program’s classroom on campus. These class sessions are viewed in real time by students in the program’s distant classroom in Tampa, Florida. A Tandberg HD Video Conferencing system sends a feed of both the presentation media and live video of the class. It simultaneously records and podcasts the sessions for viewing at a later time through iTunes or a mobile device. The podcast is distributed using Blackboard's Podcast LX tool, and presents both feeds in Picture-in-Picture format, with a voice presence algorithm determining which content should be displayed more prominently.

Even with a HD camera, the video feed did not provide enough clarity for pointing to a particular area on his slides with hand gestures or a laser pointer. Pabalate immediately saw the potential for using Keynote on his iPad in order to utilize the virtual laser pointer which displays on the screen as a red dot that can be moved by dragging a finger across the iPad screen. By presenting from an iPad, he is able to allow students viewing remotely or from the podcast to clearly see his area of focus on the content channel on their projector display.

Keynote is presentation software that is part of Apple’s iWork suite, and available as an app for iPads. For those unfamiliar with Keynote, it offers the same features as PowerPoint: themes, tables, charts, media, shapes, text, and animations, as well as integration with music, photo and movie media content on the user's computer. PowerPoint users may also utilize the Keynote app to deliver presentations; it will convert .pptx files to its own format. Visit the Apple website for more information on Keynote.

Pabalate chooses to use Keynote rather than PowerPoint for his lectures not only for its features on the iPad, but because of its ease of use and eye-catching themes. “The slides I create in Keynote don’t look anything like what they've seen before, so the slides are more­­ visually appealing, memorable and as a result allow me to connect with students in a way not previously possible”.

Pabalate said “As a digital strategist for healthcare and educational institutions, I felt compelled to integrate presentation technology on a mobile device to better understand its strengths, weaknesses, and ideal use for other colleagues and clients.” He began using Keynote on his iPad for instructional and professional presentations during the 2010 summer semester shortly after the introduction of the iPad, and believes that the use of the virtual laser pointer within Keynote “allows for a deeper level of connectedness and interactivity for both sets of students (face-to-face and distant) not previously possible.”

CIRT has iPads and the VGA connector required to present from the iPad available for faculty checkout. If you are interested in trying presentations with an iPad and Keynote, please stop by to talk with us.

 Dr. Harrison acquired access to several very large data sets from the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for use in his research on hospital leadership and health systems planning. The data was divided over multiple files and not in the correct format for his analysis needs. Dr. Harrison brought the data sets to the Center for Instruction & Research Technology where CIRT staff assisted with several data management tasks including: merging, cleaning, querying, and transforming the data. They also provided assistance in converting data from one format to another. 

Dr. Harrison then used data-envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques to evaluate the efficiency of religious not-for-profit hospitals and determine trends. Dr. Harrison published his findings in Hospital Topics: Research and Perspectives on Healthcare with the article “The Improving Efficiency Frontier of Religious Not-for-Profit Hospitals. 

CIRT can assist with conversions between Excel, Access, SAS, and SPSS, as well as the creation of publication-ready charts and graphs from data.

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Dr. Thobias Sando, School of Engineering, conducts research on transportation engineering. In one of his current projects, Operational and Safety Impacts of Restriping Inside Lanes of Urban Multi Lane Curbed Roadways to 11' or Less to Create Wider Outside Curb Lanes for Bicyclists, funded by the Florida Department of Transportation, he is researching what lane width is needed to ensure safety for bicycle riders for shared wide curb lanes. Sando has test cyclists riding on the side of the road, individually and in small groups, at selected roadway segments. He uses a digital camcorder to record their ride, and records at different times of day to get data for different traffic levels. Each pass is a separate video clip, typically 15 – 20 seconds. Video capturing is aimed at collecting several variables of interest including lateral positioning of bicyclists, lateral positioning of a motorist at the point of passing a bicyclist, lateral separation distance between a vehicle and a bicycle, and lane encroachment behaviors. The bicycles have a scale marker mounted behind the seat that is exactly one foot wide.

In the lab, the video clips are captured and saved as QuickTime files. The files are then opened with Adobe Photoshop to take measurements. Sando uses the ruler tool in Photoshop to identify the marker as one foot, which sets the measurement scale for the software and standardizes the data across all the video taken. With that information, Photoshop can measure other parts of the image to determine the distance between the rider and a vehicle, and save that data into a log file that is exported as a tab-delimited text file for later analysis.

CIRT staff member Dave Wilson consulted with Sando through this process. Dave advised on video equipment and helped Sando generate a process to capture the video and measure distances using Photoshop. He also provided Photoshop training to the researchers involved in the project.

Based on the results of the field operational study and safety analysis, the study is expected to produce guidelines that would be used by planners and engineers to guide the implementation of retrofitting urban streets to accommodate wide curb lanes which are less than 14 feet wide.

If you have a project that could benefit from making measurements from photos or videos, we invite you to stop by and talk with us.

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Dr. Clark Lunberry developed a poetry installation project for the library with students from his Senior Seminar (LIT 4934) as a follow up to April 2007's “Water on Water” poem/installation. The project was on display in February with two planned components, a pond installation, and a "Murmur" projection event; both included sound dimensions.

For the pond installation, brief poems were installed on the pond in front of the library, using plastic, twine, and clothes pins. The first week, the piece read: “MURMUR OF WORDS.” Then, for the final week, it changed to “MURMUR OF WOUNDS.” Simultaneously, in the stairwell of the library, there was an accompanying sound collage composed of 25 randomly chosen library readers, their voices mingling into a murmur, filling the entire stairwell. The other component of this project, the slideshow event, was projected during several evenings on the back wall of the library adjacent to the Green. This slideshow transitioned through eight different, but related phrases, including among them: “inside the murmur of words,” “incite the memory of wounds” and “inside the murmur of wounds.”

Dr. Lunberry received support from CIRT at several points in the project's development and implementation. When planning the sound collage, he consulted with CIRT staff member David Wilson to identify a process for capturing and mixing the voices of the library readers. CIRT provided voice recorders for capturing the readings and Wilson taught Dr. Lunberry how to use Apple's Garage Band software to mix and edit the piece and produce to CD. CIRT also provided consultation on equipment needs and checked out several pieces to support the project. Finally, CIRT assisted in the creation of a slideshow of the pond project; see the link below to view.

More information about Dr. Lunberry's installations is available on his Web site.

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When Dr. Jeff Michelman participated in CIRT’s 2007 Teaching Online Seminar to develop an online International Accounting course, he knew that he wanted to include a group research paper assignment in the course. However, he was not sure how to integrate the assignment into the online course; he was concerned about how the students would collaborate without meeting face-to-face and how he would assess the work of each individual student.

During the seminar, Michelman learned about a new tool in Blackboard for collaboration and group projects: Teams LX (Wiki), which allows students to create a collaborative web site within Blackboard. To prepare for his upcoming online class, Michelman decided to use the wiki tool in a face-to-face course for a group project because the tool provides students with an easy way to compile their information in a shared space and it provides the instructor with tools for evaluating student participation. Michelman had experience with using Blackboard, but none with the wiki tool. CIRT staff member Erin Soles provided consultation on wiki development and assessment of student participation in a wiki using the Assess Wikis feature. Once Michelman used the wiki tool in a face-to-face class, he decided to use the tool in each of his courses that require a group project, including his online International Accounting course.

Michelman says the wiki tool “leverages knowledge” and there are two advantages to using the wiki tool for group projects. Collaboration is easier for the students because they have a central place to put their content together and an audit trail is created so that the instructor may review the contributions each individual student made to the overall project. Also, once the group project is complete, the other students in the course may review the project and the wikis facilitate discussion in the course Discussion Board.

If you are interested in learning more about wikis, or if you would like to create wikis for your own courses, we invite you to stop by to talk with us.

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When Dr. Ramsey Smith became the External Evaluator for an “Arts in the Schools” grant project awarded by the United States Department of Education to Duval County Public Schools, he knew he would need a mechanism for collecting information from classroom teachers in Duval County. The grant involves a collaborative partnership between UNF, the Cultural Council of Jacksonville, and the Duval County school system. The goals of the grant include the training of a select group of local classroom teachers in three elementary arts magnet schools and three middle schools as “arts ambassadors” who will, in turn, train other teachers as arts ambassadors in other schools.

Ramsey Smith needed to survey teachers at the beginning of the three year project to obtain “snap shot” data pertaining to their current teaching practices. He received support from CIRT throughout the course of the project. CIRT staff member Dave Wilson taught him how to use UNF’s survey tool, Vovici EFM Community, and provided consulting in best practices for survey set up. The project required Ramsey Smith to track responses, send reminders, and still keep respondents anonymous. EFM Community provided all the tools required to meet those needs.

After the first round of surveying, Wilson also provided assistance in aggregating data from the schools, each of which had responded to a separate survey. The data from the survey tool was moved into Microsoft Excel for the creation of graphs showing side-by-side comparisons.

