Alan Wolf

The use of online digital resources and educational digital libraries in higher education

This paper summarizes results from a national survey of 4,678 respondents, representing 119 institutions of higher education in the United States regarding their use of digital resources for scholarly purposes. This paper presents the following results: (1) demographics commonly used in higher education to categorize populations such as institution type or level of teaching experience could not reliably predict use of online digital resources, (2) valuing online digital resources corresponds with only higher levels of use for certain types of digital resources, (3) lack of time was a significant barrier to use of materials while, paradoxically, respondents indicated that they used them because they save time, (4) respondents did not tend to intentionally look to the Internet as a trusted resource for learning about teaching.

Effective Teaching with Technology

A course entitled effective teaching with technology (ETT) has been taught to PhD candidates and postdoctoral students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) during the Spring semester of 2004, 2005, and 2006, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The course is supported by the NSF-sponsored Center for Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL). The course employs the three CIRTL pillars of teaching-as-research, learning-through-diversity, and learning communities as its basis. The ETT course introduces students to the idea that they critically evaluate technology options with the overarching goal of improved student learning. In this paper we describe: (1) development of this unique course, (2) operational experiences, and (3) student outcomes and effectiveness of the teaching-as-research approach to motivate future faculty (i.e. graduate students) to view teaching and the classroom with the same critical eye and scientific method that they use in their own research

Creating physical 3D stereolithograph models of brain and skull.

The human brain and skull are three dimensional (3D) anatomical structures with complex surfaces. However, medical images are often two dimensional (2D) and provide incomplete visualization of structural morphology. To overcome this loss in dimension, we developed and validated a freely available, semi-automated pathway to build 3D virtual reality (VR) and hand-held, stereolithograph models. To evaluate whether surface visualization in 3D was more informative than in 2D, undergraduate students (n = 50) used the Gillespie scale to rate 3D VR and physical models of both a living patient-volunteers brain and the skull of Phineas Gage, a historically famous railroad worker whose misfortune with a projectile tamping iron provided the first evidence of a structure-function relationship in brain. Using our processing pathway, we successfully fabricated human brain and skull replicas and validated that the stereolithograph model preserved the scale of the VR model. Based on the Gillespie ratings, students indicated that the biological utility and quality of visual information at the surface of VR and stereolithograph models were greater than the 2D images from which they were derived. The method we developed is useful to create VR and stereolithograph 3D models from medical images and can be used to model hard or soft tissue in living or preserved specimens. Compared to 2D images, VR and stereolithograph models provide an extra dimension that enhances both the quality of visual information and utility of surface visualization in neuroscience and medicine.

Factors motivating use of digital libraries

Knowledge about how users use digital libraries and their contents is inextricably tied to a librarys ability to sustain itself, grow its services and meet the needs of its users. This paper reports on the preliminary results of a study of how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instructors perceive and use digital libraries. Preliminary findings indicate that: they do not differentiate between digital libraries and other kinds of content that comes from the Web, they seek content to supplement traditional teaching methods and their reliance on Google and personal networks impedes their ability to recall the primary sources of useful content

Use of online digital learning materials and digital libraries: comparison by discipline

In this paper, we describe the results of a national survey of higher education faculty concerning their use of digital resources and collections of these resources. We explore the differences in resource use by discipline groups and suggest implications for development of discipline specific libraries and faculty development practices.

What do faculty need and want from digital libraries

In this paper, we report on the results of a national survey of faculty members concerning their use of digital resources (DRs), collections of resources and digital libraries (DLs). The research reported here explored issues such as: value of DRs, motivation for using DRs and barriers to use of these resources in teaching. The results have implications for how DLs might develop education and outreach efforts to increase visibility and use of their collections.