Pre Conference Workshop: The MIT iCampus initiative...

Well, I made it to Boston, checked in, and spent a very interesting afternoon at MIT. Before I go into details about the iCampus initiative, however, I do want to take care of some "housekeeping". I had mentioned in my initial e-mail to you that I would be attaching the .pdf of the conference brochure to my first blog post. However, it seems that I am no able to attach files to blog posts (learn something every day, I guess). I will post the brochure off the main page...probably as a "note".

Anyway, after lunch and a little New York style haggling, I was able to get a seat for the MIT iCampus initiative tour and presentation this afternoon (seems they "lost" my original reservation for this closed out session, but I was able to work myself back on the list.) We were led through MIT's Strata building to an incredibly well designed and unbelievably equipped high tech lecture hall by Trent Batson (someone with a tangential connection to NYiT from about 20 years ago...ask current English faculty about the old ENFI project. Trent is doing well and seems to be enjoying the tee shirt and khakis, small ponytail look of the typical MIT researcher...

The presenters during the 3 hour session (divided into 3 sections) all promised to make .pdf's available to those who were interested, and when I get these, I will certainly post them in the ning. In the meantime, however, I want to hit a few of the key ideas and highlights of each presentation and provide some web links to the projects mentioned.

Trent Batson provided an overview of the iCampus initiative. Essentially, in 1999, before the tech bubble burst, Microsoft gave MIT a bunch of money (something like 50 Million) as an unrestricted grant to fund efforts to develop innovative uses of technology for teaching and learning. The money was handed out based on RFPs, and students were encouraged to apply and could be awarded up to 50,000 for a project. 60+ faculty and 30+ student projects were funded. Technically, as the website above will indicate, the iCampus initiative wrapped up in 2006. However, Microsoft gave another "parting gift" to five of the projects that looked most promising to help MIT develop partners to disseminate what they had developed.

The presentation highlighted three of these projects.

The first is the Spoken Lecture Transcription project. Computer Science faculty created a new, web based, open source voice recognition software package that could take the burgeoning number of videotaped lectures now becoming available (several on Physics from MIT faculty member Lewin that were already archived. Once the VR engine software is installed on a server, it would scan any video and provide a searchable transcription of the lecture that would be synced with the video of the lecture being shown in a side window. There are still some kinks in the system and they are common to voice recognition. The team of developers were focusing on getting the software to recognize technical terms often found in lecture material. They are still having trouble with faculty like Prof. Lewin who have an accent (the system returns "fork" every time he says "torque.") The most impressive feature of this is the searchable nature of the transcript. However, there still seems much to be done here.

The second presentation was far more interesting, although much more work is still needed and MIT is looking for partners to help build up examples. This is the iLab remote access experiment project. The basic premise here is that very expensive scientific equipment that most colleges could not afford to buy can be shared during off times through the use of a campus side server that would connect with a piece of equipment at one site and give students either interactive or a-synchronous use of the equipment to run real time numbers through and get results to analyze. This project seems to have more potential, but it requires a great deal of front end work by computer programmers to create the web User Interface...essentially one for each experiment. MIT is beginning to archive the front ends that have been developed, including one connected to MIT's small Nuclear reactor on campus (yikes!)

For the final presentation, we were taken to another building to see a special classroom designed from the ground up to accommodate a Project Based Learning approach to first year Physics at MIT. The TEAL project (Technology Enabled Active Learning). This was the most fully developed and realized of the projects. All freshman physics classes are taught in one of two specially designed classrooms, organized around 13 tables (9 students a table) with instructor stations all around the room, white boards covering every wall, cameras mounted and focused on every white board, and a central computer station in the middle. Students are asked to view pre-class lectures (from Prof. Lewin above), they are given a pop assessment quiz of one or two questions to work out in groups and debate the answers, and then they dive into the experiments, with the instructor, GA's and even the Lab techs walking around assisting the students. At any time, the faculty can access control of the camera, bring any whiteboard he is near on to one of several screens around the room, and provide additional information for the students. While there was initial resistance to this new approach (including students) the data was shocking. Success rates of students went way up, and the longitudinal study showed that the material stayed with students into their junior and senior years at a far higher rate than with the old lecture/recitation model.

OK, that is one LONG first post. It is almost midnight. I will post again tomorrow.

Quig