Campus Technology Free 1-Hour Webinar: IT Systems Management Report Card: Does Your School Make the Grade?

Join Campus Technology and Kaseya for this FREE 1-hour webinar.

Date: Thursday, May 6, 2010

Time: 11 AM (PDT), 2 PM (EDT)

http://campustechnology.com/webcasts/list/webinars.aspx?pc=e001sn02&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=sn&utm_campaign=e001sn02

The demands on college and university IT departments increase each year as resources and budgets decrease. Students, teachers and parents expect better IT service levels-and fully protected IT systems-from the IT department at the same time the IT team is required to deliver technology innovations and demonstrate higher productivity to their administrators and board members.


This FREE webinar will teach you:
• How to save time, hassle, money and resources by efficiently managing hundreds of systems through one interface
• How one smart IT director automated away his daily IT hassles and easily manages machines in multiple locations
• How college and university IT directors can manage IT systems tasks in a new way to earn a passing grade for their school


Speakers:
Scott Farmer, Ph.D., director of outreach information services, Virginia Tech University
Pete Coleman, VP public and private sector group, Kaseya
If you're too busy patching, fixing and updating your IT systems and don't have time to focus on new ideas, you will want to take time to join us for this potentially career-saving, FREE webinar to learn how you can more effectively and efficiently respond to your school's needs.


 Register and attend this web seminar and also receive a complimentary copy of Kaseya's eBook entitled, "A Guide to IT Automation: Managing K12 and Higher Ed IT Systems Effectively."


Campus Technology and Kaseya
Follow Campus Technology on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Campus_Tech  

Campus Technology Free 1-Hour Webinar: IT Systems Management Report Card: Does Your School Make the Grade?

Academic Leader Online Seminar: The Keys to a Culture of Assessment: Value and Respect

Featured Higher Education Presenter: Linda Suskie

http://www.magnapubs.com/calendar/422.html?s=tm&p=email

Date: Wednesday, 5/19/10

Time: 12:00 AM - 11:59 PM CDT

You can log on to the seminar anytime, all day long, on Wednesday, May 19.

Program Length: 90 minutes

Cost: $189 ($214 after 5/12/10)

Three easy ways to register!

Online: http://www.magnapubs.com/calendar/422.html?s=tm&p=email

Phone: 800-433-0499 / 608-227-8182

Email: support@magnapubs.com

Learning assessments are the brussels sprouts of academia: While it’s generally acknowledged that they’re good for you, they’re almost universally despised.

Faculty object to assessments for any number of reasons. They’re intrusive; they’re tedious; they attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. You know the litany.
But you also know how important assessments are–not only for improving learning outcomes, but for providing the metrics your institution needs to maintain accountability, ensure accreditation and secure funding.
So … how do you bridge the gap between faculty attitudes and institutional imperatives? How do you encourage people to see assessments not as painful obligations but as important opportunities?
You can gain valuable insight–and answers to those questions–with this seminar program.

The Keys to a Culture of Assessment: Value and Respect will show you how to change the mindset on your campus, and encourage faculty to embrace the assessment process. Led by Linda Suskie, Vice President at the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and a 30-year veteran of college and university administration, this 90-minute audio presentation provides a roadmap to success.



You’ll learn how to:
• Make a convincing case for assessment’s importance and value.
• Gauge the level of resistance to assessment among faculty.
• Respect the history and values of your institution in the process.
• Maintain an emphasis on faculty empowerment and respect for their teaching styles.
• Win program support by building flexibility into expectations and approaches.
• Create assessments that encourage innovation and risk-taking.
• Simplify the assessment process and ease the administrative burden.
• Provide infrastructure and resources to support professional development.
• Build a strong assessment team.
• Develop meaningful incentives for improving disappointing assessment results.
• And more.

Academic Leader Online Seminar: The Keys to a Culture of Assessment: Value and Respect

Campus Technology: Classroom System Adds Assessment Data Management

Classroom System Adds Assessment Data Management

By Scott Aronowitz04/20/10

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/04/20/classroom-system-adds-assessment-data-management.aspx

ClassLink will now offer NOCTI assessment data for its ClassMate classroom management solution. The agreement will allow users to import scores from NOCTI assessments in order to improve analysis and reporting on students' individual progress and instructional needs in a range of subjects and specific goal areas.

