Hostos Project

Our Objectives

Hostos Community College already has in place a system that assists the implementation of innovative technology in classroom and online learning. The academic and pedagogical objectives that participation in the pilot project will advance are:

• Expand instructional technology infrastructure and services to support and manage the creation and distribution of audio and video podcasts for pedagogical practices across all curricula.

   

• Facilitate the creation and dissemination of basic podcasts of course content in a manner that is effortless and friendly to instructors, does not interfere with their accustomed instructional practices, and increases student engagement. 

   

• Support and encourage faculty to expose students to innovative practices that bring into use rich media—voice recordings, images, video, sound effects, animations, etc—thereby taking them beyond traditional assignments.

   

• Help faculty incorporate creative student assignments which will lead to an increase in student participation, collaboration, and engagement in the learning process

   

• Hostos continually faces—and rises to—the challenge of exploring new technologies to fulfill college-wide academic objectives.  In recent years we have tested different software and hardware that provide and enhance podcasting capabilities.  Although our initial attempts at creating podcasts have been successful using these resources (content materials for Biology, Education, and Psychology classes), the process of creating a podcast is still fairly complex, especially as an independent effort by a college as small as Hostos.  As a result faculty adaptation has been slow. In order to expedite the integration of podcasts at Hostos, we need to find a system that not only meets complex technical needs, but also one that provides a friendly environment for the faculty and student users.

   

Areas to be addressed through participation in the Rich Media project

• Establishment of standard procedures for the design, delivery and sharing of new instructional technologies. The Office of Instructional Technology at Hostos has had continued success, as reported in the PMP, in creating, adopting, and implementing new technologies: specifically, in creating a process plan for design and implementation. We would bring this experience to the CUNY-wide discussion. Hostos has had, however, limited experience in podcasts. The Rich Media Pilot Project creates an ideal environment to learn how to adapt our best practices to this highly technical new endeavor.  Contributing to the development and exploration of such best practices will allow us to gain valuable experience from what has already been done in other campuses, and have been successful.

   

• A second area is faculty support.Starting from the faculty idea to create a podcast we need to clarify how support staff will provide guidance, training, support materials and tutorials that will ensure the creation and distribution of a podcast. The Office of Instructional Technology at Hostos is directed by a member of the faculty (full professor of mathematics), and staffed by one administrator, one CLT, three staffers, and two part-time college assistants. The resources of the OIT will be committed to support the faculty and to the entire Pilot Project.

• The establishment of a repository of best practices for the use of rich media in online course content.Examples of topics posted would be matching software with intended production goals and proper use of hardware devices.  Included in the repository, which will be posted in the iTunesU site, would be at least one lesson from each of the five disciplines represented by faculty participants in this project.

• Hostos projects will involve creating podcast lessons for courses in Education, English, ESL in Content Areas, Sociology, Biology and Medieval Literature.  Some of the lessons that will be captured are related to evolution, learning styles and human expressions.

Rich Media to be used in our projects

• Different media will be used and incorporated into the development of the project.In the initial development process faculty will use PowerPoint, video clips, audio, graphics and text.  In the early stages of the development process faculty will work with tech support on deciding which media choices are best in terms of suitability and user-friendliness in order to reach the production goals that they envision.

• Tegrity and/or Camtasia will be used for rich media capture and to compose the final presentations.

Development and usage

• The presentation pieces from each participating faculty will be created with OIT technical support and in a collaborative effort with all the participating faculty, sharing content, concept and best practices ideas.

• Most of projects will involve capturing lessons that will be available to students.  Some faculty have stated that they would like to make their production available to other faculty to use or on a website available to anyone interested in the subject.

• All of the pieces cover topics included in the syllabus for the courses that the participating faculty are teaching.The rich media lessons produced in this project may be used as motivation exercises or as an illustrative device, assisting in delivery of lesson objectives.

Experience with the rich media technologies to be used

• We have been using Tegrity and Camtasia to capture record lessons and presentations.Tegrity has proved to be easy, convenient, powerful and effective for faculty to post a rich media lessons online or in Blackboard quickly. Camtasia is a very powerful program which faculty can use when they want to spend more time and take full control of the production and post-production process in creating a more personalized multimedia presentation.