CNDLS :: Faculty Projects and Profiles

A Living Archive

Verónica Salles-Reese, Ph.D.

For her upper-level course about daily life in colonial Peru, Professor Verónica Salles-Reese felt recreating the archival experience was crucial to understanding ancient cultures. She amassed documents and artifacts from her own trips to archives in South America and hoped CNDLS could help her facilitate student work with original texts and images online.

Analyzing Adolescent Diabetes (Archived)

Clarissa Holmes, Ph.D., Erika Swift, Ph.D.

When Drs. Holmes and Swift were writing their grant proposal for The Diabetes Adolescent Research Project, they turned to CNDLS statistician Dr. Rusan Chen to support them in the use of statistical analysis packages and the data analysis itself. Ultimately, they received the grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue a five-year longitudinal study that evaluates the role of memory and learning in diabetes self-care skills in adolescents, ages 10 to 17. CNDLS helped the faculty members analyze the data they collected between 2000 and 2005.

Case Study Method

Sandeep Dahiya, Ph.D.

Puzzled by his students' ability to listen intently during class, yet fail to comprehend concepts or be able to apply them later, Dr. Dahiya redesigned his multi-section Advanced Financial Management course to be completely based on the case study method. By spending class time with students reasoning through a series of situational cases in the business world, Dr. Dahiya has found a way to actively engage them in the real work of the discipline from day one.

Civic Engagement and Education (Archived)

Heather Voke, Ph.D.

Civic Engagement in Education originated from the idea of an undergraduate student, Sabrina Karim: to be effective in youth community leadership positions, students need opportunities to learn theoretical knowledge but they must also learn how to integrate this knowledge with real life experiences. She found a Georgetown faculty member, Dr. Heather Voke, and together they developed a course in which Georgetown students combined classroom instruction on youth civic engagement with direct experiences coaching teams of students in a local high school.

Constructing Criticism (Archived)

Karen E. Breiner-Sanders, Ph.D.

In her course on Spanish language cinema, Professor Breiner-Sanders wanted to find new and creative ways to engage her students in film analysis and criticism. Based on her goals to sharpen students' critical analysis and oral presentation skills, CNDLS introduced her to the Poster Tool, which was an online application designed for users to easily create online web presentations.

De Colores: Written Feedback and Spanish Language Learning

Maite Camblor-Portilla, Ph.D.

Maite Camblor-Portilla set out to investigate whether exposure to foreign language input via different types of written feedback has a differential effect on learners' immediate and delayed written production of the uses of the Spanish noun-adjective agreement, when feedback is offered within a cognitive, attentional framework.

Discerning Moral Agency (Archived)

Dan Davis, Ph.D., Carol Taylor, Ph.D.

In their course in clinical ethics, Professor Dan Davis and Sister Carol Taylor (Director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics) felt it was crucial to improve their assessment of students' abilities to reason through ethically challenging medical situations. The traditional small group and case write-up methods used to determine moral agency, Davis believed, insufficiently measured the problem-solving and reasoning processes that students must employ in authentic care-giving situations.

Dispatches from Abroad

Nate Hultman, Ph.D.

Generated by the dual goals of moving the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Gateway course away from lecture format toward a case-based approach and of better integrating study abroad experiences within the curriculum, Dr. Hultman is creating a classroom environment where students learn about relevant topics through the real-world experiences of their fellow STIA students.

Diversity Education Project: Clinical Communication in Spanish for Nurses

Jean Kelley, Ph.D., APRN, BC (FNP), M. Ignacia Klopf, M.S.

Georgetown University's NHS was awarded a five-year Human Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) grant to implement the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) and Nurse Midwifery Diversity Education Project. The Clinical Communication in Spanish for Nurses Program, a segment of the Diversity Education Project, integrates nursing and technology for participants to develop their listening and speaking skills in a second language both inside and outside the classroom.

Dolphin Data

Janet Mann, Ph.D.

Begun in 1982 in Shark Bay, Western Australia, Georgetown's Dr. Janet Mann leads the second longest running dolphin study in the world, which investigates questions about dolphin calf development, female reproduction, genetics, ecology and behavior. CNDLS helped Dr. Mann to assemble, organize, and analyze her data. The database CNDLS created now consists of over 870 animals, including 80 calves born to 50 females who have been observed from birth to weaning for over 1750 hours.

Filming for Social Justice

Bernard Cook, Ph.D.

In his course Social Justice Documentary Video, Dr. Cook engages students in the art of video production in order to enable them to reach one of his intended learning goals -- developing critical arguments about history and culture in creative ways. By involving students in the entire process -- from archival and original research to producing, filming and editing the film -- Cook believes students gain unique skills, such as the ability to create visual evidence to support an argument.

Inclusive Nursing

Edilma L Yearwood, Ph.D.

Given that her work in mental illness had always brought issues of diversity to the fore in the classroom, Dr. Edilma Yearwood, Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies (SNHS) approached the week-long Inclusive Teaching and Learning (IT&L) Seminar as a way to meet like-minded people at the university with whom she could connect and establish ongoing relationships. She left the seminar re-energized and armed with materials and resources she was determined to share with others in her department.

Intensifying Italian

Fulvia Musti, Ph.D.

For her introductory intensive Italian course, Dr. Fulvia Musti hoped to move beyond the typical listening comprehension activities based on audio-taped dialogues and textbook exercises. She turned to CNDLS to help her integrate authentic sources and cultural stimuli in the classroom.

Interacting with the Medical Humanities (Archived)

Caroline Wellbery, M.D., Ph.D.

