WebTrends

University of Iowa Site Visit

David Sonnenberger, Jon Miller, Jill Redmond and Ethel Ragland visited the University of Iowa's Academic Advising Center on May 21 to discuss the role of technology in academic advising and student retention. They met with the Assistant Director of the Advising Center, the Director of Student Development and Scholarships, the Director of the Undergraduate Program Office, College of Business and the Director of Academic Programs and Services, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The group explored several models of advising, the U of I freshman advising program, innovative retention strategies, and technologic capabilities of the U of I online Student Information System.

Faculty Workhops Held in January & May

The highly successful week-long Faculty Technology Workshops were offered for the third time in January. Fourteen faculty attended. The workshops include three days of directed, hands-on sessions covering copyright issues, imaging, PowerPoint, Excel, Dreamweaver and WebCT, followed by two days of independent project development. Check for outcomes of those workshops in the Faculty Projects area of this website.

A different workshop style was developed for the May offering. During the first three years of the grant many faculty have developed expertise in various learning technologies. In order to take advantage of that expertise, faculty were asked to suggest half-day or full-day workshops that they would be willing to teach. Suggested topics were then circulated, and those that generated interest were funded. Workshops were offered in Course Web Page Development, Creating an Excel Gradebook, Javascripting, WebCT Quizzes , Tegrity and Lectora. Rather than attend the entire week, as in the earlier workshops, faculty selected particular sessions. Fifty faculty attended a total of 99 sessions; Six faculty presented.

Tegrity Projects Launched

Tegrity technology is used to develop multimedia e-learning for on-demand or live delivery. During the Spring term two faculty began work on Tegrity-based projects.

Wayne Wesolowski, along with students Matt Moy, Andrea Ebert-McNeill and Samee Haq started planning a series of General Chemistry Laboratory presentations. The presentations will be used to introduce basic lab techniques to students before they come to lab. The hope is that students will be better prepared to complete labs properly and safely if they view these presentations in advance.

Wayne had the opportunity to share his Tegrity experience with the ACCA Chemistry faculty. In doing so he produced a Tegrity presentation that demonstrates the capabilities of the Tegrity system. The presentation is available for viewing here. (If you've not used Tegrity before, follow the First Time User link to check your browser for compatibility with Tegrity.)

Peter Tsong developed Tegrity recordings that demonstrate Excel solutions for homework problems in his statistics class. A sample of Peter's work is available for viewing here. Peter takes full advantage of the Screen Recording feature of Tegrity.

Multimedia Room Open House

In conjunction with the Office of Information Technology an Open House was held in the Library Multimedia Room, KN 232, on February 28. (Read about the Multimedia Room in Issue #8.) Equipment that is permanently housed in that room, as well as digital video and still cameras, webcasting capabilities, and the Tegrity system, were demonstrated.

Tech Training Room Open House

On April 11 an Open House was held in the Tech Training Room, KN 145. Projects worked on by faculty during the previous year were on display, along with new projects involving 3D geography mapping software. The Virtual Tour of the Library, developed by Joan Hopkins with help from student Makvika Shah, was also showcased.