How Technology Enhances Teaching and Learning Essay

Students at the Owen School’s Strategy in the New Economy seminar enter a classroom that looks like any other, except that a projection system and video screen have been installed. Their professor announces that today they will be joined by a guest lecturer, a senior VP from a Fortune 500 corporation. What makes this guest lecture unique is that the students are sitting in a Nashville classroom but the guest lecturer is speaking from his home office in Estonia, via video technology. This is an example of one of the creative ways faculty members at Vanderbilt are using technology to enhance their students’ learning. In the scene described above, Owen Professor David Owens, along with Professor Bart Victor, use video conferencing to bring an international guest speaker to their organization studies seminar. Across the University, faculty are using technology to help students master subjects from elementary and secondary school instruction to bioengineering to structural equation modeling. They are developing their own skills while making students comfortable with the technology that will help them be successful after leaving Vanderbilt. As they introduce more and more technology into the classroom, faculty are finding it raises the quality of class discussion and involves students much more deeply in their own education. The employers of today are looking for the very best employees to fill positions in their organizations. The desired traits of an employee used to be centered on experience. The more experienced an applicant was, the more likely they were to get the job for which they applied. Today, employers are not only looking for experience, they are also looking for a person that has a degree in the field. Employers have begun to realize the importance of strategic thinking and leadership skills that an education affords. Because of this shift in desired qualifications, modern adults have been unable to adequately compete in the job market. The aforementioned time and responsibility constraints, as well as the fact that they have been focused on building the experience that was previously desired has put adults at a disadvantage. Being able to obtain a college degree via technology-based education methods has greatly reduced that disadvantage. It has also had an impact on their ability to execu te the functions of the position when the  job is obtained. For this issue of the Teaching Forum, we spoke to four Vanderbilt faculty members, each of whom is using technology to enhance their students’ learning. Owen Management Professor David Owens uses videoconference links to bring in guest speakers and incorporates video and audio technology into most of his lectures. Psychology Professor Andy Tomarken teaches methods and statistics courses in a computer lab, allowing him to integrate traditional lecture with demonstration projects using the methods he is teaching. Peabody Professor Margaret Smithey guides her students in the preparation of multi-media classroom presentations including clips from the Internet, video, audio, and news archive footage. She has opened an e-conference for interns from her courses who want to stay in touch with their fellow students and professors, and she maintains a library of digitized video clips, taken from live and simulated classroom settings. Department of Biomedical Engineering Chair Tom Harris directs a new NSF-funded center focused on developing technology-based bioengineering teaching materials and curriculum. He is collaborating with several partners, including Peabody Professor John Bransford. What Technology Brings to the Classroom What these faculty members have in common, and what they share with many others across the campus, is a commitment to exploring the opportunities technology offers for improving the quality of classroom instruction. Professor Margaret Smithey describes how technology allows her to capitalize on unexpected turns in class discussion. â€Å"Yesterday afternoon my students had specific questions about classroom management, so at that point I said ‘let’s look at these scenarios that I have on a CD.’ The CD brought to life  their questions. I think seeing actual classroom scenarios related to their questions makes learning come alive for my students better than if I gave my opinion or told a story.† Professor Tomarken, who teaches advanced statistics and methods classes, says incorporating computers into class discussion can also make extremely difficult courses much easier for students to grasp. One of the challenges of teaching advanced statistics to students who often lack a strong math background is â€Å"translating theoretical stuff into a workable set of concrete analysis, â€Å"Tomarken says. â€Å"I find that it’s really important to talk about different types of models from the point of view of specific problems and that’s really where the ability in class to have stuff be on the projection system is critical.† Access to a computer-equipped classroom can also be important. â€Å"I like to get students interacting with software in the class, â€Å"Tomarken says. â€Å"I find if you just send them home to do it on their own, they run into real problems. When they follow me, typing in on their own computers, that facilitates their learning.† Last semester, Tomarken also faced another problem – the lack of a good textbook for teaching structural equation modeling to social science students – that he solved using technology. â€Å"There is no book that is perfect, that really is appropriate, for this class. There are either books that tend to be too easy or too hard or just not broad enough in scope.