FACIT Notes 10/30/2008
Introductions and announcements
Members present: Mark Goodacre (Religion), Chris Erlien (Thompson Writing Program), Dick MacPhail (Chemistry), Marcy Uyenoyama (Biology), Shai Ginsburg (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies), Sheila Dillon (Art, Art History and Visual Studies), JoAnne Van Tuyl (Slavic Languages and Literature)
CIT and A&SIST staff present: Hannah Arps (A&SIST), Randy Riddle (CIT), Andrea Novicki (CIT), Neal Caidin (CIT), Margo Evrenidis (CIT), Amy Campbell (CIT)
1. CIT Open House
Monday 12/8/2008 (reading day)
2 – 4 pm
All faculty invited!
Drop in any time – Link tours, teaching demos, technology demos, door prizes and food!
Meet our staff and learn about CIT services.
2. Workshops and training offerings
There are still workshops on the schedule for this Fall, and we are planning for next Spring. CIT can also do custom sessions in your departments.
What formats and topics do you think would be helpful? Online? Long sessions? Short sessions?
NOTES:
Some suggestions:
- Sessions more focused on the pedagogy of using the technology, not just the technology itself, to build not just technical skill but also knowledge of how to use the tools. For example, what will it really mean to incorporate the technology into a class, how will the syllabus and course schedule change? If talking about "student audio assignments," for example, how would one assess them, manage and track them, refer to them in class, etc.
- Sessions led by faculty who actually use various tools, focused on the actual implementations in courses.
- Sessions in departments, perhaps coordinated by key faculty member (FACIT members).
- Record the sessions we do run and put the recordings online
- Just keeping up with productivity software changes is time-consuming, leaving little energy for instructional technology, maybe CIT could create short online tutorials on specific topics (short side discussion on how these topics would be identified).
- Perhaps hold short real-time online workshops?
3. DDI equipment still available
See http://dukedigitalinitiative.duke.edu
Flip cams, web cams, video camera, iPod Touch, VoiceThread, Wimba, and more.
Do these seem useful and interesting to you?
How can we advertise to your colleagues?
NOTE: This topic wasn't discussed in the meeting due to lack of time.
4. Blackboard 8 upgrade notice
Neal Caidin provided some information about the coming Blackboard 8 upgrade. Our main reason for upgrading is to stay current with our support from Blackboard, Inc. (we are several versions behind the current version now, and support from Bb, Inc. will not continue indefinitely) and to add in some useful new features.
The upgrade will most likely occur between Spring and Summer I term, 2009. Also, with the exception of the new Grade Center, the new version is similar in look and feel to our current one (see the list of potential new features below). More communications to come during Spring and Summer 2009. If interested in a sneak peak at the new version, please email cit@duke.edu (or neal.caidin@duke.edu).
5. Technology planning focus groups
We broke into small groups of 3-4 faculty each, with a CIT facilitator and note-taker. The discussion focused on a variety of teaching activities, how FACIT members currently accomplish them and how they would like to be able to accomplish them in future (what new options would they like to see in their teaching tools?). Summary of comments at bottom.
Potential New Blackboard 8 Features and Enhancements
- New Grade Center (replacing gradebook): calculated grades, more options, easier data entry. Ability for instructor comments on any graded item.
- Language support: Multibyte character support for languages other than western European character based languages, including Japanese and Chinese for example, Chinese and Arabic language packs added.
- Quick Tutorials: self guided multimedia tutorials that show new features and system capabilities.
- Discussion board enhancements: integrated with gradebook, optional moderation of posts, peer review using a 5 star rating system, email notification of posts, instructors can lock posts, and more.
- Visual Text Box Editor (VTBE) compatible with PC Firefox and Mac Firefox and Safari. Enables word processing-like editing features.
- Assessments enhancements: Can now be set to allow unlimited attempts or a specific number of attempts by students. Important for formative assessments; self assessments are now possible, either in which only the student sees the outcome, or where the instructor also sees the outcome but the grade is not counted, tests can be exported and imported (enhancement over using question pools which do not include deployment settings), tests can have extra credit, customized feedback options.
- Peer assessment building block.
- Spell check capability present in more places, including email.
- Early warning system can be employed to notify academic advisors of student performance issues.
- Email enhancements: Course Announcements have an email option, ability to send to students without sending to other course administrators, spell check available, course Id is automatically added to the subject line.
! Safe Assign plagiarism/text checking tool.
! Scholar building block: a social bookmarking tool with special Blackboard integration.
! Bb Synch: Facebook integration.
(! Items need to be evaluated by system administrators before making them available).
Summary of Instructional Tools Focus Group Comments
Communication approaches to students were focused on email (often but not always via the Bb email tool). Announcements were used but not typically seen as "enough" because faculty assume students check them and sometimes there isn't time to assume that. It seemed clear that a function which would both store a communication centrally and also send it to students, would be valuable. Having a way to flexibly answer questions electronically at odd hours (from home, etc.) would be valuable (issues with symbols in some texting/chat tools mentioned).
Although faculty WANT to see students in their offices, fewer and fewer students are coming to office hours. Some thought that easy synchronous video tools could substitute for f2f office interactions, and that f2f (or seeing the person) makes it easier to explain when there are misconceptions. Also interested in capturing and sharing answers to common questions (discussion board, or even video capture) with students.
Important documents like the syllabus are handed out on paper but also stored for easy reference in Bb, which saves faculty and student time when looking for things later. Many or most course materials used are electronic (posted in Bb, library e-reserves [although it is becoming frustrating to comply with copyright], permanent links to library e-articles, media posted in iTunes U or referenced from YouTube. Methods to more powerfully, easy, and flexibly manage and display images is critical to some disciplines, and not easy to do yet. Having ways to get to all these content and tools from one central location is important. Faculty also want to be able to easily link between items in Bb.
Mixed thoughts about posting lecture notes - it can allow students to focus on the content without having to worry about taking so many notes, but can also mean they don't think as hard or synthesize because it's all "spoon fed" to them. Different faculty seemed to feel strongly both ways. Ability to time the release of items is valuable.
In terms of students communicating with each other, faculty don't know a lot about what students do. Some use discussion boards but feel there are ways to do so more effectively, and seemed to feel a discussion board doesn't come close to replicating in-class discussion.
Several of the faculty had suggestions for ways to collect and assess student writing more easily. For some, Bb assignments tool was previously unknown but seemed valuable, others have stopped using the assignment tool because they don't want to use Bb to do grading of papers (dropbox works better), others want even more flexible tools for commenting and editing on e-papers online.
Some mention of use of self-assessment (Webassign), need for placement testing (having a running test on the web for students to determine appropriate class placement). Blackboard gradebook not that heavily used, mainly due to its complexity and not being flexible enough to display ONLY what the faculty want and not more.
Generally there was a desire to know how to share parts of the site or some site content with others (outside of the class or even outside of Duke), have others be able to collaborate with class members. Seems that there is desire to do this but not if it requires a lot of pre-planning.
A mention about wanting easier ways to bring together media and images for classroom presentation - some use PPT as an amalgamation method now, but it's clunky. Would like classrooms to have computers in them. Classroom design is not ideal in many cases.
