The Virtue of Virtual Exhibitions

In a previous post on multimedia assignments, I mentioned some applications for creating online exhibitions. Today I’d like to expand on the topic by looking at the value in having your students create virtual exhibitions as an assignment or class project.

Screen shot from the online exhibition The Authority of Ruins: Piante del Molo Adriano and Forma del Molo ne la Parte di FvoriAn online exhibition can be created around any topic that involves students making a collection materials or objects, examining and discussing their relationships, and establishing a thesis or argument for the assembly. Online exhibitions are by nature visual, so materials and objects that have visual interest work best. Images must be available or students must be able to create images. Talk to your librarians about resources for high quality images on your campus. At Johns Hopkins we have a great LibGuide on Finding Images that includes resources not just for JHU exclusive use, but also many that are available to all.

Creating these collections involves several skills that are desirable for students to learn and cultivate: writing (text for the exhibition catalog), visual literacy skills, digital literacy skills, and in some cases, a basic understanding of copyright law and fair use guidelines (see more below). Not to mention critical thinking. Depending on your learning objectives, students can be assigned to work in groups, individual students can contribute to a group exhibition, or each student can work on a separate project.

Recommended applications for these projects include: PadletOmekaGoogle SitesWordPress, and Tumblr. Your choice will depend on a number of factors.

I’ve written about Padlet in a previous post. It is free and easy to use; the display is basic and functional.

On the other end of the spectrum is Omeka, a free, open-source application designed at George Mason University specifically for online exhibits. See the Omeka showcase for examples. You can download and set up Omeka on a server at Omeka.org, or look at various hosting options at Omeka.net. “Omeka.net is web-publishing platform that allows anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website to display collections and build digital exhibitions. No technical skills or special server requirements are necessary.”  For even more functionality, see the Prof Hacker (The Chronicle of Higher Education) blog post on Neatline and other plugins that can be added to Omeka. Neatline allows for an interactive interpretation with maps and timelines.

Google Sites is technically a wiki application, but it allows users to build websites and is easily adapted to online exhibitions. The Authority of Ruins is a great example created by a former Johns Hopkins assistant professor, Herica Valladares, and her students.  Google Sites is free and flexible. You can keep the site private while work is in progress and then choose to make the site public or not later.

Word Press allows you to easily create a website and offers both free and paid hosting depending on your needs. There is also an option to download the application and set it up on a local server. Like Google Sites there are a number of ready-to-use themes and the application is flexible offering users a number of options.

Tumblr is a similar application, but geared towards blogging and the use of multimedia materials. It comes down in the category of social media due to the fact that sharing and commenting are featured components. This is not to say that it has no use in the academic milieu. The Johns Hopkins George Peabody Library’s special collections use Tumblr to showcase materials in their online Wunderkammer.

As a final note, if your students’ exhibitions are going to be publicly accessible, you will want to think about copyright issues. Just because an image is found online does not mean that it is in the public domain and free to use. This can be a good opportunity to teach your students about copyright and fair use. Depending on your institution, there may be library staff able to provide assistance or other resources available, perhaps through the college or university office of legal counsel. We have a great LibGuide entitled Copyright and Fair Use: Trends and Resources for 21st Century Scholars here at JHU to get you started.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Screen shot from The Authority of Ruins: Piante del Molo Adriano and Forma del Molo ne la Parte di Fvori

Quick Tips: Creating Your Syllabus

With the fall semester rapidly approaching, it seems like a good time to provide a post on syllabi.

Stack of book in library.

I’ve written about this topic in the past (see: Rebooting Your Syllabus from November 2013), but just came across a post in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog ProfHacker, From the Archives: Creating Syllabi, that is chock-full of great advice.

The article covers the basic elements you should include such as contact information and institutional rules and regulations as well as course objectives, technology policies, and accessibility statements. There are also suggestions about logistics and design.

As you move from summer mode back into the swing of the academic year, these will be some useful tips to consider.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should you require class attendance?

Do you have an attendance policy for your classes? Do you reward or penalize students for attending class? Or do you leave it up to the individual student to determine how to acquire the knowledge necessary to pass the course? Does mandatory attendance equate with a higher success rate for students in the course?