† Tomarken solved this problem using the Prometheus system, by placing his lecture notes on the web. This not only replaced the textbook, it allowed students to spend more time focused on the lecture and less time copying formulas from the board. â€Å"I told them, you don’t have to write anything, it’s all on the web, just listen.† Technology Changes Teaching, Not Teachers While all the faculty members interviewed for this article believe technology has great power to influence their teaching, no one feels it fundamentally changes them as teachers.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"I’ve always wanted a very interactive classroom,† Smithey says. â€Å"I want it to be very theoretically based and I know exactly what I want my students to learn. I think technology has improved the quality of what we can access.† Smithey also emphasizes the importance of technology being used for a clear purpose. â€Å"I never want to use technology just for technology’s sake but to support my students’ learning.† Professor Tomarken feels that integrating statistical software and visual models into his courses means he comes into class â€Å"better prepared† but doesn’t think it changes him as a teacher. â€Å"I usually am pretty interactive with the class.† He does, however, credit the accessibility of computers with reducing the â€Å"passivity factor† in his classes. â€Å"They have to type things in, they have to click on the mouse. I think it’s pretty lively in a lot of ways.† How Technology Enhances Learning Professor Owens, Smithey, and Tomarken all feel they can see technology enhancing their students’ learning, particularly when students use the technology directly. David Owens requires his students to do at least one group project entirely over the Internet. â€Å"They’re not allowed to do it face to face,† Owens says. â€Å"They aren’t allowed to say, â€Å"I’ll call you tonight.’ They have to do everything virtually. In this project, they have a lot to figure out about group process, what things are done best face to face, what things are done best asynchronously, what things are done best in an anonymous chat room. And they figure it out. It’s†¦so much more powerful than my sitting up there saying â€Å"the group process models show†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Professor Smithey requires her students to complete a series of computer assignments from a course CD that she has developed. Smithey values these pre-class assignments because they save classroom time and improve the quality of class discussion. â€Å"When the students complete their CD assignments, they come to class with a common context. We are able then to discuss particular class dilemmas or teaching dilemmas that everyone has watched, analyzed and reflected upon. So, we can start there and go with our class discussion rather than having to take 20 or 30 minutes of class  showing the video and asking the specific questions. They’ve done all that in the computer lab.† Technology can also improve the dynamics between teachers and students, often leading to enhanced learning. â€Å"Students can see you’re doing a lot of work to further their education and I think that there’s an appreciation factor that ultimately contributes to their own motivation,† Tomarken says. Students who may question how much their professors care about teaching can also see evidence of the time and trouble taken to prepare for class. â€Å"I think sometimes graduate students, or possibly even undergraduate students, go in with the mindset that this teachers doesn’t really give a darn about teaching and I think using technology is a real way of communicating ‘yes I do,’† Tomarken adds. Technology Brings Challenges Introducing technology into the classroom can also bring a set of challenges. First among them is finding the time needed to incorporate new technology into courses. Professor Smithey not only uses the technology herself but also requires her student to produces multi-media projects during the semester. â€Å"If you’re going to ask the students to do such a challenging project, you have to be available to them. You have to have support. There has to be some relief time to learn about the technology. You don’t have to know the details of technology but you have to understand it well enough that you can envision what your students need to know about using it.† The technology itself can fail, leaving an instructor to resort to back up. Technology also changes rapidly and it takes time to keep up with technical changes that influence how equipment and software perform in the classroom. Professor Owens points to a digitized news show he purchased from CBS: â€Å"I have the CD in here and one of my fears is that someday I’ll pop it in the classroom and it won’t work. It’s a constant upkeep.† Professors Tomarken and Owens also note that having computers in the classroom can distract students from the class itself. Teaching in a  classroom equipped with computers â€Å"actually introduces the potential for students to be doing something on the computer that doesn’t have anything to do with the class,† Tomarken says. â€Å"I occasionally go parading around and check out what people are up to,† Owens says. Some people take notes on the computer, some people try to get the lecture slides up on their screen so they can see them up close, some people do e-mail, surf the net, do whatever.† He agrees with Tomarken that students’ personal use of computers in class is an issue that needs to be examined, â€Å"through whether that’s worse than day dreaming I don’t know.