2019-20 Teaching and Learning with Technology Faculty Fellows project wrap-up

2019-20 Teaching and Learning with Technology Faculty Fellows project wrap-up

Last academic year, four Penn State instructors worked with teams from Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) to enhance the spaces where students learn. With preparations underway for the new academic year, the most recent cohort of TLT Faculty Fellows; Ed Glantz, Siu Ling (Pansy) Leung, Pierce Salguero, and Priya Sharma can share lessons learned from their work.

Ed Glantz – Personalizing Learning Spaces by Streaming and Recording Lectures

Glantz, a teaching professor and assistant director of masters programs in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), utilized his fellowship to explore best practices in recording classroom lectures and how those recordings can help with reflective teaching. Penn State’s resources, particularly Zoom, Kaltura, and Canvas, allowed Glantz and his team to dive deeper into technical requirements and the pedagogical value of recording classroom lectures. Many of their findings helped develop content that is available now.

The group compiled three semesters’ worth of recorded course content in face-to-face “residential” and remote synchronous instructional settings. They then found that live session streaming and supplemental recording is feasible in college and general-purpose classroom sections of up to 150 students. Additionally, they noted that recorded lectures could supplement student engagement in the event of excused absences.

Glantz’s project’s implications are being felt in real-time as Penn State faculty and students deal with hybrid learning spaces this fall. One of the most noteworthy findings from the project is the importance of accounting for things like time zone differences and students’ technical obstacles (like high-quality wireless access) and their impact on hybrid or remote learning environments. That information has helped inform training that is now available to Penn State faculty.

Siu Ling (Pansy) Leung – Using Mixed Reality to Prepare Students for Better Laboratory Learning Experiences

Leung, an assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate laboratories in the department of Mechanical Engineering, explored how to improve students’ learning experiences with virtual labs instead of traditional ones. With assistance from TLT staff, she transformed a machine-based mechanical engineering experiment into two virtual platforms; a desktop version for broad student access, including remote learning, and a virtual reality version for immersive learning.

The virtual experiment included features like student progress tracking through user log-in and data capture, a real-time graphing system for capturing, displaying, and playback of virtual object movement, a linear story around the experiment to help with motivation, and a functioning virtual scientific calculator.

While the focus of Leung’s project in the last year was on development, the plan going forward is to implement the virtual experiment in the classroom. Its deployment will support the ongoing need for remote learning and provide opportunities to study how immersive coursework impacts student engagement.

Pierce Salguero – Expanding the Asian Studies Classroom Through Virtual Learning Spaces 

Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State Abington, used immersive technology to build upon an ongoing pedagogical project that educates students on Japanese Buddhist temples without the expense of travel. He and his team also worked toward improving students’ digital fluency by having them produce immersive content.

Through technical and pedagogical training in filmmaking, editing, and publication of 360-degree video, students and faculty were able to perform immersive, ethnographic fieldwork in Philadelphia-area temples. The training and fieldwork provided the foundation upon which Salguero’s team developed pedagogical supports, including lesson plans, to assist faculty in any discipline in their efforts to incorporate multimedia in their coursework.

The coronavirus pandemic paused Salguero’s planned travel to Japan to collect immersive content as the foundation of virtual field trips to Japanese temples. He hopes to resume that work when conditions permit.

Priya Sharma – Reconceptualizing Places of Learning

Sharma, an associate professor in the College of education, and her team dove deep into literature and empirical research to search for evidence on how to create learning places instead of learning spaces. The theory that launched her project was that learning spaces are arrangements of objects, tools, learners, and instructors within a geometrical area while a learning place centers around a lived, personalized experience.

After reading approximately 50 published works on learning places and spaces, Sharma’s group found that the concepts are typically treated interchangeably. It also became apparent that the discussion of learning places and spaces rarely includes an online learning component. They were able to identify some distinguishable characteristics between “place” and “space” that could help inform how learning spaces are designed to create a sense of belonging and community that makes it a learning place.

Sharma plans to continue her work by researching courses that take place in experimental classrooms at University Park, and by examining online communities for elements of “place.”