Handwritten attendance sheet.Research studies have not shown mandatory attendance to insure a higher success rates for students. An oft-cited article by Karen L. St. Clair, A Case Against Compulsory Class Attendance Policies in Higher Education, Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 23, No. 3, Spring 1999, examines and evaluates the research literature on the relationship between attendance and academic achievement. St. Clair applies Paul Pintrich’s model of college student motivation in the classroom to the issue surrounding attendance policies. [Paul Pintrich, Student motivation in the college classroom. From: K. W. Prichard & R. McLaran Sawyer (Eds.), Handbook of college teaching: Theory and application, Greenwood Press, 1994.] She finds that attendance is linked to motivation and required attendance does not guarantee high achievement. Low achievement in a course is usually due to a number of factors. Moreover, an attendance policy will not guarantee attendance. “Classroom environments that engage students, emphasize the importance of students’ contributions, and have content directly related to knowledge assessed will undoubtedly provide encouragement to students to attend regularly.” (p. 178-179) St. Clair notes that there are exceptions when it is necessary for students to attend class to demonstrate proficiency, for example, in foreign language and laboratory classes, small discussion sections or seminars where “…attendance is compulsory because it is part of the grading structure.” (p. 179). Otherwise, St. Clair concludes that class attendance should not be compulsory.

St. Clair’s work dates from 1999, and it could be argued that much has changed in the classroom and in institutions of higher education in the past fifteen years. While more recent studies on attendance have been conducted, these have focused on attendance for online courses or other issues, for example, whether providing lecture materials online causes student class attendance to decline. However, instructors have written articles based on personal experiences that may provide insight for your consideration of the issue.

Inside Higher Ed featured an article, Attendance Not Required (December 17, 2012) by Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. Bugeja, who taught at Ohio University and Iowa, accepted any reason for not attending class (as long as a test or project presentation wasn’t scheduled) because he wanted students “to assess their priorities.” He required students to email their excuse for the absence with the criteria that they be completely honest. He collected and posted the reasons, because he felt that faculty are not well informed as to why students miss classes. He explained to his students that attendance correlates with achievement and had the data to prove it. Perhaps not everyone will want to duplicate this approach, but his reasoning and results are worth examining.

On the other side of the discussion, in 2013, Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska adopted an extremely tough “three strikes” attendance policy. “Once a student skips class, flunks a quiz or fails to turn in their homework (or any combination thereof) three times, the vice president for academic affairs, Steven Bullock, decides whether the student is out — of the class, in this case.” (Carl Staumsheim, Striking Out of Class, Inside Higher Ed, April 11, 2013). The key here was a perceived need for early intervention for struggling students. “Administrators stressed the policy was created to motivate, not weed out, lazy students. As students begin to accumulate strikes, they are sent to Midland’s advising center to get help with their coursework and study skills.”

A recent post (July 14, 2014) in the Advice section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, presents the views of Michelle LaFrance and Steven J. Corbett in A 21st Century Attendance Policy. LaFrance, an assistant professor of English and director of the writing-across-the-curriculum program at George Mason University, uses a prompted freewriting exercise at the start of each class as a means of both encouraging and taking attendance. Students receive points for each completed freewrite, but the exercises are not graded.  In anonymous surveys, students have been positive about the process. It also serves as a formative assessment as LaFrance writes: “But I like how this activity makes keeping attendance much simpler for me and, at the same time, is a useful means of taking the temperature of student learning. Instead of standing at the front of the room placing check marks and late notes by student’s names on a roster, I return to my office later that day and spend some time reading their warm-up thoughts. I’m not only keeping track of attendance, I’m gauging how the course is going and where I may need to make adjustments, based on their comments.” Corbett, a visiting assistant professor of English at George Mason University, has a much stricter policy based on a concept of professionalism – in the real world if you don’t show up you don’t get paid. Students are allowed two or three absences after which each absence takes a mark off their overall grade. Both LaFrance and Corbett have clearly stated policies. “We talk to our students throughout the semester about our expectations, reminding them frequently about how their choices will affect their final grades, a clear motivator for the 21st-century student. But we also remind them that learning is an investment of time and energy that only they can bring to the table.”

Barbara Gross Davis in Tools for Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2009, p. 17-18) offers some good general advice: “Let students know in the syllabus and on the first day of class that you expect them to come to class regularly. Do your best to make class time worthwhile – a time when real work takes place. Students are also more likely to attend if they know that exams will include items that have been discussed in class only. Some faculty use attendance as a factor in grading, but many do not. If you want to reward good attendance, let students know how you will determine whether they come to class. Rather than penalize absences (by subtracting points), reward perfect or near-perfect attendance (by giving bonus points); the numerical result will be the same, but students feel better about the latter. Set a good example by arriving early to class, starting and ending on time, and staying late to answer questions.”

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art