Faculty scores educational hits with new technology

Inspiration struck Jan Miernowski as he watched his young son play “Myst,” a computer game that Miernowski the elder finds beautifully designed and executed.

“I myself never have played a computer game, but I think that this generation comes to the university with a culture very different from my own,” says Miernowski, a professor of French and Italian. He is creating software to better acquaint contemporary students with older scholarship techniques.

Miernowski is developing two interconnected programs. “The Humanist” will be an interactive, multimedia simulator of historical interpretation devoted to the French Renaissance.

“It will be an adventure game in which, instead of the puzzles and obstacles traditional to gaming, the student will face the challenge of interpreting authentic literary, philosophical and political texts of the French Renaissance. The texts will be hidden in a 3-D world of Renaissance architecture, maps and paintings,” he says.

Miernowski is pursuing his other instructional technology project within the context of an upper-level undergraduate class he is teaching on French culture.

“The purpose of the class is to explore how students can use their historical knowledge in designing multimedia applications, such as educative games, a multimedia encyclopedia and more. In order to better serve communication among people, information technologies should incorporate the cultures of their users to enable them to deal with interpretations of complex, multilayered texts,” he says.

Miernowski is one of a growing number of faculty and staff from a variety of disciplines dedicated to harnessing technology for added depth and dimension in their courses, making the curriculum more relevant, understandable, accessible and engaging.

“Users of electronic media and information technologies urgently need the input of interpretive techniques of the past, such as allegories, classical rhetoric and classical scholarship,” he says.

Michele Slachetka, one of Miernowski’s students, is finding the class both a source of knowledge — not only about Francophone culture, but also the development of new technologies.

“I am definitely expanding my appreciation for the intense process of software development,” says Slachetka, a senior majoring in French and international relations. “I also am learning how technology can be adapted to a specific educational purpose, but that in order to have value, it needs to provide something above and beyond what can be gained from traditional sources of information.”

“We are focusing on analyzing scores of music, trying to understand the style of a composer, and then trying imitate that style using the computer.”

— Chiwei Hui, a senior in music composition and computer sciences

The Disklavier in the UW–Madison School of Music certainly fits that criterion. The top-of-the-line, handcrafted grand piano uses technology to expand teaching and performing applications. A direct descendant of player pianos in use a century ago, the Disklavier records hammer motions of a live performance onto a computer disk drive. When played back, the recording reproduces an exact acoustical interpretation.

As an aid to teaching, the Disklavier offers a number of advantages and enhancements. For example, the student can perform and immediately afterward become an audience to the exact performance. The student hears the performance through the piano rather than an audio system.

Todd Welbourne, professor of piano and music technology in the School of Music, finds the Disklavier a welcome addition to his collection of teaching tools and strategies. It is especially useful, he says, as students prepare for concert appearances.

“The difference between a “real’ and a taped sound is dramatic,” he says. “In a concert hall, the perception of what you think is happening and what is actually happening can be radically different. For instance, this technology allows students to hear if they are projecting their sound into the hall, or are “playing for themselves’ too much. The ability to perform a work and then come out into the audience and actually hear that performance is very instructive.”

There are now five Disklaviers — two grands and three uprights — in the school’s possession. As part of a grant from the Division of Information Technology, Welbourne has written software for them that gives students visual feedback on chord balancing, scale evenness and velocity control during practice sessions.

Not surprisingly, composers as well as performers make great use of such innovative software. Stephen Dembski, professor of music composition, is in the process of developing two programs. “Circles” assists in the creation and exploration of eccentric harmonic and scalar systems, and “VIDI” enables a compositionally interactive installation of sound and light sources.

This semester, Dembski has been advising a team of three students from music and computer science who are creating new technology using artificial intelligence to compose music. Team members Yau-hei Chan and Kin-chung Wong, seniors in computer engineering, and Chiwei Hui, a senior in music composition and computer sciences, are working with Dembski and Yu Hen Hu, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer sciences.

“We are focusing on analyzing scores of music, trying to understand the style of a composer, and then trying imitate that style using the computer,” Hui says. “We hope this project will make strides in computer creativity and in the overall understanding of music.”

The College of Engineering, of course, is a hotbed of computer activity. A case in point is the Engineering Program in Community Service (EPICS) course taught by faculty in mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science and engineering. It attracts students not only from the engineering campus, but also from the schools of Business, Education, and Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as departments in the College of Letters and Science.

During the course of the semester, EPICS students work in interdisciplinary teams to design Web sites and Web-based informational systems for clients from nonprofit agencies around Dane County. The projects give students r>=sum>=-ready experience with clients, as well as familiarity with graphic design, content research and the finer points of working as part of a professional team.

“The EPICS students have … been especially adept at anticipating the need for updates to the Web site, and changes to its content.”

— Michael Hernke, a Sustain Dane board member and a graduate student in the School of Business

One satisfied client is Madison’s Ecological Footprint project, a collaboration between the nonprofit Sustain Dane and EPICS students. The project, which measures the area required to support Madison’s resource consumption and waste, now has its own Web site, courtesy the EPICS team. A link from Sustain Dane’s Web site (http://www.sustaindane.org) will activate later this year.

Michael Hernke, a Sustain Dane board member and a graduate student in the School of Business, is delighted with the work that EPICS students have done with his organization.

“The EPICS students have provided valuable insight about the goals we might achieve using informational technology. They have been especially adept at anticipating the need for updates to the Web site, and changes to its content,” Hernke says.

More innovative uses of technology in education will come next year. DoIT will accept grant proposals to support such projects this fall. For more information, contact Christine Lupton, 265-8948, clupton@wiscmail.wisc.edu or visit http://www.doit.wisc.edu/faculty/grant/index.asp.