June 16, 2017

It is time to think in new ways about mobile devices and cloud storage. With the right program in place and guidance from your IT organization, students, faculty members and administrative offices can find new efficiency in non-paper solutions. Two IT directors from Campbell Law and Duke Law describe hardware/software programs designed to do just that.
Larry Essary will describe Campbell Law’s partnerships with Sony’s Digital Paper (portable pdf editor) and Citrix’ ShareFile (cloud storage). Essary is working to identify a variety of uses of these technologies, which to date include faculty grading of final exams, weekly legal writing assignments, and bar preparation essays. Faculty and staff have also used the Digital Paper to “carry” hundreds of pages of materials when they travel to conferences, while retaining the ability to markup pages and save them for later review or sharing with colleagues. Effectiveness and efficiency are achieved by not printing documents, allowing faculty members to grade anywhere at any time and not using email resources for providing access to the document by faculty and student. The Digital Paper’s Wi-Fi capability and a ShareFile app for the DP allow for automatic synchronization, so that changes to files are safe, even if the DP is lost or damaged. Internal storage has the capacity for thousands of pdf documents and there is a micro SD slot for further expansion. Another potential use case is student notetaking. Several scientific studies have shown that information retention can be increased when taking notes by hand, rather than typing on a laptop. Again, having a digital copy for easy review and sharing is an additional benefit.
Wayne Miller will discuss Duke Law’s Digital First project, which makes use of iPad Minis and Box.com. The outlines of this initiative were discussed at last year’s CALI. In the context of this presentation, we will look specifically at the “workflows” developed to support a variety of courses. A workflow is a carefully vetted and documented set of steps used to satisfy an identified exercise or project need. Data is stored on and retrieved from students’ Duke Box accounts for use within selected apps. We will look at the details of workflows for knowledge management, image and document capture, annotation, recording, videoconferencing, and collaborative authoring. In one course, rather than create workflows, Academic Technologies staff members consulted with individual students regarding their software and presentation needs. The project continues to evolve with new courses and improving software.