Richard Nafshun explains some chemistry basics for a short video he’ll make available to his distance-education students. Victor Yee from E campus films a number of different segments for Nafshun, which are posted for his class, as well as being available through OSU iTunes University. (photo: Theresa Hogue)

Given that many of their instructors were raised in an entirely different generation, before the Internet revolutionized information delivery, there can be a disconnect between how the student is used to receiving information, and how their professor is used to delivering it.

In order to jump that particular hurdle, the use of digital media as part of teaching must be made as simple and efficient as possible. And thanks to a number of recent additions to the Oregon State University digital toolkit, faculty are now more able than ever to add layers of digital education onto their traditional classroom approach.

Richard Nafshun, senior instructor of science education for the department of chemistry, has taught general chemistry classes for extended campus for more than six years. He has found that videotaping small, digestible segments on general chemistry, and making them accessible on-line to his far-away students, has been a great and popular way to teach.

“I call them modules,” he said. “They’re three to five minute segments, attention getters. They include quick (chalk) board work.”

And its clear his distance-education students are watching. In fact, 92 percent of the students watch at least 75 percent of the modules or higher.  He tries to include direct questions to students, as well as pauses for them to work out the problems, in each module, so it feels more interactive. He also practices before-hand, and makes sure his equations are error free before he tapes the segments. While Nafshun doesn’t see video as ever replacing classroom time for on-campus students, he thinks it serves as an important tool to the greater OSU community.

“It is able to reach students who would not otherwise be on campus,” he said. The videos are available both on the E campus web site, and OSU’s new iTunes University.

ITunes University is a new site to bring instructor’s lectures and other audio and video content to listeners and viewers. It provides a gathering place for video and audio to be distributed to a wider audience. Other universities have already jumped aboard the iTunes platform, and OSU has been working for several years to get their own iTunes U site ready for the public. The university is in the middle of a quiet launch of the site, and there are currently 121 tracks spread over a dozen different categories.

OSU is first among public colleges in Oregon to provide iTunes U, which went live Nov. 21, according to David Baker, director of Web Communications. iTunes U allows instructors to share podcasts and audio files with their students literally at the push of a button.

“Podcasting or videocasting can effectively double the time a lecturer has in front of the student. Instead of delivering the same lecture year after year, students can review the lecture independently and then use the classroom time for discussion and to ask questions,” Baker said. “Video or audio podcasting can also be a great form of outreach or marketing, developing and education a core group of listeners/viewers who can then become your advocates.”

Almost simultaneously to the introduction of iTunes U, OSU Media Services introduced a new digital media management system to users across campus. Media Manager H.264 automatically encodes video, audio and almost all other media files and then returns them to the producer, usually a faculty member, who can then post them to Blackboard, iTunes, YouTube or their own Web site.
The onus is still on faculty and staff to produce content, such as videos of lectures, or recordings of interviews, but the Media Manager allows them to send that raw data out, and have it turned into something they can easily upload.

Considering laptop computers and today’s digital home cameras often come with recording capability, and that Media Services can also provide the equipment to make video and audio recordings,

The process enables Media Services to “increase what faculty can do and puts what they can do into their own hands,” he said.
Together, the two additions utilize existing infrastructure to streamline the delivery of the most up-to-date media for classroom, departmental, and marketing use, according to John Greydanus, director of Media Services.

OSU is the “furthest developed” of all Oregon universities and colleges, Greydanus said, “and most of our peers.”
By building on what already exists, he said, “we doing this with much fewer staff – only four for the 160 classrooms we serve.”

OSU has already established a YouTube channel to post university videos on-line. Because YouTube has become so ubiquitous as a video viewing site, it’s a great marketing tool. With the fact that approximately 10 percent of all web traffic currently goes through YouTube, OSU will be able to tap into the power that concentration brings, Greydanus said.

And as faculty and staff learn more about what digital offerings are available to them, it can only get better.

