NUTSHELL NOTES

"Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado
at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Office of Teaching Effectiveness
1250 14th St. Room 720
Denver, CO 80217-3364

Phone (303)556-4915
FAX (303)556-2678
Volume 6 Number 5

Flashlight — A Flexible Feedback Tool

Flashlight is a bank of over 400 clearly worded, validated survey items that professors can choose from to assess the effects of instructional technology in courses and projects. Flashlight was developed through AAHE by testing the survey items at five different colleges and refining them through student and faculty focus groups. The items are available in "the toolbox" as files in standard word-processing formats. Most items are designed for "fill in the bubble" scaled responses, but open-ended questions and protocols for focus groups are also provided.

A beauty of Flashlight lies in the clarity and comprehensiveness of its items. One may get student perceptions on practically any aspect of his/her course and be reasonably confident that the students will interpret each item as expected. Most items elicit the students' evaluation of how particular technology affected the learning process. The professor simply selects items from the toolbox to build a custom survey tool. A few sample items written for a course using the World Wide Web (WWW) are given below. Each item is accompanied by an appropriate scaled response field (not shown here).

Because of the way this course used the WWW
I am better able to visualize the ideas and concepts taught
I am encouraged to exercise my own creativity
I am spending more time studying
I am at a disadvantage because I do not possess adequate computer skills.

Compared to a course that relied primarily on library research, how likely are you to

discuss ideas taught in this course with other students
complete assignments on time
apply what you are learning to "real world" problems?

Banks of questions dealing directly with most technologies (e-mail, chat rooms, multimedia, televised lectures, WWW for distance learning, specific commercial software and even graphing calculators) are available. All items are also categorized by the pedagogical aspect they address. Some of these aspects are: active learning, engagement in learning, faculty-student interaction, time on task, and preparation for "real world" work.

Although primarily developed to assess the effects of technology on learning, Flashlight also has over 60 items that can be useful in standard classroom formats. These items provide information on the students' comfort with learning and on the extent of students' involvement in the course. A few sample items are given below. Again, each would be accompanied by an appropriate scaled (Lickert scale) response field.

To what extent were each of the following given priority in this course?

working in teams/groups
providing detailed comments on assignments
developing students' creativity
learning to make study time more productive

How frequently have you

discussed ideas and concepts taught in this course with other students
worked on optional tasks for this course
applied what you have learned in this course to other courses
discussed what you are learning with the instructor?

A site license for Flashlight has been purchased for all CU faculty and instructional staff. You can get a user's manual from UCD's Office of Teaching Effectiveness (address on masthead above) and you can download the entire Flashlight toolbox to your computer from CU-Virtual by making a request to Monica_Younger. ENJOY!

PAVELICH and PIZZA

Join us on Thursday, April 16 from noon-1:30, at CU-Building 14th & Larimer, Executive Programs Suite, when guest speaker Dr. Michael Pavelich from Colorado School of Mines will present Mentoring Students to Higher_Level Thinking, which includes the exciting results from their recent research. To reserve space & pizza, Ed Nuhfer.
(See back of this page for important announcements!)

BOOT CAMP FOR PROFS RETURNS!

After two years off to do Pathways summer workshops, BOOT CAMP for PROFS is back for June 14-20 in Colorado Springs. And this year we have some scholarship funds to send a number of UCD folks. The YUMPS Group is especially encouraged to apply. We stay there in dorms for the week, and do one of the most beneficial development weeks in anyone's career. It's beneficial, and a great time— a real hoot!! To join us, register with Ed Nuhfer.

Technology Development/Use Survey

A WHOPPING THANKS to those who completed this monster. We know it was a chore. If you are a tenured faculty or tenure-track faculty, and you did not receive a survey, it is because Academic Affairs doesn't have you on their current listing. Let me know by replying to 556-4915 or to Ed Nuhfer, and we'll spruce up their list--and send you a survey. " GOLDEN III" at "THE SPRINGS" The third and final Pathways to Learning Teaching with Technology event will be held July 20-22 at CU_The Springs. We have had splendid participation in our past two years with this event at the Colorado School of Mines. This year, the presence of the new technology building and the shiny new dorm facilities at The Springs led us to host this CU event within a CU institution. The Health Sciences Center will be handling registration, and more information on specifics will follow. This year, we will have a slightly different format. The program will include expanded abstracts of up to 2000 words, and this will be followed by a reviewed published Proceedings of the Pathways Project with final papers due in about November of 1998. We encourage presenters from the past two Pathways Conferences to submit papers, as well as presenters at this upcoming third conference. This third year, the theme is "From Best Practices through Assessment." Thus we particularly seek projects that involve some assessment of results in the use of Instructional Technology. For those of you with ongoing classes that use some of the new "bells & whistles," this is a SPLENDID opportunity to make use of the FLASHLIGHT TOOLBOX, assess your course, and present results both orally and as a reviewed paper in a proceedings.

Back to Index