Faculty Showcase

Student as Historian Project – Cinthia Salinas and Anthony Brown

This project, initiated by Dr. Salinas and extended by Dr. Brown, asks students to create web pages that illustrate how various people, events, and institutions have been excluded, misrepresented and/ or over-generalized in the formal curriculum. Student groups develop a rationale for selecting a person, group, culture, event or institution to study, outline a research plan and develop web pages that provide a collection of primary sources that lead to a historical conclusion. The end goal is to create a narrative through multiple perspectives and to prompt others, through document based questions, to engage in historical reasoning.

Student Example: Border Lynchings

Teaching Sports Skills Digital Video Project - Amanda Gammage and Tere Ramirez

In this project, students in a physical education teacher education course produce digital videos that illustrate and teach fundamental sports skills. The videos include voiceover, music, text and transitions to present, demonstrate, and teacher the skill. The assignment addresses beginning teacher standards for physical education that focus on planning and instruction and communication to enhance learning and engagement. It serves as an authentic assessment that is well suited for this unique instructional environment. At the conclusion of the course, students receive a DVD compilation of all of their peers’ projects for later use.

Strategies for Collaborative Online Inquiry (WebQuest) – Paul Resta

This project is one module of an award-winning graduate class in computer-supported collaborative learning. This is a blended course, and all student assignments are carried out in groups in an online environment. The project is designed to teach about the design of WebQuests and the types of learning they support as well as promote an understanding strategies and techniques for effective collaborative web-based inquiry of this kind. In the module, students are introduced to the framework underlying the WebQuest model, principles of backward design, and are then asked to work with other group members to create their own WebQuests, assess and provide feedback on peers’ work and reflect on the experience.