Newest Teaching and Learning with Technology Faculty Fellows focus on learning spaces

Newest Teaching and Learning with Technology Faculty Fellows focus on learning spaces

Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) has welcomed four new faculty fellows for the 2019-20 academic year; Ed Glantz, Siu Ling (Pansy) Leung, Pierce Salguero, and Priya Sharma. Each member of the cohort will undertake a project intended to enhance unique spaces where students learn.

“This year’s group of faculty fellows brings a diverse set of perspectives to our theme of learning spaces,” said Kyle Bowen, director of innovation with TLT. “Learning spaces can be physical, digital, virtual, blended, or data-informed places where students interact with course material. Each of our fellows is taking an innovative approach to improve learning spaces, and our staff is eager to support their work.”

For the next year, each fellow will work with a dedicated team of TLT staff to realize the goals set forth by their projects. They cover an array of topics that are strongly influenced by each fellow’s discipline and background.

Ed Glantz – Personalizing Learning Spaces by Streaming and Recording Lectures

Glantz, a teaching professor and assistant director of masters programs in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), will use his project to explore best practices in recording lectures in the classroom and how it can be used for reflective teaching.

“Two years ago, TLT’s BlendLT seminar and the idea of a flipped class planted the seed for this project,” said Glantz. “Recent technological innovations in video management and cloud storage give us the opportunity to expand learning beyond the physical spaces and provide course content in alternative formats.”

Glantz and his team will explore the technical requirements and the pedagogical value of recording lectures in the classroom. This will be paired with new data science capabilities that analyze the topical content in a recorded lecture that will be displayed in a dashboard for the purposes of reflective teaching.

Siu Ling (Pansy) Leung – Using Mixed Reality to Prepare Students for Better Laboratory Learning Experiences

Leung is an assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate laboratories in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She will investigate how virtual labs can deliver higher quality learning experiences than traditional science and engineering laboratories.

“Performing experiments from fundamental concepts to complex systems requires tremendous time and space,” said Leung. “For instance, learning how an airplane flies without understanding thrust and drag is impossible. A solution could be to transform fundamental topics experiments into virtual labs so students can visualize and revise concepts at their own pace before performing tests on complex scenarios.”

Along with the intent to create multiple virtual lab experiments for students to conduct, the team will study the impact of technology-enhanced learning, and roadmap a platform designed to help other educators create immersive learning experiences.

Pierce Salguero – Expanding the Asian Studies Classroom Through Virtual Learning Spaces

Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State Abington, will work with his group to build on an ongoing pedagogical project that is used in the classroom to deliver ethnographic data, photography, and short documentary films to students. Immersive technology will be the backbone of the project’s expansion so that students can experience Japanese Buddhist temples without the expense of travel.

“The project’s website provides all content freely through a Creative Commons license,” noted Salguero. “These valuable teaching materials will be available to faculty at other Penn State campuses – and elsewhere throughout the world – as open educational resources. The use of open, public, and free technologies makes the work and content both accessible and sustainable so that, long term, students can have deeper learning experiences.”

The scope of Salguero’s project aims to include interactive maps and virtual tours of Buddhist temples native to Japan and virtual tours of Buddhist temples in Philadelphia. Supplemental to the immersive content will be pedagogical supports that aide faculty in the incorporation of the multimedia materials.

Priya Sharma – Reconceptualizing Places of Learning

Sharma is an associate professor in the College of Education and hopes to use her project to shift the focus from “spaces” to “places” within the context of learning and design. She posits that learning spaces are arrangements of objects, tools, learners, and instructors within a geometrical area while a learning place centers around a lived, personalized experience.

“Penn State is uniquely positioned to engage with the idea of how to create places of learning,” said Sharma. “There is a focus on reinventing and revamping learning spaces across the University’s physical campuses along with World Campus’ continued focus on expanding access to high quality online learning opportunities.”

Beyond knowing that space design requires consideration of seats, scheduling, writable surfaces, etc.; Sharma and her team will work to discover how place design considerations like, “How do users create a common and shared experience through their work within a space,” can work in concert with space design. That would provide the foundation of a framework to guide practical and theoretical learning design and architecture efforts around spaces and places.

