ITS-Instructional Services

Information Technology Services (ITS) is offering faculty a new way to increase student engagement in the classroom.

Clickers – also referred to as student response systems, audience response systems, or personal response systems – allow students to answer an instructor’s questions via a small wireless device that records responses using a radio frequency receiver. Instructors create content with built-in response indicators and ask students to use their clickers to respond at the appropriate times during a lecture. Instructors can create questions in PowerPoint with TurningPoint 2008, or they can use TurningPoint AnyWhere with any application.

For more information about student response systems, visit the clickers website.

UI Law professor Lea VanderVelde had a problem. She wanted students to dig into a topic not covered in standard law textbooks. A SITA team by Leighton Christiansen pulled together a vast amount of case law and worked with Prof. VanderVelde to create a wiki her students could really sink their teeth into. Read about it in the Wired Campus Newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The latest issue of fyi features an article about the work of the Student Instructional Technology Assistants (SITAs). The SITA group is part of the Campus Technology Services department in ITS. Student Instructional Technology Assistants are innovative problem solvers who help faculty use technology to enhance the student learning experience.

Click here to read the fyi article.

In response to a Center for Teaching-sponsored workshop on portfolio-based assessment held in January 2007, ITS-Instructional Services partnered with a number of departments to weigh the viability of commercial electronic portfolio options. The commercial products did not meet the functionality needs of the various end users, so Instructional Services developed a modular electronic portfolio system, branded as ifolio, that can be easily customized to UI colleges and departments.

As technology continues to make sharing information easier, faculty and teaching staff gathered at this year’s 4CAST conference to discuss “Who Owns Knowledge?”

In early September 2008, Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, was at the University of Iowa as part of the Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorships Program.

The videos of three of Professor Mazur’s lectures are now available online.

After teaching optical physics and astronomy at Harvard for a decade, Eric Mazur “came to the agonizing conclusion” that his students were simply memorizing material he presented, rather than learning to understand. The videos show Mazur describing and demonstrating how he now teaches introductory, large-enrollment classes interactively. His entertaining and engaging presentations draw on his personal experience as a renowned educator, as well as his research on teaching and learning, particularly verifiable ways to improve science education.

Professor Mazur’s visit was sponsored by the Center for Teaching, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and ITS Instructional Services. Please contact any of the three sponsoring organizations if you have questions or comments.