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Multimedia
use reinvigorates the classroom experience
Photo by Stephen Bleezarde
Before Gutenberg
and the printing press made modern textbooks possible, teaching
took place through lectures and Socratic dialog between teacher
and student. Printed materials didn't eliminate that dialog,
or the need for lectures, but they did revolutionize teaching.
In Princeton's classrooms, another revolution is taking place.
Some professors are redefining how they teach by using new
computing applications developed by a team of programmers
in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).
The programmers belong to the Multimedia Engineering Computation
Atelier (MECA). They are developing applications that include
web-based simulations and multimedia databases that provide
new ways for students and teachers to access information.
Like textbooks, these new technologies are available outside
the classroom and provide students with access to more information
than can be presented in lectures alone.
Unlike textbooks, these web-based simulations and multimedia
databases are highly customizable and can be tailored to a
professor's individual needs.
"Simulations are great for teaching," said Kirk
Alexander '72 *75, manager of MECA. "With a simulation
you have a mathematical model and algorithms to
| Janet Temos, graduate student
of art and archaeology, John Pinto, professor of art and
archeology, and Kirk Alexander, manager of MECA, review
the Nolli map of Rome.
Photo by Jon Roemer
|
define what happens--and this isn't discipline specific.
You can simulate power plants, or automobiles, or abstract
equations. With tools that work this way, demonstrations can
follow classroom discussion. Teachers are not locked into
one scenario; they are free to explore the possibilities with
their classes."
Since becoming part of the SEAS in 1996, MECA has collaborated
on projects reaching students in dozens of classrooms, in
fields ranging from chemical engineering and art history to
ecology, evolutionary biology, and comparative literature.
Chemical Engineering Professor Yannis Kevrekidis is
one of the first professors of engineering to capitalize on
this added dimension to teaching.
Collaborating with MECA, Professor Kevrekidis produced an
interactive graphing tool that allows students to model, animate,
and explore complex dynamic equations online (see related
story on page 9).
The development of this new generation of teaching tools
is made possible by the speed of affordable PCs and the versatility
of applications that can be used on the web. Nonengineers,
and even inexperienced computer users, can take advantage
of these powerful classroom tools by using the simple web
interfaces MECA personnel have built into the applications.
When Art and Archeology Professor John Pinto decided
to develop a database for Art 320: Rome the Eternal City,
he turned to MECA. The result, the Nolli project, placed Giovanni
Battista Nolli's famous 18th-century
| Kirk Alexander, left, manager
of MECA, discusses multimedia capabilities at a recent
MECA open house.
Photo by Stephen Bleezarde
|
map of the city into an online database and created a new
way to study the map and the city. Buildings and monuments
are linked to a rich collection of paintings, photographs,
histories, and literary references.
"The technology allows students and teachers to approach
research and instruction in a new way," Professor Pinto
said. "For years I've shown students this map, but the
static image wasn't alive. You couldn't manipulate it.
"Having it online means that the students can virtually
walk down an 18th-century street. By clicking on mon uments,
they can pull up not just textual information but images showing
the buildings as they appear today and as they appeared in
the past."
Professor Pinto said the online database has two primary
benefits: Students are able to independently explore material,
and he is able to spontaneously respond to questions.
"This project gives students a significant measure of
control and personal investment in the learning process that
wasn't there before," Professor Pinto said. "In
the past I would bring a limited number of slides into class
to prompt discussion, but questions would always arise about
something I hadn't brought a slide along for. Now I can call
into the database and pull up any image I want. To address
a question from the class in real-time, rather than bringing
that slide to class the next week, is a tremendous resource
for any instructor."
Michael Curschmann, professor of Germanic Languages
and Literatures, has used another database tool MECA staff
helped develop, called Mappamundi, to instruct students of
Medieval Studies 227: The World of the Middle Ages.
This database contains mixed media from several disciplines
and makes it possible for Professor Curschmann to combine
and interrelate images from "between 250 and 300 slides,"
and a "small mountain of data," formerly distributed
in handouts.
His experience developing and using Mappamundi has made professor
Curschmann an advocate of technology in the classroom.
"Until I became involved in this project, I had not
even touched a word processor, let alone a serious computer,"
Professor Curschmann said. But with MECA's partnership, he
participated in the design and implementation of a tool that
improves his ability to teach--without demanding that he become
expert in the technical details.
"One of the most beneficial effects of this program
is that it unclutters the classroom and gives the teacher
a chance to do what he or she does better than the computer,
namely teach--no more scribbling on the blackboard, no more
unwieldy handouts," Professor Curschmann said.
