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September 1998"The Finite Show" Debuts This Fall on IU Campus CableThis fall, students enrolled in M118 Finite Math have an unusual resource for help: television. Twice a week, IU airs "The Finite Show"--a ninety- minute live call-in program that supplements M118 lessons. The campus cable system carries the show to the IU residence halls, on channel 32; students who live off-campus can see the show in HPER 019. "The Finite Show" premiered September 3 and will run Mondays and Thursdays from 9 to 10:30pm throughout the semester; the shows are taped and rebroadcast mid-morning and late at night. Two "Super Review Specials" will help students prepare for the midterm and final exams.
Steve McKinley hosts "The Finite Show," IU's new ninety-minute live call-in program that supplements M118 Finite Math lessons."The Finite Show" is funded by the Lilly Endowment's "Road to the Baccalaureate" project, which supports numerous efforts on campus to increase the retention rate of undergraduates. Since M118 has one of the highest drop-out rates among IU courses, Lilly is also underwriting the Math department's new two-semester version of M118, as well as other initiatives with math help components, such as the Academic Support Centers. The broad partnership that developed "The Finite Show" includes the Department of Mathematics, Radio and Television Services, Residence Programs and Services, and three ISS units: Instructional Consulting & Technology, Graphic Services, and Media Production. Samuel Thompson of Instructional Consulting at Franklin Hall and Steve Egyhazi of Radio/TV produce "The Finite Show." The Math Department's Steve McKinley hosts the program. Each episode follows the same basic format. McKinley begins with a general introduction to the topic M118 students are currently learning in class. A phone number and e-mail address regularly flash on the screen, and McKinley encourages students to call or e-mail with questions. Andrew Dabrowski, also from the Math Department, fields the calls and messages. McKinley works problems and addresses difficulties based on the questions students have generated. Students who call in may stay on the line to interact directly with McKinley, or may register their concerns anonymously. The premiere episode of "The Finite Show" exceeded all expectations. So many students responded that Thompson had to assist Dabrowski in prioritizing requests. "Our lines filled up almost as soon as Steve McKinley announced the phone number. Steve Egyhazi compared it to the phone order line at Domino's, and he told me to handle it the same way: put all new calls on hold right away, and get back to them later." Egyhazi captures the enthusiasm generated by the first few episodes. "I've produced many televised instructional programs at IU and 'The Finite Show' is probably the most exciting experience I've had thus far, and not only because it's the first program I've worked on with such a large potential audience (as many as 3,000 students). It's the one project where all the elements have come together--instructional design, marketing, television production--to generate this tremendous response. Students are watching and they are actually having fun." Thompson explains the show's mission. "We want it to be attractive and useful to students as an alternative instructional medium. The show personalizes a large course by creating a 'virtual' small class within it. Students are encouraged to interact--student involvement is the essence of the show. One reason they may be more willing to ask questions and offer answers than in the large lecture hall is because they control the amount of anonymity that they retain."
McKinley's relaxed manner and quick sense of humor make him ideal for hosting the show. He puts potential callers at ease and reacts well in front of the camera."The psychological goal of the show is an important one," says McKinley; "if we can create a positive association between learning finite math and something mildly entertaining, we can help to ensure that students will be more willing to use the other existing sources of help for the course." McKinley's relaxed manner and quick sense of humor make him ideal for hosting the show. He puts potential callers at ease and reacts well in front of the camera. Director of Graphic Services Suzanne Hull, who was in the studio for the spring and summer test episodes, praises McKinley's teaching style: "He has a lot of good strategies for dealing with students, for keeping them talking. He tries to find out how far back their problems go. Sometimes what they're asking about isn't what they're really stuck on." The introductions that McKinley prepares for every show are part mathematics instruction and part stand-up routine, in order to engage students in the material and to encourage them to call. For the show's premiere, McKinley brought in a pig brain; on camera, he pointed out for students the "specific part of the human brain devoted to solving finite problems." "So far coming up with introductory material hasn't been too bad," McKinley says; "I expect that will be more challenging as the semester goes on, because I don't want to do just the same ideas over and over." The show's development involved significant logistic and pedagogical challenges. Thompson outlines one major difficulty posed by a live, audience-driven show with an instructional purpose: "Since the show is exercise-oriented, and since students can ask about any exercise in the course, we need a database of problems that Steve can access and work on the spur of the moment. And these problems must be visible on students' screens in the Residence Halls." Radio/TV's Steve Egyhazi captures the enthusiasm generated by "The Finite Show": "I've produced many televised instructional programs at IU and this is probably the most exciting experience I've had thus far."For Egyhazi, who broadcasts "The Finite Show" from Radio/TV's interactive classroom studio located in HPER 195, the "main challenge has been to find interesting ways to utilize every tool we have available in the studio to complement Steve McKinley's very lively teaching style--music, graphics, layers of video--whatever helps create interest in the content we're trying to get across." While Radio/TV is now in charge of producing the show, earlier this year Media Production staged and videotaped some trial programs in a studio in the Memorial Union, to experiment with the instructional format of the show and with the requirements of filming and transmitting it. Graphic Services printed questions for retrieval and projection in the studio. Radio/TV continued the testing, broadcasting several shows from the new studio during summer sessions; students enrolled in M118 classes were encouraged to call in. These trials allowed the team to test the show with a real audience. Producer Samuel Thompson: "The Finite Show personalizes a large course by creating a 'virtual' small class within it. Student involvement is the essence of the show."All those involved in planning and producing "The Finite Show" praise the smooth interaction among participants. "This collaboration has been extremely rewarding right from the start," Egyhazi says. "Every partner has brought a unique talent to the project and it all shows on the screen." "In the spring, a partner commented that 'The Finite Show' was 'the only committee meeting that I look forward to,'" recalls Thompson. "That remark pretty well captures our feeling. We're growing a new instructional method at IU to improve success and retention rates for undergraduates. There's plenty of room for the creative energies of each of us. It's very exciting and a lot of fun!" |
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