The project involves a series of workshops taught by Kennedy Center, Arts Educators, and Ramsey Smith. He plans to next use the survey tool to collect information from those teachers as they endeavor to integrate the workshop ideas into their own teaching.

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Professor Danny Gottlieb teaches in the Jazz Studies program and travels extensively, playing drums with Gary Sinise & the Lt. Dan Band, and others. Videotaping performances is something Gottlieb has always done, but when he started teaching online courses, he began to think about the impact video could have as an instructional tool to engage his students.

Gottlieb digitized some of his personal videos recorded at performances with prominent jazz musicians including Bobby McFerrin, John Mclaughlin, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny, and made those available to his students via Blackboard. Gottlieb also interviews musicians with which he performs, and has shared with his students interviews with Carla Bley and Gary Sinise, among others. The clips serve to expose students to great performers and performances, and relate to a variety of activities in his courses, including group discussion and concert reviews. Gottlieb hosts the video clips on UNF’s streaming server, and links to them from Blackboard.

CIRT has worked with Gottlieb at numerous points during these endeavors. He has received assistance and support with capturing video, editing, publishing, linking, and become expert at all. He has also consulted with CIRT on various other video projects related to his research agenda.

Beyond his personal library, Gottlieb uses video clips of artists such as Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillispie and Louis Armstrong in his Evolution of Jazz distance learning course to supplement the course materials in the textbook. He locates these historical clips in online sources, such as YouTube. CIRT staff member Erin Soles worked with Gottlieb to embed the videos from YouTube directly in the content areas of his Blackboard course using this method. By embedding the videos, rather than linking to them, students are able to view the content directly in the Blackboard content window, without leaving the course.

More recently, Gottlieb has recorded several short tutorials for his drumset students including lessons on controlled strokes, full strokes, hand position, and brushes and made these tutorials available to the students online.

Gottlieb says that integrating video into his courses and lessons has completely changed the parameters of instruction for him. Instead of just looking at photos in a text book, he is now able to provide video links for virtually every event, and students are able to view the videos on their own schedules. In addition, instead of just one viewing in a classroom, students can refer to the material multiple times during the semester. Gottlieb describes: “For private musical instruction, students can watch me perform and discuss concepts, and view the clips repeatedly, without limitation. It’s like a 24/7 private lesson! And with You Tube access through Blackboard, classic performances that were forever buried in archives are now just a mouse click away. Students now can easily access concert footage which just might change their lives significantly!”

If you have a project that could benefit from consultation and assistance with creating or linking to digital video, we invite you to stop by and talk with us.

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Dr. Lori Lange is currently conducting research on the impact of ongoing physical symptoms in the lives of patients. The study focuses on those who experience persistent or recurring somatic symptoms for more than three months, and includes patients with medically unexplained and functional syndromes. 

The project is named VOICE, which stands for Verification of Illness, Coping, & Experience. Lange and her team of researchers are conducting a study of personal experiences with ongoing symptoms of chronic illness through a series of online surveys given to patients who meet the study criteria. They are collecting and analyzing data which will be reported to the scientific and medical communities, as well as back to participants.

CIRT worked with Lange at several points in the project development. First, she received assistance and support in setting up a project website. The website is a tool to provide information to patients about the study, to provide access the questionnaires on an ongoing basis, and to communicate research findings. The study will deliver the questionnaires via UNF’s Survey tool, Vovici Enterprise. Lange next consulted with CIRT staff member Dave Wilson to determine methods for setting up and deploying surveys, and received training on using the system. It was important for the study to set the surveys up in such a way that users could remain anonymous, yet their data could be linked by the researchers, and that goal was achieved.

Another critical part of the project is recruiting participants. CIRT staff member Mike Boyles designed a brochure to be placed in doctor’s offices for this purpose as well as an identity icon to be used in the brochure and on the website. The brochure incorporates content supplied by the research team, integrated into Mike’s design, to promote interest and participation in the project.

Lange’s team hopes to improve understanding by gathering firsthand information from people dealing with ongoing illness for which there is no known cure. It is their hope that this information will help improve the lives and support of individuals who are affected by such illnesses.

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When Dr. Sheehan-Dean began working on an atlas of the Civil War for Oxford University Press, he planned to create drafts of the maps to send to the publishers. The drafts would allow him to express his vision for the fifty maps to be included in the volume, which consist of a wide range of thematic and campaign information. His goal was to create an affordable resource that could be used in the classroom. As it turned out, Sheehan-Dean became so engaged in the process that he created all of the published maps himself, using ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator. ArcGIS was used to build the data maps and create a base template for the geographic maps. Adobe Illustrator then provided the tools to create map symbology for a variety of content including political and social changes and battle locations.

Sheehan-Dean received support from CIRT throughout the course of the project, which lasted about two years. He had some experience with ArcGIS going in, but none with Illustrator. CIRT staff member David Wilson provided consultation on map design and color selection, support in learning the software and problem-solving help throughout. The atlas goes beyond maps of troop movements and battles. It also includes maps that illustrate the social and economic state of the country and offers a detailed visual narrative of the war. CIRT assisted in solving issues of conversion between different formats, map design, and readability. One example was determining how to best create a visual system to show troop advances and retreats for both sides, on a single map.

“Concise Historical Atlas of the US Civil War” will be published on December 2, and is available for pre-order on Amazon. The atlas is laid out chronologically and represents the complexity of the Civil War both visually and textually, providing an affordable study aid for history courses. It is intended for classroom use and the volume extends coverage into Reconstruction, mapping such issues as sharecropping, post-war industrial development, and the politics of the era. Since completing this project, Sheehan-Dean has helped another professor create a map for use in publication.

If you are interested in learning more about mapping technology, or creating maps for your own publications, we invite you to stop by to talk with us, or to contact Sheehan-Dean. He is happy to talk with others about the process.

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Dr. Clark Lunberry developed a poetry installation project for the library with students from his Senior Seminar (LIT 4934) as a follow up to April 2007's “Water on Water” poem/installation. The project was on display in February with two planned components, a pond installation, and a "Murmur" projection event; both included sound dimensions.

For the pond installation, brief poems were installed on the pond in front of the library, using plastic, twine, and clothes pins. The first week, the piece read: “MURMUR OF WORDS.” Then, for the final week, it changed to “MURMUR OF WOUNDS.” Simultaneously, in the stairwell of the library, there was an accompanying sound collage composed of 25 randomly chosen library readers, their voices mingling into a murmur, filling the entire stairwell. The other component of this project, the slideshow event, was projected during several evenings on the back wall of the library adjacent to the Green. This slideshow transitioned through eight different, but related phrases, including among them: “inside the murmur of words,” “incite the memory of wounds” and “inside the murmur of wounds.”

Dr. Lunberry received support from CIRT at several points in the project's development and implementation. When planning the sound collage, he consulted with CIRT staff member David Wilson to identify a process for capturing and mixing the voices of the library readers. CIRT provided voice recorders for capturing the readings and Wilson taught Dr. Lunberry how to use Apple's Garage Band software to mix and edit the piece and produce to CD. CIRT also provided consultation on equipment needs and checked out several pieces to support the project. Finally, CIRT assisted in the creation of a slideshow of the pond project; see the link below to view.

More information about Dr. Lunberry's installations is available on his Web site.

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Dr. Constanza López is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures whose recent exhibit in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library showcased the diversity of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community through oral histories created by students. 

When López  visited El Museo Latino in Omaha, Nebraska in 2011, she was touched by the stories told in its oral history exhibit, History of Latinos in Omaha: 1900 to present.  She was further inspired by the NPR special project, Story Corps, that provides Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives. As a new Jacksonville resident, López became aware of how dispersed the Hispanic community was here and became interested in developing a vehicle to collect these voices and present a picture of Jacksonville’s Hispanic communities and their stories.

Around the same time, the  Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures was developing a new class for native speakers , and López worked with the department chair, Dr. Jorge Febles, to create Communications and Communities for Speakers of Spanish (FOL3930). The course emphasizes the development of techniques for conversation and public speaking in Spanish. Students examine the implications of bilingual and bicultural identities and study regional linguistic variations.  López  taught the course in Spring 2012, and through the coursework, students developed a common set of interview questions and began identifying and interviewing members of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community to develop oral histories.  The students recorded, translated, transcribed, and digitized the interviews and these profiles became the project Voces y caras (Voices and Faces): Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville. 

The interviews focus on the rapidly growing Hispanic community of Jacksonville, which – as this project makes evident – is very diverse. The interviewees come from, or have connections to, fourteen Spanish-speaking countries. They occupy different roles in our community; some are doctors, business owners, teachers, architects, engineers, students, parents, grandparents, etc. Some have been here for many years, and others came recently. Some escaped political repression and violence in their own countries, others came looking for a better future, and some came following their loved ones. They all represent a happy, vibrant, family-oriented, hard-working community whose members strive to achieve their goals and dreams. They have assimilated to American society while maintaining a strong cultural identity. This desire to keep their own culture, or to become bicultural, is non-negotiable, because this varied group is extremely proud of its customs, food, music, language, and above all, of its families. 

