Information Technology in Education Committee (ITEC)

Information Technology in Education Committee (ITEC) Course Development Grants Application for the 2013-14 academic year

1) Name, departmental/program affiliation, and contact information. If you wish to collaborate with other faculty members, list all names on one application, but grants are capped at $1,000 per proposal.

Stefanie Chambers, Political Science Department [email protected]

2) Course title and semester offered, type of students (e.g., majors, non-majors; intro or upper- level), and projected enrollment

I will be teaching Women and Politics at the graduate and undergraduate level during the summer of 2013 (PS 326 and PBPL 812). For undergraduates, this is an upper level undergraduate course with interdisciplinary appeal. It is also aimed at graduate students in the Public Policy Program. I generally have 10-15 students in this course each summer. I intend to leverage my findings over the summer in my fall and spring courses.

3) Goals and Objectives Last summer I received a grant from Bryn Mawr to support a new blended summer course. As a result of this support, I familiarized myself with three “blended” components that I used in my course. First, over the summer months I created a video interview with two of the plaintiffs in Connecticut’s same sex marriage court case. Sue Denning and John Dlugosz helped me record the interview, edit and upload the interview on Moodle. At the end of this interview, I posed a number of questions that my students were required to answer in an online Moodle discussion. I was also able to schedule a phone conference call with my students and a leading scholar in the field of women & politics. This was a particularly exciting experiment and resulted in a series of emails between the scholar and some of my students. Finally, I experimented with placing films on Trinflix and running online discussions with my students that forced them to connect the films to course material. On two occasions I was able to hold synchronized class sessions with the entire class. This was the first time I had ever experimented with any of these modes of instruction. It was not only exciting for me to learn about different types of instruction, but I think my students enjoyed the mixed instructional methods I used in the class.

This summer I intend to build upon the isolated blended components I created last summer and design a truly blended course. More specifically, I plan to spend considerable time working with Sue Denning on three new blended components. First, and by far the most ambitions, is holding online classes via WebEX. By learning how to hold on-line class sessions with students, I hope to investigate the merits of teaching the course half the time online and the other half in person. I tentatively plan to hold one class session in person on Tuesdays, and the online session on Thursday evenings. Given that the Graduate Program is eager to explore this sort of course, I hope to provide very helpful feedback to my colleagues about the merits of teaching a course of this type. Because I also offer the course at the undergraduate level (with slightly different requirements), I also hope to recruit a larger group of undergraduates who might not normally be available to take my summer course.

In addition to the online class sessions, I will also learn how to create a private wiki for my students to post their reading journals. Entries will only be viewed by me, and this will provide the opportunity to assess student understanding of the reading before class sessions. I will also be able to use these online postings to help guide my class sessions.

Finally, I plan to arrange a skype session with two leading scholars in the field of women and politics. Last summer we had a teleconference, but this summer I want to have the two academic discuss whether or not the 2012 elections signified the real “Year of the Woman” or not.

A recent article in The Journal of Political Science Education compares student outcomes in blended vs. face-to-face courses (Roscoe 2012). The author indicates that academic performance was not influenced by mode of instruction. I am very eager to build upon the foundation I developed last year to better determine whether a blended course benefits my students. For me, my summer courses provide the ideal opportunity for experimentation because I am dedicated to a single course and have time for regular meetings with Sue Denning and the IT staff. I would also add that the previously funded grants, including my own, have all focused on small components of a blended course (ie: wikis, teleconference, journaling, etc). My plan is to build upon the skills I acquired last semester and combine various blended components in a truly blended course.

4) While teaching your course, how will you determine if this technology innovation actually enhances student learning?

I will work with Sue Denning to create a pre- and post- course survey for students to assess the quality of the “virtual” part of the course.

5) How do you propose to spend up to $1,000 to support your plans? Categories may include stipends for faculty time, hourly student assistants, workshop/conference training, software or equipment costs, or other invoiced expenses.

I will use the $1000 as a faculty stipend. I will present the results at the Winter 2014 Teaching Institute. During the Spring 2013 semester and during the first part of the summer, I will schedule regular meetings with Sue Denning to make sure that I have mastered the necessary technology for this blended course.

By submitting a proposal, you agree that if funded, the College will publicly share its content on the web, and that you will participate on an ITEC panel with other recipients in 2013-14 to share your experiences, and submit a brief report on lessons learned by June 30, 2014.