Fall 2019 Report
Fall 2019 saw 12,576 students and faculty use Teaching and Learning with Technology’s Media Commons, Maker Commons, and Immersive Experiences Lab initiatives across the Commonwealth. Much of this use was focused in 289 classes in nearly every discipline offered at Penn State. To facilitate these interactions outside of University Park, traveling consultants visited campuses 72 times to offer instruction and consultations.
One Button Studios at 18 campuses helped students and faculty create 10,351 academic videos, comprising over 15.9 straight days of video. Students across the Commonwealth also created 4,228 3D prints in pursuit of their own curiosity and course work.
The creation of wildlife-related Learn Now-style videos was the focus of a project from Margaret Brittingham’s Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences 497 at University Park. These 2 – 6 minute videos, created by students in groups of three, told the story of local wildlife neighbors, from habitat management, to identification challenges, aging techniques, and more.
Laura Rotunno expanded a very successful controversy-focused video project in her ENGL 137H at Altoona to her colleague, Bill White’s section of the course, doubling the number of students completing the assignment and expanding the discourse around contested issues like animal rights, marijuana legalization, student athlete pay and more.
In PSYCH 496 at Berks, psychology majors are challenged to present their work and research in a different type of medium: video. Students work individually to create a resume video showcasing why they pursued the psychology field, reflecting upon what they have learned from their research and internships, and explaining where they would like their career to go in the future. Students worked with Media Commons and used iMovie to complete this project.
Immersive viewing assignments continued to expand into new classrooms in the Fall semester. At Greater Allegheny, Rosemary Martinelli used 360º videos to expose her students in COMM 260 to newsrooms, press conferences, backlots and more while in her COMM 370 course, students developing a marketing plan for a local non-profit focused on music education for Autistic youth leveraged 360º content to build empathy through Autism simulations.
Meanwhile, in his PT 290 course at Mont Alto, Daniel Dandy allowed his pre-clinical students to observe a mock-patient intake and consultation using Oculus Go headsets, then reflect on the principles of their course that could have altered and improved the interaction. His goal is preparing students by ironing out anxieties about the clinic before placement.
Events at New Kensington included a kick off to the semester overview of IMEX Lab resources available on campus as well as a prominent place in the Technology Showcase, featuring both immersive tools as well as the 3D scanning roadshow’s first offering outside of University Park. The latter was of such impact that it made the Chancellor’s semester newsletter.
Students in Cyndy Walton’s BUSAD 822 class, both at the Penn State Great Valley and Penn State Berks campuses, were challenged to use Adobe Spark Pages to create attractive web pages for their small businesses. This is a class of entrepreneurial students, and the goal in using Spark is to encourage them to make and use their webpage, and webpage making skills, for future business endeavors.
Students from Kevin Bowley’s METEO 440W class at University Park were tasked with creating rain gauges in Tinkercad and 3D printing their creations in the Maker Commons. Students then tested the accuracy of their creations.
The Media Commons website seems to be undergoing a transformation from a largely inward-facing tool to a global resource for information about video and audio production. While usage within the university audience has remained stable, increased visitation from literally everywhere else continues growing rapidly. The number of unique visitors reached 149,336, up a respectable 4% from the Fall 2018 semester. Just 21,323 users were within the Commonwealth, allowing for the rough inference that 14% of all traffic was from in the University. This is down 1% from Fall 2018. Of the other 85% of website traffic, almost ¾ originated in the United States while 27% of visits originated outside of the country. Within Pennsylvania, 15,047 users visited our homepage while 3,037 users visited the Free Media Library.