Susanna Horng – Creative Cartography: The City as Site of Cultural Production

Posted on by Timothy Schaffer in Humanities, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Susanna Horng (Liberal Studies) uses project based learning to guide her first-year Writing II students in the creation of digital maps. Students are asked to research and design an unwritten chapter for one of the following course texts: Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi, or Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas edited by Rebecca Solnit & Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Students use ESRI Story Maps software to create interactive, city-based narratives/digital humanities projects, which interrogate the urban and visualize what it means to be a Global Citizen.

Learning Objectives

  • Creative cartography offers multi-modal methods of synthesizing research, narrative mapping, analysis of sources, and data visualization.
  • These activities allow students to flex multimedia and presentation skills. Image, video, and sound selection creates meaning or supports text.
  • The project engages students’ critical thinking, time management, and executive functioning skills.
  • This practice hones students’ digital literacy.

Student Experience

First-year Writing II students are asked to create layered maps with images, videos, hyperlinks links, QR codes, and lyric essays. After instructor contacts Data Services, students are sent email invitations for NYU institutional ArcGIS accounts. Students then create free ESRI Story Maps accounts using NYU Institutional ArcGIS Account. The instructor then creates a private ArcGIS Group for class so students share projects with classmates only. To develop their projects, students work with large amounts of data, longitude and latitude coordinates, and create Excel/Google spreadsheets as research tools.

Technology Resources

  • Data is stored in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
  • Story Maps software:
    • Uses ArcGIS (Geographic Information Software)  to integrate maps with text, images, videos, hyperlinks, and sound.
    • Free NYU Institutional Accounts through Data Services
    • Digital Studio, Bobst 5th floor

Outcomes

  • Students will synthesize research, analysis of sources, narrative mapping, and data visualization through the practice of creative cartography using Story Maps software.
  • Students will create an effective presentation and create meaning through multimedia: image, video, and sound.
  • Students will apply digital literacy, critical thinking, time management, and effective functioning skills.
Dvorak Project - Prof. Beckerman

Michael Beckerman – Musical Geographies of Dvorak’s New York

Posted on by Andrew Greene in Humanities, PBL + collaboration

Summary

FAS Ed Tech worked closely with FAS Music Professor Michael Beckerman on a collaborative class project for his Freshman Seminar class. Students learned to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology as both a research and narrative tool, demonstrating connections among New York City’s history, geography, and architecture, and connecting these with Dvořák’s impact on and experience with American music culture during his time spent in the city (1892-1895).  Students used the Fulcrum app on their mobile devices to explore and collect information from locations around the city significant to Dvořák’s time. While developing their “story map” students investigated several different threads that emerged from the initial data captured via the Fulcrum app.  

Goals

  • Assist Professor Beckerman and students in a project combining location data, multimedia, and historical reSearch
  • Determine, in collaboration with instructor and students, appropriate tools for location-based research and media collection for student projects
  • Partner with NYU Library Data Services to provide access and training to GIS tools (Fulcrum, ESRI)
  • Facilitate management of student-generated data collections  and provide technical assistance importing Fulcrum data into ESRI Story Maps

Outcomes

Combining location data, multimedia, and historical information, Professor Beckerman’s students used both CARTO and ESRI Story Maps to create interactive, GIS-focused presentations describing Dvořák’s influence on NYC and American music cultures, as well as America’s musical influence on Dvořák.

Technology Resources

  • Fulcrum mobile app
  • ESRI Story Maps
  • Carto
screenshot of student project

Glenn Wharton – Project-based Learning in Museum Studies

Posted on by ds4583@nyu.edu in Discipline, Humanities, Method, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Glenn Wharton (Museum Studies) leverages project-based learning in his Museums and Community course. As a final research assignment, students work individually or in small groups to design fictional community programs for museums and cultural heritage institutions. Students create websites containing information about their programming. In addition to demonstrating content knowledge, students gain experience in website design and development.

Learning objectives

  • Increase student engagement through use of real-world scenarios
  • Leverage students’ existing knowledge
  • Develop students’ basic web design and production skills

Student experience

  • Students conduct research individually or in small groups to design a community-based, participatory program for a museum or cultural heritage institution
  • Students design and produce a website to display program information, including the aims of the program, activities, funding, etc.
  • Students peer review one another’s websites

Project workflow

In order to introduce students to web publishing technology that may be unfamiliar to them, Professor Wharton and an educational technologist collaborated on an in-class session on the basics of web design and building a website. The ed tech office also provided instructional materials and resources, as well as one-on-one consultations for students with follow-up questions. Whenever technology is used in a course innovation, we work with faculty to develop a support model that puts course content and knowledge building first.

Technology resources

Outcomes

  • Students gain media literacy, website design and creation skills.
  • Students are better prepared for field where collaboration is an essential component.
  • Students are deeply engaged by real-world scenarios.
  • Students are agents of their own learning.

