Welcome to a new academic year. Why does the summer seem so long in May and so short in August?? I guess it's one of those age-old mysteries.
The Instructional Design team has had a busy summer with a lot of new things to share. First and foremost we are working with our talented IT colleagues to bring our Bridges course management system up for all courses for Fall 2010 powered by Sakai. Any faculty member who would like to use this new system with their classes is welcome to try it out. There are many wonderful features that will be sure to please everyone. Many faculty have already started exploring with an impressive number achieving Sakai certification and others attending the full-day virtual Summer Institute webinar held on August 20. The ID team is also offering instructor-led sessions, both virtual via Elluminate and on campus, during the month of August. It's not too late to sign up - check our registration info and topics at: http://www.timetosignup.com/rwusignup/signupsheet/1701 More on this to come...
Forty-six faculty and deans participated in the E-Portfolio Institute this summer that was generously funded by Provost Laura deAbruna. This four-day intensive workshop was offered in three separate series with two in June and one in August. Faculty explored the use of e-portfolios for learning, assessment and professional development. Our Bridges system offers an integrated e-portfolio option that will be a great benefit for faculty who opt to use it. One of the highlights of the Institute was the creation of a professional e-portfolio for each participant that included a digital story of each person's professional journey. What a wealth of talented and experienced faculty we have! Our hope is to have a website up soon that will feature some of these professional faculty e-portfolios so you all get to see them as well.
Upgrades are happening during the month of August to both our Panopto CourseCast lecture capture system as well as our Elluminate web conferencing system and we're also bringing back the Turnitin Anti-Plagiarism software that will be accessible to both Blackboard and Bridges users. Another new edition to our instructional toolbox is Respondus. This application does a great job of creating electronic quizzes that can be used in either Blackboard or Bridges. It's easy to learn and is a huge timesaver for faculty. We'll be offering some workshops on these and other topics during the Fall semester. Stay tuned....
I'd also like to put in a word for some of the work our Learning Commons partners have been doing over the summer. You all were sent a notice in late Spring about our new video collection. Veronica Maher can fill in anyone who missed the announcement about a substantial digital video collection that is now available to faculty or you can view the nifty video that Barbara Kenney produced at: http://www.youtube.com/user/BJKenney1. Also, our library now offers a texting option to connect to our library staff. How cool is that! To find out more about this option for our community go to http://library.rwu.edu/mobile/ Thanks to Sue McMullen for all her hard work on this new benefit. In addition our Center for Academic Development has brought two new people on board to replace retired administrative assistants. Wendy McDonough and Patsie Almonte will be a great support for the Center (although Wendy's help will be missed in the Library). Also the Center will feature a new tutor reporting application called TutorTrak that will automate tutor scheduling and tracking. Thanks to all the hard work by Karen Bilotti along with our IT colleagues in getting this set up.
So... lots to hear about. Looking forward to seeing all our faculty at the upcoming Fall Faculty Conference on August 31 and hearing all your stories about what you did for your summer vacation :)
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