Ernest Bond, elbond@salisbury.edu
Project: Enhancing International Experiences through Collaboration and Technology (written by Dr. Debra H. Thatcher)

This project is designed to enhance student learning through international experiences that are supported by distance education.  Throughout the project, attention will be given to maintaining program integrity as alternative methods of delivering courses are explored.

This project proposes a three-tiered plan for integrating an international experience in Ecuador into the Elementary Education Program.  This first step is to pilot the internship (traditionally called student teaching, ELED 401 and 402) in a non-English speaking country, accompanied by a distance education seminar (ELED 411).  The second step is creating opportunities for faculty exchanges between SSU faculty and faculty at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and its lower extension, the Colegio Menor (CMSFQ).  The third step is establishing opportunities for students exchanges between SSU and USFQ.

Madhu Rao
Project: "Gurukul": A Web-based Collaborative Project Environment for supporting Co-located and Globally Dispersed Student Teams

It has long been acknowledged that there is considerable value in the use of collaborative projects to meet learning objectives in a variety of courses.  Team-based activities provide students the opportunity to work on tasks that allow them to hone inter-personal and time-management skills in a manner not easily duplicated by individual assignments.  Such group projects offer the further benefit of exposing the student to the type of environment they will see upon graduation, regardless of academic discipline.  The advantages of team-based efforts are, however, tempered by the control and coordination difficulties associated with such endeavors.  Students often complain of the excessive time spent in simply trying to manage the activities and outputs from multiple group members.

The objective of the project proposed here is to create a web-based collaborative project environment for students teams as well as faculty research.  The system envisions would provide users a means through which team members could have a single location to share common files, schedule tasks and meetings, and communication both synchronously (chat) and asynchronously (email and discussion boards).  The project design would be geared to supporting both co-located and globally dispersed groups.  A key feature of the system will be that it is discipline-independent and easily customized for individual needs.

Miguel Mitchell, momitchell@salisbury.edu
Project: Organic Chemistry 3D Kit Development

Chemistry is a subject that requires an understanding of abstract events occurring in three dimensions.  These abstract events are the chemical reactions usually described by two-dimensional symbolic representations, which are supposed to facilitate an understanding of these three dimensional processes.  However, not every student can take the mental leap of faith from 2D to 3D, and even when one tries, sometimes there is conceptual mistranslation.  Particularly difficult to explain are stereoselective reactions.  Stereoselective reactions convert a reactant predominately into a single product with only one of several plausible spatial arrangements of atoms.  In CHEM 222, Organic Chemistry 2, these reactions are described in lecture using two-dimensional techniques, computer-rendered 3D graphics, and hand-held 3D models.  However, I believe that the student's understanding of these stereoselective reactions will be enriched if they could manipulate accurate physical representations of these processes, thus creating undistorted 3D memories of these reactions.  The aim of this proposal is to create an Organic Chemistry in 3D Kit that will provide materials clearly illustrating how to predict the outcome of stereoselective organic and biochemical reactions.  Each student would receive or purchase a kit before beginning the CHEM 222 course in Fall 2001.

The purpose of this project is to modify NURS 319: Health Assessment by developing a section of the course that is web-centric.  The course currently has a didactic and a weekly lab component.  In order to facilitate student learning at a distance, the didactic portion would be totally web-based and the lab component would be modified to a monthly meeting.

The project I propose will allow me to redesign the lecture components of all my television production courses to PowerPoint presentations complete with digitized video and audio clips and appropriate animated graphics.  I see this as a combination of the Instructional Strategies and Instructional Technology foci as outlined in the guidelines of Mentors Program Request for Proposals.  It would seem that computer presentation would be a natural method to enhance lecture materials in a television/video course and that bringing the computer technology into the studio would offer the production students another (important and relevant) venue to explore.

This research and mentoring project focuses on both Curriculum Development and Instructional Strategies.  It engages educators in the scholarship of teaching and its application across disciplines.  It fosters learning in collaborative and cooperative ways across the K-16 continuum.  It provides mentoring opportunities for elementary school children, preservice and inservice elementary school teacher, and university faculty.  Cooperative Learning and collaboration were Charlie Long's areas of expertise.  Charlie was passionate about creating learning environments where learners are active participants and where their diverse voices are both encouraged and valued.  I believe this project embodies that spirit of collaborative, cooperative learning and the valuing of divergent responses.