† Need for University Support Support by the University for the use of technology is also critical. Bringing technology into the classroom uses resources ranging from computers to classrooms to graduate assistants, and university wide coordination is essential for ensuring an effective learning environment for students. â€Å"One element that is essential is support in the form of graduate students to help students with technology,† Smithey says. â€Å"It is impossible for one faculty member to support an entire class of students in creating innovative ways to use technology. You can continue to use CDs that you have in your own library, you can continue to connect to the Internet from the classroom, but additional faculty support is necessary to take technology use to the next level of requiring our students to use technology in a way that prepares them for using it in the future classrooms.† Physical facilities are also important. Keeping the technology in working order is crucial but so are other issues such as ensuring a classroom’s physical design supports the best possible use of the technology. â€Å"You have a very real problem if you have big nice screens and nice projectors but the screen is in front of the white board; if you want to write and have slides at the same time, it’s difficult if not impossible,† Owens says. Moving Forward with Technology As the University moves towards an increasingly coordinated approach to the use of technology, several efforts  are underway at Vanderbilt to determine just how technology can be used to most effectively enhance learning. One effort is the VaNTH Center in Bioengineering Educational Technologies, a joint effort between Vanderbilt, Harvard University, University of Texas, and Northwestern. Among is several priorities is research into the value of technology, such as web-based education for teaching bioengineering. The research team is collaborating with specialists from the Learning Technology Center at Peabody and with the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS). â€Å"It’s recognized that bioengineering teaching materials are not very well developed and there is not a broad consensus on bioengineering curricula,† says Thomas R. Harris, chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. â€Å"We need a new way to look at bioengineering education. Why not use the modern methods that we’ve been developing in the learning sciences and learning technology, and really take a look at this from an entirely new point of view?† The result is a $10 million NSF grant for Vanderbilt and its academic partners to develop a new curriculum in bioengineering, one that utilizes fundamental principles of learning science and â€Å"is driven by technology, web based technology, simulations, slides, interactive systems, and tutoring and homework systems,† Harris says. Although the grant focuses on the development of bioengineering, the collaboration between Peabody’s Learning Technology Center and the Department of Biomedical Engineering has the potential to benefit students and faculty in all areas of the university because part of the research involves determining exactly which technological tools best enhance learning. â€Å"One of the things of concern is that in higher education a lot of people are very critical of technology as being just a waste of time and money and so forth. Well, is that right or not?† Harris asks. â€Å"If a particular piece of learning technology is no good, we’re going to be happy to identify it as such. We’d like to be able to guide the decision of  educators and administrators about what is effective and what is not. And if you can begin to show major advances for some of this, then the justification for the additional investment is there.† Another potential benefit this research offers is the opportunity to develop a much better understanding of the kinds of resources required for faculty to use technology in ways that consistently enhance student learning. â€Å"There could be a small investment that could dramatically increase our effectiveness if we do it right,† Harris says. â€Å"That’s the key. We have to know how to do it and what to do. So if we get in and do research in this center and we find out some of the mistakes and things you ought to avoid, I think that you could tailor a system that could dramatically increase effectiveness and make faculty more effective.† Harris believes that effective use of technology has the potential to transform the student-teacher relationship at the undergraduate level. â€Å"I think we’re going to see a revolution in the interaction between students and teachers,† he says. â€Å"I think the relationship to undergraduates is going to become more like the relationship to graduate students in the sense of more direct personal interaction. By using technology we’re going to be able to use the power of the person, who they are and what they are. The teacher’s inspirational role is going to become much greater.† Like Harris, Professors Owens, Smithey and Tomarken also see new opportunities to use technology in the classroom. David Owens wants to pursue his interest in virtual teams by developing a course run exclusively on the Internet. Andy Tomarken plans to continue integrating computer interaction with more traditional classroom activities. Margaret Smithey would like to use videoconference links to allow her students to observe a live classroom setting and then interview the teacher afterward, all via video. In each case, these faculty members, like many others across the University, will continue to use technology to challenge both themselves and their students.

