Spring Break
Drexel technology connects students, professors
Nathan Fried
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: News
"If a student organization here wanted to have a video conference with a group of students in England, they could," Biros said.
Although technology in the classroom may seem like a recent initiative, Biros points out advances made by the faculty here at Drexel in the mid-'80s under the Micro Computing Program which was the first in the world to instate a mandatory policy that all students own a micro computer.
"We had a Pew grant to do that. And [faculty] developed courseware like Molecular Editor which was a molecular modeling program that Alan Smith developed for chemistry students and Pascal's Pointers that was a tool that Jeff Popyack in computer science developed for teaching the concept of Pascal pointers in programming," Biros said.
Drexel has continued to be a "front runner" in the field of e-learning, specifically with DragonDrop. It allows students, faculty and staff to upload any form of rich media, convert it to different formats and disperse it to others via the Internet.
"We just added a front-end capture system to [DragonDrop] known as Camtasia Relay. This lets professors or presenters capture their lecture or talk, and, in a seamless manner, get it into the encoding system for streaming, publication and syndication. Learners can then revisit these events on demand," Scheuermann said.
The science of learning and the field of e-learning has become a hot topic throughout the entire country, drawing support from many advocates such as the National Science Foundation.
Baba Kofi Weusijana, a new member of the Math Forum at Drexel, spoke April 20 on his experiences with one of the first Science of Learning Centers to receive NSF funding, the Learning in Informal and Formal
Environments (L.I.F.E.) center.
"We're trying to figure how you can more consistently help people learn more than you could without [Second Life]. That means leveraging what's unique about it and different from a typical classroom experience," Weusijana said.
Although technology in the classroom may seem like a recent initiative, Biros points out advances made by the faculty here at Drexel in the mid-'80s under the Micro Computing Program which was the first in the world to instate a mandatory policy that all students own a micro computer.
"We had a Pew grant to do that. And [faculty] developed courseware like Molecular Editor which was a molecular modeling program that Alan Smith developed for chemistry students and Pascal's Pointers that was a tool that Jeff Popyack in computer science developed for teaching the concept of Pascal pointers in programming," Biros said.
Drexel has continued to be a "front runner" in the field of e-learning, specifically with DragonDrop. It allows students, faculty and staff to upload any form of rich media, convert it to different formats and disperse it to others via the Internet.
"We just added a front-end capture system to [DragonDrop] known as Camtasia Relay. This lets professors or presenters capture their lecture or talk, and, in a seamless manner, get it into the encoding system for streaming, publication and syndication. Learners can then revisit these events on demand," Scheuermann said.
The science of learning and the field of e-learning has become a hot topic throughout the entire country, drawing support from many advocates such as the National Science Foundation.
Baba Kofi Weusijana, a new member of the Math Forum at Drexel, spoke April 20 on his experiences with one of the first Science of Learning Centers to receive NSF funding, the Learning in Informal and Formal
Environments (L.I.F.E.) center.
"We're trying to figure how you can more consistently help people learn more than you could without [Second Life]. That means leveraging what's unique about it and different from a typical classroom experience," Weusijana said.
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