The 2004 ~FAST Tex projects
College of Natural Sciences

Title:
Cold Reading Experiment

Faculty Client:
Dr. Jim Bull, bull@bull.biosci.utexas.edu

Student Developer:
Rajiv Bhatia

Project Description:
This project was developed for a critical-thinking course for non-science majors. The goal was to create an online simulation of "cold reading," which is the method that psychics use to convince clients that they know what they are talking about (which they don't). The Web interface generates unique passwords for each student, then asks them to respond to about 25 multiple-choice questions. After answering the questions, the students are given a supposedly "tailored" personality description, which they then score as to how well it fits their own perceptions of themselves. Everyone gets the exact same description, but they don't know it. The average score (from 1 to 5, where 5 is the rating for a good fit) runs around 4. This exercise raises many important critical thinking questions to be discussed in class.

Title:
Fishes of Texas: Web Database of Live Fish Photographs

Faculty Client:
Dr. Dean Hendrickson, deanhend@mail.utexas.edu

Student Developer:
Lan Zhang

Project Description:
Students need to see photos of organisms to learn about them and their relationship to their environment. A professional photographer produced the Fishes of Texas image collection and all are of very high quality, attractive to students, and taken in their natural habitats. This project uses web-based technologies to make all the Fishes of Texas images accessible from anywhere at any time to a diverse audience, and especially for use in Biology classes. This database of images can be used during class lectures or lab, and students can refer to it at other times.

Title:
Petroleum Geology of Texas

Faculty Client:
Dr. J. Richard Kyle, rkyle@mail.utexas.edu

Student Developer:
Jaladhi Pujara

Project Description:
This project developed a web-based multimedia tutorial on the geology of Texas oil and natural gas fields. The tutorial will be used in GEO 335 - Geology and Mineral Resources of Texas, a third-year course largely for non-geological sciences majors. Students in this course have wide ranges of backgrounds in geology and other science courses. As a result, some students need more time to work with materials to improve their understanding and course performance. The availability of interactive tutorials gives students the opportunity to spend as much time with the materials out of class that they feel they need. This project complements and updates an earlier multimedia tutorial on Principles of Petroleum Geology, as well.

Title:
SmartBytes: An interactive multimedia program for teaching nutrient composition of food

Faculty Client:
Dr. Monica Meadows, MonicaRD@mail.utexas.edu

Student Developer:
Chongxiang Wang

Project Description:
SmartBytes is an interactive multimedia program for the teaching of nutrient composition of food. It is organized into 4 nutrient modules and includes interactive learning activities like click-and-drags, fill in the blank, multiple choice, and clicking on menu food selections. Until this project, SmartBytes was available only on CD-ROM and our goal was to make the program accessible to students on other campuses as well as audiences outside the university population.

Title:
General Chemistry Resource Database

Faculty Client:
Dr. Stacy Sparks, ssparks@mail.utexas.edu

Student Developer:
Jeff Sneden

Project Description:
The introductory-level courses offered by the Chemistry department are generally large, often with 300-500 students per course. Many professors have found interesting demonstrations to use for each particular topic, with specifics on how to tie the demonstration into the lecture and how to best perform the demonstration so it is visible to such a large audience. The goal of this project was to develop a database of instructional materials—movies, tutorials, demonstration ideas, diagrams, and so on —for faculty to share as they prepare to teach introductory-level courses. Faculty can login to the website, search the database for interesting materials and even add their own.