"This is not meant to be a computer-age version of show-and-tell,
a substitute for good classroom teaching, or for other forms
of guidance through the learning process. The idea is not
to make teaching easier for me, or to eliminate me altogether,
but to make me a better, more effective teacher."
Providing effective and innovative teaching tools requires
a team like MECA, Mr. Alexander said, because such specialized
software doesn't exist anywhere else.
"Commercial software isn't available to do what we're
capable of doing with the hardware," Mr. Alexander said,
"especially in teaching. Commercial programmers are trying
to build the next big moneymaker; they are hoping to compete
with Microsoft, and they aren't asking the kinds of questions
that are going to help in the classroom."
Exposing students to these new technologies is an important
benefit to developing cutting-edge software for the classroom.
"If we're teaching the way everyone else is teaching,
we aren't doing Princeton students any kind of service,"
Mr. Alexander said.
Additional information about MECA and the
projects mentioned in this story can be found on the web at:
http://meca.princeton.edu.
Hold the date!
Graduate Reunions this year--May 27 through May 30, 1999--will
feature the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Departments
within the School are planning a variety of presentations.
Reunions festivities planned by the APGA Reunion Committee
include: Friday night graduate student-alumni mixer, Friday
evening program, Saturday luncheon and P-rade, and Saturday
night awards dinner. The schedule can be accessed at: http://www.princeton.edu/~alco/gradalum/reunions/reun99.html.
| Multimedia tools breathe
life into complicated, technical materials |
| Professor Kevrekidis' course is called ChE/Math 448:
Introduction to Nonlinear Dynamics. It might be better
recognized if it were called Introduction to Chaos. In
recent years, chaos has made headlines as both natural
and social scientists have identified it in everything
from economics to meteorology.
Even Hollywood has cashed in on chaos by creating characters
such as the pessimistic mathematician in "Jurassic
Park." In Professor Kevrekidis' classroom, Princeton
students are using a new generation of computer applications
to look behind the headlines and investigate the math
that drives dynamical systems.
Professor Kevrekidis developed the course in the late
1980s with Rafael de la Llave *83, then an assistant
professor of mathematics at Princeton. Professor Kevrekidis
said it was an exciting time, when scientists were discovering
that common characteristics in many parts of nature
were echoed in the behavior of certain dynamical models.
"This made it possible for you to learn something
about the mathematics of a model and then talk about
phenomenon across disciplines," Professor Kevrekidis
said. "This dialog doesn't happen very often."
To study dynamics, which is an evolution in time, it
is important to have real-time animation--to see how
graphs bend, fold, expand, or collapse. Professor Kevrekidis
said that without animation he is limited to showing
still images and trying to narrate changes that take
place. Real-time visualization tools are vital to understanding
the material and have been part of the course from the
beginning.
"The software started out being used for research,
but as it grew we reached a point when we could put
a lot of models in and put together a version that was
a kind of computational laboratory," Professor
Kevrekidis said.
In the beginning, students worked in Unix on Silicon
Graphics workstations. They received photocopies with
step-by-step instructions. They usually had a textbook
with pictures of an equation in different states. In
the course of a lab, students might reproduce illustrations
from the text, or alter the parameters of the equation
to get from one illustration to the next.
The newest version of the application, developed with
programmers from MECA, combines the interactive animated
graphing tool with lab notes and illustrated examples,
and is accessed through a web browser. Professor Kevrekidis
said the streamlined layout changes the pace and the
ease with which students can get to the material and
explore.
"You would exhaust the course, the patience, and
the enthusiasm of the students if they had to write
the code to do this," Professor Kevrekidis said.
"With this interface we can have people interested
in economics or in biology, whether they are sophomores
or graduate students, mathematicians or engineers, all
exposed to the study of dynamics."
As the tool develops, Professor Kevrekidis said modules
might be developed to use in other classes. He already
uses the program with students in MAE 305: Mathematics
in Engineering. When their class discusses the behavior
of dynamic systems he brings them to the computer lab
to experience that behavior firsthand.
"The relationship with MECA lets me develop the
tools for teaching," Professor Kevrekidis said.
"As an engineer or a scientist you are rarely going
to receive funding to develop a teaching tool, and if
you try to use something commercial, then you are using
someone else's software and you are not able to change
it very much. But if you've worked together with a team
like MECA, you'll have access, and then you can make
something you can use in the classroom."
For more information and a demonstration
of the web-based application, see the Projects menu
on the MECA web site at http://meca.princeton.edu.
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