Excerpt- http://www.unf.edu/~constanza.lopez/entrevistas/ 

The Voces y caras: Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville exhibit was exhibited in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library during the month of October, and represents the library’s first exhibit in honor of Hispanic Heritage month. The exhibit was composed of interview posters that included photographs and interview excerpts, in both Spanish and English. These posters and digitized recordings will become part of the library’s Special collection.

López and her students faced many challenges during this project: identifying community members to interview, learning how to approach people, learning how to ask questions, and personally processing the traumatic experiences many interviewees had faced. They see these challenges as wholly worth the end result:  “Teaching this class was a learning experience in every way.  I was touched by so many wonderful stories and it was very rewarding for me to witness the growth that took place in the students as they did the interviews and, in many cases, as they discovered a part of their own history”.

Her students are also very proud of what they achieved, “First of all, I would like to say that I am so thankful for having been able to be part of this amazing project.  I enjoyed the opportunity to discover more about where a person comes from and what it’s like to start over in a new country. It was such a humbling experience and one that I will take with me wherever I go in life” - Brian Dunbar.

The class and project have been so successful that the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures applied for and received a Community Engaged Department grant  and plans to continue the project next year.

CIRT provided assistance with the project website and publishing the interview recordings. Mike Boyles, in particular, designed the posters and assisted with the library exhibit installation. Boyles also took many photographs of the exhibit and by sharing them on Facebook, spread the word about this project through the community.  In fact this social media dissemination has already resulted in the identification of additional members of the Hispanic community who will be included in next year’s interviews.

 “It was a delight to work with Professor Lopez on this project and learn so much about the diverse Hispanic community in Jacksonville. The real joy arrived with seeing the overwhelming pride in the face of one of the students involved, who so politely asked if he could take a photo to share. His smile and pride expressed a gratitude that words could not convey.” - Boyles 

If you are interested in developing an oral history project or another project along these lines, please stop by to talk with us. We’d love to help.

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Professor Danny Gottlieb teaches in the Jazz Studies program and travels extensively, playing drums with Gary Sinise & the Lt. Dan Band, and others. Videotaping performances is something Gottlieb has always done, but when he started teaching online courses, he began to think about the impact video could have as an instructional tool to engage his students.

Gottlieb digitized some of his personal videos recorded at performances with prominent jazz musicians including Bobby McFerrin, John Mclaughlin, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny, and made those available to his students via Blackboard. Gottlieb also interviews musicians with which he performs, and has shared with his students interviews with Carla Bley and Gary Sinise, among others. The clips serve to expose students to great performers and performances, and relate to a variety of activities in his courses, including group discussion and concert reviews. Gottlieb hosts the video clips on UNF’s streaming server, and links to them from Blackboard.

CIRT has worked with Gottlieb at numerous points during these endeavors. He has received assistance and support with capturing video, editing, publishing, linking, and become expert at all. He has also consulted with CIRT on various other video projects related to his research agenda.

Beyond his personal library, Gottlieb uses video clips of artists such as Buddy Rich, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillispie and Louis Armstrong in his Evolution of Jazz distance learning course to supplement the course materials in the textbook. He locates these historical clips in online sources, such as YouTube. CIRT staff member Erin Soles worked with Gottlieb to embed the videos from YouTube directly in the content areas of his Blackboard course using this method. By embedding the videos, rather than linking to them, students are able to view the content directly in the Blackboard content window, without leaving the course.

More recently, Gottlieb has recorded several short tutorials for his drumset students including lessons on controlled strokes, full strokes, hand position, and brushes and made these tutorials available to the students online.

Gottlieb says that integrating video into his courses and lessons has completely changed the parameters of instruction for him. Instead of just looking at photos in a text book, he is now able to provide video links for virtually every event, and students are able to view the videos on their own schedules. In addition, instead of just one viewing in a classroom, students can refer to the material multiple times during the semester. Gottlieb describes: “For private musical instruction, students can watch me perform and discuss concepts, and view the clips repeatedly, without limitation. It’s like a 24/7 private lesson! And with You Tube access through Blackboard, classic performances that were forever buried in archives are now just a mouse click away. Students now can easily access concert footage which just might change their lives significantly!”

If you have a project that could benefit from consultation and assistance with creating or linking to digital video, we invite you to stop by and talk with us.

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Dr. Jonathan Pabalate is an instructor in the Nurse Anesthetist program in the School of Nursing and teaches a Technology in Anesthesia Nursing course in the program’s classroom on campus. These class sessions are viewed in real time by students in the program’s distant classroom in Tampa, Florida. A Tandberg HD Video Conferencing system sends a feed of both the presentation media and live video of the class. It simultaneously records and podcasts the sessions for viewing at a later time through iTunes or a mobile device. The podcast is distributed using Blackboard's Podcast LX tool, and presents both feeds in Picture-in-Picture format, with a voice presence algorithm determining which content should be displayed more prominently.

Even with a HD camera, the video feed did not provide enough clarity for pointing to a particular area on his slides with hand gestures or a laser pointer. Pabalate immediately saw the potential for using Keynote on his iPad in order to utilize the virtual laser pointer which displays on the screen as a red dot that can be moved by dragging a finger across the iPad screen. By presenting from an iPad, he is able to allow students viewing remotely or from the podcast to clearly see his area of focus on the content channel on their projector display.

Keynote is presentation software that is part of Apple’s iWork suite, and available as an app for iPads. For those unfamiliar with Keynote, it offers the same features as PowerPoint: themes, tables, charts, media, shapes, text, and animations, as well as integration with music, photo and movie media content on the user's computer. PowerPoint users may also utilize the Keynote app to deliver presentations; it will convert .pptx files to its own format. Visit the Apple website for more information on Keynote.

Pabalate chooses to use Keynote rather than PowerPoint for his lectures not only for its features on the iPad, but because of its ease of use and eye-catching themes. “The slides I create in Keynote don’t look anything like what they've seen before, so the slides are more­­ visually appealing, memorable and as a result allow me to connect with students in a way not previously possible”.

Pabalate said “As a digital strategist for healthcare and educational institutions, I felt compelled to integrate presentation technology on a mobile device to better understand its strengths, weaknesses, and ideal use for other colleagues and clients.” He began using Keynote on his iPad for instructional and professional presentations during the 2010 summer semester shortly after the introduction of the iPad, and believes that the use of the virtual laser pointer within Keynote “allows for a deeper level of connectedness and interactivity for both sets of students (face-to-face and distant) not previously possible.”

CIRT has iPads and the VGA connector required to present from the iPad available for faculty checkout. If you are interested in trying presentations with an iPad and Keynote, please stop by to talk with us.

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Two professors from the Honors program recently used the same technology to meet two completely different instructional goals.

Professor Marcia Ladendorff took a group of students to the Ghanaian city of Kumasi to visit the largest open air market in West Africa, as part of the UNF Honors Program’s Ghana Project. Prior to the trip, she visited CIRT and received assistance using Google Earth Pro to locate the market in Kumasi and save a satellite image of it. Google Earth Pro can export higher quality images than the free version of Google Earth, and that satellite image was printed onto 3’ x 3’ posters using the wide-format printer. Professor Ladendorff took the posters with her on the trip to orient students, to use for navigation, and to give as gifts to people working in the Kumasi market.

For a different course, Dr. Chuck Paulson was planning to take his students to Shell Island in the St. Johns River, and wanted them to be able to plot the location of various species while working there. He used Google Earth Pro to find and save an image of the island. Then CIRT staff helped him export the image from Google Earth Pro to Photoshop, where a grid overlay was added. Dr. Paulson printed the map with overlay at 5’ x 3’, and on the trip, used that poster for marking species locations.

CIRT staff are available to assist with locating and saving images in Google Earth Pro for various instructional and research purposes. Please stop by and see us in 10/1150 if you have questions or would like to discuss a project.

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Professor Marcia Ladendorff, of UNF’s Honors program, took several UNF engineering students to the Tamale Children's Home for three weeks in May 2009 as part of the Ghana Project. The Ghana Project focuses on sustainable development in engineering, healthcare, and democratic action. During this trip, students made several improvements to the school’s nursery, enhancing the rainwater harvesting system, installing a water drainage system and a garbage containment site. They also upgraded the outdoor play area. The drainage solutions will eliminate standing water around the home, which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes that infect the children with life-threatening malaria. Water storage improvements will reduce intestinal infections, which the children get from drinking rain water containing high levels of bacteria. At the conclusion of the trip, Ladendorff filmed the students giving a narrated tour of the improvements they had made, as well as an interview with the director of the Tamale Children's Home, Mdme Quainoo. The director spoke about the positive impact of the changes the students made on her ability to do her job and on the quality of life for the children.

