AECOM Faculty Retreat Appropriate and Effective Use of Computers in Education

Keynote Address Comments

These comments are taken from my notes of the conference presentation by Dr. Martin Nachbar.

Dr. Nachbar is a Microbiologist who has been at NYU for his entire medical career (from medical student to present). A MEDLINE search reveals that he was involved in early work on membrane proteins and lectins. When he first saw an Apple II he got interested in computer based education and started by teaching himself everything he needed to know.

He attracted the interest of the Dean and four course leaders and began a pilot project using student help. Out of this begining grew the Hippocrates Project which includes a staff of 15 directed by Dr. Nachbar (in addition to computer based education this also incorporates what corresponds to the AECOM Instructional Support Services).

Dr. Nachbar demonstrated a variety resources that are available to NYU students while at the same time making several points about computer based education.

• There is no one right way to use computers within a course.
• Let faculty find a way that works for them.
• Let faculty who are getting started try things even if they are unlikely to "work". Both the faculty and computer staff may learn something useful in the process and the faculty member will be "hooked" and ready to improve on their efforts the following year.
• There is about a 3-year cycle from first trying a new idea to the final product running smoothly within a course.
• The measure of whether something works is how much it gets used.
• Things that fit seamlessly into the learning process are the easiest to use. The best computer applications are those where the user is not thinking about the fact that they are using a ocmputer.
• Start small. Things like a course guide or reading assignments allow faculty to get their feet wet. They can also prove a boon to adminstering a course and communicating with students.
• Think "re-useable". Even when placing static material on the web, think of how the material might be reused in another year or another course. For example, an atlas of images has one use but a database of images can be used as an atalas, a quizbank, or a variety of other uses. As specific example of this, Dr. Nachbar showed a respiratory physiology simulation "engine". The engine is set up so that a variety of web pages could be set up to feed parametres into this engine to produce results in a many different educational contexts.
• Maintaining quality educational material takes a significant commitment of resources.
• Students provide a great source of inspiration and start-up activity but permanent staff is needed for follow through and on-going support.