In the following video, Professor Wharton describes the benefits and challenges of incorporating project-based learning in a traditional humanities seminar. In particular, he notes the transformative potential of technology to move his teaching from a “top-down model” into a true “co-production of knowledge.”

Esferas cover

Lourdes Dávila – Experiential Language Learning through Professional Publishing

Posted on by admin in Discipline, Humanities, Language instruction, Method, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Lourdes Dávila (Spanish & Portuguese) directed a team of current student and alumni editors to produce an online version of Esferas, a peer-reviewed, annual publication that publishes exceptional critical essays, visual art, creative writing, interviews, translations, and works related to Hispanic and Luso life within and beyond New York City.

Learning objectives

  • Allow for students to develop linguistic, technological, and professional skills
  • Facilitate collaboration among students through group work

Professor Lourdes Dávila, managing editor of Esferas, embarked on a full-scale re-design of the online journal to have a dynamic, modern showcase emerging scholarship, art, and writing from Hispanic and Lusophone culture. She identified NYU’s Web Publishing as a suitable environment since it mimics the hierarchical publishing structure, is supported by NYU, and allows for rich multimedia. She also developed a 2-credit course so that students could gain valuable experience contributing to the editorial process, while earning credit. In addition to current students, alumni, graduate students, and faculty work to realize the journal issue each semester.

Student experience

  • Participate in an authentic publishing process from start to finish
  • Learn new technologies
  • Collaborate with editorial board, artists, and authors
  • Showcase multimedia production and web publishing skills

Technology resources

  • NYU Web Publishing (WordPress), to house public-facing Esferas journal
  • NYU Box (file storage/sharing and document collaboration), to house submission iterations
  • Adobe InDesign, to format journal-ready articles and other submissions

Outcomes

  • Students have meaningful opportunities for real-world language use
  • Students work in a team-based environment on a real-world task (i.e. journal publishing)
  • Students hone transferrable professional skills
  • Students gain skills presenting knowledge with various media and in various modes.
Visible / Invisible Cities - Student project

Virginia Cox – Creative Critical Thinking

Posted on by admin in Discipline, Humanities, Method, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Virginia Cox (Italian Studies) integrated project-based learning into CORE-Texts & Ideas, Visible and Invisible Cities, a course that focuses on representations of the city since Classical times. In addition to writing scholarly papers, each student had to complete a creative project, critically exploring texts using multimedia and non-traditional technologies.

Learning objectives

  • Develop students’ ability to use multimedia to advance and enhance a scholarly argument
  • Use emerging technologies to broaden the audience for scholarly content

Visible and Invisible Cities centers on the ways in which human communities have been theorized and imagined within the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Renaissance. Activities include close reads of primary texts, rich discussions, and the completion of a creative project. For the creative project, students critically reflect on texts using alternative methods, like podcasting, interactive illustration, mapping, and even song writing.

Student experience

  • Develop and iterate on project idea
  • Post final projects on a course blog, and upvote favorite projects

Technology resources

Outcomes

  • Increase in engagement for subject matter
  • Increase in ability to transfer text-specific ideas to a broader context
  • Project showcase: https://wp.nyu.edu/nyucities/ (open to NYU community only)
microphone and laptop stock photo

Stefanie Goyette – Podcasting for Presentation

Posted on by ds4583@nyu.edu in Discipline, Humanities, Method, PBL + collaboration

Summary

Professor Stefanie Goyette (formerly of Global Liberal Studies) assigned a podcasting project in lieu of a final paper in her Cultural Foundations II course. She knew many of her students listened to podcasts, and wanted to provide a creative means for students to synthesize and demonstrate knowledge.

Learning objectives

  • Work on a team to perform and present research.
  • Properly frame a text for a non-specialist (general) audience.

Professor Goyette developed learning objectives and technical specifics with the FAS Office of Ed Tech. She created her Tumblr blog and offered an in-class session (20 minutes) to expose students to the basics of creating and editing audio.   Leveraging the medium of podcasting challenged students to distill scholarly arguments and gain transferable technical skills that apply to a wide range of experiences.

Student experience

  • Make and edit a basic podcast (20-25 minutes of high-quality audio in which each member of the group gets to speak about the same amount).
  • Demonstrate familiarity with text, original analysis, and research on topic.
  • Devise an interesting format or debate topic to liven up the podcast and provide a thematic core.
  • Divide up project tasks effectively with team.
  • The Tumblr post must include: the podcast audio; any necessary documents or images; Works Cited; outline of who was responsible for each part of project.

Technology resources

  • Audio recording and editing software (GarageBand and Audacity)
  • Freely available music and audio assets (see a list on our website)
  • Microphones and recording spaces (NYU LaGuardia Coop)
  • Web publishing (Tumblr)

Outcomes

“The students loved it and it was mostly very productive in terms of learning.” – Stephanie Goyette