Ladendorff wanted to use the video to document the project’s work and be able to distribute it to others in the form of a DVD. In order to prepare the video footage for the DVD, CIRT staff helped Ladendorff capture the raw video into iMovie '09 for editing. During the editing process she worked with multiple shots, combining the student's narration with illustrative video recorded at a later time. She also added fades between segments, adjusted the audio volume for each segment, added images and titles, and recorded an introduction. Ladendorff then published the video to DVD using iDVD. She also used the DVD duplicator in CIRT to automate the creation of 50 copies. Ladendorff has given copies of the DVD to the students who participated in the trip last spring, and to the donors who support the Ghana Project. The DVDs have also been distributed to the School of Engineering which partnered with Honors on the trip, and Alumni Services. Ladendorff plans to share the disc with other faculty who might want to see the benefits of this kind of academic experience, and will use it in the future as a promotional and recruiting piece.

If you are interested in learning more about video editing and production we invite you to stop by and talk with us, or visit CIRT's Digital Video Web page.

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When Teaching Online Seminar (TOL) participant Dr. Ron Lukens-Bull was redesigning his Peoples and Cultures of the World course for online delivery, he wanted to introduce the course to students in a way that would allow him to express his personality and introduce students to the overarching themes of the course. He considered shooting a short introductory video, but decided that for him, a different kind of video would better fit his style and capture students’ attention. A self-described geek, Lukens-Bull found xtranormal.com, a moviemaking website for creating animated videos.

The service allows users to provide a script and then select characters and a location. The animated characters speak your transcript and the resulting movie can be produced in a number of formats.  You can also add various actions and animations to a movie including specific character motions, facial expressions, and sounds.  Because the video is generated directly from the text you provide, once you become accustomed to the interface, production is quick and easy. There are two editors available, one that is online and another that is desktop-based. The desktop editor provides some additional features, such as more than two characters.  An update to the online editor allows the addition of voice recordings in both editors.

Lukens-Bull created two characters, Andy Throw and Polly Gee (get it?) to introduce his course. The setting is a talk show with those characters, who are students in the course. In the first five-minute episode, they discuss the course content, procedures, assignments, and the instructor.  In a humorous way, Andy Throw and Polly Gee discuss what can be expected in the course and how to obtain help. Lukens-Bull plans to produce additional episodes of the Andy Throw and Polly Gee Show to be used periodically during the online course.

Xtranormal.com allows users to create a free account that comes with a set number of credits. Credits are used to access additional characters, locations, and other features. Xtranormal.com will give additional free credits to educators, so use your .edu address when emailing them. 

Since creating the introduction movie for his online course, Lukens-Bull has produced six other videos that he is currently using in his traditional courses.  Titles include Larry King Interviews Jesus on How Muslims see Him and Symbols, Myths, and Rituals. Feedback from students has been positive.  With the use of “Video Syllabi” instead of talking through the syllabus on the first day, students pay attention.  Further, there are fewer questions later in the term about the contents of the syllabus.  Lukens-Bull hosts the videos on his YouTube channel. To see more, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/rlukensbull.

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Basic clinical skills, such as measuring joint range of motion and gait training, form the foundation for other interventions physical therapists employ on a routine basis. Typically, students are initially exposed to these skills in their texts and then see live demonstrations in the classroom. This is followed by practice opportunities with other students while being supervised by the instructor. A limitation of this approach is that students only see the demonstration performed 1-2 times by an instructor before they practice the skill and they do not have access to the demonstration outside of class.

To optimize student learning and use of available resources, Drs. Smith, Moore and Thigpen videotaped demonstrations of basic clinical skills, narrated a description of the skills being performed, and converted the narrated video to a file format suitable for playback on a computer or portable media device. Following conversion to the appropriate format the video is made available to students through Blackboard or iTunes as a podcast. The video podcast episodes enable students to view and practice demonstrations at a time and place of their choosing, and extends the time in class for practice of techniques and formative feedback from the instructor to each student.

The faculty members consulted with CIRT staff on several topics to plan for the project, including the equipment to be used and methods for videotaping, narration, production and distribution. The video was captured to iMovie in CIRT, where it was narrated and edited before being produced as an .m4v (MPEG-4 video). The podcast files are distributed via the Podcast LX tool available in Blackboard, which allows students to view or download episodes one at a time, or to subscribe to the podcast feed with iTunes.

Drs. Smith and Moore are now planning a study to examine physical therapy student cognitive and psychomotor performance related to basic clinical skills taught with demonstrations distributed through podcasting as compared to those taught with live demonstrations.

If you are interested in creating audio or video podcasts for your classes, please contact CIRT.

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Dr. Scott Brown teaches art history in the Department of Art and Design. His subject area requires that he incorporate high-quality images into his lectures. He previously used PowerPoint or Keynote, but found the process of locating and managing the images to be cumbersome. He now uses ARTstor, an image database provided by the UNF library, to find, manage and present images.

At the heart of ARTstor is a huge community-built collection of works from over 200 organizations including museums, universities, private collections and libraries. The collection can be browsed by collection, classification, or geography and is comprised of more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences. It was designed as a teaching and research tool for scholars, and the collection contains images useful in a variety of disciplines. ARTstor provides subject guides for many disciplines including Art, Anthropology, History, Music, and Religious Studies.

After creating an account, users are able to save images into image groups. Image groups allow users to work with a set of images, that can be downloaded as jpeg files (at presentation quality), or as a PowerPoint presentation. Additionally, ARTstor provides a link for each image group that can be used to add the group to Blackboard courses. There are also tools to save or email citations in popular formats like EndNote and RefWorks.

The most important tool provided by ARTstor is the Offline Image Viewer (OIV). The OIV is a tool designed for creating and delivering presentations.  It allows users to work with full quality images from ARTstor and also to import other images and PowerPoint presentations. Creating a presentation in OIV is similar to creating one in PowerPoint, but presentation delivery is where OIV really shines. The viewer allows for zooming, panning, and side-by-side image comparisons.

In Brown’s own words, ARTstor and the OIV have “revolutionized” the way in which he integrates images with teaching.  In the past, Brown drew his visual content from a wide range of different resources including museum websites, Flickr, hobbyist websites, Google, etc.  Work that formerly took many hours—scouring the internet for a particular image and teaching students to do the same—now literally takes minutes.  Brown uses ARTstor to permanently house every image that he shows in class and configures his folders in ARTstor to be freely accessible to the students in his classes from any computer with internet access. ARTstor’s ease of use and depth and breadth of content have significantly expanded the possibilities in his courses in both instructional content and student research.

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When Dr. Mullen began teaching at UNF last year, feedback from students in his General Chemistry I course indicated that they often didn’t understand where they went wrong in solving a particular question.  Students also frequently requested more practice on exam-like questions. In response, he developed a method for providing feedback using an app on his iPad in conjunction with a YouTube channel.  This feedback exposes Mullen's thought process behind the problem-solving aspects of a particular question and can be viewed repeatedly as students work to master the concepts. The availability of these video walk-throughs enables him to preserve precious instructional time in the classroom for tying together concepts, demonstrations, and case studies.  Office hours are also much more productive because instead of hearing from students, “I don’t know how to solve the question,” he more often hears comments like, “I didn’t understand why you did this at this point in the question.”  

Mullen uses Doodlecast Pro on his iPad to create video walkthroughs of the problems on his three midterm exams and for 12-15 Practice exam worksheets of 4-6 problems each. He records each walk-through on his iPad, showing students how to setup and how to approach a problem and the thought process employed in solving it. The question is loaded in as background image and he then uses the iPad as a whiteboard to describe his thought process as he solves it. This “thinkaloud” approach provides cognitive modeling for students. The videos are uploaded to his YouTube channel immediately after the exam or class session. He reports that it takes him about two hours to record the Exam walk-throughs, which total about 50 minutes of final product. Practice exam worksheets are shorter and tend to take 45 minutes for a 20 minute final video.  Mullen posts the YouTube video links in Blackboard, and students can also subscribe to the YouTube channel to be alerted when new videos are posted. He finds the time investment is worthwhile and also reports that the process of creating the videos often helps him catch mistakes in the exams before he gives them. 

Student reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and for his Summer 2012 course, there were nearly 2800 views of the videos, in a class of 116 students. He leaves all of the videos up at the end of the semester, which serves to build a library for future students and provide additional examples for solving problems.  These old exam problems are incorporated into a lecture packet available to his students at the UNF Bookstore as further exam practice.
 

If you are interested in creating similar instructional materials please stop by to talk with us.

