March 6, 1998
The Stanford Learning Lab's primary mission is to improve
the undergraduate learning experience at Stanford. The lab explores
the use of pedagogically-informed technological solutions
to learning problems in Stanford courses. Studies include design
and development of curricula and software, assistance to faculty
and students in the delivery of courses and extensive evaluation.
The large lecture course, which combines lectures to large audiences
with small discussion groups taught by junior instructors, has
long posed motivational, curricular, and learning problems to
faculty and students. In this type of course, coordination of
discussions and lectures is difficult, communication/ collaboration
among students and faculty is lacking, and students typically
are not motivated to learn.
The Learning Lab's first project addressed these problems. A
course web site was developed that provided a virtual center
to the course--everything was available at the web site. One
design goal was to infuse a sense of community by supporting
many types of interactions among the lecturers and students. The
site provided a set of discussion forums, an assignment distribution
and collection system that feed all documents into individual
and course portfolios, and an alerting and announcement system. Design
decisions, rationale, and lessons learned in building and deploying
this web site will be shared in our presentation.
The course was evaluated by a team of graduate students who made
use questionnaires, interviews, video interaction analysis of
on-line and face-to-face discussion, peer review, and extensive
analysis of web logs.
Analysis of findings is currently in progress.
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Charles Kerns is the Associate Director for Curriculum Deployment
in Stanford's Learning
Lab. Most recently, he managed development and delivery of
a curriculum prototype, Stanford University's revamped freshman
"Introduction to Humanities" course, which used a web-based
instructional support system. Previously as Director of Stanford's
Curriculum Development Lab he assisted faculty in the use of
off-the-shelf software in courses, especially those studying
or collecting visual data. He also designed and tested the Flexible
Classroom, in a reconfigurable learning space that supports
many learning and teaching styles. The room has laptops, lightweight
moveable furniture, bright rear-screen projection and a grid
of network connections throughout the room.
From 1989 to 1994 he was a Research Engineer at Apple's
Advanced Technology Group. Projects that he managed included
testing networked collaborative science labs for middle school
students, developing new protocols for student documentation
of field trips using hand held devices and cameras, and studying
multimedia kiosks which linked student prepared "baseball
cards" to multimedia materials delivered at the kiosk. Before
1989, Mr.Kerns authored computer-based curriculum materials at
Stanford University's Courseware Authoring Tools Project. His
work included a theater staging program, jet and steam engine
simulations, and tutorials in biology. He is a graduate of the
Interactive Educational Technology Program of Stanford University.
George Toye is both Associate Director for Technology Development
at the Stanford Learning Laboratory and Associate Director at
the Stanford Center for Design
Research. His current research interests include internet
based collaboration technologies, integrated learning and knowledge
management. At Stanford, he has developed prototype electronic
notebook software, called PENS (Personal Electronic Notebook
with Sharing), that has been used by over 250 students in Mechanical
Engineering and English departments. PENS technology was also
utilized in a collaboration project with MIT, called "Shakespeare
on the Web".
George is a mechanical engineer by education and professionally
licensed to practice in California. Ultra-reliable mechatronic
systems is one of his core design interests. Before coming
to Stanford, he has been involved in a diversity of projects
that include modeling and simulation studies of the Three-Mile-Island
nuclear power plant, development of computer based training simulators
for nuclear power plant operators, optimization of pulp and paper
mill operation, design of the first digital controller of feedwater
flow control in nuclear power plant, and ultra-reliable control
of robots that assist quadriplegic, control system for dynamic
pricing of electricity in residential applications, porting Sun's
display postscript software to Microsoft-IBM OS/2 presentation
manager. George received his B.S. and M.S. from U.C. Berkeley
and his Ph.D. from Stanford.
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