Integration Project: Robert Boram

Project Overview

The primary objective is to develop on-line resources for the Physical Sciences Department capstone courses, Senior Thesis I and Senior Thesis II. The students work on individual research projects, but they need a place where they can go to find on-line links to resources that will help them review the appropriate literature. Since this department has students in geology, physics, and chemistry the site would need to be quite extensive. During Senior Thesis II the students prepare an oral, written, and poster presentation of their research. The students need to learn how to use the appropriate technology to enhance their oral presentations and to design and create the posters.

Students in the Physical Science Department have very little experience with on-line courses, by designing many of the components of Senior Thesis I and II for access on-line will provide a valuable experience for the students and well as provide the resources and flexibility needed by the faculty to meet the diverse needs of the student population.

Project Details

Primary Objective:

Develop on-line resources for the Physical Sciences Department capstone courses, Senior Thesis I and Senior Thesis II. The students work on individual research projects, but they need a place where they can go to find on-line links to resources that will help them review the appropriate literature. Since this department has students in geology, physics, and chemistry the site would need to be quite extensive. During Senior Thesis II the students prepare an oral, written, and poster presentation of their research. The students need to learn to use the appropriate technology to enhance their oral presentations and to design and create the posters.

Students in the Physical Science Department have very little experience with on-line courses, by designing many of the components of Senior Thesis I and II for access on-line will provide a valuable experience for the students as well as provide valuable resources and flexibility needed by the faculty to meet the diverse needs of the student population.

Secondary Objective:

By creating a quality web site and using technology to enhance these courses, the student research should improve to a level that will make it useful in joint publications and presentations with faculty in the department. The design of these classes and the way technology is used to enhance the classes will be shared at professional meetings with other universities that have similar courses.

Implementation of the Project:

A web site was created for Senior Thesis I at http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/r.boram/sci498/index.html and a web site was created for Senior Thesis II at http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/r.boram/sci499c/index.html. It became clear early on that providing links to all the web resources that might be useful to geology, chemistry, and physics students was impossible. The inspiration for this idea came from a "Science Direct" training session at the library. While "Science Direct" has many valuable resources, it was only accessible from computers on campus. This turned out to be case with several of the publication databases that students might find helpful. There are a few links on the Senior Thesis I web page that have been useful to students. Since students work directly with faculty in their research, the faculty member is the best at pointing them to the most useful resources. It is impossible to create a full set of links that will meet the needs of all students in geology, chemistry, and physics.

As a part of this project, I needed a way for students to communicate regularly with me, the Senior Thesis Coordinator, and their research advisor. I tried having them send me an e-mail report with a copy to their research, but they often failed to copy the message. There were some requirements in the weekly report that were often overlooked. I received a private lesson from the MSU web page editor on how to design and publish forms on our UNIX based system. I had attended a training session, sponsored by PT3, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where we learned how to make forms. The problem was that the forms could not be uploaded to our system. Our system does not support Front Page Extensions. This was frustrating, so that is why I secured some additional instruction.

I was able to create and publish that weekly report forms on the course websites. The challenge was to create forms that would send two e-mail reports at the same time, one to the Senior Thesis Coordinator and one to the research advisor. This involved learning some HTML code and going in a editing the forms. I ended up creating a separate weekly form for each student in the course, because each student had a different research advisor. The forms were formatted to include a space for each weekly requirement and adjusted depending on the week.

I discovered that there are some drawbacks to using forms for students to report their work. Since the reports were coming from the web page, it was impossible to use the reply options to respond to the students report. This made quick responses much more difficult. Also, programming a separate web page form for every student, every week, became very time consuming.

The students in Senior Thesis II have made significant progress in their use of technology. Most students use PowerPoint to enhance their oral presentations. They have learned to import graphics files to be included in their presentations. The use of digital photos, spreadsheets, graphs, and other images have greatly enhanced their presentations.

The creation of posters featuring the student research has progressed significantly over the past couple of years. Most students have developed the skill of creating a poster using PowerPoint or other software and how to use a plotter to create 20 inch by 30-inch posters. The poster are mounted on foam board and displayed in the 4th floor hall of Lappin Hall.

A new requirement has been added to Senior Thesis II that requires developing some additional technology skills. The students are required to create a web page of their research and publish it on the student web server. This has been a great challenge for many of the students, as they have never created web pages in any other classes. Most of the students were successful this last semester, but there is still a steep learning curve and progress to be made in the design of the web pages.

One goal of this PT3 project was to increase the number of student and faulty presentations emanating from the research. We have had presentations at the Kentucky Academy of Science last fall. Two students presented their research. One student received the "Outstanding Undergraduate Student Research" award. Students used technology to create a couple of poster presentations at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

In conclusion, this PT3 project has been a valuable in helping me develop my technology skills to enhance my teaching. I have learned a great deal about creating and publishing web pages and the limitations that they present. It has been good to see students develop and refine their abilities to use technology to prepare presentations, papers, posters, and web pages.