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Dr. Thobias Sando, School of Engineering, conducts research on transportation engineering. In one of his current projects, Operational and Safety Impacts of Restriping Inside Lanes of Urban Multi Lane Curbed Roadways to 11' or Less to Create Wider Outside Curb Lanes for Bicyclists, funded by the Florida Department of Transportation, he is researching what lane width is needed to ensure safety for bicycle riders for shared wide curb lanes. Sando has test cyclists riding on the side of the road, individually and in small groups, at selected roadway segments. He uses a digital camcorder to record their ride, and records at different times of day to get data for different traffic levels. Each pass is a separate video clip, typically 15 – 20 seconds. Video capturing is aimed at collecting several variables of interest including lateral positioning of bicyclists, lateral positioning of a motorist at the point of passing a bicyclist, lateral separation distance between a vehicle and a bicycle, and lane encroachment behaviors. The bicycles have a scale marker mounted behind the seat that is exactly one foot wide.

In the lab, the video clips are captured and saved as QuickTime files. The files are then opened with Adobe Photoshop to take measurements. Sando uses the ruler tool in Photoshop to identify the marker as one foot, which sets the measurement scale for the software and standardizes the data across all the video taken. With that information, Photoshop can measure other parts of the image to determine the distance between the rider and a vehicle, and save that data into a log file that is exported as a tab-delimited text file for later analysis.

CIRT staff member Dave Wilson consulted with Sando through this process. Dave advised on video equipment and helped Sando generate a process to capture the video and measure distances using Photoshop. He also provided Photoshop training to the researchers involved in the project.

Based on the results of the field operational study and safety analysis, the study is expected to produce guidelines that would be used by planners and engineers to guide the implementation of retrofitting urban streets to accommodate wide curb lanes which are less than 14 feet wide.

If you have a project that could benefit from making measurements from photos or videos, we invite you to stop by and talk with us.

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For a recently accepted book chapter, “Prevention of Shoulder Injuries in Overhead Athletes,” Dr. Thigpen needed to illustrate how body positions change to produce and reduce forces across the different phases of the throwing motion. He brought a draft to CIRT, where staff used Adobe Illustrator to create a publication-quality illustration.  The draft was scanned and used as a reference to draw each figure of the five phases of the pitching cycle. Once the figures were drawn in Illustrator, they were refined to ensure that the position and scale was accurate. The final step added labels, lines and arrows indicating the force production and reduction during each phase of the throwing motion.  When the illustration was complete, CIRT provided Dr. Thigpen with a copy in Adobe Illustrator for the publisher, and a PDF copy for his records.  Individual figures were created for each phase, allowing for adaptation in future projects.

Dr. Thigpen’s research surrounds injury prevention in youth sports. Specifically, his focus in ongoing projects is identifying risk factors for shoulder and elbow injuries in adolescent, college, and professional pitchers as well as the effectiveness of an exercise program on preventing Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries (ACL) in high school basketball players.

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Dr. Constanza López is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures whose recent exhibit in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library showcased the diversity of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community through oral histories created by students. 

When López  visited El Museo Latino in Omaha, Nebraska in 2011, she was touched by the stories told in its oral history exhibit, History of Latinos in Omaha: 1900 to present.  She was further inspired by the NPR special project, Story Corps, that provides Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives. As a new Jacksonville resident, López became aware of how dispersed the Hispanic community was here and became interested in developing a vehicle to collect these voices and present a picture of Jacksonville’s Hispanic communities and their stories.

Around the same time, the  Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures was developing a new class for native speakers , and López worked with the department chair, Dr. Jorge Febles, to create Communications and Communities for Speakers of Spanish (FOL3930). The course emphasizes the development of techniques for conversation and public speaking in Spanish. Students examine the implications of bilingual and bicultural identities and study regional linguistic variations.  López  taught the course in Spring 2012, and through the coursework, students developed a common set of interview questions and began identifying and interviewing members of Jacksonville’s Hispanic community to develop oral histories.  The students recorded, translated, transcribed, and digitized the interviews and these profiles became the project Voces y caras (Voices and Faces): Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville. 

The interviews focus on the rapidly growing Hispanic community of Jacksonville, which – as this project makes evident – is very diverse. The interviewees come from, or have connections to, fourteen Spanish-speaking countries. They occupy different roles in our community; some are doctors, business owners, teachers, architects, engineers, students, parents, grandparents, etc. Some have been here for many years, and others came recently. Some escaped political repression and violence in their own countries, others came looking for a better future, and some came following their loved ones. They all represent a happy, vibrant, family-oriented, hard-working community whose members strive to achieve their goals and dreams. They have assimilated to American society while maintaining a strong cultural identity. This desire to keep their own culture, or to become bicultural, is non-negotiable, because this varied group is extremely proud of its customs, food, music, language, and above all, of its families. 

Excerpt- http://www.unf.edu/~constanza.lopez/entrevistas/ 

The Voces y caras: Hispanic Communities of Jacksonville exhibit was exhibited in the Thomas G. Carpenter Library during the month of October, and represents the library’s first exhibit in honor of Hispanic Heritage month. The exhibit was composed of interview posters that included photographs and interview excerpts, in both Spanish and English. These posters and digitized recordings will become part of the library’s Special collection.

López and her students faced many challenges during this project: identifying community members to interview, learning how to approach people, learning how to ask questions, and personally processing the traumatic experiences many interviewees had faced. They see these challenges as wholly worth the end result:  “Teaching this class was a learning experience in every way.  I was touched by so many wonderful stories and it was very rewarding for me to witness the growth that took place in the students as they did the interviews and, in many cases, as they discovered a part of their own history”.

Her students are also very proud of what they achieved, “First of all, I would like to say that I am so thankful for having been able to be part of this amazing project.  I enjoyed the opportunity to discover more about where a person comes from and what it’s like to start over in a new country. It was such a humbling experience and one that I will take with me wherever I go in life” - Brian Dunbar.

The class and project have been so successful that the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures applied for and received a Community Engaged Department grant  and plans to continue the project next year.

CIRT provided assistance with the project website and publishing the interview recordings. Mike Boyles, in particular, designed the posters and assisted with the library exhibit installation. Boyles also took many photographs of the exhibit and by sharing them on Facebook, spread the word about this project through the community.  In fact this social media dissemination has already resulted in the identification of additional members of the Hispanic community who will be included in next year’s interviews.

 “It was a delight to work with Professor Lopez on this project and learn so much about the diverse Hispanic community in Jacksonville. The real joy arrived with seeing the overwhelming pride in the face of one of the students involved, who so politely asked if he could take a photo to share. His smile and pride expressed a gratitude that words could not convey.” - Boyles 

If you are interested in developing an oral history project or another project along these lines, please stop by to talk with us. We’d love to help.

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Dr. Paulraj wanted to maximize his instructional time by taking advantage of the testing features available in Blackboard for his face-to-face courses, without sacrificing a rigorous testing environment. In order to minimize the possibility of cheating on online quizzes and exams, he invested time up front and utilized several of Blackboard testing features including random blocks of questions, random ordering of assessment answer choices, calculated numeric questions, Advanced Group Management and Adaptive Release.

Dr. Paulraj's assessments include a combination of Multiple Choice questions with answer choices displayed in a random order and random blocks of questions pulled from a question pool. He also uses calculated numeric questions, which give each student a unique problem to solve. In addition, Dr. Paulraj created several versions of each assessment and assigned students to the different versions through the creation of testing groups in Advanced Group Management and the use of Adaptive Release in order to display an assessment to students based on membership in a particular group.

Comments from Dr. Paulraj:

"Apart from maximizing instructional time, online exams enabled me to test a student’s ability to (1) create appropriate models, (2) solve these models using the data provided, and (3) interpret the results. In summary, I believe that Blackboard helped me to test the understanding of the entire process rather than just a few aspects of problem solving.

I was initially skeptical about conducting exams online due to the belief that I might be compromising on the rigor. But, with the ambition of maximizing instructional time and enhancing testing ability, I spent some time at CIRT discussing the various options. With their invaluable input, I was finally convinced that I could set the exam online without compromising on rigor. By (1) creating multiple versions of the same problem and data sets, (2) incorporating multiple choices that cut-across these multiple versions, and (3) using the neat features in Blackboard, I was able to curtail cheating while simultaneously achieving my testing goals. Though I had to put a considerable amount of time up front to setup multiple versions of the exam, I was delighted to be able to successfully test the entire process of problem solving without sacrificing the rigor."

The Blackboard Assessment feature may be used in fully online, hybrid or face-to-face courses to facilitate teaching and learning. If you are interested in creating Blackboard assessments for your courses, please contact CIRT for assistance.

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Cedric Lewis is an instructor in the Coggin College of Business. In his Principles of Managerial Accounting course, students acquire the conceptual foundation necessary to understand how to use accounting information to make decisions. Lewis holds regular office hours on campus, but found those hours were not always convenient for his working students.  In order to meet all of his student’s needs, he began a conversation with CIRT to discuss tools that could be used to achieve his goal. 

