Welcome to my teaching with technology portfolio. It focusses on my experiences teaching an introductory course in Newtonian dynamics to engineering students, and as a teaching assistant for engineering statics, experimental methods, and numerical methods courses. The portfolio is organized into sections by topic.
My experiences have shaped my philosophy of teaching with technology. These opinions are summarized in a statement of my views on pedagogical technology. A more general overview of my teaching philosophy is also available.
Here is a screen shot of a web site I created for my engineering dynamics students.
It was created with the Course Management System used at Penn State (otherwise known as ANGEL). Though it has a clunky user interface, the ANGEL system is accessible to all students there. Whether on ANGEL or the web in general, I try to create simple sites that can be navigated easily. The content of the sites, and not the style, is the primary focus. In addition to distributing information to students, I have used ANGEL to collect background information (previous courses taken, intended major, specific interests in course content). The system makes it easier to collate results from such surveys without paperwork.
One of the problems every instructor faces is that of motivating his or her students. In engineering classes, one way to build student interest is to introduce them to a potpourri of applications of the material in the class. I created a short slide show to introduce students to the applications of engineering dynamics. The design of the slideshow is indicative of how I use slideware in general: as a projector for pictures and data, with a minimum of text and bullet points. For delivering most of the content of the engineering dynamics class I felt that lecturing from the blackboard was a better strategy than showing slides because with the former strategy the arguments and concepts could be developed in a continuous manner instead of being broken into discrete chunks (which can easily become disconnected in the mind of the student). However, for presenting applications, a slide show was an appropriate choice. My philosophy on the use of slideware presentations has been heavily influenced by the work of Edward Tufte.
When analyzing mechanical systems in dynamics class it is common to encounter systems for which the governing differential equations are not solvable by analytic means. In such cases, use of numerical methods and symbolic manipulation packages such as Mathematica or Maple can be very helpful for students to visualize and understand the behavior of the system they are studying.
The advantage of having students learn the basics of such software packages is that they then have a powerful tool to use throughout the course and in future courses. The drawback is that it takes time to learn the syntax of the software packages. To easy the learning curve, I made example workbooks for students to modify for their own ends. I also spent several class periods walking students through numerical calculations in lecture as well as with a hands-on session in a computer lab.
Here are some Mathematica workbooks I used to introduce students to solving dynamics problems numerically.
Several assignments either required or invited students to use technology. For example, several homework problems asked students to plot their results on a computer (with Mathematica or a program of their choice) and interpret the plots. Students were also given a project to complete that encouraged them to use numerical software to help them analyze and improve the design of a machine.
I had the opportunity to observe a real-time student feedback technology while serving as a teaching assistant for an engineering statics class. The clickers, as they were called, allowed whole classrooms of students to answer multiple choice questions simultaneously from their seats. This setup allowed the professor to ask questions during class and obtain statistics on which concepts the students understood and those which gave them trouble. She also used the system to encourage students to do the reading by giving a one question reading quiz each class period using the clickers.
The advantage of such a system is that it enables a professor to elicit feedback from all the students in class, even those who might be shy about speaking up. Statistics on the responses are automatically calculated, which saves paperwork. However, clickers are limited to true/false and multiple choice questions, they take time to set up and maintain, they are one more item students have to buy, and they may not be reusable. Overall, they appear to be promising for increasing the amount of student/teacher interaction in large classrooms, as long as the questions are prepared carefully.
This file was last modified at 01:44 on 03 Nov 2008.