Rice course goes the distance

Nanotech for Teachers shared via video with Colorado classroom

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

High school science teachers in Greater Houston and Colorado are taking part in a bold experiment by Rice and the University of Colorado at Boulder’s ATLAS Institute to share a class taught both here and there. It’s a perfect example of the way Rice is reaching beyond the hedges to help the community, a prime goal of the Vision for the Second Century.

Every Thursday evening, Carolyn Nichol, associate director for education at Rice’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, fires up her systems at Keck Hall. John Hutchinson, a professor of chemistry at Rice, does the same in Colorado, where he’s spending a sabbatical year at ATLAS, the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society. As both classrooms fill with teachers, cameras blink on, microphones come alive and large video screens fire up, letting the groups see and hear each other.

Nanotechnology for Teachers (aka Chem 570) reaches out to high school instructors who learn new ways to give science lessons to their own students. Taught since 2002, the course has become popular thanks to Nichol’s extensive recruiting at Greater Houston schools. The result: 35 teachers from 13 Texas school districts come to the Rice campus each week, while another dozen are with Hutchinson in Colorado and six more join in from home via the Web.

“Nanotechnology is the hook that brings teachers in, but it’s the second half of the class they really like the most, when we cover physics and chemistry,” said Nichol, a native of Ottawa who joined Rice after a stint at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and taught bioengineering for five years before taking on her current duties. “They always find something they can use.”

	Rice's Carolyn Nichol, live and in person at Keck Hall, and John Hutchinson, on screen from Boulder, Colo., show off their videoconferencing system before a recent Chem 570 - Nanotechnology for Teachers class.

Sometimes they use those lessons the very next day. Nichol, whose enthusiasm for her work is infectious, said a recent session had teachers throw tennis balls at a suspended bowling ball to illustrate atomic principles. “The tennis balls were alpha particles, and the bowling ball the nucleus. The idea was to show them that most of the balls miss, and that’s because most of an atom is empty space. And the balls that bounce back do so because the nucleus is very dense.”

After the class, Nichol let the teachers take materials home to recreate the exercise for their own students. “I think every one of them took a bowling ball,” she said.

Nichol said the real draw is Hutchinson, who is renowned at Rice for his Socratic style of teaching that gets students involved. “John’s teaching style is pretty memorable,” she said. “He does this sort of thing in his Rice undergraduate classes, and that’s what students tend to remember about freshman chemistry.”

Most professional development workshops for teachers take place during the summer, said Nichol. While having teachers come to campus during their busy workweeks can be grueling, the lessons are fresh when they go back to their own classrooms the next day.

“Teachers seem to be able to do the most with the information we provide them when they receive it, while they are actively teaching,” said Hutchinson.

The experiment in distance teaching has gone remarkably well, said Hutchinson. “I know we took on some interesting challenges, and we’re testing the limits of what can be done technically. It’s all come together, thanks to a lot of hard work from a lot of people, including Rice’s Educational Technology staff.”

Four cameras at Keck Hall cover the angles, with audio feeds from microphones placed around the room and a network feed from Nichol’s computer, which displays PowerPoint and other content that can be seen in the Boulder classroom and by those tuning in from home. None of it would be possible without Rice’s modern network infrastructure and high-end classrooms.

“Think of the room as a big TV,” said Carlos Solis, Rice IT’s manager of educational technologies. “The trickery comes in all the things you attach to it.”

Solis and his on-site producer at Rice, Tom Lytle, needed to be sure audio, video and computer feeds were shared among all the sites, and it’s worked well so far — though teachers taking the class from home can be a little overwhelmed trying to track the activity in as many as four open windows. In addition, teachers on site are provided wireless clickers (and home users use a Web interface) to answer questions and take polls.

The learning curve to deliver the course may be steep, but the impact is obvious. Nichol took an informal survey last year and found the 27 teachers in that class took what they learned to 3,700 of their own students.

The course is offered free to the teachers, who collect 45 hours of state-mandated continuing professional education credits along with a $300 stipend to help cover expenses. Alternately, teachers may earn credit hours toward a degree at greatly reduced cost.

And anyone can view the course through the Rice webcast archive, which makes all of the classes available as streaming video or podcasts. Course materials are available through Connexions.

Hutchinson, who will return to Rice in the fall, sees the Web as the ultimate delivery medium for the course. “If we can combine these experiences in such a way that more teachers can join us via the Web, that’s the direction we really want to take this in the future,” he said. “We’re trying to make this as convenient as possible.”

Nichol finds the work satisfying. “When John was teaching quantum mechanics, one older teacher said, ‘I’ve waited 40 years for someone to explain this to me.’

“From the feedback we get from teachers, we know they feel this is the most exciting thing they’ve done in a long time.”