Fox Instructor Brings Technology Innovation to Teaching
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Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University |
While technology has charged ahead at an unprecedented rate over the past decade, the Fox School has stayed apace every step of the way, establishing itself as an enthusiastic adopter of technologies that enhance teaching.
One Fox School instructor who has helped that advancement is Darin Kapanjie, an instructor of business pre-calculus and business calculus in the Statistics Department. At the beginning of this academic year, Kapanjie was appointed as faculty coordinator of Fox Online Initiatives, a new position created to help the school increase engagement via technology in both face-to-face and online courses. The Fox innovation grant Kapanjie received at the end of last year, to use web-conferencing tools in online courses, has also helped in his work to advance teaching technologies. Class in your pajamas It’s 6:59 a.m., Kelsi Wenner has a Business Calculus exam in one minute and she hasn’t even left her South Philadelphia home. |
Time to panic? Not if going to class is as easy as opening your laptop.
WebEx is an on-demand collaboration software for online meetings and desktop sharing that allows teachers to conduct classes online in real time as effectively as if they were right in Speakman Hall.
Kapanjie predicts that pencils and paper will become mere relics of an earlier age, replaced by tablet PCs. If that comes true, then Fox School freshman honors students are getting a taste of the future. These digital tablets, which streamline homework and tests and allow increased interactivity, were distributed to freshman honors students in fall 2007.
Taking class capture to the next level With the program InternetVue, any work done on students’ tablets can be instantly projected onto a screen at the front of the class — a useful tool for sharing results from group problem solving. The Fox School was one of the first schools to use Apreso Classroom to allow professors to visually record classes and save them onto Blackboard. With Internet Vue, the school is taking the technology further. “Teaching is no longer one-dimensional,” said Kapanjie, who implemented InternetVue in the classroom with the help of senior technical support specialist Riu Baring. “There is a difference between showing and telling, and students now have the ability to share with the class, which increases involvement.” Using InternetVue PC2TV software in addition to Apreso Classroom, an instructor can share a student’s work with the rest of the class, even as it is being captured. The instructor, working wirelessly, is free to move around the room, select any student’s work to be projected right from their seat, and capture it for review after class. Kapanjie believes Temple is the first user of this software, with only his freshman honors business class incorporating the technology thus far. In the future, however, the software will surely play a role in daily teaching throughout the Fox School and Temple. “Professor Kapanjie’s ease with the technology allows for a very energetic and efficient class,” freshmen accounting major Steve Doneson said. “As opposed to a blackboard, the use of a computer allows for infinite amount of space for students and professors to write notes and problems.” Freshman accounting major Annie Brady agrees. “PC2TV is engaging because you know at any time the whole class could see your work,” she said, adding that she enjoys it when students are allowed to project their work. “It's like being allowed to write on the chalkboard when we were younger.” According to Associate Dean for Information Technology John DeAngelo, these technologies will become part of the environment in the new $80 million Alter Hall, scheduled to open in January 2009. “Our goal is to make technology both ubiquitous and invisible to our users … part of a new 21st-century techno-rich environment,” DeAngelo said. —Written by Andrew Thompson |