remembering professor alan hankin

September 20, 1948 - March 1, 2005

As part of the Emerson community, we sadly miss the enthusiasm and professionalism of Dr. Alan Hankin. Professor Hankin was a campus leader with instructional technology, we are proud to have worked with him and display these profiles of his teaching.

Students Examine their Impact on the Environment with WebCT tools

Alan Lee Hankin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Head of Science Program

An enthusiastic proponent of technology in the classroom, Professor Alan Hankin used the quiz and grade-book features of WebCT to engage students in examining their own day-by-day impact on the environment.

As the goal of SC205 Environment and Humankind is to examine and understand the impact of humankind on the environment, Professor Hankin assigned students an activity to document their own water usage over a period of 7–10 days.

Students then answered a series of questions such as “how many times did you wash your dishes by hand” with answer options such as 0–7.

The student answers were computed according to a formula Professor Hankin inputted into the grade book. Using a feature normally used to calculate final grades, he inputted the formula to calculate each students average number of gallons consumed by the frequency of their particular water usage activities.

The “grade-book” allowed students to see the average amount of water they consumed weekly by the gallon. Further, Professor Hankin configured the tool so that students could view the class average and compare their own water usage to that of their classmates.

The grade-book tool can be used for a variety of activities that require collecting data and computing the mean, the median, and the highest and lowest scores.

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PowerPoint in the Classroom

Assistant Professor Alan Lee Hankin used PowerPoint in his courses, SC205 Environment and Humankind and SC280 Science and Society. While attending a session at the WebCT conference, he had engaged in a discussion on taking advantage of PowerPoint's features. In light of replacing the use of transparencies, he intended to use images, animation and audio in order to enhance his lecture. Professor Hankin emphasized, "transparencies and PowerPoint are not the same thing."

instructional process
One of the course objectives in Environment and Humankind is the understanding of mapping and the integrated nature of environmental space. In order to present a local watershed, the Charles River, Dr. Hankin used maps, selected aerial photographs and animation. One part of this effort was to point out the brooks in Massachusetts that make up the Charles River watershed. As maps only partially convey the concept and complexity of a watershed, he created a solution to demonstrate the meeting of numerous streams into one area through the PowerPoint animated typewriter feature. Here is a sample of the presentation.

production process
To produce the animated slide, Professor Hankin created a new blank slide and typed the names of the streams and rivers that flow into the watershed. Then he selected the menu called Slide Show, scrolled down to Animations, and selected Typewriter from the sub-menu. This enabled the flow of the text on the screen as though it is progressively being typed, accompanied by typewriter audio. The names of the streams and rivers appeared on the screen one after another. The animated screen caught students attention and added a sense of movement to the watershed concept as Professor Hankin described it.