WebBoard and PowerPoint are two new teaching tools that Janice Naegele, Associate Professor of Biology, has mastered. WebBoard is a Web-based bulletin board that Naegele used as a drop-box for student writing assignments, and PowerPoint is presentation software she and her students use during lectures. She's employed both in three Neuroscience and Behavior courses, BIOL/NSB 213, BIOL/NSB 345, and BIOL/NSB 575. She has also encouraged her students to utilize PowerPoint in both BIOL/NSB 345 and the graduate course, BIOL/NSB575 in their own presentations. Now, after several semesters of experimentation, she's figured out how to make them work effectively for her teaching needs and her students' learning styles. Her success with both tools comes from carefully considering her applications of the technology in successive offerings of each course, and from listening to student input.

"The major problems for me have been to find the right pace for introductory lectures and to strike a balance between lecturing and writing on the board, interacting with students and soliciting active participation in the lecture, and showing images by PowerPoint-while also covering the amount of material that is needed."

Behavioral Neurobiology (NSB 213) is part of the core curriculum for the Neuroscience and Behavior major. It's a large class, taught in the spring, with approximately 70-90 students enrolled. Some of the students are science majors preparing to major in the Neuroscience and Behavior. Others are simply looking to this introductory course for an interesting means of fulfilling their general education science expectations. "This heterogeneity is probably the largest pedagogical problem in this course" reports Naegele. Development Neurobiology (NSB 345), is taught alternate years and has an average class size of 25, composed of both undergraduates and graduates. Her graduate seminar (NSB575) is also taught on alternate years. One of the major goals of these latter two courses is to engage upper level undergraduate students and graduate students in analysis and discussion of current issues and concepts in the field of Neuroscience, and to teach them to critically evaluate the scientific literature.

In general, Naegele presents her course materials using PowerPoint, but her students commented early on that they prefer the slower pace of lectures dependent on writing out information on the chalkboard. Favoring PowerPoint because of the ease at which it allows her to present complicated material (often high quality images), Naegele sought a compromise. "The major problems for me have been to find the right pace for introductory lectures and to strike a balance between lecturing and writing on the board, interacting with students and soliciting active participation in the lecture, and showing images by PowerPoint-while also covering the amount of material that is needed." Naegele now provides the students with printed handouts of the PowerPoint presentations. The handouts show each slide in a small format and save the students from wildly copying down the images and notes during lecture. The best format for the handouts, she has found, is to use the 3 slide/page format which clearly shows each lecture image, yet still provides enough space on the page for students to add their own notes. She begins her PowerPoint lectures with a topic slide that also lists the required readings for that class and any Web sites that contain animations or other supplementary information. This provides students with up-to-date changes in the syllabus of the course and helps to orient them to the topic.

Additionally, Naegele now composes her PowerPoint lectures in such a way as to provide natural breaks in the presentation. When she comes to one of these junctures, she shuts off the projection and moves to the chalkboard for in-depth discussion of particular key points. By doing this, Naegele reduces the monotony associated with long lectures, slowing the pace of the session, and this helps to maintain the students' attention. Additionally, the ensuing question and answer period helps the students digest the material she's just finished presenting and clear up any points of confusion. Overall, Naegele's pleased with her PowerPoint compromises. In her upper level courses, the students are also required to make oral presentations using PowerPoint. Students like the ease of transferring JPEG images from journal articles that are available as PDF files and also appreciate the higher quality images when showing their classmates the colorful microscopic images from the articles.

Naegele has put WebBoard through similar paces. When she originally tried out WebBoard in the Spring of 1998 with her NSB 213 course, she had the students submit short response essays two or three times during the semester. Her plan was to read, comment, and grade each one of the essays, but she found herself printing them out to read, and not really finding the time to keep up with the onslaught of submissions. "It was burdensome trying to keep up in a timely fashion," says Naegele. Not be deterred, however, she refocused her use of WebBoard the next spring, using WebBoard for extra credit assignments. In her last configuration, a student could submit up to three one-page essays discussing scientific articles dealing in-depth with a particular area of neuroscience research. Naegele reads these online and assigns an extra credit point for good work. By keeping the work in an online environment, students who are just learning to critically evaluate the literature benefit from being able to read other students' submissions.

In her more advanced course, Developmental Neurobiology (NSB 345), Naegele uses WebBoard as a "guided study tool." She posts on-line quizzes and discussion questions for the students to keep in mind while they're reading the assigned scientific literature, and they are required to post answers to these questions on the WebBoard at least one day prior to the lecture for that material. While in WebBoard, each student can browse the other posted responses, and judge whether their own reading of the journal articles is correct and at an appropriate level. Students sometimes post corrections to the answers given by other students or add additional information such as the URL for a Web site that deals with a particular topic in more detail. Heterogeneity among the students' experience with the subject matter is an issue with this course also, notes Naegele, and she recognizes that in reading the WebBoard posts before answering, some students may simply be following the lead of the more advanced students. This isn't a bad thing at all, she points out, since "using WebBoard in this way brought everyone to the same level and removed some of the need for review or remediation."

Naegele's case shows how one often needs to work through the application of new teaching tools, modifying their use over a number of semesters, in order to find one's own version of "best use." Pragmatism aside, Naegele looks at the constant evaluation and revisions of her methodology as part of the normal teaching process.