Lisa Troyer

Virtual Immersive Social Environments (VISE) Teaching & Research Laboratory

Prof. Troyer created the VISE Teaching & Research Laboratory to facilitate teaching and learning in the social and behavioral sciences. In this immersive virtual reality (VR) environment, students are provided the opportunity to experience and learn in laboratories which provide insight into experimental research. Through this environment students replicate classic experiments or design and conduct their own experiments. This VR experience increases students' understanding of and appreciation for the scientific foundations of social and behavioral sciences.

Bob Boynton, students in Global Political Communication and Governing Feudal England classes

Professor Boynton used Web 2.0 technology in courses that revolved around two large data collections — a database of 80,000 pages of the Calendar of Patent Rolls, and 1200+ photographs downloaded from global news websites. The students used Del.icio.us to tag sites of mutual interest and they used Wikis as a tool to easily create web pages and as a collaborative writing tool.

2004
Fred Dee+,
Timothy Leaven+,
Paul Heidger*

The Virtual Slidebox (supported in part by a grant from the National Library of Medicine), gives medical students access via the Web to more than 1,000 digitized slides of magnified images of human tissue and cells.  Histology and pathology specimens thar are preserved and mounted on glass slide and traditionally examined through a microscope can now be viewed by students anytime and anywhere the have access to a personal computer. Virtual Slidebox (www.path.uiowa.edu/virtualslidebox/).

This dynamically-controlled, silicone breast model is designed to train doctor's clinical breast examination skills by simulation of up to fifteen cancerous tumors in independent locations at controllable hardness levels. Feedback and dynamic re-configuration features allow trainees a variety of scenarios to fine-tune their palpation and tactile discrimination skills in distinguishing between the presence and absence of tumors.

This multimedia educational software is designed to help beginning anatomy students learn the bones and important features of the human skull. Interactive 3-D models allow the student to rotate and view the skull and its bones from various perspectives. An interactive textbook contains embedded activities to encourage mastery of the content.

The Iowa Electronic Market (IEM) allows students to trade on a real-time, real world futures market and to see how their actions and larger societal events have an impact on market outcomes. In placing the IEM on the internet, Professors Berg and Nelson's efforts were able to greatly enhance the data gathering capabilities of the IEM and to broad public access to this tool for educational purposes. The variety of subject matter on which the IEM can focus, including election outcomes and movie revues, can appeal to the interests of a broad range of students.

The Iowa Observatory consists of an Automated Telescope Facility (located on campus in Iowa City) and a fully robotic telescope in Southern Arizona operated over the Web. The facility is used by more than 700 University of Iowa students each year and by over 650 additional users world-wide. The facility makes it possible for non-majors in a GER course to do original research in teams of two or three.