Designed especially for vocational and technical education, ClassMate offers several standard classroom management features specially tailored for such curricula, including performance and mapping data and analysis. The company said it expects the inclusion of NOCTI assessment data to pinpoint more accurately the progress and needs of students engaged in technical instruction and pursuing certification in specific career disciplines.


NOCTI (http://www.nocti.org/), the National Occupational Competency Testing Institute, is a nonprofit corporation offering a range of assessments and related products specifically geared to determining student skills and competency, acquired through career and technical instruction, as they directly relate to real-world job readiness. A spokesperson for NOCTI noted that the joining of its data with a sector-specific system like ClassMate is a natural fit.


Robert Lees, administrative director of Berks Career & Technology Center in Leesport, PA, expressed enthusiasm for the new component of ClassMate. "Now our teachers will have instant access to both pre-test and post-test scores on their students. This will enhance their ability to analyze both written and performance components of the NOCTI assessment. They can determine where learning gaps exist and which areas of instruction will need to be reinforced. Having this type of data will direct curriculum renewal and help our teachers improve instruction."


About the Author
Scott Aronowitz is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas. He has covered the technology, advertising, and entertainment sectors for seven years.

Campus Technology: Classroom System Adds Assessment Data Management

Infotopia Information Portals for Academic Educators

htp://www.infotopia.info/portals.html

Infotopia Information Portals for Academic Educators

Science Daily: Your Source for the Latest Research News!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

ScienceDaily is one of the Internet’s most popular science news web sites. Since starting in 1995, the award-winning site has earned the loyalty of students, researchers, healthcare professionals, government agencies, educators and the general public around the world. Now with more than 3 million monthly visitors, ScienceDaily generates nearly 15 million page views a month and is steadily growing in its global audience.

No other web site offers readers the depth and breadth of breaking news about the latest scientific discoveries that ScienceDaily does in such a user-friendly format – all freely accessible with no subscription fees. With over 65,000 research articles, 15,000 images, 2,500 encyclopedia entries, 1,500 book reviews, and hundreds of educational videos, there is something for everyone on ScienceDaily.

Updated several times a day with breaking news and feature articles, seven days a week, the site covers discoveries in all fields of the physical, biological, earth and applied sciences. Stories are integrated with photographs and illustrations, links to journals and academic studies, related research and topics, encyclopedia articles, and videos, to provide a wealth of relevant information on almost every science topic imaginable – from astrophysics to zoology. And thanks to a custom search function, readers can do their own research using the site’s extensive archive of stories, topics, articles, videos, images and books.


ScienceDaily is best known for showcasing the top science news stories from the world’s leading universities and research organizations. These stories are selected from among dozens of press releases and other materials submitted to ScienceDaily every day, and then edited to ensure high quality and relevance. Universities have come to rely on ScienceDaily to spread news about their scientists’ findings to a wider audience. And through ScienceDaily’s email newsletters and RSS newsfeeds (offered freely to both commercial and non-commercial web sites as well as individuals), news about these important discoveries is further amplified.


Over the past 14 years, ScienceDaily has been linked to by thousands of schools and universities, professional associations and research organizations, reference sources and other information authorities, newspapers, magazines and other news services, and increasingly bloggers and social networking and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and Technorati. ScienceDaily enjoys high rankings with popular web search engines such as Google and Yahoo for hundreds of scientifically important keywords, including the word “science” for which the site comes up in typically the top three search results.


Top companies looking to advertise on the web have also come to recognize ScienceDaily – not only for the quality of its content, but for its well-educated audience as well. Premium branding ads for leading consumer, health, and technology companies are regularly placed on ScienceDaily, served by major ad networks. Media metrics firms now rank ScienceDaily among the Internet’s top 500 to 1,000 web sites.


