I.T. Times

Volume 6, No 1 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis September 1997

SITT '97

Faculty Perspectives

A conversation with Barbara Sommer

Barbara Sommer is a lecturer in psychology who served as a facilitator at SITT 1997 and a participant at SITTs 1996 and 1994. The class she teaches most often is Research Methods, a lower-division psychology class offered each quarter. Up to 300 students take the class, many of them majoring in fields other than psychology, such as nutrition, human development, and exercise science.
Dr. Sommer spoke with I.T. Information & Events writer Aviva Luria on August 20, 1997.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about what drew you to SITT initially as a participant?
A: I was interested in using various electronic media. I was in that first group three or four years ago and at that point I was barely using e-mail, so I was just learning about what was available to help with teaching. Last year the focus was much more on doing Web pages. And so I was interested in learning how to do a Web page and subsequently developed one. I also was very interested in the notion of distance education and trying to develop course modules. I was interested in finding alternatives to the large lecture with the idea of being able to get the basic material out in some other way -- the textbook, of course, is a very good way -- but then having this other option for materials and having students doing more hands-on work. This is still my interest -- thinking ahead of ways to structure the course, for alternative ways to teach Research Methods, more efficient ways to teach it. And so I'm interested in exploring what the electronic media can offer to do that. Now, it may turn out not to be very much, I'm not sure yet, as to what it can offer and what it can't. There's certainly some very important face-to-face interaction that's necessary. Maybe one can do that electronically. So at the moment I'm interested in all aspects of it -- the communication part of it, the Web page/Internet part of it, and developing presentation modules for my classroom lecture.
Q: Have you incorporated anything that came out of SITT into the class so far?
A: Lots of things. I've done a Web page for the course. I use e-mail, although I haven't set up specific e-mail groups, and I've been using presentation software. I use Persuasion and make slides, and do computer presentations. You make up a slide and you use the computer to project it in the classroom. SITT has helped me go multimedia. I think those are the strengths of the Summer Institute. It gives you tools, gives you examples, exposes you to people that you can interact with who are doing this, you can ask ideas about it, you can find out what works, what doesn't work, modify it for your needs. It was very stimulating in that regard.
Q: Are you able to talk about how the class is different now that you are using these multimedia presentations?
A: Well, I asked students what they thought about it, and they were very positive. They thought it improved their understanding, and they felt it made the course more interesting. Now, in terms of whether their grades were better -- I don't know. That's hard to evaluate because you'd have to do an experiment in which half the class gets one presentation, the other another, and then you'd see who comes out better. But if they find the material more interesting, if they like it better, I can then maybe assume they are paying a little bit more attention. So I'm willing to accept that as a positive benefit.
Q: Does it make it easier for you to teach the class?
A: No, it doesn't necessarily make it easier for me to teach the class. In fact, I've ended up spending a lot more time on it as a result. It doesn't save time, particularly at the beginning. In fact, the first slide lecture I did, I think I spent about 50 to 60 hours. Much of that was learning the software. On the other hand, one of the things I like about it is that even after many, many years of teaching I'm still fairly self-conscious lecturing in front of a large group of people. And one of the things I like about having the slides is the students are looking at the slides, not me. And I'm still there, and I'm still talking and getting the communication out, but it makes me more comfortable.
One of the things I picked up from talking with the other people at SITT is that none of these methods or these media presentations is perfect in and of itself all the time. What you need are different techniques for different kinds of materials. And to provide some variety in the course. Students don't want to see a slide lecture every day. On the other hand, they don't want to hear someone drone in front of a blackboard every day, either. And so if you can mix it up, that's probably a better way to go. Some materials are better some ways and some the other.
Q: Are there specific types of media that you might suggest for a particular type of class or a particular type of lecture?
A: Sure. If you're going to show a lot of photographs, probably a carousel slide projector is better. Slides are good, they're very clear for complex photographs. On the other hand, if you're doing a lot of diagrams and you can use animation to show a line moving across a graph or what happens if you add more cases, how the pattern changes, the presentation software on the computer is fantastic. And sometimes video is best, where you have a dialogue and show a sequence of events.
A lot of people make the mistake of just putting words up on the screen. That's not much of an improvement because the challenge is to take advantage of the visual potential. This is a challenge in teaching Research Methods, which is a conceptual course that tends to be word-based. Sometimes I'm trying to come up with images to describe something I can describe very easily in language.
Q: Are there particular aspects of psychology that lend themselves to being taught via technology and other aspects that don't?
