UP Tech Talk Podcast

Engineering classrooms can feel intimidating to many people, but Dr. Tammy VanDeGrift, Associate Dean and Associate professor in the Shiley School of Engineering, is aiming to make sure they are places where students feel welcomed. She is working on a grant project by the Dundon-Berchtoldt Fund for Moral Development & Applied Ethicsabout creating a more inclusive environment in engineering classrooms.

Peter Pappas, adjunct instructor with the School of Education, sees himself as a designer of learning experiences. He identifies instructional goals and then searches for tools that will help him meet those goals. He and his students have collaborated to produce some of the most downloaded history books on iTunes in addition to many blogs and a mobile app.

We might be sitting next to each other in class, but we can be inhabiting completely different social spaces, according to Eric Anctil, Director for Innovation in the Franz Center for Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation at the University of Portland. Anctil, Associate Professor of Education, has been observing classroom behavior for nearly two decades and takes the role of "provocateur" in asking us to consider the effects of the ubiquitous use of technology.

Ted Talks, You Tube videos, film clips, and other media excerpts have become ubiquitous in most classrooms. This week on the podcast we're talking about some popular tech tools used to create media in the classroom. We also demystify terms like slidecasting, screencasting, and podcasting. Finally, we rave about some of the mobile apps we've enjoyed in 2014. Ben Kahn, our audio engineer, joins us for this roundtable discussion.

Dr. Jennette Lovejoy, Assistant Professor of Communications, explored this idea recently through a semester long experiment that required students to complete a project with their classmates without ever meeting face to face. In this podcast, she talks about why she wanted students to work this way and also discusses her decision process around introducing new technologies into her classes.

This week our guest is Dr. Susan Stillwell, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the UP School of Nursing. Dr. Stillwell discusses a research project introducing Digital iPad Lab activities into her pharmacology course that yielded surprising reactions from her students.

Dr. Ellyn Arwood, professor in the School of Education, is designing online courses for the new postmaster’s program in Neuroeducation. The courses will take advantage of new lecture capture technology that allows learners to view lectures and materials from multiple viewpoints.

According to Dr. Arwood, the majority of learners today, even adults, are visual thinkers and need to be able to see an instructor’s face when she’s speaking, see concepts illustrated visually, and cross reference written materials with visuals to integrate concepts fully.

As a new professor at UP, Dr. Alice Gates,Assistant Professor in Sociology & Social Work, liked the fact that her students didn’t automatically hide behind laptops in class and many took notes with paper and pen. But she started to feel as if her position of “no technology in the classroom” was not very well informed. She became curious enough to explore the use of video in her Social Welfare and Policy class.

Dr. Karen Eifler, professor of Education at the University of Portland, is the co-director of the Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture. On this podcast, she talks about the versatility and reach of the Garaventa Center reflected in the many events, lectures, and media sponsored by or produced by the Center. One of the popular offerings for the UP campus community is Visio Divina or “Divine Seeing” which reoccurs twice each year during Lent and Advent and offers a quiet space to reflect on the images of the St John’s Bible.