Tom Butler's classes have been using his Hypercard
stack Critical Reading Coach in which users are "coached"
for their comprehension as they read selections from C.S.
Lewis. His students like the immediate feedback as well as
the hypertext-linked glossary. Sally Rings is also using
Critical Reading Coach to teach reading strategies for
complex text in her integrated block courses of Critical
Reading (CRE 101) and English (ENG 101). Her students also
study a mode of critique in Letter from Birmingham Jail, a
Hypercard stack developed at Penn State University that
analyzes the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King.
For her Substance Abuse (HES 201) and Introductory
Psychology (PSY 101) courses, Donna Rebadow uses the
Brain and Nervous System, a Hypercard stack she developed
that includes animation and accesses images from a video
disc. In the classroom, her students may see information
from the ABC News video discs Drugs and Substance Abuse and
Health: AIDS, the Discovering Psychology video tapes, and an
Astound computer presentation that accompanies a psychology
textbook. Rebadow's students are very active on the
Electronic Forum, as well as on the Internet, where her
Honors students are conducting searches on the World Wide
Web.
Since 1992, calculus classes have been using a
microcomputer lab equipped with 30 Macintosh stations,
printers, and a projection system. Students use software
such as Maple, Temath, Excel, and other specialized
programs. These packages are capable of performing the
laborious symbolic, numerical, and graphical tasks that
students once had to do by hand. Ed Chandler says, "These
are the tools of the future that students will work with in
their professional lives."
In the library, John Chavez reports that the newly
installed LAN offers speedy access to resources such as
indexes, abstracts, full-text journals, multimedia
encyclopedias, and the Internet. Chavez is also developing a
World Wide Web page as a campus-wide information system.
English instructor Karen Kabrich has developed a
Hypercard stack that accesses a laser disc presentation of
Othello. For her beginning Spanish classes, Carmen
DeMiguel-Marquez is exploring the use of HyperGlot
software. Anne Eller's Intercultural Communication
classes subscribe to various Internet listservs. Ray Laing
uses the Lifesaver CD-ROM for teaching First Aid/CPR. Gary
Quick is a consultant for the company that produces the
anatomy software A.D.A.M.