TLT Symposium 2019 sparks one’s imagination for what is possible in higher education

TLT Symposium 2019 sparks one’s imagination for what is possible in higher education

On Saturday, March 16, more than 500 attendees packed into Presidents Hall at The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center to kick off the 26th Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State. One of the most innovative professional development events of the year at Penn State, no other conference promises to spark your imagination and stoke your curiosity for what is possible for the future of higher education.

In her opening remarks, Jennifer Sparrow, senior director of Teaching and Learning with Technology, touched on Penn State’s commitment to forward-thinking with initiatives such as President Barron’s vision for One Penn State 2025, a guiding framework for University-wide education innovation with a focus on student success and lifelong engagement. “I am proud that Penn State continues to be cutting-edge and Teaching and Learning with Technology collaborates with faculty to explore how innovative technology can transform education to advance student learning.”

Penn State leads the charge in reimagining student learning by tackling the burning discussions in higher education on topics such as immersive learning, connecting education to the workforce of the future, and promoting access and equity.

A large crowd of 500 people in a room listening to the keynote speaker's address

Keynote speaker Dan Heath addresses a crowd of more than 500 attendees at the 2019 TLT Symposium at The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center.

After the buffet breakfast, four-time New York Times bestselling author and a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE Center, Dan Heath delivered the keynote address on how to make ideas stick. “Our memories are leaky, fallible, and they deteriorate,” says Heath. “For an idea to stick, it needs to be understood, remembered, and change something.”

Citing the research done by Dr. Michael Palmer, professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, Heath captivated the audience with his explanation of how Dr. Palmer used learner-centered, backward-integrated design principles to convince instructors to rethink how they create a syllabus to teach their courses. By starting with a goal of what is most important for students to take away from a course and working backward to create the activities and assessments, the core ideas have a chance of sticking long after students leave the classroom.

Heath co-authored four must-read business books, with his brother Chip, including Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and their latest, The Power of Moments.

Energized by the keynote speaker’s message, attendees dashed to the concurrent sessions—two before lunch and two afterwards. The most popular sessions covered topics including 3D printing, 360-degree videos, open educational resources, learning the art of storytelling, the future of digital fluency, and leveraging prototypes of artificial intelligence applications to support data empowered learning at Penn State.

The most anticipated aspect of the Symposium every year is the Open Innovation Challenge, where five faculty innovators have five minutes to present their idea in the hopes that it will ignite the attendees’ curiosity and earn their votes as the most impactful.

Professor of Astronomy Chris Palma envisioned technology that will help students embody solar system formations; Faith McDonald, professor of English, hoped to prepare students with digital stories to face workplace challenges; Dr. Matthew Woessner, professor of Political Science, wanted to create 360-degree videos to take students to distant places through virtual reality; Josephine Wee, assistant professor of food science, wanted students to reimagine classrooms without textbooks and embrace interactive content in real-time; and Rodney Allen Trice, professor of practice in the graphic design department of the Stuckeman School at Penn State, won the challenge with his idea “Walk a Mile,” a series of 360-degree videos and photos that create an immersive experience to invoke empathy. Penn State’s Stuckeman School also houses graduate and undergraduate degree programs in architecture and landscape architecture.

Over the course of the year, Trice’s idea will be explored and developed with the help of TLT staff. “Working on the Open Innovation Challenge is the highlight of my year,” explains Zach Lonsinger, learning experiences designer for Teaching and Learning with Technology. “I enjoy having the opportunity to meet and work with amazing faculty who have this contagious enthusiasm and passion for transforming teaching and learning with their big ideas.”

The conference ended with faculty networking over scoops of Penn State Berkey Creamery ice cream while trying out some new technologies such as test driving a BEAM robot and stepping into virtual reality with headsets at the Discovery sessions.

The Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology brings together faculty, staff, and innovators to inspire new ideas for what is possible in the future of higher education. It takes one “sticky” idea to inspire innovation that changes the world. From Gutenberg’s printing press to Thomas Edison’s light bulb, curiosity fuels learning, and educators are charged with stoking it.