Poetry, literature, visual and multimedia arts might seem to take a back seat to science in medical teaching, yet Dr. Caroline Wellbery believes that by taking a closer look at the liberal arts and creative representations of the body, doctors-in-training can broaden their understanding of medical practice. After participating in the CNDLS Faculty Colloquium in 2004, Dr. Wellbery developed a website to help medical students learn about the patient-doctor relationship through the arts.

Jazz Combos (Archived)

José Bowen, Ph.D.

When over 150 students registered for his Jazz History course, former Georgetown University Professor José Bowen wanted to preserve the course's substance and still accommodate the large number of students by adding interactive elements. CNDLS helped Bowen reshape his course to ensure the key concepts remained meaningful by engaging selected students as small groups discussion leaders and enabling easy access to the course audio files.

Microbes and the Non-Major

Heidi Elmendorf, Ph.D.

After years of designing and redesigning her introductory biology course for non-majors in order to better engage non-science students in science, Heidi Elmendorf had turned to Blackboard as the latest in a series of innovations. She hoped to draw in her liberal arts students by getting them to engage with the material before class to be able to participate more fully in class discussion.

Online Pediatric Training

Wolfgang Rennert, M.D., D.M.Sc., DTM&H

While medical students usually know a lot about sophisticated imaging studies and exotic lab tests, they often don't know how to approach a patient, make a clinical diagnosis, and come to a sensible differential diagnostic hypothesis. With the help of CNDLS, Dr. Wolfgang Rennert designed a website on which students could work through case scenarios in order to practice their clinical thinking and decision making skills.

Passion for Politics

Mark Carl Rom, Ph.D.

Developing fresh approaches to American politics is always a challenge, but it's even tougher in an introductory graduate class of 100 students. In his course, "Introduction to the U.S. Political System," Professor Mark Rom wanted to create an intimate feeling in the large class through a focus on class discussion.

Re-Visions (Archived)

James Slevin, Ph.D.

Dr. Jim Slevin's "Literacy, Literacy Education, and Social Justice" course asked students how literacy mediates power, and how they, as students, figure in such power schematics based on their relationships to literacy and literature. As a CNDLS Fellow, Prof. Slevin translated the central issues of the course to the world of digital communication. His project posed the question: what can students gain from looking critically at new ways of writing?

Resourceful Psychology

Rachel Barr, Ph.D., Darlene Howard, Ph.D., Chandan Vaidya, Ph.D., Jennifer Woolard, Ph.D.

As part of a larger curricular project, the Psychology department wanted to find ways to support deep, recursive learning through electronic resources as students progressed through the major. CNDLS assisted the faculty and undergraduate students in developing and assessing a website that would serve as a "bridge" resource between the required "Research Methods and Statistics" course and the remaining courses in the major.

Teaching for Cura Personalis

Alisa Carse, Ph.D.

One of the challenges for Alisa Carse (Philosophy) has been to balance students' acquisition of critical philosophical knowledge with demanding significant personal engagement from each student in a time-intensive community-based learning (CBL) project. In her four-credit course, Responsibility, Resilience and Self-Respect, Dr. Carse worked with the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service (CSJ) to connect each of her students to a community-based organization, where they spent at least 30 hours working on-site throughout the semester.

Teaching Law

Diana R. Donahoe, J.D.,L.L.M

Law professor Diana Donahoe turned to CNDLS to help her design and create an online legal writing textbook. She envisioned an immersive environment that would simulate the activities of a junior partner in a law firm. By interacting with legal texts through the application (dissecting their parts, restating their arguments, and reviewing their structures), students would develop their legal writing skills.

Teaching the Teaching Assistants

Charles King, Ph.D.

Prompted by the CCRP mission to raise interaction and intensity in large core curriculum courses, the Government department embarked on a mission to determine how to best engage their students in introductory courses. They began by asking questions: How do you help students take a more active role in their learning in large courses? How do you maximize opportunities for questioning and discussion?

The World is Your Lab

Jennifer Swift, Ph.D.

Jennifer Swift knew her "Organic Chemistry II" students weren't intellectually engaged with the material of the course due to its formulaic series of "cookbook" four-hour experiments. While this approach kept costs low and experiments efficient, it felt impersonal and failed to promote a meaningful understanding of the actual chemistry. A CNDLS Fellowship enabled Dr. Swift to restructure her course so as to better meet her students' needs.

Third Language Learning

Cristina Sanz, Ph.D.

Dr. Cristina Sanz studies the impact of cognitive variables on third-language acquisition. Her goal was to systematize an evaluation process that would measure the effects of different treatments, particularly computer lessons. Prof. Sanz asked CNDLS for assistance with a web application that delivers a series of pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests to bilingual subjects. The application was to record student responses and to collect data for subsequent analysis.

Treasure Hunt (Archived)

Hui-Chen Hsieh

A thorough review of Second Language Acquisition research designs revealed to Ph.D. Candidate Hui-Chen Hsieh the need to examine thoroughly the role of practice in second language acquisition. She then decided to research the unanswered question of whether it is practice, feedback, or a combination of these two variables that contributes to subsequent L2 performance. In addition, she planned to integrate measurements of awareness and perception of treatment conditions into her research.

You Do the Math

Jim Sandefur, Ph.D

When he saw his "Foundations of Mathematics" students struggling to apply formulas, Jim Sandefur wanted to know how they were using the problem-solving methods discussed in class. Ultimately, he wanted to help them think and communicate like mathematicians. CNDLS helped him implement innovative assessment techniques that involved student collaboration.

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