Academic Technology

“Shanghai: A Cultural History” excavates the cultural and historical memories of Shanghai.  With the goal of rendering legible this city’s multiple layers, the course covers topics such as the Shanghai’s literary and cinematic representations, architecture and urban spaces, rural migrants and foreign expatriates, everyday life and consumer culture, and Shanghai in wartime and under Socialism.

Project goals:

• Creating an online repository of historical maps and other mapping resources for students to reference when doing their own mapping assignments
• Developing simple mapping tools that students can use to create itineraries and time-traveling tours, to geographically reference historical photos, films, and other visual artifacts, and to map scenes from the novels and stories read in class
• Creating English subtitles for the 1964 movie Sentinels Under the Neon Lights and producing a DVD of this film for class use. This film has never been available with English subtitles (and has probably never been taught in any undergraduate course before) and is one of the few resources available to teach the most under-discussed historical period of Shanghai history, the revolutionary years.

Project accomplishments:

• Discovered numerous historical maps of Shanghai in library collections and produced high-resolution electronic scans suitable for use in research, geo-referencing, or importing into more extensive project formats like Google Earth or WorldMap
• Implemented a Google Map on the course website with which the students and instructor could geographically visualize the weekly topics, and which was then exported into Google Earth at the end of the semester as a comprehensive visualization of the material covered over the semester.
• Created English subtitles for the film Sentinels Under the Neon Lights, and produced a high-quality DVD (with menus, chapter markers, and optional subtitle tracks) of the film for class and library use.

Tools and technologies used:

• Course iSites
• Google Maps
• Sublime subtitling software, DVD Studio Pro

Check out the course website to learn more.

The goal for ATG staff for the “China: Traditions and Transformations” iSite was to help students sort, classify, and visualize important events in Chinese history and learn some basic vocabulary pertaining to Chinese history.

ATG staff created an interactive syllabus and audio-rich pronunciation guide, and migrated a previous timeline of Chinese history to a timemap on the course iSite. The interactive timemap puts events discussed in the course in chronological and geographic perspective, enabling students to commit milestones to memory much more quickly. The pronunciation guide has filters for course week, tag, or alphabet, as well as the option to view all glossary entries at once by clicking on the Google Spreadsheet (GSS) in the footer.

The timemap and pronunciation guide were made possible with Google Maps, Nick Rabinowitz’ Timemap Library, and developer tools including GSS-API and jQuery.

Details are available on the course iSite.

The fall 2011 course “United States in the World 32: The World’s Religions in Multicultural America” explored the dynamic religious landscape of the US with special focus on Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions in the most recent period of post-1965 immigration. Students in this course examined the negotiations between civic, constitutional, ethical, and theological issues through the lens of specific cases and controversies.

The goal for educational technology was to bring the “sites of encounter” at the heart of the case studies to life. ATG staff produced a multilayer GIS map of the multi-faith landscape of 10 American cities with the help of WorldMap. They also used iSites resources to edit 20 video clips, to scan and optimize 30 slides comprising various religious traditions, and to redesign the case studies section of the website.

More information is available on the course iSite.

In the fall of 2012, students in 2^nd year Modern Hebrew piloted an iPad project that combined all their handouts, worksheets, exercises and review materials into a digital format. The goal was to allow students to review materials anywhere at any time, take self-correcting quizzes, review material that could be updated instantly by course staff, bring text files to life with native speakers and pop-up definitions, and make for a much more interactive and enriching experience.

ATG staff created an interactive iBook, an online flashcard interface, and an enhanced mobile-ready course website. The also oversaw the purchase and distribution of loaner iPads for this pilot.

Students reported the following benefits from this project:

• Spent more time reviewing the documents then they have in the past with paper formats
• Increased comprehension by listening to native speakers
• Digital flashcards were used more often and with greater impact that paper ones they would have had to create themselves
• Greatly increased their typing proficiency, as the keyboard layout on the iPad can be instantly change to Hebrew, something impossible on a laptop
• Were able to take quizzes that self-corrected instantly
• The organization of the materials is superior to what existed as paper handouts
• Having the added advantage of being able to use the iPad in many other ways (for email, web browsing, installing other apps)
• Liked the “green” aspect of the large amount of paper handouts that they now didn’t have to get

More on this project can be read about in this Harvard Crimson article.

Learn more about how Professor Dan Smail uses 3D models of museum objects in his course, Making the Middle Ages.

Professor Lue uses rich animations to illustrate complex concepts and processes in molecular and cellular biology.

With the aid of visualization tools such as Gapminder and custom data sets, students examined the distribution of severe health crises around the world, and in particular the prevalence of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa.

For History of Art and Architecture 172w, students were able to locate objects in local collections for their term research projects more efficiently using digital maps, guides, and photo collections.

In Professor Browne’s Gen Ed course on the Darwinian Revolution, students will create a “Cabinet of Curiosities” by curating their own collections of images taken at various places in Harvard Museums. The work will be presented in an online interface that can be added to and built upon.

Students in all levels of french are evaluated on their comfort level in specific language situations (interpersonal, cultural, presentational, etc.) at the be beginning and end of each term. The goals is for students and the department to be able assess their strengths and weaknesses as individuals and a collective, and to see the change over the course of the term.