Controversy Behind Qatar 2022 Bid

Qatar 2022 On 2 December 2010 it was announced that Qatar would host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, after the FIFA Executive Committee voted in a secret ballot in Zurich. The government of Qatar’s successful proposal bid defeated four other candidates to stage the 2022 edition of the world’s greatest sporting event: Australia, Korea Republic, Japan and the United States of America. Qatar, with a population of 1. 69 million people will be the first Arab state to host the World Cup. Consequently, Qatar is the smallest nation, both by relative population and by area, ever to have been awarded the tournament hosting privilege. The Qatar bid was emphasized as the only one representing the Arab World (which has never hosted a World Cup prior) and positioned their bid as an opportunity to bridge the gap between the Arab World and the West. Their hosting of the 2006 Asian Games as well as the 2011 Asian Cup proved to legitimize their capabilities of hosting the tournament. Further, its superior financial capabilities were evident in their proposals for new stadia and infrastructure. While the decision on 2 December 2010 brought delight to Qatar, it inversely brought concern and controversy in the West. A number of rival candidates, western groups and media outlets have expressed concern over the suitability of Qatar to host the event, with regard to climatic conditions, interpretations of human rights, press freedom and allegations of corruption. Climate: Winter World Cup? The World Cup is traditionally held in the northern hemisphere’s summer. During this season in Qatar, the temperature can get to 50  °C  (122  Ã‚ °F). The Qatar bid’s chief executive, Hassan al-Thawadi has attempted to quell fears of an unbearable environment by stating â€Å"heat is not and will not be an issue† and that the 2022 World Cup would benefit from â€Å"state-of-the-art air cooling technologies. † The Qatar 2022 Bid’s official site explains this: â€Å"Each of the five stadiums will harness the power of the sun’s rays to provide a cool environment for players and fans by converting solar energy into electricity that will then be used to cool both fans and players at the stadiums. When games are not taking place, the solar installations at the stadia will export energy onto the power grid. During matches, the stadia will draw energy from the grid. This is the basis for the stadiums’ carbon-neutrality. Along with the stadiums, we plan to make the cooling technologies we’ve developed available to other countries in hot climates, so that they too can host major sporting events. † This method of cooling techniques is theoretically able to reduce temperatures from 50 to 27 degrees Celsius. The bidding committee also proposes to use such cooling technologies in fan-zones, training pitches and walkways between metro stations and stadiums. However, the architect in charge of one of the venues has abandoned their project claiming that a more old-fashioned solution would be cheaper and better. Leading firm Populous, which is designing the Sports City stadium in Doha, is trying to persuade Qatari organizers to scrap plans to have air conditioning at the venue. Populous director John Barrow said the system is too expensive and â€Å"notoriously unsustainable† for the environment when used on a large scale. Given the debate on the subject, a proposal of hosting a â€Å"Winter World Cup† has arisen. Backed by the likes of Blatter and Platini, the proposal suggests for the tournament to be held in January of 2022, rather than the summer. Blatter has told reporters â€Å"Personally, now that the decision has been taken [to have the tournament in Qatar], we must play at the most adequate period to have a successful World Cup and to have a successful World Cup we have to do it when it is best for the actors which means winter. † However, Mr. Blatter has failed to provide a solution on the effect it would have on European domestic leagues which operate in this period. There is nothing in FIFA’s rules to prevent a host changing the time of year when a World Cup is played. It is only tradition that dictates this. And the FIFA executive committee has the authority to change any aspect of the World Cup after the decision is made. Worker’s Conditions Given its lack of sporting infrastructure, the Gulf state must build nine football stadiums in the next ten years- and they’ll be using primarily migrant labor (over 90% of Qatar’s workforce is made up of foreign migrant workers). Trade union activists are now lobbying FIFA to highlight what they say are poor working conditions in Qatar. International trade unionists say FIFA has the power to impose decent working standards on Qatar and will campaign for the tournament to be moved unless FIFA presses for better conditions. If Qatar is unable to support the tournament on its own, Secretary-General Jerome Valcke has suggested the tournament be shared with neighboring states, such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Alcohol and Homosexuality Qatar is not a dry country. Alcohol can currently be consumed legally in a few clubs, bars, certain hotel restaurants, and the Pearl Island by showing your passport for reporting. Hassan Abdulla al Thawadi, chief executive of the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid, said the Muslim state would also permit alcohol consumption during the event. Specific fan-zones will be established where alcohol can be bought. Though legal with a permit, drinking in public is not permitted as Qatar's legal system is based on  Sharia  law. The selection of Qatar as hosts attracted controversy, as  homosexuality  is illegal in Qatar. FIFA President  Sepp Blatter  stated that â€Å"we (FIFA) don't want any discrimination. What we want to do is open this game to everybody, and to open it to all cultures, and this is what we are doing in 2022. Corruption: Bribery Scandal Six members of Fifa’s executive committee — a quarter of the membership – were accused by Lord Treisman (Chairman of England’s bid) of â€Å"improper and unethical behaviour† with two members, Issa Hayatou, of Cameroon, and Jacques Anouma, of Ivory Coast, alleged to received $1. 