Leveraging Apple Remote Desktop to Facilitate Classroom Critiques of Digital Projects

Classroom critiquing of visual projects is an essential exercise to help students refine their work. Usually, instructors display student work on a large screen so that the class can offer comments and suggestions. However, problems arise because critiques are often mired by ambiguous or misunderstood language. Sometimes students are better shown than told. This presentation demonstrates how Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) can be used to project the display of any lab computer while the instructor and student share control. The student’s work can be interactively modified during a critique session, resulting in an engaging experience for the entire class

A Representation of Selected Nonmanual Signals in American Sign Language

Computer-generated three-dimensional animation holds great promise for synthesizing utterances in American Sign Language (ASL) that are not only grammatical, but believable by members of the Deaf community. Animation poses several challenges stemming from the massive amounts of data necessary to specify the movement of three-dimensional geometry, and there is no current system that facilitates the synthesis of nonmanual signals. However, the linguistics of ASL can aid in surmounting the challenge by providing structure and rules for organizing the data. This work presents a first method for representing ASL linguistic and extralinguistic processes that involve the face. Any such representation must be capable of expressing the subtle nuances of ASL. Further, it must be able to represent co-occurrences because many ASL signs require that two or more nonmanual signals be used simultaneously. In fact simultaneity of multiple nonmanual signals can occur on the same facial feature. Additionally, such a system should allow both binary and incremental nonmanual signals to display the full range of adjectival and adverbial modifiers. Validating such a representation requires both the affirmation that nonmanual signals are indeed necessary in the animation of ASL, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the new representation in synthesizing nonmanual signals. In this study, members of the Deaf community viewed animations created with the new representation and answered questions concerning the influence of selected nonmanual signals on the perceived meaning of the synthesized utterances. Results reveal that, not only is the representation capable of effectively portraying nonmanual signals, but also that it can be used to combine various nonmanual signals in the synthesis of complete ASL sentences. In a study with Deaf users, participants viewing synthesized animations consistently identified the intended nonmanual signals correctly

Participatory Curriculum Design: Letting Students take the Lead

Educators continually strive to increase student engagement and deep learning in their classrooms. This pursuit has led to a proliferation of evidence-based pedagogy shared widely in conferences, journals, books, and professional organizations that focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). Still, implementing consistently effective and engaging learning experiences remains elusive to many teachers. Educators tend to experiment with different approaches. They adopt those that are effective and discard the ones that are not. While this is a reasonable approach, it often fails to leverage an immensely valuable resource: students. Participatory curriculum design (PCD) provides students the opportunity to co-create their own coursework. It frames the classroom context as one that is emergent and collaborative. Students take the responsibility to ideate, formalize, implement, and participate in learning experiences including classroom activities, presentations, projects, and even quiz and exam questions. PCD is similar to learner experience design. But instead of the instructor bearing the responsibility of learning students’ perspectives and then designing curricula, it appoints the students as co-creators who collaborate with the instructor and each other. This session will present an approach to PCD developed over the last two semesters. Participants will see how learning objectives can be used as a guide, and met, while students develop and engage in learning experiences of their own design. They will see examples of student-generated assignments, presentations, and exam questions and learn effective ways to integrate PCD into a variety of class contexts including face-to-face and remote settings

Trends in Multimodal Human-Computer Interfaces

Touch screens, voice commands and wireless gesture controllers have the potential to provide a more natural human-computer interface than traditional mice and keyboards. While these technologies are still evolving, the usefulness of such interfaces across industries is undeniable. In this presentation, the state of the art of human-computer interfaces will be explored. We will examine the qualifications necessary for these technologies to replace traditional interface hardware and project how far this interface revolution can take us

Students Perceptions of an Alternative Testing Method: Hints as an Option for Exam Questions

In the Proceedings of the 2014 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Indianapolis, Indiana, June 15 – 18, 2014

Improving Deaf Accessibility in Remote Usability Testing

For studies involving Deaf participants in United States, remote usability testing has several potential advantages over face-to-face testing, including convenience, lower cost and the ability to recruit participants from diverse geographic regions. However, current technologies force Deaf participants to use English instead of their preferred language, which is American Sign Language (ASL). A new remote testing technology allows researchers to conduct studies exclusively in ASL at a lower cost than face-toface testing. The technology design facilitates open-ended questions and is reconfigurable for use in a variety of studies. Results from usability tests of the tool are encouraging and a fullscale study is underway to compare this approach to face-to-face testing

Automated Hints on Quizzes: An Approach to Combined Learning and Evaluation

This paper describes and evaluates an approach to student assessment using Point Barter, an online quiz system that allows students to sacrifice partial credit in exchange for hints about the correct answer. In the Proceedings of the 2014 International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association Conference. Anchorage, Alaska, May 31 to June 2, 2014

Tools of Engagement: Recasting Mobile Devices in the Classroom

Attendees will learn ways in which teachers can utilize student’s smartphones, tablets and laptops to enhance the classroom experience. Live interactive activities will demonstrate how easy and effective these techniques can be

Gamification Techniques for Academic Assessment

Students from the millennial generation have come to expect highly developed and engaging academic tools - including those used to assess their performance. Keeping up with these expectations can be a daunting task for educators. However, the creative use of gamification, customization and on-demand supplemental material can potentially lead to a more engaging assessment experience. This presentation will focus on the topic of gamification and the millennial generation. The audience will participate in an open dialogue about how gaming and other engaging approaches can play a role in the summative assessment process

Developing a Just-in-Time Adaptive Mobile Platform for Family Medicine Education: Experiential Lessons Learned

EASEL is a platform designed to provide just-in-time adaptive support to students during experiential learning interviews conducted as part of required work in an online course in a family medicine education program in a Midwestern urban university setting EASEL considers the time and location of the student and provides questions and content before, during, and after the interviews take place EASEL will provide a new way to facilitate and support online family medicine students as they meet with patients and healthcare professionals This paper presents a look at the considerations, issues, and lessons learned during the development process of this interdisciplinary collaborative effort between the platform designers and family medicine faculty while working toward completion of the stud