Sounds of drilling and grinding echo against the lockers and brick walls on the third floor of Hopkins Hall during an early Friday morning, but students scattered among the lab in room 346 remain fixed on their computer screens. Slight murmurs and mouse clicks, with an occasional punch on the keyboard, drown the construction tool squeals down the hall.
Casey Parthemore huddles in front of the computer screen, focusing intently to match a background image of a building with the foreground of a basic architecture course Web site. Frustrated, she scoots her chair away, sliding the mouse across the pad.
Along with the rest of the class, Parthemore is a student in the Technology Enhanced Learning and Research internship program at Ohio State.
“We want to create layers of images,” said Parthemore, a senior in sculpture. “It’s a lot of trial and error.”
But the final project is worth the effort and frustration.
“They create something that is sustainable and usable,” said Catherine Gynn, TELR coordinator. “If it’s too complex to use, we haven’t achieved our goal.”
TELR’s internship program connects undergraduate students with OSU faculty to create technology-based projects that can be, and usually are, used for future courses. TELR welcomes undergraduates from all majors with a minimum 2.5 GPA and an interest in technology.
Both students and faculty must apply to the program. Students must submit an application, detailing their interests and skills. Faculty must propose a project that will technologically enhance a future course, but the details of the project must be able to be completed in 10 weeks, as the TELR internship lasts one quarter.
“We do a skills assessment of the students and an interest inventory of what they want to develop,” Gynn said. “We look for faculty projects that will be used in credit-bearing courses for future quarters. Then we analyze the project that the faculty submits, and we try to make a good match.”
Common projects include basic home pages, WebCT course sites, streaming video, digitizing slide collections and interactive quiz material.
“We spend the first few weeks with instructional design and explaining the tools that they will be using,” said Juliann Cortese, one of the three instructors for the TELR course.
Although each project dictates the technology programs to be used, students most commonly utilize Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Quicktime, WebCT and Photoshop.
“They tailor what they teach us to our projects,” Parthemore said.
In the third week, TELR introduces a faculty member to a student team, which usually consists of two students but can increase to three for larger projects.
“We try to pair a high-skill (student) and a low-skill (student),” Gynn said. “The blend of teamwork makes it more like a real world situation.”
For the remainder of the quarter, students continue to meet in the classroom once per week, but the class becomes more individualized and more like a workshop, as the students work to create their assigned projects.
In addition to the four instructors for the class sessions, students may call upon their respective faculty member’s department web master for support. In the end, students are extending their learning resources outside of the classroom and working with contacts throughout the university.
“That’s what I call the ‘no-extra-charge learning experience – the team management,” Gynn said. “We work with other professionals, as needed – programmers and videographers, if the project requires it.”
Student teams present their final project to both faculty and peers on the last Friday of the quarter in the TELR showcase event.
“Students show their projects and present their problems and how they approached them,” Gynn said.
But the TELR program keeps on giving even after the showcase is over.
After completing one quarter through the TELR internship program, faculty may hire students to either continue modifying the same project or to begin work on another.
For the first 10 weeks of employment, TELR will cover half of a minimum $8 student wage.
“I’ve probably had six to eight TELR students in the past,” said Chuck Curtis, professor of plant pathology. “When they’re finished with TELR, I usually keep them on.”
This quarter, Curtis and his former TELR intern, and now part-time employee Derek Blevins have collaborated to create an animated disease triangle for a plant pathology course.
“Derek has prepared the flash animation. He’s done a tremendous job,” Curtis said. “It’s hard work because I know things he doesn’t, and he knows things I don’t. It’s always interesting and fun to kick around a bunch of ideas.”
Curtis said most of his TELR employees eventually move onto other jobs, but some students in the program opt to stay in the university community.
Cheryl Brilmyer, a graduate of OSU and former TELR intern, now holds a full-time position in the College of Medicine and Public Health.
While enrolled in the TELR internship program in summer 2001, Brilmyer updated WebCT pages for an allied med course.
“I met Larry Hurtubise in 2MD (medical multimedia design) and followed up with him to get an internship or work-study position,” said Brilmyer, now an instructional designer for the College of Medicine and Public Health. “I got an internship for one year, and after I graduated, they hired me full-time.”
Brilmyer’s job duties resemble those she had with TELR two years ago – assisting faculty in placing course information online and working with WebCT.
“Except I know more,” Brilmyer said. “But (TELR) got me where I am now.”
