Faculty Use of Media in Research & Implications for Future Classroom Tools

Helen L. Chen, PhD. Robert Emery Smith O ce of the Registrar

Introduction One of the advantages of attending a research university is the opportunity for students to bene t from faculty bringing information from their cutting-edge research activities into the classroom, o ering a richer view of the ongoing development of knowledge in any given eld.

Media used by Faculty in their Research Activities

VPUE

Results Across all schools, Presentation tools (PowerPoint, Keynote and other slideware) are common, underlining the role of communicating process and results in research. Simulation appears as an important research tool in most schools, including spreadsheets implementing mathematical models to custom software creations with advanced visualization tools to completely immersive simulated environments. Specialized Software (including GIS to Gene Sequencing to CAD to Media Authoring and beyond) plays a role in every area of research.

SLAC National Accelerator Lab

Methodology
School of Medicine

In the interest of making sure that current and future Stanford University classrooms and learning spaces support this opportunity, we have participated in a polling opportunity initiated by the O ce of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, adding a question about what media they use in their research activities: Please list up to 3 kinds of media (e.g. PowerPoint, websites, video, specialty imaging, visualizations, simulations etc.) that you are currently using in your research. Please give speci c examples of software/hardware if applicable.

Video is an important research tool, and appears in many di erent forms, from eld interviews to time lapse applications to room and lecture capture to stereo HD capture. Finally, the World Wide Web continues to have an important role in every form of research, both for gathering information and publishing results, as well as being itself a topic and a location of study. A number of schools make regular use of databases in their elds (NIH, WestLaw and LexisNexis et al.), many of which are accessed via the web, but distinct enough in their applications that faculty called these tools out separately. Other tools common to the classroom seem to not have a widespread role in research. Coursework, the universitys LMS, is rarely cited in association with research, and Blackboards/Whiteboards are generally rarely in evidence, with the exception of the Engineering disciplines, which have a long tradition of sketched models and easily reworked analysis. O ce suite software packages such as Microsoft O ce are widely represented, popular as a standardized platform for analysis and exchange. Imaging tools range from specialized data visualization packages for medical data to rendering applications to special camera systems to capture microscopic or very high speed events. In the context of so much interest in tools to facilitate communication, its interesting that Videoconferencing doesnt appear more prominently. Perhaps like the telephone, Skype and its peers have become a media so ubiquitous as to be nearly invisible. Or it may be that face-to-face communication is not actually as important as we imagine it might be, that voice or text alone is more than adequate as a standard mode of communication among colleagues.

School Of Engineering

School of Education

School of Earth Sciences

We wanted to hear about media types we didnt expect, so to avoid prescribing likely and expected responses, we formulated the survey question not as a multiple choice selection, but as a write-in response. In the nearly 800 responses this question received, it elicited the range of replies we had hoped for. The rst pass at encoding the responses (with a moderate level of correlation/consolidation) yielded 37 categories. A second consolidating pass was performed to reduce the full range of categories across all schools to 15 for the purposes of this presentation.

Law School

Humanities and Sciences

Graduate School of Business

Research Questions With this information, we have posed two research questions: What kinds of media are faculty currently using in their research? How do these uses and preferences for media di er across schools? The consolidated categories: Audio: Recording or playback of sound. Coursework: Making use of Coursework tools. Data Manipulation: The acquisition and/or analysis of data in the classroom, by automated lab systems or through use of web-based survey or data capture tools. Database: use of online databases of images, texts, papers and specialized information. Imaging: creation and/or manipulation of eld-specialized imaging, such as fMRI or multiple wavelength imaging of documents. Interactive: use of iPad, SMART board or other interactive or gestural computing facility. O ce: use of O ce-style software suites (formatted text, spreadsheet). Presentation: slide-based presentation using PowerPoint, Keynote or LaTex-related tools. Simulations: exercising illustrative mathematical or software models. Specialized Software: using eld-speci c specialized software, from bibliographic tools to CAD to GIS to Video Editing to programming environments. Video: ranges from playback of commercial media (movies, etc.) to in-class video capture and review. Videoconference: Skype and similar PC-based solutions.. White/Blackboard: shared in-room writing. WWW: World Wide Web, especially search engines, reference sites (WestLaw, NIH) and topic-speci c pages.
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Audio Interactive Video

Coursework O ce Videoconference

Data Manipulation Presentation White/Blackboard

Database Simulation WWW

Imaging Specialized Software

Implications for Current and Future Classrooms Most of the tools called out by this surveys respondents are digital, and most can be hosted on a laptop that can be brought to class. Some data may be inappropriate for use on a portable machine for security reasons. In addition, several respondents indicated that their research tools require more powerful processing resources than a laptop can provide, or their simulation or demonstration data may be too large for laptop storage. In these cases, high quality network access may provide a better path. A su ciently high bandwidth connection (1 Gb/s and higher) can provide access to remote grid computing solutions as well as stream video to allow for acceptable interaction (editing, etc.). Currently, many classrooms are served only by shared wireless access points which do not o er su cient bandwidth (1150 Mb/s peak) for access to large research materials. Wired ethernet or next-generation wireless access (802.11ac) should provide suitably fast connectivity if the local network distribution architecture is up to date. Display quality and access are also issues. Most Registrar classrooms are on an update schedule that refreshes their display capabilities every few years; as a result, more than half of the universitys Smart Panel classrooms are currently capable of HD display, and that capability is spreading rapidly.

Media used by Faculty in their Research Activities (by School)

Humanities & Sciences Graduate School of Business Law School Earth Sciences

Graduate School of Education

School of Engineering

School of Medicine

SLAC

Some respondents cited the inability in some classrooms to both write on a board and project digital information, as the projection screen largely covers the classroom writing surface. Emerging technologies may serve to address this essentially architectural limitation: large-scale atscreen displays with local computing resources and annotation software are being deployed in a number of classrooms. For other small rooms, Ultra Short-Throw projectors in conjunction with standard whiteboards may provide a novel solution to this old problem, allowing glare-free projection right on the whiteboard, without need for a separate screen.