Tech Speak
A glossary of new pedagogical tools
The introduction of information technology to academia has brought with it a new vocabulary, with students and faculty using a variety of media in their academic lives. Here are some of the most common:
Blackboard.com This course-management website provides a central platform for course communication and materials. Professors can upload syllabi and readings, accessible to anyone registered for the class. Other features include an interactive discussion board, a messaging system, a "digital dropbox" where students can submit assignments, and a page where grades can be recorded and viewed.
iClicker This wireless response system allows professors to get immediate feedback from 750 students per second. The professor can use the small white remotes ($40 at the Cornell Store) to track attendance or gauge understanding through in-class quizzes. iClickers are especially prevalent in large lecture courses, where taking attendance or monitoring individual students' understanding is impractical.
Turnitin.com With the ubiquity of websites offering essay-writing services, more and more students are submitting research papers they didn't write, at least in part. To counter this, websites such as Turnitin.com allow professors to check a student's work against material on the Web, helping them catch plagiarism.
Ratemyprofessor.com This site allows students from more than 6,000 schools to post reviews of their professors and courses, so peers can check them out before they enroll. Students can rate professors in categories such as clarity, helpfulness, and easiness—even physical appearance—on a scale of 1 to 5.
Cornell E-recruiting Today's seniors need not spend hours looking through job and internship binders in Barnes Hall; instead, they can log on to this online database. Students can access job listings, upload resumes and cover letters, sign up for interviews, apply for positions, and receive e-mail bulletins about job and internship opportunities.
Virtual Student Center Enrolling for classes used to be a tortuous process, requiring that students run around campus for faculty and administrative approvals and signatures to change their schedules. Now they can easily set and change schedules online through Cornell's virtual Student Center. The site lets students add and drop classes, view transcripts, and access tuition information.
Facebook The social networking site is one of the primary ways that students socialize, and some professors are experimenting with it as a classroom tool. Students can get course updates, discuss assignments, and help each other with sample exam questions.
Blogs Like Facebook pages, blogs are sometimes used to share ideas and promote discussion in a less formal setting. They are especially common in language classes, where some professors have students show their command of the language by maintaining a blog that classmates can read and comment on.
Podcasts It's hard to go a whole semester without missing a single class, and now some students have an easy way to catch up on missed material. With audio and video podcasts, professors can record lectures and upload them to Blackboard.com.