Vol. 18, No. 13	Dec. 3, 1998

Retirees visit Gore Hall to view new teaching technology

Edward H. Rosenberry brought retirees to campus to see UD's new teaching technology.

The group of men included Edward H. Rosenberry, professor emeritus of English, who arranged the visit with Judith Greene, Center for Teaching Effectiveness.

UD professors Joan Del Fattore, English, George Watson, physics and astronomy, and Larry Peterson, music, demonstrated how they incorporate the latest technology available in Gore Hall into their classes. Paul Hyde, Information Technology/User Services, spoke about the technical aspects of the programs and gave other examples of how faculty and students are making use of technology.

Peterson, who acted as host for the program, told the group about his Music 101 course, which is offered as a distance learning class over the web complete with a syllabus, grade book and interactive chat room for students.

Watson spoke of the technological gains in education since his college experience 25 years ago and focused on ways that technology today makes education dramatically different. Comparing slide-rules to laptop computers; pay phones and letters to e-mail, v-mail, fax, pagers and cell phones; card catalogs to online data bases, online encyclopedias and online newspapers, he spoke of the need to adapt teaching techniques to technology. He also gave the visitors an online tour of his websites devoted to physics courses for engineering majors.

Del Fattore demonstrated how faculty teach students to use the Internet for research in the humanities. She talked about selecting a topic, tracking down sources, finding full-text books, journals, newspapers and government and court documents on the web. She also explained how the web is useful for finding out what libraries house manuscripts and materials that aren't on the web, finding out the hours and policies of those libraries and getting maps and directions to them.

She also showed the group Leo LeMay's website on Ben Franklin, stressing that UD faculty not only draw from the riches of the web, but also contribute to them.

Del Fattore also guided the group through several Shakespearean websites, including the ever popular "Elizabethan Curse Generator," which gives visitors access to generic Shakespearean insults, such as "Thou jarring horn-mad whey-face!," or a custom make-a-curse option.

"I've been struck ever since the opening of Gore Hall with all the wonders UD is doing with instructional technology," Rosenberry said. "Almost to a man, this group is comprised of men who were employed in the technical and engineering venues for DuPont and Hercules. Most of them have two or three degrees and their intellectual curiosity is wide open.

"Most of us got our training back when education consisted of a lecturer and a chalkboard. There are still chalkboards, of course, but now with the push of a button a screen comes down and these beautiful changing images are projected from a computer to augment what the professor is saying," he said.

"It was all as much a revelation to me as to the rest of the group. When I retired from the faculty 20 years ago, it was still very much the chalkboard era. Computers were just coming into use. The only faculty to have them were the people in the hard sciences. Those of us in the humanities hadn't the remotest notion of how those developments would contribute to our profession.

"I'd hate to say that we were entertained," Rosenberry said, "but the program was intellectually stimulating and fun, too. My friends were impressed with the University."

-Beth Thomas
Photo by Duane Perry