At the end of the Spring 2001 semester, UMBC department chairs were invited to submit proposals for "mini-grants" funded by the Faculty empowerment through Common Tools (FaCT) program. The summaries below describe the projects which will be presented during the January 17 Teaching, Learning & Technology fair.

Supplementing 19th & 20th Century Art History Courses (Art History)

The quality of instruction in art history classes is significantly enhanced by in-depth discussion of the artworks. However, the requirement to cover a large number of time periods and art movements, in both the Art 323 and Art 321 courses, largely precludes the possibility of devoting class-time to engaging students in productive discussions about the context of artworks: the complex network of artistic intentions, historical circumstances, economic opportunities and social, and political agendas that shape art objects and artistic practices. Professors Preminda Jacob and James Smalls hope that online lectures, a combination of streaming video and PowerPoint slide presentations, will free up a greater amount of class time for discussions.

Art 323 Lecture Series

Teaching, Learning & Technology Faculty Workshop (English)

Under the RFP for Faculty Development in Technology Enhanced Learning, funding support is requested by the English Department to provide $500 summer stipends for those English Department faculty who attend a four-day workshop on "Teaching, Learning, and Technology," to be organized in July 2001 by the Faculty Development Center and the Office of Information Technology at UMBC. Faculty who attend the workshop will acquire and develop skills in the use of Blackboard, MS Power Point, and MS Word Collaborative Editing software, and they will address larger issues that emerge in the redesign of the existing English curriculum to integrate technology effectively into the teaching of writing. All workshop participants will be expected to attend a follow-up seminar in August 2001, and to give a presentation on the outcomes of their curriculum development project during an all-campus workshop in January 2002.

Cardyn Fitzpatrick

Specific Fall 2001 outcomes included the following:

Blackboard Courses

• ENGL 100 "Compostion" (Carol Quinn)
• ENGL 100 "Compostion" (Carolyn Fitzpatrick)
• ENGL 100 "Composition" (Donald Killgallon)
• ENGL 100T "Composition" (Jane Porter)
• ENGL 100T "Composition" (Barbara Simon)
• ENGL 100T "Composition" (Diane Putzel)
• ENGL 110 "Composition for ESL Students (Sally Shivnan)
• ENGL 241 "Currents in British Literature" (Carolyn Fitzpatrick)
• ENGL 250 "Introduction to Shakespeare" (Robin Farabaugh)
• ENGL 305 "British Literature: Neo-Classical and Romantic" (Gail Orgelfinger)
• ENGL 308 "American Literature: 1870-1930" (Jessica Berman)
• ENGL 395 "Writing Internship" (Carolyn Fitzpatrick)
• WMST 480 "Theories of Feminism" (Jessica Berman)
• English Department Bb Community Site

PowerPoint Presentations

• Background on JFK Assassination for ENGL 100 Assignment (Donald Killgallon)
• Academic Integrity & Turnitin.com (Gail Orgelfinger)
• Two presentations for ENGL 308, including one on the Harlem Renaissance that includes several images and musical examples (Jessica Berman)

Putting French 201C Online (MLL)

Professor Marie Deverneil continues her work putting UMBC's fourth hour language classes in French 101 through 201 online using the Blackboard web-based software package. Putting French 201C online addresses the issue of enhancing technological fluency on the campus broadly because FREN 101 through 201 are courses taken by students towards fulfillment of the general education requirements. The online work for FREN 201C will involve assignments in composition that teach students skills in organizing and writing descriptions, narratives, as well as expository papers.

Building an Online Archive and Broadcast of German Popular Music since 1945 (MLL)

Professor Ed Larkey is enhancing German 303, a topics course which gives students an overview of the history of German popular music since 1945. In Fall 2001, he based coursework outside of class discussions on the Blackboard internet-based instruction package. Professor Larkey's students will be primarily German majors who will learn to do web-based research and create a web-broadcasting facility. This is an ambitious and innovative project because it will involve the students' creating final projects of 30 minute radio broadcasts for web-based broadcasting facility which will include both spoken and musical segments in English and German. Students will be shown how to use, and will use the Blackboard web-based software package for the course.
See the Presentation

Teaching Interactive Programming to Artists (Music)

UMBC's Visual Arts program offers a unique approach to teaching multimedia in that students develop a high degree of both aesthetic and technical sophistication. This raises complex pedagogical challenges. In order to teach Macromedia Director to art students, an instructor must address the balance between aesthetic concerns and programming. In fact, it has proven difficult to find talented artists qualified to teach even our intermediate level classes. This proposal would develop an online resource to help ensure both the quality and the consistency of instruction. The primary result would be a website that is a remarkable resource for teaching programming in the Visual Arts interactive emphasis, specifically Art 382, Interactivity, and Art 468, Advanced Interactivity. Such a set of online programming demonstrations would be geared toward students in the Visual Arts program, but it would also be a valuable self-guided resource for anyone else on campus or online who is interested in learning multimedia. Since the demonstrations approach multimedia programming from a fine arts perspective not found online or in
bookstores, non-art majors would benefit from this resource.