Instructional Technologies

There are a number of challenges associated with presenting a course to high school students that introduces engineering and technology. In many high schools, a teacher with the necessary background might not be available. Likewise, most college faculty can not devote the time needed to present such a course at a local school. Even if an instructor is available, he / she will likely not be an expert in the various areas of technology and engineering.

In order to overcome those challenges, we are using instructional technologies to help provide much of the content. We are also hopeful that with proper attention to these technologies, the content may be more engaging to this student population than a traditional lecture-based course.

Brief descriptions and examples of the technologies are given below.

Streaming Media

With streaming media, audio, video and presentation materials are recorded in a digital format and provided to students through a web site. Materials are not downloaded to a computer, information is provided from a server to a local machine as if you are playing a tape. A popular example of streaming audio and video is You Tube.

Our streaming media content will be video clips and mini-lectures that also incorporate images. These will be viewed by students as homework.

Advantages to this technology are it can be presented and maintained centrally then distributed to as many individuals as needed. This also allows many presenters to provide instruction on their areas of expertise. It also permits students to get the material at their convenience and to view it as often as they like.

The disadvantage to the technology is that it can be dull and if poorly done can hinder learning the content.

Follow the links to see examples of presentations

• Introduction to Communications
• Important Concepts in Mechanical Engineering

Pod Casting

With pod casting audio files, such as radio programs, are distributed via the internet using standard protocols for listening on mobile devices and personal computers. A podcast is a combination of a web feed of audio or video files and the content of that feed placed on the Internet for anyone to subscribe to (a web feed is a data format used to provide frequently updated content.) The subscription feed of automatically delivered content is what distinguishes a podcast from a download or from streaming media.

Students do not have to have an iPod or other generic mp3 player to listen to podcasts. The files are automatically downloaded to the student's computer and they can then choose how to listen - on their PC, burn the files to CD and listen in the car, or listen on a mobile device such as an iPod or other mp3 player.

Apple offers many, many pod cast opportunities. You can explore these by following the link.(http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html)

Course Management System

Course management systems are simply means to organize and present content and facilitate communication among participants in a course. UC uses the Blackboard course management system. Each student and each instructor will have a username and password which will allow them to access the course content and to communicate (primarily with email) with other participants.

Using this system, instructors can provide the content to all students at once, they can send announcements to everyone, they can set up student groups, and they can provide resources that allow motivated students to explore topics of interest beyond what is required in class.

For our course, all the teaching content will be made available through Blackboard. This includes:

• Documents
• Handouts
• Streaming media lectures
• Presentation materials
• Links to web sites
• Audio files

Course management systems also provide for a level of copyright protection sense access to materials can be password protected.