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Evaluation and Research Services
We design and conduct research projects related to the use of educational technology at the University of Minnesota, often in collaboration with faculty and other staff members. We also conduct evaluations of DMC-sponsored programs, publish in peer-reviewed journals, and present at local, national, and international conferences.
In consultation with University of Minnesota, Twin Cities constituents, we distribute biannual technology surveys to University of Minnesota, Twin Cities faculty members and students and promulgate the results through papers and presentations.
We are working with faculty members in the College of Biological Sciences to produce multimedia vodcasts designed to address common student misconceptions in introductory biology. A pilot study of students’ use of these vodcasts was conducted in fall 2007 and further research is planned for 2008-2009.
We are collaborating with the Office of Classroom Management and selected instructors to design and evaluate several courses taught in specially designed classrooms. These “active learning classrooms” were built using flexible classroom design and construction techniques in order to create a more student-centered, interactive learning environment.
With a past DMC Faculty Fellow we researched a major programmatic shift in the Program in Occupational Therapy to a hybrid learning program and examined the role that the Faculty Fellow Program played in this transition.
Donald Liu, professor of Applied Economics, collaborated with the DMC research and evaluation team to explore the use of an audience response system (“clickers”) in his introductory economics classes, with the goals of improving student engagement, motivation, and performance.
In 2005 the University of Minnesota created the Fair Use Analysis (FUA) Tool, an interactive online application intended to educate users and foster defensible fair use assertions, in accordance with copyright law. With an interdisciplinary team, we compared participants' use of the tool with a control condition in iterative cycles.
Beginning in the fall of 2002, we worked with faculty members in the School of Nursing to collaboratively conduct a curriculum-level evaluation of three online nursing master's degree programs.
During the 2005–06 academic year, DMC staff members published an article in a peer-reviewed journal; were awarded grants; gave presentations at local, national, and international conferences; and appeared on TV shows.
