 |
Photo by Reed Hutchinson |
“I tell students to get machines to do what they want them to do,” says Nicholas Gessler, a lecturer in the Human Complex Systems Program, his face bathed in computer-generated Maori-like facial tattoos. Gessler is one of four winners of the 2006 Brian P. Copenhaver Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology.
|
Tech tools bring new dimension to learning
BY Ajay Singh
Today Staff Writer
Computers make superb teaching aids. But who knew that these technological powerhouses can also help sharpen what is widely regarded as a uniquely human faculty — reason?
In a multidisciplinary course called “Artificial Life, Culture and Evolution,” Nicholas Gessler, a lecturer in the newly launched Human Complex Systems Program, teaches students how to describe, understand and explain social complexities computationally.
The innovative project enables students to “reason with technology” — a phrase Gessler coined to express what many of his colleagues once told him was impossible: teaching students to develop and experiment with their own computer models of social interaction to understand complexity.
“Computers are very good at understanding complexity — one thing humans have great difficulty comprehending,” explained Gessler, one of four UCLA faculty members honored with the 2006 Brian P. Copenhaver Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology.
The College of Letters and Science presents this annual award, named in recognition of the former provost’s leadership, to honor faculty who are improving undergraduate education with the innovative use of technology. Winners for the 2006 award were selected from among 32 nominees by the Faculty Committee on Educational Technology and previous winners.
Gessler also teaches “artificial culture,” in which students use computer language to simulate and critically assess aspects of cultural complexity. This involves developing applications in which the results of numerous individual perceptions, beliefs and behaviors
can produce counterintuitive global outcomes.
For example, Gessler’s students have explored how different preferences for the ethnicity, status, wealth and/or education of neighbors can lead to mixed or segregated demographic patterns that are far from intuitively obvious.
Such programs “offer enormous possibilities for good science and public policy,” said Gessler. “Usually, other people’s software defines what we do with computers. I tell students to take control of the machines and get them to do what they want them to do.”
Computers are rapidly revolutionizing disciplines. Not long ago, biology students used pens, papers and spreadsheets to analyze animal behavior — a tedious process that has been more or less discarded at UCLA, thanks to Daniel Blumstein, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Blumstein won this year’s Copenhaver Award for co-developing software that enables the collection and analysis of animal behavior data. Along with Senior Research Associate Janice Daniel, he developed JWatcher, a program that not only quantifies animal behavior but “walks students through the process by which they come up with a focused idea to test quantitative hypotheses and then ask even more sophisticated questions in the field,” explained Blumstein.
Are squirrels warier than deer? Using JWatcher, students can compare video footage of foraging squirrels and deer, evaluating the amount of time each allocates to vigilance. JWatcher is used worldwide in research and teaching in such diverse fields as neuroscience, comparative psychology and veterinary medicine.
For Todd Presner, another 2006 Copenhaver Award winner, explaining urban complexities to students was a challenge. So the assistant professor of Germanic Languages and Jewish Studies developed “Hypermedia Berlin,” an animated, Web-based textbook and modular-mapping tool that highlights the German city’s rich architectural, historical and cultural heritage.
Using archival-quality maps, Hypermedia Berlin offers a 360-degree view of the city that allows students to live there virtually in any era dating back to 1237. Further, the students write about their experiences and collaborate on Web projects, thereby “not just digesting knowledge but producing it,” said Presner.
Arlene Russell, senior lecturer in chemistry and biochemistry, won the Copenhaver Award for co-developing the Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), a set of network tools that manages the online evaluation of written work by students in a way that helps them develop their writing and peer-reviewing and critical-thinking skills.
Meant initially for chemistry students at UCLA, the CPR has been used by more than 100,000 students in some 2,000 courses at 500-plus institutions since it was first used in 1997. It’s widely popular, said Russell, because the CPR “addresses concepts that any instructor has in teaching a course.”
To read interviews with the winners, go to www.college.ucla.edu/edtech/bpcaward.htm.
|
