Calhoon

Calhoon is the first IU Kokomo professor to earn an IT award in the program.

The grant paid for Digital Media Services (DMS) at IUPUI to program course modules, or “templates,” in Macromedia Flash, software commonly used by Web site developers to add sound and animation to pages. Calhoon then added content to the templates for a class she taught last fall on the subject of abnormal psychology. DMS donated an additional $1,500 of in-kind service to “tweak” the templates according to students’ responses.

“If this works as I think it will, the software and templates will be made available to other IU Kokomo faculty through the campus server,” Calhoon said.

She believes the online instruction would be particularly helpful for ACCELerated Evening College classes. These four-hours-a-night, once-a-week-classes concentrate the lessons of normal 16-week courses into eight weeks. Students appreciate the condensed time frame, but sometimes struggle to maintain attention during the long class sessions.

Last fall, half of all ACCELerated Evening College classes employed a hybrid format that moved some instruction online. Students access course materials and participate in threaded classroom discussions over the Internet, thus reducing classroom time. With Calhoon’s templates, students can interact with the materials and receive feedback that confirms what they have learned.

Initial templates for the abnormal psychology class include electronic flash cards and drag-and-drop exercises. Students use them to quiz themselves on text and lecture content. A “Challenge Game” reviews lessons from a prerequisite general psychology class that some students took years before, Calhoon said. With Flash templates, students have time flexibility and variety in how they learn.

“They’re not just waiting for me to pour information into their heads,” she said.

Using the templates should be “fairly, if not extremely, simple” for both faculty and students, said Chris Rivers, technical support coordinator at IU Kokomo. “The templates may have far-reaching impact beyond our campus.”

Under contract to Workforce Development Strategies, Inc., 20 SIFE members surveyed respondents in Cass, Fulton, Howard, Miami, Tipton and Wabash counties.

The survey assessed how prepared communities are to participate in the networked world. SIFE members sent letters and E-mails to businesses, governments, schools, health-care organizations and home users. Online responses were entered into a computer database created by Mayur Desai, assistant professor of management information systems.

The final report found “pockets of good and bad service,” establishing baseline measurements for future technology developments, SIFE faculty adviser Kathy Parkison said.