“It’s incredible how dedicated our faculty, staff, and students are to show up at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning to share the innovative things that they are doing in the classrooms and to learn more about what is happening in the teaching and learning community at Penn State,” says Sara Davis, 2019 Symposium chair and Teaching and Learning with Technology instructional designer. “I want to thank everyone who attended the 2019 Symposium and mark your calendars, the 2020 TLT Symposium will be on Saturday, March 21, 2020. I hope to see everyone next year.”

TLT seeks proposals for Faculty Fellows

TLT seeks proposals for Faculty Fellows

Each academic year, Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) welcomes a new cohort of Faculty Fellows who work on projects that explore ways technology can help overcome pedagogical obstacles and maximize opportunities for student success. Since 2009, 38 diverse Faculty Fellows have worked with TLT to help transform education and drive digital innovation at Penn State.

The call for 2019-20 TLT Faculty Fellows is now open. TLT is inviting faculty to submit proposals focusing on this year’s theme of “Learning Spaces.” All Penn State faculty, from any discipline, are encouraged to share their innovative idea by submitting a proposal for exploring, enhancing, or engaging students in the many spaces where they learn. Learning spaces can include physical, digital, virtual, blended, and data-informed places where students interact with course material.

Faculty who submit successful proposals will work collaboratively with TLT staff to combine ideas, innovative spirit, and academic expertise to apply emerging technologies to teaching and learning. The deadline for proposals is April 19, 2019.

To request more information or to submit a proposal, please email tltfellows@psu.edu.

3D printing center enhances visual arts at Altoona

3D printing center enhances visual arts at Altoona

3D printing-centered learning spaces are becoming an increasingly popular way for students across Penn State’s campuses to explore innovative technology, while also gaining skills for their future careers. The Penn State Altoona’s Center for Additive Manufacturing and Printing (CAMP) is no exception, and visual arts students have been using it frequently to elevate their artwork.

“It gives us more mediums to use; it’s not only paper crafts and painting,” said senior and visual arts major Emily Wagner. “We use different machines. We can take our ideas and print them.”

Although the campus founded The CAMP in 2015, a couple of classes have been working with 3D printing since 2002. Through the center, 3D printing has become accessible to the entire campus community.

The CAMP is located in the Doing Better Business 3D Printer Lab in the campus’s Robert E. Eiche Library. Funded and supported by Doing Better Business and the campus’s engineering and visual arts studies programs, The CAMP provides a variety of 3D printers that allow the campus community to explore and understand how this innovative technology will change the future.

Using the space, visual arts students create various types of artwork, including jewelry, sculptures, and vinyl decals, some of which they display at the annual campus student art exhibition.

“Often it’s the case that there’s no physical way of manually sculpting the objects we conceptualize,” said Rebecca Strzelec, professor of visual arts. “For example, 3D printing allows one to build objects within each other. Something like a chain link or objects that move, to build those with traditional tools would take some big feats of engineering.”

The CAMP has significantly enhanced student learning and engagement. Strzelec has found students regularly work in the center outside of class time.

“When students choose to work in The CAMP when they’re not in class it means they’re truly engaged. It’s meeting them intellectually and creatively in a way they weren’t getting elsewhere,” said Strzelec.

students design 3D models on computers

Visual arts seniors Emily Wagner (left) and Josh Weyandt develop their 3D designs through computer software.

Artists today need to be multifaceted problem solvers, which means having experience with many diverse tools and modes of making.

Some visual arts students, like senior Josh Weyandt, plan to pursue careers which will leverage their knowledge of 3D modeling. One such field is video game creation, where Weyandt aspires to work in character design.

“Video game creators will make a character in a computer-aided design program,” explained Weyandt. “Before they send it out for the expensive molding process, they will 3D print a character in their office and ask themselves if it is what they want exactly.”

Strzelec said, “These students use the tools they have learned here and parlay them into working at libraries, art centers, camps, and running businesses. They’re able to piece together what they learn from this degree and make a living by creating—or assisting people in creating—visual art.”