5 million each in bribes from the Qatar 2022 bid in exchange for their votes. The bribery allegations against Qatar were made in evidence from  The Sunday Times  and published by the committee. As a result, in November 2010, two ExCo members,  Reynald Temarii  and  Amos Adamu, were banned for one and three years respectively. Temarii was also fined 5,000 Swiss Francs, while Adamu was fined 10,000 Swiss Francs. More corruption allegations emerged in the summer of 2011. In May, ExCo member Chuck Blazer claimed fellow members Mohammed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner offered bribes for votes in the upcoming presidential election. As a result of this scandal, Bin Hammam stood down from the June 2011 presidential election and FIFA later suspended both he and Jack Warner. Sepp Blatter stood unopposed and won the election with 186 out of 203 votes. Bin Hammam’s suspension had been met with widespread anger in the Middle East- He was subsequently banned for life in July. Warner responded to his suspension by exposing an email by Valcke in which the Secretary-General suggested Qatar had â€Å"bought† the right to host 2022 tournament. Valcke defended his statement, insisting he was referring to Qatar using financial muscle to lobby legitimately for votes. â€Å"They were a candidate with a very important budget and used it to heavily promote their bid all around the world in a very efficient manner,† he said. â€Å"I have made no reference to any purchase of votes or similar unethical behaviour. Qatar 2022's bid team said they â€Å"categorically deny† any wrongdoing, and asked for clarification from FIFA on the meaning of the Valcke e-mail. Nevertheless, the scandal has raised concerns over $10 billion of investment and development contracts related to stadiums and hotels for the World Cup in Qatar. Possibility of a Re-Vote Given the developments in corruption and bribery scandals, as well as questions concerning the Qatar’s capabilities of hosting the tournament effectively, there is a ground swell of popular support to re-hold the 2022 vote won by Qatar. Blatter has said that a FIFA inquiry into persistent and increasingly detailed claims of corruption could lead to the Executive Committee (ExCo) making the unprecedented move of rerunning the vote. Blatter also conceded that support for re-running the vote was â€Å"circulating around the world†. Such a move would be a monumental embarrassment to FIFA but that has to now be balanced with the equivalent embarrassment of more allegations leaking out.

How to Compete in India Essay

1. The political environment in India has proven to be critical to company performance for both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola India. What specific aspects of the political environment have played key roles? Could these effects have been anticipated prior to market entry? If not, could developments in the political arena have been handled better by each company? 2. Timing of entry into the Indian market brought different results for PepsiCo and Coca-Cola India. What benefits or disadvantages accrued as a result of earlier or later market entry? 3. The Indian market is enormous in terms of population and geography. How have the two companies responded to the sheer scale of operations in India in terms of product policies, promotional activities, pricing policies, and distribution arrangements? 4. â€Å"Global localization† (glocalization) is a policy that both companies have implemented successfully. Give examples for each company from the case. 5. How can Pepsi and Coke confront the issues of water use in the manufacture of their products? How can they defuse further boycotts or demonstrations against their products? How effective are activist groups like the one that launched the campaign in California? Should Coke address the group directly or just let the furor subside? 6. Which of the two companies do you think has better long term prospects for success in India? 7. What lessons can each company draw from its Indian experience as it contemplates entry into other Big Emerging Markets? 8. Comment on the decision of both Pepsi and Coke to enter the bottled water market instead of continuing to focus on their core products—carbonated beverages and cola-based drinks in particular.

Occupational Safety and Health Law Handbook Essay - 1

Occupational Safety and Health Law Handbook - Essay Example HIPAA amplified patient security with was critical towards patient security as it introduced new legislation that protect critical information such as social security number, private medical information and payment. This facilitated the cause of security and eliminated many types of frauds that plagued the industry. Another element that was emphasized in 2002 was health hazards. Hazard identification is a critical steps towards identifying risk management process. It is where individual work hazards are identified and rectified through a mitigation plan for the safety of others. Prior to 2002, there was no log of audits for hazard identifications. However after 2002, organizations were not only audited but were required by law to keep logs of information and history for the sake of safe for employees. In 2002, these processes were more refined. Organizations were required to not only develop processes for efficient use of resources OSHA Small Business > Small Business Handbook. (n.d.).  OSHA Small Business > Small Business Handbook. Retrieved August 19, 2014, from