A: I could see -- and I'm just starting to play around with this -- statistics, the technology, the visuals being really great for illustrating those kinds of concepts. So I see that as a strength. When you get into more theoretical things, they're trickier. I cruise around the Web a lot looking at people's courses and they still look pretty traditional. Mine look pretty traditional. So I think we're just starting to explore that. On the other hand, I can see some science courses and psychology courses like perception and physiology being able to illustrate how the visual system works, how the brain works. And I think from the student point of view, the nicest thing is going to be the archival potential, where you can put these things in Hart Hall and the student can go look at them any time they want. If that's what we want students to do, it's great.
The other thing that hasn't really come out yet that I think has potential is getting more immediate feedback from students within the classes. It's this distance thing... For example, there's some software called Tango. You can put up a questionnaire on a Web page and have students fill it out. Tango takes the information and dumps it into a database like Filemaker. We can actually collect data very quickly and then I can use those data that they provided to demonstrate various research principles. Here's the data, now what do we do with it? Here's how we have to analyze it, here are the descriptive statistics for it, and they'll have more of a stake in it because they just filled the thing out the night before. That's something I want to try.
Q: Is there a lab associated with your Research Methods class?
A: We run 15 one-hour sections a week. So for one hour of the course they're in a small class setting and those are supervised by the teaching assistants for the course. And there we do a lot of hands-on work. So there I probably wouldn't use electronic media -- other than e-mail -- among the students. At some point I could see maybe having the sections be a mailing list or something like that.
Q: Without meeting?
A: Well, that's an interesting thought. At the moment, we'll stay meeting. But again, thinking in the future, if one wanted to put this course in the distance, one could do that. There is a technology where people could work in small groups, they could communicate by means of either a mailing list or a newsgroup where they could post things and run it that way. It would be possible.
Q: How would you do it?
A: I'd do it with modules, probably on the Web or on PDF files that they could download and then set up some kind of groups, either with a mailing list and then set up communication between the students and me. And I have started working on some of those modules. Harry Matthews has got a whole course online for his medical students. Another person who's used media a lot is Bob Thorton. These people were facilitators at SITT and they have a lot of expertise. They're in the sciences, but there are other people in English who are using the media, too.
Q: What was it like to facilitate at SITT this year?
A: It didn't seem that different. (Laughs.) You're with your peers - you're all colleagues. It's not like a student-teacher relationship, really. There were people who were participants who knew much more than facilitators in particular areas. I think that was the balance that [Wini Anderson of the Teaching Resources Center] was trying to get.
Q: You've participated in various capacities in three different SITT sessions. Can you talk about SITT's particular strengths as a program?
A: I think the opportunity for this total immersion for a week is excellent. You really need to set aside a block of time to get into what these techniques have to offer. So that's what SITT does. They have all the labs set up, they have the people there to help out, they have meals served, it keeps you there and gives you the in-depth experience. What was it one person called it? "Computer camp for grown-ups." So, I think that's a strength, that you make a commitment for a week to do this.
The second part is the tremendous range of knowledge that's available to you. And as I said, not only the facilitators, who are terrific, but also other participants who will have experience that you can learn a lot from. So that is great. Then I found a tremendous emotional satisfaction from spending a week with people who care about teaching. The people who sign up for it and participate in it tend to be people who are very committed to teaching and who are interested in teaching. It's a rare experience.
Q: How do you see technology as being related to innovation in teaching?
A: The technology offers opportunity for innovation. But it doesn't guarantee that innovation's going to happen. For me, the technology has provided opportunities to try looking at things in a somewhat different way, to think about whether I get this idea across in a visual way. Can an image convey it better? This causes me to look at things a little bit differently and maybe package my material in ways that will reach more students. Because not everyone's a linear, verbal thinker.
Q: Do you find that most students have access to the Web?
A: There's a big difference between having access to the Web and accessing the Web. I found that only about half of them accessed it. They all have access, technically. Any student can walk into a lab on campus and access it. But many don't do it, many don't know how to do it. And I know some instructors just absolutely require it. I'm not quite ready to do that. Because I have so many students who are freshmen and sophomores. I could see if I had an upper-division, a smaller class where I could take the time to show students how to do it, then I might consider requiring it. I don't want that to become the dominant part of my course. I'm hoping that in a few more years the problem will go away.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: Faculty who start to fool around with multimedia have to recognize that students have very high expectations because they've grown up watching those slick videos that are beautifully produced. You may not like the content all the time, but the presentation is fabulous. And so you get amateurs like myself, faculty members who are middle aged, just learning this technology. Our lecture presentations look pretty hokey. I still remember one student's feedback on my Web page that said "cheesy graphics." Now, 90% of the people liked it, but I still remember the one person who said "cheesy graphics." [Laughs.] I have to once in a while remind people that, "Hey, this is education, not entertainment, and it may not be quite so slick and so smooth." But that's a reality. So if we're going to do it we have to try to do it fairly well and that's going to take a long time.