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Photo by Reed Hutchinson UCLA
Photographic Services
Assistant Professor Tim Groeling (right), one of four
winners of the Brian P. Copenhaver Award for Innovation in
Teaching with Technology, works on a video with student David
Zhang for a class on the art of political persuasion.
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Prize honors teaching with technology
BY AJAY SINGH
UCLA Today Staff
Dick Cheney is sitting in an airplane, gazing pensively out a window.
“He’s thinking about today’s tough issues,”
a voiceover announces. Moments later, the vice president is sitting
behind a desk, talking about Social Security reform. Booms the voiceover:
“Cheney is planning to keep America’s future secure.”
A Bush-Cheney campaign commercial? Sort of. The minute-long video
film, made by four UCLA communication studies majors studying the
art of political persuasion, is an example of how technology is
transforming student learning across campus. While the films are
driven by technology, surprisingly, many of Tim Groeling’s
students have no filmmaking experience at all.
“It’s a case of learning by doing,” said Groeling,
assistant professor of speech and communication studies, who is
overseeing the production of political campaign films as part of
the students’ assignments. “You couldn’t do this
10 years ago, or even five years ago.”
Such technological innovations that enrich education are revolutionizing
teaching in many different disciplines, thanks to faculty like Groeling,
one of four instructors who have won the 2004 Brian P. Copenhaver
Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology, awarded by the
UCLA College. This year’s recipients also include Russell
Poldrack and Stephen Engel of psychology and Kimberly Jansma of
French and Francophone studies.
Poldrack, an assistant professor, shares the award with Engel,
an associate professor, for designing and implementing research
experiments using functional MRI to measure brain activity.
Psychologists have been grappling with cognitive processes since
at least the 1950s, but it wasn’t until advanced, noninvasive
brain-imaging techniques were developed in the early 1990s that
it became possible to understand, for example, how the brain processes
language.
In Poldrack’s and Engel’s classes, psychology undergraduates
use complicated software packages to measure and examine the patterns
of human brain activity in the laboratory. “This is the future
of psychology,” said Poldrack.
“Our students end up learning more than they would have
otherwise,” said Engel. “An analogy would be when radio
telescopes provided a wholly different way of seeing the universe.”
Jansma’s quest to use technology to enhance learning partly
began with a question: “What are the symbols of French culture
that students should know about?” she asked. In response,
she and some colleagues and students worked for three years to design
multimedia modules offering authentic and culturally enriching material
based on pedagogical principles.
Take France’s national anthem, which is included in the
modules. “Even the French don’t know many of the words
in their national anthem,” Jansma said, chuckling. Now her
students can hear them all — sung in a romantic or militaristic
vein. There’s even a reggae version. Jansma also played a
vital role in making the modules available through the UC-wide Electronic
Language Media Archive.
Judith L. Smith, vice provost of the UCLA College, said the awards,
which will be presented April 5, not only honor creative innovators
but also celebrate a community of instructors with a shared interest
in being on the leading edge of technology in undergraduate teaching.
This year, the Faculty Committee on Educational Technology selected
the recipients from 23 faculty nominees from 14 departments.
“We are thankful to Richard and Barbara Bergman, who have
endowed the Brian P. Copenhaver Award, for their generous and thoughtful
support,” Smith said. Find out what the 2003 nominees —
and soon, 2004 nominees — have to say about their teaching
and use of technology at www.college.ucla.edu/edtech/using_iwi.htm.
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