TLT Fellow Jansen making great progress with course app project

by Sarah Stoolman, TLT writing intern

Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology, 2011 Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Fellow, began work on a mobile app project in May, which is still in progress. Specifically, he has developed an application directed at a particular course, IST 402: The Google Online Market Challenge, that could possibly be extended to include many other courses at Penn State in the future.

"It was a project to leverage the whole app technology and mobile technology in some type of learning environment; somehow extend the classroom, but take advantage of these new features that the smartphones provided," stated Jansen. "What we specifically focused on was the application for a keyword advertising class that I teach (IST 402), so it’s really focused on keyword marketing, keyword advertising, and search engine marketing," added Jansen. Accompanying Jansen on this project are TLT's Brad Kozlek, Heather Hughes, Zac Zidik, and Matt Meyer, and Jansen's graduate assistant, Partha Mukherjee.

"The app allows the students to contribute to their course projects at times and places that are convenient for them," stated Jansen. "This app is a portal to six or seven tools that the students will need for the course that would typically confine them to their desktops, but they're all on mobile phones so they can access these different applications on the web and also all the content from the course is embedded in the app, too."

This app brings a great deal of mobility and expediency to the students' workload in IST 402. "They also can reference materials if they don’t understand something while they’re not confined to a particular geographic location. Finally, they can contribute to a course discussion outside of the classroom walls," noted Jansen.

The ease and accessibility of smartphone usage was part of Jansen's inspiration for this project. The other part was the problem that course schedules and assignments were so set in stone once the semester began. "As an instructor it was frustrating not being able to respond to course corrections and also not being able to build on what previous students have done. I've always thought that if you have one assignment and a group of students complete it, you can almost breeze through that faster the next semester and let students use what other students have done before them, thereby keeping the knowledge level accelerating much faster," stated Jansen.

The project is making great headway, through the advancement of his application as the semester progresses. "We're going to do a few interface design things, then prototype it this semester with a handful of former students, and then we’re going to introduce it to classroom in the spring semester. We actually explored different developmental environments and went with an open-source platform, so it's compatible on any device including mobile, on a laptop, a desktop, an Android, or an iPhone," stated Jansen.

One of the main advantages of this app is the fact that it focuses on one specific set of tasks. "The apps make the material simple to use, very straightforward for the instructor to explain to the students, very simple for the students to use, for it's not a lot of very complicated interfaces. It just deals with this one specific thing. I think if you look at successful apps, they seem to have that characteristic about them," noted Jansen.

This new app is more convenience-driven for both the instructor and the student. It's easily accessible and is an ever-present connection between instructors, students, and the course makes this project extremely relevant for all parties. Jansen and his TLT team are continuing to work hard on this project, so that it can develop and reach its full potential. The TLT Fellows program has allowed Jansen to tackle a project that is pertinent to faculty and student life at Penn State.

"I think that the whole TLT fellowship program is a really great opportunity. I personally learned a lot. I think it's a really great program to get some worthwhile synergy between faculty members and the permanent staff here at Penn State. It seems like it fosters a great deal of connections with fairly minimal cost, but in a way that can hopefully provide some great benefits to the University," stated Jansen.

To learn more about the TLT Fellows program, visit http://tlt.its.psu.edu/faculty/fellowship.