FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: MEASURING DISTANCE IN VIDEO FILES Thobias Sando, Civil Engineering Listen Now  |
||
|
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.
CIRT staff member David Wilson consulted with Sando through this process. Wilson 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. |
||
 |
||
| ACADEMIC INTEGRITY IN ONLINE COURSES Deb Miller, Director deb.miller@unf.edu Listen Now |
||
There is a widely-held belief that online courses provide greater opportunity for students to engage in academic dishonesty, and that online students are more prone to do so. A recent study published in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration explores this issue and its presumed causes, finding that students enrolled in online classes were actually less likely to cheat than those enrolled in traditional, face-to-face courses: Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom. Though this study was limited by sample size and location, the results are worthy of consideration and corroborate the findings of previous studies. At UNF, faculty who participate in CIRT’s Teaching Online seminars are taught to use a variety of assessment strategies that include tests, papers, projects, and other activities. We encourage instructors to develop a multi-faceted learning environment which does not rely primarily on objective test grades to evaluate student knowledge. Each instructor is encouraged to inform students of academic standards and take steps to ensure that assessments are structured in ways that discourage cheating and accurately measure each student’s progress. We recommend requiring students to submit an Honor Pledge that addresses plagiarism and other forms of unethical conduct. Further, the tools within Blackboard can and should be used to monitor and control the environment when online testing occurs, by limiting access, using test banks, and randomizing questions.
As with any endeavor, the time and consideration put into preparation of an online course will determine its success and validity.
|
||
|
||
For a complete list of our fall events, please visit: Also, check out our past events and handouts, sortable by topic: |
||
|
||
| FREE STUFF: KINDLE FOR PC Dave Wilson, Coordinator of Educational Media, david.wilson@unf.edu Listen Now  |
||
Installation of the software is quick and easy. The interface is minimalist, with most of your screen devoted to the page. Navigation and other functionality is aligned in rows above and below the page and you can flip pages by either clicking a button on the interface, or pressing a key on the keyboard. A lot of people don't like to read on a computer screen. It just doesn't feel the same as holding a book. This is true of Kindle for PC. Its page layout makes reading about as good as it gets on a screen, but it's still reading on a screen. It took me awhile, but I finally got used to reading from a screen and now it's not bad. There are a couple advantages to the software. First, it's a lot easier to manage the library than on either the Kindle or Amazon's website. Second is travel. If you have a laptop you don't have to bring your Kindle too. I haven't tried it, but I imagine that it would be great installed on a netbook or ultra mobile laptop. |
||
| BLACKBOARD NEWS: PATCHES AND TIPS Erin Soles, Coordinator of Instructional Design, esoles@unf.edu Listen Now |
||
Blackboard Grade Center Tips |
||
|
||
| ITS NEWS: IMPROVED SERVICE STATUS NOTIFICATION | ||
To find out if there is a current service interruption, students or faculty can view the IT Service Status notification box. Usually it is green and says “No Current Interruptions”, however if a service or system is known to be unavailable, the box turns red and the issue is described. Beneath the IT Service Status is a link to “All Events and Outages”. When this link is clicked, faculty and students can select a date range and then view a list of service interruptions or planned events that fall between the dates they selected. The third section, IT Planned Events, displays future planned system or service interruptions. Viewing this area gives faculty and students advanced notice of upcoming changes that will affect campus IT services. |
||
|
||
|
||
| WHAT'S NEW IN CIRT | ||
New face! We have a new graduate assistant, Syleste Bolden, who is focusing on Blackboard documentation and instructional design support Christal Bolden (Syleste) graduated from UNF with a Bachelor’s degree in Communication in 2007. She is currently pursuing her M.Ed. with a specialization in Instructional Technology in the College of Education and Human Services and will finish up in the spring of 2010. Previously she worked for Jacksonville Center of the Arts teaching modeling and pageantry for five years and at Citigroup for two years. In her spare time, Syleste enjoys reading, cooking, vacationing, and spending time with her friends and family. We are very excited to add her to our team, so please stop by to say hi. |
||
|
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. 
I recently came across a great resource for promoting academic integrity in the online environment that I want to share. WCET is a membership cooperative of institutions and organizations dedicated to advancing access and excellence in higher education through the innovative use of technology. They recently published the second version of 
It's nearing the end of the semester and everyone's busy writing exams and grading papers. Soon we'll be on winter break and should finally have some free time. If you're like me, you'll try to catch up on some leisure reading. Thanks to Amazon there's a new way to do that. They've released a computer based reader for their books that are in the Kindle format. This version is Windows only but Amazon promises a version for Macs soon. Kindle for PC lets you read the books that are in your Kindle library using your computer. It also works in parallel with your Kindle, if you have one. It will sync up your bookmarks, furthest points read, and notes between the software and the Kindle. If your reading a book on your computer you can stop, and then pick up at the same point on your Kindle. It's kind of like how iTunes works with iPods.
Assignment File Download Patch
Hide Column vs. Delete Column - The Blackboard Grade Center provides two options for removing a column from view: Hide Column and Delete Column. Hide Column removes a column from the instructor’s view of the Grade Center while preserving the column data (the column remains available in the student view: My Grades). Delete Column completely removes a column from the Grade Center and My Grades (student view) and the column data is permanently removed from the course. 
Information Technology Services has improved the way it notifies its customers of service interruptions. A student or faculty member can visit the ITS web site (
This newsletter is a publication of the
Center for Instruction & Research Technology at the University of North Florida.
Deb Miller, Editor
Please direct any comments or questions to cirtlab@unf.edu