Lewis had specific requirements in mind; he wanted to be able to show students PowerPoint and PDF files and be able to demonstrate the use of formulas in Excel. Of the options discussed, Lewis selected Elluminate. Elluminate is a web-conferencing tool that provides voice and/or video over IP, a chat function, and application sharing, among other features. Lewis uses the VoIP, chat, and application sharing to offer extended office hours to students via Elluminate. His ‘virtual’ office hours are typically held from 9 - 10 pm twice a week and accessible via Blackboard. Lewis has received excellent feedback from students, who find this to be a convenient option and appreciate his time and extra help.

 "I wish other professors would use the same thing" --Brian.

Before he implemented virtual office hours in his courses, Lewis spent time in exploring the tool and making decisions about which features he would use. He invited friends to practice sessions and asked for their feedback on the participant experience. Lewis advises that Elluminate may feel complex at first, but by exploring options and whittling down the toolset he needed to ten features, he now finds it easy and convenient to use. Lewis created a checklist that he uses to prepare for his virtual office hours in Elluminate. It lists set up tasks that help keep the sessions running smoothly. He has generously shared that list with CIRT and we have it available here for faculty to adapt for their own use. Students in his course also received a first-time user’s guide created by Lewis based on the resources available on CIRT’s Elluminate page.  He always loads an image slideshow with background music into the session just before it is scheduled to start so that students can test their volume. Lewis reports that he has anywhere from 3-12 students show up for each session. He estimates that about a third use a microphone to ask their questions and the rest use the chat tool to ask questions, but they all use speakers to hear him.

Elluminate is available through Blackboard for courses in the School of Computing, the Coggin College of Business, all graduate courses, and all Distance Learning and Hybrid courses. If you are interested in discussing tools to address a particular need in one of your courses, or in learning more about Elluminate, please stop by and talk with us.

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Dan Richard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the director of the Office of Faculty Enhancement. He has used PowerPoint extensively for instructional and professional presentations for years, but that changed when he learned about Prezi last year. He immediately saw the potential for creating his presentations conceptually, rather than fitting his content into bulleted lists.

Prezi takes a different approach than PowerPoint or Keynote.  Rather than breaking a presentation down into discrete slides, a Prezi presentation is unified on a single canvas. Progression is made by moving and zooming to different areas of the canvas. This allows the presenter to easily show relationships between concepts and demonstrate hierarchical structures. “In PowerPoint, I often represented relationships among ideas by lists or time. The design of Prezi encourages representing relationships among concepts with distance, direction, size, and aspect or rotation. I found that I have many more options with Prezi.”
 
Prezi is an online tool that can be accessed from any computer connected to the internet. Presentations can also be downloaded and edited or played offline. They are easy to share, embed in Blackboard, or add to websites. Prezi also has a real-time collaboration feature, Prezi Meeting, that lets you work with others to create presentations. This may sound complicated, but it is actually fairly easy to use. Visit the Prezi website to see examples of Prezis that others have created.
 
“I decided to use Prezi for a professional presentation. I converted an earlier set of PowerPoint slides into a single Prezi. The response from the audience was immediate and positive. I then used Prezi for all of my presentations in an undergraduate course in the Fall 2010 semester. The students commented that they thought the presentations helped them understand the concepts. At the end of the semester, a group of students used Prezi to create their own presentation for the class. I don’t plan on going back to PowerPoint.” 
 
Prezi offers free educational accounts which have more features than their standard free accounts.  If you would like help getting started with Prezi, please stop by and talk with us.

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When Dr. Jeff Michelman participated in CIRT’s 2007 Teaching Online Seminar to develop an online International Accounting course, he knew that he wanted to include a group research paper assignment in the course. However, he was not sure how to integrate the assignment into the online course; he was concerned about how the students would collaborate without meeting face-to-face and how he would assess the work of each individual student.

During the seminar, Michelman learned about a new tool in Blackboard for collaboration and group projects: Teams LX (Wiki), which allows students to create a collaborative web site within Blackboard. To prepare for his upcoming online class, Michelman decided to use the wiki tool in a face-to-face course for a group project because the tool provides students with an easy way to compile their information in a shared space and it provides the instructor with tools for evaluating student participation. Michelman had experience with using Blackboard, but none with the wiki tool. CIRT staff member Erin Soles provided consultation on wiki development and assessment of student participation in a wiki using the Assess Wikis feature. Once Michelman used the wiki tool in a face-to-face class, he decided to use the tool in each of his courses that require a group project, including his online International Accounting course.

Michelman says the wiki tool “leverages knowledge” and there are two advantages to using the wiki tool for group projects. Collaboration is easier for the students because they have a central place to put their content together and an audit trail is created so that the instructor may review the contributions each individual student made to the overall project. Also, once the group project is complete, the other students in the course may review the project and the wikis facilitate discussion in the course Discussion Board.

If you are interested in learning more about wikis, or if you would like to create wikis for your own courses, we invite you to stop by to talk with us.

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Dr. Jonathan Pabalate is an instructor in the Nurse Anesthetist program in the School of Nursing and teaches a Technology in Anesthesia Nursing course in the program’s classroom on campus. These class sessions are viewed in real time by students in the program’s distant classroom in Tampa, Florida. A Tandberg HD Video Conferencing system sends a feed of both the presentation media and live video of the class. It simultaneously records and podcasts the sessions for viewing at a later time through iTunes or a mobile device. The podcast is distributed using Blackboard's Podcast LX tool, and presents both feeds in Picture-in-Picture format, with a voice presence algorithm determining which content should be displayed more prominently.

Even with a HD camera, the video feed did not provide enough clarity for pointing to a particular area on his slides with hand gestures or a laser pointer. Pabalate immediately saw the potential for using Keynote on his iPad in order to utilize the virtual laser pointer which displays on the screen as a red dot that can be moved by dragging a finger across the iPad screen. By presenting from an iPad, he is able to allow students viewing remotely or from the podcast to clearly see his area of focus on the content channel on their projector display.

Keynote is presentation software that is part of Apple’s iWork suite, and available as an app for iPads. For those unfamiliar with Keynote, it offers the same features as PowerPoint: themes, tables, charts, media, shapes, text, and animations, as well as integration with music, photo and movie media content on the user's computer. PowerPoint users may also utilize the Keynote app to deliver presentations; it will convert .pptx files to its own format. Visit the Apple website for more information on Keynote.

Pabalate chooses to use Keynote rather than PowerPoint for his lectures not only for its features on the iPad, but because of its ease of use and eye-catching themes. “The slides I create in Keynote don’t look anything like what they've seen before, so the slides are more­­ visually appealing, memorable and as a result allow me to connect with students in a way not previously possible”.

Pabalate said “As a digital strategist for healthcare and educational institutions, I felt compelled to integrate presentation technology on a mobile device to better understand its strengths, weaknesses, and ideal use for other colleagues and clients.” He began using Keynote on his iPad for instructional and professional presentations during the 2010 summer semester shortly after the introduction of the iPad, and believes that the use of the virtual laser pointer within Keynote “allows for a deeper level of connectedness and interactivity for both sets of students (face-to-face and distant) not previously possible.”

CIRT has iPads and the VGA connector required to present from the iPad available for faculty checkout. If you are interested in trying presentations with an iPad and Keynote, please stop by to talk with us.

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Dr. Matt Gilg has used the CPS clicker system since Fall 2007. He adopted this technology as a means for engaging students and providing them with feedback on their performance in his large lecture Genetics course. The course covers the principles of classical and molecular genetics, including modes of inheritance at the individual, molecular and population levels. Students calculate observed and expected proportions of individuals with different genetic constitutions under assumptions of independent assortment, linkage and epistasis. Students are exposed to modern molecular techniques and use them to analyze genetic data.

Gilg uses the system for quizzing, which counts for 10% of the lecture grade. Students earn one point for incorrect answers on daily questions and three points for correct answers. This setup provides incentive for students to participate, but is low-stake to keep attention focused on the activity, rather than the scoring. In the student survey given at the end of the fall term, of the respondent’s from Gilg’s Genetics course, 76 % of students reported that the use of clickers made the class more interesting, and 71% reported that they were more likely to attend class because of the clickers.

In addition to daily quizzing, Gilg uses the clickers as a tool for employing Eric Mazur’s peer instruction method. This strategy for collaborative learning in large lecture courses is designed to engage students in critically applying the concepts of the course and expose common difficulties in understanding the material. The students are given a problem and have a few minutes to think about the question and formulate their own answers; they respond with clickers and a graph of the responses, usually with a wide distribution, is shown. They then spend two to three minutes discussing their answers in small groups, attempting to reach consensus on the correct answer. The students then respond again, and responses are typically now clustered around the correct answer, which is revealed at this point. The process compels students to think through the arguments being developed, and enables them and their instructor to get feedback on their understanding of the concepts during the class period. A student in Gilg’s class reported:

"Discussion time between peers really helped with understanding different ways to get the same answer and manipulate the data."

