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Beyond PowerPoint®: UGather® and UPresent® Bring Innovative Multimedia into Large Classes
Rick Peifer
Assistant Director, General Biology Program
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
rwpeifer@tc.umn.edu
I began thinking about using visualization as a technological aid more than a decade ago, as students in our introductory biology courses struggled to understand the developments and discoveries in molecular biochemistry -- the structure of DNA, molecular and cellular processes, protein synthesis, biochemical reactions, and such. Learning such complex concepts, involving processes at the molecular level that students can't readily see and touch, is a real challenge for them.
It literally is true that a picture is worth a thousand words - but a computer animation of an abstract molecular process is worth even more.... illustrations can significantly improve students' learning; but ....students need guidance and prompting to process illustrations and place them in the proper context. All through our project we've felt that it's very important to keep faculty and students engaged and working together when using technology. Our program is responsible for three introductory biology courses ... the program serves about 4,000 students each year.
We've developed a rich library archive of multimedia graphics - sophisticated illustrations, animations, photos, electron micrographs, videos, and more - for our faculty to use in class. We've also created UPresent® and UGather®, Mac-based software applications for multimedia presentation and management....
So try the demo version of UPresent® or the full version of UGather® and let me know what you think. My email address:
rwpeifer@tc.umn.edu
UGather® and UPresent® are registered trademarks of The Regents of the University of Minnesota. PowerPoint® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
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