For more information, please contact us at:
ScienceDaily
1 Research Court
Suite 450
Rockville, MD 20850
Tel/Fax: (240) 454-9600 (240) 454-9600
Dan Hogan, Editor
editor@sciencedaily.com
Michele Hogan, Sales Manager
sales@sciencedaily.com


We hope you enjoy ScienceDaily and make it one of your regularly visited web sites. We welcome all questions and comments.

Science Daily: Your Source for the Latest Research News!

Academic Index: A True Meta-Search Tool!

http://www.academicindex.net/

The Academic Index was created and is maintained by Dr. Michael Bell , former chair, Texas Association of School Librarians. The Academic Index is a true meta-search tool that includes results from mega-information databases that index only research-quality reference and information sources selected by professional librarians, educators, and educational and library consortia.

At the present time the Academic Index provides access to over 300,000 quality information web pages.

Some included sites are :

• Virtual Learning Resources Center http://www.virtuallrc.com/ - 100,000+ pages recommended by professional librarians and teachers.
• Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk/  -Intute is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 123,700 records.
• Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) http://www.thegateway.org/  - Sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Education, GEM is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to (currently) 39,723 educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.
• MagBot http://www.virtuallrc.com/magbot/  - a carefully selected database of freely accessible online periodical articles corresponding to important topics of interest to high school and community college students and teachers.
• Internet Scout Project http://scout.wisc.edu/Archives/index.php -Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, an eclectic staff of academics and professionals have selected 16,969 research-quality Internet information sites.
• MeL Internet http://www.mel.org/ -A division of the Michigan E-Library, MeL Internet makes available 20,000+ librarian recommended Internet sites.

As a meta-search engine, the Academic Index integrates into its search results only the first 1-2 pages returned from each site it searches. Because most sites rank search results as to relevance, this ensures that only the best (most relevant) information is returned to users.

I hope you enjoy using Academic Index.

Sincerely,

Dr. Michael Bell

Academic Index: A True Meta-Search Tool!

GOOGLE Custom Search BETA Website

http://www.google.com/cse/ 

With Google Custom Search, you can harness the power of Google to create a customized search experience for your own website.

• Include one or more websites, or specific webpages
• Host the search box and results on your own website
• Customize the look and feel of the results to match your site

Custom Search for your website or blog

•Provide fast and relevant search results
•Make money with AdSense for Search
•Invite your friends and community to contribute
•Automatically search across links, bookmarks or blogrolls with Custom Search on the fly

GOOGLE Custom Search BETA Website

Innovative Educators Webinar: Leveraging Internet Technology to Facilitate Student Success

http://www.innovativeeducators.org/retention_p/794.htm

Webinar Description

This presentation will highlight the collaborative efforts of faculty members, student services staff, computer programmers/web developers, and administrators in the development, implementation of an Online Student Profile system which serves as an integral part of a college-wide effort to improve the retention and success of at-risk students (defined as those placing into one or more developmental reading or English courses). This project, funded in large part through a Dept. of Education Title III Improving Institutions grant, resulted in significant increases in student success and retention for this student population.
This internally-produced Online Student Profile system incorporates self-scoring personality and learning style assessment features and a wide variety of student information features in a package used by student services staff and faculty members to provide more individualized service and instruction to students through ease of access to expanded information about individual students and, for instructors, about the learning/cognitive preferences of entire class sections.


Objectives

Participants will learn how to :
• develop and implement an Online Student Profile system that includes a variety of student information features
• teach student services staff how to utilize the system to provide more individualized service
• teach faculty how to utilize the system to learn more about the learning/cognitive preferences of entire class sections and ultimately improve instruction
• incorporate the system into a college-wide effort to improve the retention and success of at-risk students

Who Should Attend?

• Faculty
• Vice Presidents of Academic Affairs
• Vice Presidents of Student Affairs
• VP for Enrollment Management
• Dean/Director of Admissions
• Deans of Academic and Student Affairs
• Student Success Staff
• Retention Specialists
• Student Development Retention Coordinators
• Academic Advisors
• Directors of Enrollment Services
• Directors of Student Development Services



Who is the Speaker?

