“Enlightenment” by Van Morrison played on the projection screen as people started drifting in to the last College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Master Teacher Workshop in the Communications Building Tuesday.

The music was accompanied by PowerPoint projections listing the main points of the song and how the sights and sounds of the music presentation calms students for the upcoming class, helping catch their attention.

“I will usually begin with a presentation of this sort while the students are coming into class,” said Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science. “Music can be very effective. The point is you can get students decompressed from their last class and get them ready for the next to begin.”

He showed several examples of the type of digital videos professors can use. Schmidt’s class “Election 2000” has a Web site, www.doctorpolitics.com/e2000class/, where students can watch video segments of speakers. This gives students the opportunity to watch the speaker again if they didn’t understand something, watch it for the first time if they missed class or review the material before an exam.

It also gives a professor the chance to reuse material, with the proper permission, from speakers after they leave.

“All of you bring people to your classrooms from time to time, resource people, famous people, great teachers who have specialties and they come in and give a lecture,” Schmidt said. “What happens after the lecture is over and they fly back home? One of the things I think that is really an opportunity is essentially to just digitally record their presentation.”

Technology to record and edit digital video is also easy to use, he said, and demonstrated with a few clicks of a mouse how to edit video, create titles and make fade-ins and fade-outs, all giving the video clip a professional appearance. This may replace the traditional slides and films professors may have used previously and keep students interested in the class material. “Digital video is the next perfect medium,” he said. “You can narrate it and explain what [students] are seeing.”

Brenda Kutz, academic advisor for electrical and computer engineering, said Schmidt had some helpful ideas on teaching.

“I thought it was good,” she said. “I got some good ideas on how to apply things.”