Drs. John Olson and Cayle Lisenbee, the biology lecturers in the School of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus, were excited about the capabilities of the new science lab there: 12 computers with 24-inch, flat-panel monitors, 12 high-powered microscopes, 12 USB cameras connecting them to the computers, and a well-equipped teaching station. The students would be able to examine all kinds of specimens and capture digital pictures for study and projects. But the learning opportunities would multiply if the students could share their discoveries with classmates in real-time.
Would they need to buy some expensive computer-classroom software system to accomplish this? No! Peter Lafford, academic computing professional and computing director for the specialized labs, installed Microsoft Office OneNote on the computers and the teaching station in the lab, and showed them how to use OneNote’s “Live Sharing” feature to have the student workstations connect to the OneNote session running on the Teaching Station. The students, with each workstation on a separate tabbed page in the shared section, could insert still images captured live from the microscope camera. At the Teaching Station, the instructor could look at each contribution and display the most interesting tabs on the projector. In a recent session for students visiting from the nearby Phoenix Union Bioscience High School, Dr. Lisenbee provided the students water samples from a pond, and challenged them to capture the most “interesting” picture. You could almost hear the students inviting the instructor’s attention to their OneNote tab, clamoring, “Check out MY pond scum!”
The students can also cut and paste from other sources or web pages, with OneNote attributing the source and link for future reference. While these students were working on separate pages, the Live Sharing function also provides for collaborating on the same page, allowing groups to put documents together in real-time. The documents can then be saved and “published” as .pdf documents. In addition, each student can save the OneNote session from the class onto a flash drive to take home for future reference. When Dr. Olson contemplated what OneNote could do for his classes, he exclaimed, “There’ll be so much learning going on, their heads will pop!”
An added attraction of using Microsoft Office OneNote is that it is already licensed to install on university-owned PCs as part of the Microsoft Office Enterprise Suite for Windows. Bottom line: Creative use of existing resources enhances the students’ learning experience, AND the bottom line!
Imaginative Imaging in the Science Labs
Many of the classrooms in the Downtown Phoenix campus are equipped with ceiling-mounted cameras with the intention of capturing lectures as podcasts. While ASU is still developing and refining the podcast potential, these Sony IPELA cameras (Figure 1) are proving particularly useful in the science labs in the School of Letters and Sciences, where the faculty use them to enhance student access to experimental procedures being performed in the labs.
Laboratory exercises in the biological and chemical sciences often include applied, hands-on components that require keen observation and dexterity. Though most lab sections are capped at no more than 24 students, teaching these skills frequently requires the lab instructor to divert his or her attention away from the class as a whole to demonstrate techniques in one-on-one sessions with individual students. This time-consuming process has prompted Dr. Cayle Lisenbee and Mr. Patrick Daydif to explore how ceiling-mounted cameras may be used to improve student learning in the school’s microbiology program.
In one application, Daydif (Figure 2) uses the overhead camera to demonstrate a delicate “quadrant streak” technique that the students will have to perform themselves to isolate individual colonies of bacteria. In a normal lab, this could be closely observed by only a few students crowded around the end of the table. In this lab, however, Daydif zooms the camera in on the procedure, pulls the live picture up on the teaching station from the camera’s Web page, and projects the larger-than-life live images on the screen in the front of the room to give all students a clearer, more detailed view. This type of instructional improvement seems to be paying off. Daydif reports that by giving all the students a close-up view of the one procedure, he does not have to perform the procedure multiple times for small groups just so each of the students can get a good view. This can shorten the time it takes for students to grasp the technique, allowing more time for other lab activities to be covered. Daydif notes, “This display technology is especially useful in the Microbiology Lab because nearly every exercise involves manipulation of small materials. I’m able to teach more students in less time and, in doing so, avoid the frustration and expense of repeating the procedure with additional specimens and costly materials.” Dr. Lisenbee couldn’t be happier with these findings: “A majority of the students I’ve spoken with have told me that the camera made it much easier to relate the practical side of the techniques to their outcomes. We’ve found this relationship to be a major roadblock to student learning in the Microbiology Lab. The overhead camera has allowed us to address this issue directly and, in doing so, we have been able to improve the levels of success and engagement of our students and the consistency and efficiency of our teaching.”
In the Anatomy and Physiology Lab, Dr. John Olson has a lab full of students who need to observe delicate examination and analysis techniques being performed on human cadavers. Again, the ceiling-mounted cameras provide an unobstructed, enlarged view on two 42-inch plasma displays (Figure 3) for both sides of the lab, allowing the entire class to see on screen and close up what only the one or two students actually performing the examination are able to see directly. What’s more, as Dr. Olson displays the live image pulling it up on the teaching station, he is able to mark up and annotate the image on screen using the SMART Sympodium monitor and stylus. The still images can be captured on the IPELA camera Web page, full-motion video can be recorded with some additional software the school is acquiring, and the images and Sympodium annotations can be captured by the SMART software. In a recent session, the students were so engrossed in watching the live procedure that they didn’t want to leave at the scheduled end of the lab period. Explains Olson, “Instead of trying to look over the shoulder of the surgeon, every student in the class had the equivalent of ‘the best seat in the house.’ The students were fascinated by the magnified image of the cranial meninges, and I had the opportunity to explain what the surgeon was doing, and point out critical anatomical features and their clinical correlations in real time, without disturbing the painstaking work being done by the dissection team. Twenty-four students were involved and directly learning from that dissection procedure, not just the two actually doing the work. I can teach far more material in less time and using fewer expensive cadavers than before, and the quality of the education is substantially increased. As a substantial bonus, I get a high-definition video record to use in lecture and lab prep classes. For anatomy, our video teaching stations are as great a leap in teaching technology as the first introduction of a piece of chalk and slate for lecture classes.”
Dr. Olson is also employing innovative technology in having his students use Wi-Fi-enabled digital cameras to map the body. Taking advantage of the one-to-one wireless environment at the Downtown Phoenix campus, the camera images are automatically uploaded to a course Web site, where Dr. Olson and his colleagues are assisting the students to create an Anatomy Atlas, as a collaborative endeavor.
In the Science Labs here at the School of Letters and Sciences, “Instructional Innovation” goes hand-in-hand with “Imaginative Imaging.”
—Peter Lafford, with Cayle Lisenbee, John Olson, and Patrick Daydif