Teaching Showcase: Brown Bag Series

Teaching Academic Subjects with Audio-Visual Effects

Marsha Woodbury (Lecturer, Department of Computer Science)

In this Brown Bag discussion, Marsha Woodbury discussed some general tips for the effective use of technology in the classroom. She especially focused on the use of PowerPoint. Her Computer Science (CS 105) course had originally involved use of overhead transparencies. She switched to PowerPoint and has been refining it ever since. She has some important and widely applicable tips for instructors:

• Use the upper part of slide since the lower part might be harder for people at the back of room to see over the top of classmates or classroom/laboratory fixtures. If necessary, adapt your presentation to the classroom.
• Use "W" and "B" key to go to a white or black screen during the presentation in order to get students' full attention or "reset" them during lecture.
• Use text boxes in PowerPoint to turn it into an interactive chalkboard that can be used to record responses.
  • To create a text box in PowerPoint, under View select Toolbars, then Control Toolbox. To select a text box, click on the appropriate icon ("ab" inside a rectangle) in the Toolbox (below).

• Use action item buttons to make PowerPoint resemble a clickable web site where one can click to see slides containing quiz answers, which the instructor can hide from appearing in the presentation itself.
  1. Under Slide Show, select Action Buttons. For a quiz, you can use the Forward and Back icons.
  2. Place a forward button next to your quiz.
  3. Create a slide that contains the quiz answer.
  4. Hide that slide (Slide Show >> Hide Slide) so that it appears only as a result of clicking from the quiz.
  5. Right click on the action button you created and go to Edit Hyperlink.
  6. Select Slide... and then pick the answer slide (not Next Slide-- remember you hid the answer slide).

A little example of the use of Action Buttons

• Use a larger font so that people at the back of the room can read - white text on black background works well.
• Use sounds and gimmicks judiciously, especially when in front of an older group.

Marsha uses fun and interactive objects within her PowerPoint presentations. She often places YouTube videos for fun, including showing a random clip demonstrating to students that there are things out there far more boring than her class. Marsha uses PowerPoint templates for educational games like Jeopardy and Tick-Tack-Toe. Rather than re-invent the wheel, Marsha encourages instructors to go out and find templates easily procurable by a simple Google search. Students enjoy these games and are perhaps distracted from the fact that they are learning discipline content and information.

Marsha uses Compass extensively given her large enrollment (over 500), which allows her to efficiently manage course material and assignments. With help from her assistants, Marsha has even created a tutorial explaining how to submit assignments in Compass. Within Compass, Marsha loves the wiki since it bypasses reliance on webmasters to make changes. Rather, they can be made quickly right in front of students during class, and all 12 TAs and co-instructors can join together to revise and add content. The wiki appears inside her Illinois Compass course on the home page by use of the <i frame> html command.

Marsha also discussed other online tools. Marsha is on Facebook and believes the social aspects are useful for students. She once used Facebook to catch a student that cheated on a programming assignment. However, she notes that teacher-student cooperation with Facebook is far more common as there are teachers out there holding open forums and other sessions on the popular site already.