Clint McElroy, Ph.D., is Dean for Retention Services at Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) in Charlotte, NC. He earned his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Urban Education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He chairs CPCC's Retention Committee, a cross-functional group which focuses on improving student retention, and also its cross-functional Student Intake Steering Committee, which focuses on improving student intake processes. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Activity Director for a federal Title III Improving Institutions grant project focusing on improving retention of students entering the College who placed into two or more developmental courses. The success of the CPCC Title III activity in positively influencing student retention has resulted in teams from several colleges from across the United States visiting CPCC to learn about the implementation of the project and how it might be duplicated on their own campuses. The organization of the CPCC Title III activity was highly cross-functional, requiring substantial interaction among the College's Instructional, Student Services, and Information Technology Services units.

Innovative Educators Webinar: Leveraging Internet Technology to Facilitate Student Success

Campus Technology: The Future of Lecture Capture is in the Cloud

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Cloud Lecture Capture[1]

View more documents from Dillard University Library.

Campus Technology: The Future of Lecture Capture is in the Cloud

*Call for Chapters Call for Reviewers Transformation in Teaching: Social Media Strategies in Higher Education

*Call for Chapters Call for Reviewers Transformation in Teaching:

Social Media Strategies in Higher Education

Proposals for chapters are being solicited for a new refereed book entitled Transformation in Teaching: Social Media Strategies in Higher Education. Please fill out your proposal at: http://www2.oakland.edu/elis/book_proposals.cfm

*Proposals are due July 30, 2010. Contact Editors:* Catheryn Cheal, cheal@oakland.edu  , John Coughlin, jcoughli@oakland.edu  , Shaun Moore, samoore@oakland.edu  

*Call for Reviewers:* For those interested in only reviewing chapters, please sign in and create an account at: http://transform.informingscience.net


All authors will eventually be asked to review as well.
" Go to: Reviewers Sign up. The keycode is required, so type in the box: * key*
" Click Enter and fill out the form.
" Write down the username and password you create, because you won't be using it for several months. We recommend making your password the same as your username.
" Write a paragraph biography in the Comments to Chair.
You will be credited as a reviewer in the final book.

*Publisher*: This book will be published by Informing Science Institute, a non-profit publisher located in Santa Rosa, California.
As a leader in non-profit publishing, all Informing Science Press publications are made available online free of charge as well as available in print. To learn more about the Informing Science Institute, visit http://informingscience.org  

*Description:* Social media is web content that is user-generated through social interaction. Social constructivism is an educational theory that focuses on active learning by students who construct and build upon their own knowledge-base through social interaction. The intersection of educational theory with online networking practices has invigorated teaching and learning in higher education. This book will describe specific examples and case studies of adapting social media systems for educational purposes in colleges and universities.

*Proposal Format:* You are invited to submit an abstract proposal (50 words or less) for a short book chapter on teaching in higher education with social media. The proposal for chapters on case studies should describe what specific social media you use in teaching and the type of course. If you are proposing an overview chapter on social media about the history, theory, etc. give the specifics of what you plan on covering. Please also submit a three to four page discussion and outline of your chapter (750 - 1000 words), including planned section headings. Also include a paragraph biography of all authors.

" Abstract Proposal (50 words or less)
" Discussion and outline of chapter (750 - 1000 words)
" Authors biography (paragraph)

*Possible Topics:* Chapters should describe and evaluate teaching that uses specific social media strategies and enhances learning outcomes for a college or university course. Case studies or quantitative/qualitative studies of teaching in higher education with networking software, the successful abstract proposal should give an explanation and summary of the proposed subject, including the course taught, the teaching and learning activity, and the resulting student perceptions and measured student outcomes. Examples of specific software technologies listed below are in parentheses, but there are many other possibilities as well.

