Teaching Spotlight
John Adams receives 2009 UM President's Award for Outstanding Teaching
John E. Adams, professor, Department of Chemistry, has been honored with the 2009 University of Missouri President's Award for Outstanding Teaching. This award recognizes a tenured faculty member with at least ten years of teaching experience at a University of Missouri campus. Adams has been teaching at MU since 1981. Each campus is allowed to submit one candidate. Read more.
Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award
Emily Friedman: GI/TA Teaching Award
Emily's creativity in working with both traditional and new pedagogical and technical approaches is simply impressive. Because much of the work in Emily's literature classroom flows from student participation and discussion, she begins by recording her students' and her own interpretations and analyses in old-fashioned chart format on the blackboard or whiteboard, depending on the classroom she's assigned to. These are usually messy, many-arrowed chart-like affairs that are pretty difficult for a student to recreate in their notes. In order to allow students to focus on the discussion, rather than having to take down every word, at the end of the class period Emily takes a photograph of the board. After class she posts it to a Flickr site. Students access these images in order to recreate the discussion from each class as they are studying for their exams and preparing papers. Emily also utilizes these images to create exam questions and paper topics. The "exchange" this allows for in the classroom is both technologically advanced and delightfully old-fashioned.
Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award
Dale Musser, Undergraduate Teaching Award
In his role as Director of the Information Technology (IT) program within the department, Dale Musser is developing a Master of Engineering degree for the IT program, primarily using online courses. He teaches online courses, as well as supports others in developing their own online courses. Dale is also actively involved in the ongoing Mizzou iPhone Software Design & Development Competition that is a collaboration among five schools/colleges, i.e., Journalism, Engineering, Business, CAFNR and Education on campus. Dr. Musser greatly encourages participation of students in his department and works closely with the students, teaching them the principles and techniques for design and implementation.
Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award
Linda Esser: Graduate or Professional Award
Continuous improvement marked Linda's experiences in teaching distant courses with technology- as the technology evolved, so did her ability to meet student needs and preferences. For example, in 2004 Esser incorporated blogs into her courses using WordPress. Students noted that they still missed hearing the instructor's voice throughout the semester. So Esser then used the School's "LIS Radio" to create podcasts throughout the semester. She even used GarageBand to compose theme music The students were given a toll-free phone number they could use to call in questions. The following semester Linda used Skype to supplement an online course. Then in 2008 Linda was able to use WIMBA VoiceDirect which enabled students to speak one at a time, hear each other and the instructor as they "pass the microphone" from person to person.
Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award
Keith Politte: Staff Support Award
Keith is the Manager of the Technology Testing and Demonstration Center in the Reynolds Journalism Institute where he supports creative and innovative uses of educational technology. He is the Institute's main liaison with technology companies such as Apple, Adobe, AT&T, Cisco and Google. In this role he is a leader in developing Apple-affiliated competitions such as the iLife Challenge for freshmen and the iPhone Student Developer Competition. Keith also is in charge of the Institutes' efforts to develop and showcase new technologies in support of journalism.
Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award
Oscar Chavez: Graduate or Professional Award
Not only does Oscar show an immense variety of technology to use in the classroom, but he does so in an incredibly enjoyable atmosphere. Mathematics poses some challenges to online communication, but teaching how to use technology to teach mathematics creates even more complex problems. So Oscar uses screen recording programs (Camtasia, Jing) to create short demonstration videos for his online courses and his Blackboard supported courses. He also asks students to create their own using Jing software. Additionally, Oscar's students use GeoGebra to create dynamic worksheets via web pages that include GeoGebra applets to pose or solve problems. Oscar has also been researching how undergraduate and graduate students can use concept-mapping technology to learn about assessing what students know. Using CMap Tools software, his students have examined secondary students' work and have created concept maps about the mathematical topic involved in order to identify misconceptions that secondary students may have. This experience has challenged students to think more deeply about the complexities of teaching mathematics and the role of technology in the mathematics classroom.
Teaching Students Problem-Solving With Movies
Jim Groves One of the challenges that many instructors face is helping younger students learn how to develop problem-solving skills. The earlier we can begin helping students to learn these skills, the better students tend to do in school and eventually in their careers.
I teach HRM 3143: Property Management Systems and Operations, which is composed mainly of sophomore-level students. This class is the students' first introduction to the lodging industry; so much of the material I present is composed of theories and processes that students need to learn. However, I also want the students to begin learning problem-solving processes. When I first began teaching this course, I did this through research papers. While this method was somewhat effective, it led to quite a bit of grading on my part, and a less than enthusiastic reception by the students. Read the full story in The Innovator.