Gilg has found the use of clickers in his class to increase class participation and attendance. There has not been a significant increase in test scores in his Genetics course since implementing the system. The lack of difference may simply be due to the fact that Gilg has only used the system for three semesters and the difference is so small that it is imperceptible with the current data. Use of the system has also decreased the amount of material that is covered in class, but Gilg believes the increased attendance and focus of the students makes use of the system worthwhile.

If you are interested in learning more about using clickers in the classroom, we invite you to visit CIRT’s Clickers page or stop by to talk with us.

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Nurse Anesthetist is a clinical specialty track within the School of Nursing at the University of North Florida. The Nurse Anesthetist curriculum is a rigorous academic and clinical undertaking consisting of seven semesters of full-time graduate study with classroom, clinical time and study time averaging around 70 hours per week. Anesthesiology Nursing is an Advanced Practice Track in the Master of Science in Nursing program. Students in the Nurse Anesthetist Program (NAP)rotate frequently to several clinical sites in the NE Florida area including Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, and Tampa, as well as to partner universities in Salzburg, Austria and the Netherlands. NAP students need easy access to program information including contact information for faculty, clinical site information, class (lecture) schedules, the curriculum outline, clinical evaluation forms, and program policies and procedures.

The Nurse Anesthetist Program developed the NAP-Central Blackboard course in response to the need to have a single site in which general program information could be housed. NAP Faculty, Curriculum Outline, Policies and Procedures, and a brief overview of the various clinical sites are among the resources located in the course. Because the faculty and students already log into Blackboard to review materials and readings for courses, and because some of the program information is private and not appropriate for the Brooks College of Health website, using a Blackboard course as a centralized location for program information related to current students was ideal.

Because the Nurse Anesthetist Program has a complex schedule which includes information from the UNF Academic Calendar, clinical schedules, and class meeting times (which sometimes change), the NAP also needed a robust calendaring solution. They wanted a tool that all NAP faculty could edit, and that students and clinical stakeholders could easily access. In addition, it was important for faculty, students and clinical stakeholders to be able to subscribe to the calendar and be able to embed the calendar in Blackboard courses and link to it from the NAP website. Although products such as Blackboard and MS Office allow the creation of calendars, they are not always readily accessible and editable on mobile devices of varying platforms. For all of these reasons, the NAP adopted Google Calendar as the shared calendar solution. The NAP Google Calendar is readily accessible online and in the NAP- Central Blackboard site.
Heath Farmer, a second-year Student Registered Nurse Anesthetist (SRNA) finds the tool critical to his success as a student.

“Due to the continuing changes that occur in the program and in the schedules of SRNA's real time updates are needed. These changes occur almost daily and our program could not function without the communication that the calendar provides……..for the calendar to an effective tool accurate and timely updates are crucial. The NAP-Central course is the hub of communication between the school and the students. With continual updates, the NAP-Central course provides the students with answers and guidance as the student progresses. Both tools are ideal for graduate programs.”

If you are interested in setting up a program or organization Blackboard site or Google Calendar, please stop by to talk with us.

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When Teaching Online Seminar (TOL) participant Dr. Ron Lukens-Bull was redesigning his Peoples and Cultures of the World course for online delivery, he wanted to introduce the course to students in a way that would allow him to express his personality and introduce students to the overarching themes of the course. He considered shooting a short introductory video, but decided that for him, a different kind of video would better fit his style and capture students’ attention. A self-described geek, Lukens-Bull found xtranormal.com, a moviemaking website for creating animated videos.

The service allows users to provide a script and then select characters and a location. The animated characters speak your transcript and the resulting movie can be produced in a number of formats.  You can also add various actions and animations to a movie including specific character motions, facial expressions, and sounds.  Because the video is generated directly from the text you provide, once you become accustomed to the interface, production is quick and easy. There are two editors available, one that is online and another that is desktop-based. The desktop editor provides some additional features, such as more than two characters.  An update to the online editor allows the addition of voice recordings in both editors.

Lukens-Bull created two characters, Andy Throw and Polly Gee (get it?) to introduce his course. The setting is a talk show with those characters, who are students in the course. In the first five-minute episode, they discuss the course content, procedures, assignments, and the instructor.  In a humorous way, Andy Throw and Polly Gee discuss what can be expected in the course and how to obtain help. Lukens-Bull plans to produce additional episodes of the Andy Throw and Polly Gee Show to be used periodically during the online course.

Xtranormal.com allows users to create a free account that comes with a set number of credits. Credits are used to access additional characters, locations, and other features. Xtranormal.com will give additional free credits to educators, so use your .edu address when emailing them. 

Since creating the introduction movie for his online course, Lukens-Bull has produced six other videos that he is currently using in his traditional courses.  Titles include Larry King Interviews Jesus on How Muslims see Him and Symbols, Myths, and Rituals. Feedback from students has been positive.  With the use of “Video Syllabi” instead of talking through the syllabus on the first day, students pay attention.  Further, there are fewer questions later in the term about the contents of the syllabus.  Lukens-Bull hosts the videos on his YouTube channel. To see more, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/rlukensbull.

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Dr. Scott Brown teaches art history in the Department of Art and Design. His subject area requires that he incorporate high-quality images into his lectures. He previously used PowerPoint or Keynote, but found the process of locating and managing the images to be cumbersome. He now uses ARTstor, an image database provided by the UNF library, to find, manage and present images.

At the heart of ARTstor is a huge community-built collection of works from over 200 organizations including museums, universities, private collections and libraries. The collection can be browsed by collection, classification, or geography and is comprised of more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences. It was designed as a teaching and research tool for scholars, and the collection contains images useful in a variety of disciplines. ARTstor provides subject guides for many disciplines including Art, Anthropology, History, Music, and Religious Studies.

After creating an account, users are able to save images into image groups. Image groups allow users to work with a set of images, that can be downloaded as jpeg files (at presentation quality), or as a PowerPoint presentation. Additionally, ARTstor provides a link for each image group that can be used to add the group to Blackboard courses. There are also tools to save or email citations in popular formats like EndNote and RefWorks.

The most important tool provided by ARTstor is the Offline Image Viewer (OIV). The OIV is a tool designed for creating and delivering presentations.  It allows users to work with full quality images from ARTstor and also to import other images and PowerPoint presentations. Creating a presentation in OIV is similar to creating one in PowerPoint, but presentation delivery is where OIV really shines. The viewer allows for zooming, panning, and side-by-side image comparisons.

In Brown’s own words, ARTstor and the OIV have “revolutionized” the way in which he integrates images with teaching.  In the past, Brown drew his visual content from a wide range of different resources including museum websites, Flickr, hobbyist websites, Google, etc.  Work that formerly took many hours—scouring the internet for a particular image and teaching students to do the same—now literally takes minutes.  Brown uses ARTstor to permanently house every image that he shows in class and configures his folders in ARTstor to be freely accessible to the students in his classes from any computer with internet access. ARTstor’s ease of use and depth and breadth of content have significantly expanded the possibilities in his courses in both instructional content and student research.

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When Dr. Mullen began teaching at UNF last year, feedback from students in his General Chemistry I course indicated that they often didn’t understand where they went wrong in solving a particular question.  Students also frequently requested more practice on exam-like questions. In response, he developed a method for providing feedback using an app on his iPad in conjunction with a YouTube channel.  This feedback exposes Mullen's thought process behind the problem-solving aspects of a particular question and can be viewed repeatedly as students work to master the concepts. The availability of these video walk-throughs enables him to preserve precious instructional time in the classroom for tying together concepts, demonstrations, and case studies.  Office hours are also much more productive because instead of hearing from students, “I don’t know how to solve the question,” he more often hears comments like, “I didn’t understand why you did this at this point in the question.”  

Mullen uses Doodlecast Pro on his iPad to create video walkthroughs of the problems on his three midterm exams and for 12-15 Practice exam worksheets of 4-6 problems each. He records each walk-through on his iPad, showing students how to setup and how to approach a problem and the thought process employed in solving it. The question is loaded in as background image and he then uses the iPad as a whiteboard to describe his thought process as he solves it. This “thinkaloud” approach provides cognitive modeling for students. The videos are uploaded to his YouTube channel immediately after the exam or class session. He reports that it takes him about two hours to record the Exam walk-throughs, which total about 50 minutes of final product. Practice exam worksheets are shorter and tend to take 45 minutes for a 20 minute final video.  Mullen posts the YouTube video links in Blackboard, and students can also subscribe to the YouTube channel to be alerted when new videos are posted. He finds the time investment is worthwhile and also reports that the process of creating the videos often helps him catch mistakes in the exams before he gives them. 

Student reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and for his Summer 2012 course, there were nearly 2800 views of the videos, in a class of 116 students. He leaves all of the videos up at the end of the semester, which serves to build a library for future students and provide additional examples for solving problems.  These old exam problems are incorporated into a lecture packet available to his students at the UNF Bookstore as further exam practice.
 

If you are interested in creating similar instructional materials please stop by to talk with us.

