The impact of the Internet on education has been recognized for decades, and as technology advances, the ways in which students can access Internet content is ever increasing. Most students have some kind of portable smart device with which they access Internet content without the locational constraints of a desktop computer. This mobility has prompted abundant literature suggesting ways that Quick Response Codes (QR codes), a kind of two dimensional barcode, could be used to advance student learning. However, very few studies have tested the usefulness of QR codes in undergraduate science classes. We report on our development of a campus “scavenger hunt” activity using QR codes. We found that this activity develops application skills of the concepts of native and invasive species and enjoyment of coverage of content relative to traditional lecture in a nonmajors Environmental Science class at a four-year teaching institution.

The Penn State Taxonomic Tags group, with representatives from Information Technology, Business Administration, and the Penn State Libraries, was formed to examine whether a taxonomic set of tags, systematically applied across the university's Web pages, could (a) make finding specific pages easier from among the University's greater than 500,000 Web pages, (b) simplify Web content management tasks and (c) prove useful over time as search engines continue to evolve and despite whether open source or commercial (and often, proprietary) search algorithms are employed. The University has had broad experience with several search engines, and currently holds a University-wide license for the Google Appliance. The Tags Group has developed recommendations that it believes will address issues found in the current environment and yet remain useful during and after what it expects will be the increasing adoption of Content Management Systems across Penn State University.

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