Awardee: Justin Touchon
Semester of Award: Fall 2020
Materials Awarded: iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, stand for holding the iPad.
Project Description:
This grant has been exceptionally beneficial to my students taking BIOL 226 – Animal Structure and Diversity. In the lab component of this course, students learn about animals via preserved specimens and dissections. Some specimens are sliced and mounted on slides and are viewed through a microscope. Using the iPad, I was able to film myself doing dissections or viewing slides and then using the Apple Pencil I annotated these videos in the program Explain Everything and stitch different videos together using iMovie. These videos were principally made to facilitate learning by students that were still remote during the spring 2021 semester, but they have had two added benefits. First, as students have continued to occasionally need to quarantine, the videos have provided a way for them to not miss out on lab activities (which are rather difficult and time consuming to make up). Second, the videos have provided valuable reference materials for all students to be able to review what they did in lab, with the added benefit of my narration and annotation. Giving student this added resource has improved students’ grades on the two lab practicals given during the semester. All of the videos are posted on YouTube and some examples are seen here: https://youtu.be/ineTPpVlBR4; https://youtu.be/JJWGU8XccLg; https://youtu.be/RAffC1L5p8c. Lastly, in other courses (both at the 100 and 300 levels) I have used the iPad and Apple Pencil to grade written work and provide feedback, which has been very useful for me and my students.