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When Professor Vanessa Cruz was developing courses for online delivery, it was important to her that they be aesthetically pleasing, engaging for students, easy to navigate and, pedagogically sound. An Illustration course was to be offered as a hybrid, meeting both on campus and online. A Motion Graphics course was to be offered fully online.

Professor Cruz participated in the Summer 2006 Moving a Traditional Course Online Seminar offered by CIRT, then began meeting with Instructional Designer Erin Soles during the Fall 2006 semester to discuss course design as well as communication and course tools available in Blackboard. She used Photoshop and Adobe After Effects to develop her overall design and used Dreamweaver to produce the course modules. She then uploaded her courses to Blackboard using the "unpackage" option, which allows for the display of the entire course through the Blackboard interface.

The courses are being offered during the current semester and beautifully meet the challenge of teaching multimedia courses in the online environment. In the Motion Graphics course, a Welcome Video introduces students to the course and their professor. Students work through lessons on specific techniques. The lessons are QuickTime movies in which Professor Cruz demonstrates and explains the techniques with a narrated screen movie, which students may watch as many times as they'd like. A podcast also provides multiple examples for each technique. Course readings are listed in Blackboard, along with project specifications. Students post their projects in progress in the very active discussion board for peer review and comments before final submission.

Student feedback gathered to date indicates that students appreciate the flexibility of online learning and the level of interaction available.

" She [Professor Cruz] answers any questions promptly and thoroughly, and if it can't be put into words she sends me a quick time video walking me through the steps of my question."

 

" I really like this DL course because I can do the work whenever I want."

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When Dr. Sheehan-Dean began working on an atlas of the Civil War for Oxford University Press, he planned to create drafts of the maps to send to the publishers. The drafts would allow him to express his vision for the fifty maps to be included in the volume, which consist of a wide range of thematic and campaign information. His goal was to create an affordable resource that could be used in the classroom. As it turned out, Sheehan-Dean became so engaged in the process that he created all of the published maps himself, using ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator. ArcGIS was used to build the data maps and create a base template for the geographic maps. Adobe Illustrator then provided the tools to create map symbology for a variety of content including political and social changes and battle locations.

Sheehan-Dean received support from CIRT throughout the course of the project, which lasted about two years. He had some experience with ArcGIS going in, but none with Illustrator. CIRT staff member David Wilson provided consultation on map design and color selection, support in learning the software and problem-solving help throughout. The atlas goes beyond maps of troop movements and battles. It also includes maps that illustrate the social and economic state of the country and offers a detailed visual narrative of the war. CIRT assisted in solving issues of conversion between different formats, map design, and readability. One example was determining how to best create a visual system to show troop advances and retreats for both sides, on a single map.

“Concise Historical Atlas of the US Civil War” will be published on December 2, and is available for pre-order on Amazon. The atlas is laid out chronologically and represents the complexity of the Civil War both visually and textually, providing an affordable study aid for history courses. It is intended for classroom use and the volume extends coverage into Reconstruction, mapping such issues as sharecropping, post-war industrial development, and the politics of the era. Since completing this project, Sheehan-Dean has helped another professor create a map for use in publication.

If you are interested in learning more about mapping technology, or creating maps for your own publications, we invite you to stop by to talk with us, or to contact Sheehan-Dean. He is happy to talk with others about the process.

 Dr. Harrison acquired access to several very large data sets from the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for use in his research on hospital leadership and health systems planning. The data was divided over multiple files and not in the correct format for his analysis needs. Dr. Harrison brought the data sets to the Center for Instruction & Research Technology where CIRT staff assisted with several data management tasks including: merging, cleaning, querying, and transforming the data. They also provided assistance in converting data from one format to another. 

Dr. Harrison then used data-envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques to evaluate the efficiency of religious not-for-profit hospitals and determine trends. Dr. Harrison published his findings in Hospital Topics: Research and Perspectives on Healthcare with the article “The Improving Efficiency Frontier of Religious Not-for-Profit Hospitals. 

CIRT can assist with conversions between Excel, Access, SAS, and SPSS, as well as the creation of publication-ready charts and graphs from data.

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Dr. Lori Lange is currently conducting research on the impact of ongoing physical symptoms in the lives of patients. The study focuses on those who experience persistent or recurring somatic symptoms for more than three months, and includes patients with medically unexplained and functional syndromes. 

The project is named VOICE, which stands for Verification of Illness, Coping, & Experience. Lange and her team of researchers are conducting a study of personal experiences with ongoing symptoms of chronic illness through a series of online surveys given to patients who meet the study criteria. They are collecting and analyzing data which will be reported to the scientific and medical communities, as well as back to participants.

CIRT worked with Lange at several points in the project development. First, she received assistance and support in setting up a project website. The website is a tool to provide information to patients about the study, to provide access the questionnaires on an ongoing basis, and to communicate research findings. The study will deliver the questionnaires via UNF’s Survey tool, Vovici Enterprise. Lange next consulted with CIRT staff member Dave Wilson to determine methods for setting up and deploying surveys, and received training on using the system. It was important for the study to set the surveys up in such a way that users could remain anonymous, yet their data could be linked by the researchers, and that goal was achieved.

Another critical part of the project is recruiting participants. CIRT staff member Mike Boyles designed a brochure to be placed in doctor’s offices for this purpose as well as an identity icon to be used in the brochure and on the website. The brochure incorporates content supplied by the research team, integrated into Mike’s design, to promote interest and participation in the project.

Lange’s team hopes to improve understanding by gathering firsthand information from people dealing with ongoing illness for which there is no known cure. It is their hope that this information will help improve the lives and support of individuals who are affected by such illnesses.

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When Dr. Ramsey Smith became the External Evaluator for an “Arts in the Schools” grant project awarded by the United States Department of Education to Duval County Public Schools, he knew he would need a mechanism for collecting information from classroom teachers in Duval County. The grant involves a collaborative partnership between UNF, the Cultural Council of Jacksonville, and the Duval County school system. The goals of the grant include the training of a select group of local classroom teachers in three elementary arts magnet schools and three middle schools as “arts ambassadors” who will, in turn, train other teachers as arts ambassadors in other schools.

Ramsey Smith needed to survey teachers at the beginning of the three year project to obtain “snap shot” data pertaining to their current teaching practices. He received support from CIRT throughout the course of the project. CIRT staff member Dave Wilson taught him how to use UNF’s survey tool, Vovici EFM Community, and provided consulting in best practices for survey set up. The project required Ramsey Smith to track responses, send reminders, and still keep respondents anonymous. EFM Community provided all the tools required to meet those needs.

After the first round of surveying, Wilson also provided assistance in aggregating data from the schools, each of which had responded to a separate survey. The data from the survey tool was moved into Microsoft Excel for the creation of graphs showing side-by-side comparisons.

The project involves a series of workshops taught by Kennedy Center, Arts Educators, and Ramsey Smith. He plans to next use the survey tool to collect information from those teachers as they endeavor to integrate the workshop ideas into their own teaching.

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Dr. Scott Brown teaches art history in the Department of Art and Design. His subject area requires that he incorporate high-quality images into his lectures. He previously used PowerPoint or Keynote, but found the process of locating and managing the images to be cumbersome. He now uses ARTstor, an image database provided by the UNF library, to find, manage and present images.

At the heart of ARTstor is a huge community-built collection of works from over 200 organizations including museums, universities, private collections and libraries. The collection can be browsed by collection, classification, or geography and is comprised of more than one million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences. It was designed as a teaching and research tool for scholars, and the collection contains images useful in a variety of disciplines. ARTstor provides subject guides for many disciplines including Art, Anthropology, History, Music, and Religious Studies.

After creating an account, users are able to save images into image groups. Image groups allow users to work with a set of images, that can be downloaded as jpeg files (at presentation quality), or as a PowerPoint presentation. Additionally, ARTstor provides a link for each image group that can be used to add the group to Blackboard courses. There are also tools to save or email citations in popular formats like EndNote and RefWorks.

The most important tool provided by ARTstor is the Offline Image Viewer (OIV). The OIV is a tool designed for creating and delivering presentations.  It allows users to work with full quality images from ARTstor and also to import other images and PowerPoint presentations. Creating a presentation in OIV is similar to creating one in PowerPoint, but presentation delivery is where OIV really shines. The viewer allows for zooming, panning, and side-by-side image comparisons.

In Brown’s own words, ARTstor and the OIV have “revolutionized” the way in which he integrates images with teaching.  In the past, Brown drew his visual content from a wide range of different resources including museum websites, Flickr, hobbyist websites, Google, etc.  Work that formerly took many hours—scouring the internet for a particular image and teaching students to do the same—now literally takes minutes.  Brown uses ARTstor to permanently house every image that he shows in class and configures his folders in ARTstor to be freely accessible to the students in his classes from any computer with internet access. ARTstor’s ease of use and depth and breadth of content have significantly expanded the possibilities in his courses in both instructional content and student research.