“It takes a lot of commitment to produce good quality content,” Baker said. “But on the flipside, it’s an excellent way to reach a global audience and start building a community of viewers and listeners.”

~Theresa Hogue and Ed Curtin

If your summer itinerary took you away for research, a sabbatical or just a good old-fashioned vacation, you may have missed some particularly interesting campus happenings. LIFE@OSU offers this recap for the information challenged.

OSU President Ed Ray presents honorary degrees to 23 former students. (photo: Jim Folts)

June
If you were unable to attend OSU’s 139th commencement ceremony, you not only missed the university’s largest-ever graduation, with some 4,600 degrees awarded, but the presentation of honorary degrees to 23 former students of Japanese ancestry who were forced to leave the university during the early years of World War II.

Victims of U.S. Executive Order 9066, which sent many of them to internment camps, most of the former students have since died. But several attended the ceremony, moving many in the crowd to tears by their grace and dignity.

Bindi, Terri and Bob Irwin visit Corvallis. (photo: OSU Foundation)

Later in the month, Terri Irwin, wife of the late Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin, came to Corvallis to sign a memo of understanding with the OSU Marine Mammal Institute to fund a series of upcoming whale expeditions headed by Professor Bruce Mate. Accompanied by her Emmy-award winning, 9-year-old daughter, Bindi, and 4-year-old son, Bob, Terri captivated a standing-only crowd at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center and patiently indulged multiple interview requests.

Terri, who is originally from Oregon, disclosed that she and Bindi also plan to accompany Mate on at least one of the expeditions, which will be filmed for later broadcast on the Animal Planet cable network.

OSU Associate Professor Staci Simonich and Peking University student Wentao Wang gather air samples from a rooftop in Beijing during the Summer Olympics.

July
News that Staci Simonich, an OSU associate professor of chemistry and toxicology, would be part of an international team monitoring air quality in smoggy Beijing during the Summer Olympics prompted a spate of major, big media coverage. Outlets ranging from the Wall Street Journal to National Geographic to USA Today seized on the story, as did the Reuters and Associated Press wire services, sending the story around the globe.

The air quality, it turns out, was lousy for the Aug. 8 – 24 games, but not as bad as expected, Simonich reported. Chinese efforts to clean things up reduced particulates by 20 to 40 percent over previous year measures, but still left the air considerably below cleanliness standards that many visiting athletes experience in their home countries.

An interesting new partnership between OSU and the London-based Into University Partnerships firm began attracting its own considerable news attention in July. The agreement, the first that Into has signed with a U.S. university, aims to attract significantly more international students to OSU. If successful, the partnership could increase OSU tuition revenue by $25 million over the next five years. The New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education were among the media writing about the arrangement, which promises to draw much more attention over the coming school year.

August
A pair of prominent new hires were announced in the first half of the month: new College of Liberal Arts Dean Lawrence R. Rodgers and Stephen Brandt, new director of the Oregon Sea Grant Program.

Rodgers , associate dean of Kansas State University’s College of Arts and Sciences since 2002, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a scholar in ethnic and racial minority literature. He’s been a recognized innovator at Kansas State, leading establishment of a first-year experience program and leading creation of a university-wide strategic plan. Rodgers replaced Vice Provost Larry Roper, who had served as interim dean over the past year.

Brandt comes to OSU from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, replacing Robert Malouf, who served as Sea Grant director from 1991 until June of this year. An accomplished scientist with more than 90 publications, 80-plus scientific cruises and more than 220 presentations to his credit, Brandt begins work in Corvallis in January 2009.

Finally, if the dog days of summer left you feeling your age, George Poinar put the passage of time in perspective with his discovery of the world’s oldest gecko.

Poinar, a courtesy professor at OSU and one of the world’s leading experts on insects, plants and other life forms trapped in amber, published the finding in the journal Zootaxa along with fellow researchers from the National History Museum in London. The ancient lizard’s age? One hundred million, give or take a few summers.

~ by Todd Simmons