By Richard H. Miller, Global Campus
PULLMAN, Wash. – Unless you’ve got a Learjet or a set of gills, virtual worlds can be preferable to reality, presenters said Monday at a faculty-led workshop on student success.
Adam Attwood, of the College of Education, spoke about visiting virtual museums through the Google Art Project. Unlike physical museums with their emphasis on hushed reverence, virtual museums let students get up close to the artwork, exclaim loudly and talk with friends.
“They can learn from each other,” Attwood said, “not just me.”
Virtual museums, he said, are open to anyone with a computer and include such additional curatorial resources as extended biographies and historical data.
“It’s a great free way to access museums all around the world,” he said.
WSU marine biology professor Ray Lee discussed exploring the deep sea through remote-operated cameras and instruments. Not only can robots go places humans can’t, they can stay almost indefinitely while transmitting high-definition images that are clearer than the view from a five-inch submarine porthole.
“Virtual is not the poor man’s substitute,” Lee said. “It’s the best way of doing the science, and we can bring that to the classroom.”
The uncertainty of what happens next in a live video keeps some students glued to the monitors and stimulates their scientific curiosity. For example, some students got hooked on live video from the Nautilus cruise, Lee said: “They watched it even though it wasn’t assigned.”
More workshops planned for student success
The workshop was the fifth in a series co-sponsored by the provost’s office, Washington State University Teaching Academy and WSU Global Campus.
Next on the agenda are a Nov. 18 workshop on liberating (rather than conventional teaching/learning) structures and a Dec. 9 workshop on writing as a way of doing. All will be at 12:10 p.m. in CUE 518 and available via live streaming.
To attend a workshop, go to the WSU eLearning trainings page and select “faculty-led” from the dropdown menu.