Social networking and discussion sites (Facebook, MySpace, or Ning) Collaboration through wikis (Wikipedia, GoogleWave), social bookmarking and tagging (Delicious, Diigo), or social news sites
(Digg) Multimedia sharing of video (YouTube) or images (Flickr) Music sharing (Share the Music)Presentation sharing (SlideShare, Prezi) Live chat (IRC), or video conferencing sessions (Skype)
Virtual worlds (Second Life) GPS software in phones Blogging (Wordpress, Edublogs) Microblogging (Twitter) Blogging Activities in open source Learning Management Systems (Moodle) Overviews (such as history, theory and philosophy, research methods, future trends and/or purposes of social media or a particular category of social media): For further information contact me at cheal@oakland.edu  

Catheryn Cheal, Ph.D. Assistant Vice President
e-Learning and Instructional Support Suite 430 Kresge
Library Oakland University cheal@oakland.edu
248-370-4566
fax: 248-370-3628

Powered by PHPlist, www.phplist.com

*Call for Chapters Call for Reviewers Transformation in Teaching: Social Media Strategies in Higher Education

Digital Librarian: a Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web

Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web

http://www.digital-librarian.com/

Digital Librarian is maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York

 

 

Digital Librarian: a Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web

DU 2009 2010 Yearbook Photos for Faculty and Staff

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

DU 2009 2010 Yearbook Photos for Faculty and Staff

View more presentations from Dillard University Library.

DU 2009 2010 Yearbook Photos for Faculty and Staff

Faculty Focus: Six Steps to Designing Effective Service-Learning Courses

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/curriculum-development/six-steps-to-designing-effective-service-learning-courses/?c=FF&t=F100421

By: Mary Bart in Curriculum Development, Instructional Design

A biology class works with a local environmental organization to test water samples from the Chesapeake Bay. A graphics design class helps a non-profit organization build a new website. A childhood development class serves as mentors to at-risk students in an after-school program.


These aren’t examples of a few kind-hearted college students volunteering their time, but rather part of formalized service-learning programs designed to achieve specific learning outcomes. Although service-learning isn’t new, it is “burning hot” right now, says Barbara Jacoby PhD, senior scholar and chair of the Coalition for Civic Engagement and Leadership at the University of Maryland.


And for good reason.
“Faculty members I’ve worked with say that service-learning invigorates both their teaching and their students’ learning. By integrating course content with real world experience, service-learning has tremendous potential to meet faculty goals for student learning while making unique contributions to addressing critical community needs,” Jacoby says. “Service-learning enables students to deepen comprehension of course content, integrate theory with practice, increase understanding of the complexity of social issues, and sharpen their abilities to solve problems creatively and collaboratively – all skills that are highly valued in the workplace.”


Of course all of this is only possible if the service-learning course is properly designed and taught, and that takes careful planning, a strong commitment, and frequent communication.


In the recent online seminar Service-Learning Course Design: What Faculty Need to Know, Jacoby provided a step-by-step guide to help faculty design a service-learning course from scratch, or revise a current course. What follows is a brief outline of these steps, along with just a few of the key questions you need to answer along the way:


Step I: Consider how service-learning will help students achieve your desired learning outcomes.
•What are your desired learning outcomes for the course?
•What pedagogies align with the desired learning outcomes (e.g., research papers, lecture, demonstration, problem based learning, class discussions, service-learning)?
•What desired learning outcomes are best achieved through service-learning? Why?


Step II: Determine how the combination of service and academic content will enable students to achieve the learning outcomes.
•What types of service are appropriate for the course? How frequently? What duration?
•What readings and other materials will complement the service?
•What kinds of reflection activities will students engage in?


Step III: Initiate community partnerships.
•How will you identify community organization partner(s)?
•Who will be responsible for initiating and developing the partnership?
•How many students does the organization need? With what knowledge and skills? To do what tasks?


Step IV: Establish assessment and evaluation standards.
•How will students demonstrate learning from their service experiences and other assignments? What measures will you use?
•At what points during the term will you assess learning?
•What will be the community organization’s role in evaluating students’ performance at the service site?


Step V: Develop the syllabus.
•Prepare a draft syllabus detailing rationale for service-learning, students’ roles and responsibilities, how the service experience will be assessed, readings, course materials, and reflection activities.
•Visit the community partner to discuss the draft syllabus.
•Based on community partner input, revise the syllabus as needed.


Step VI: Prepare to manage the process.
•What logistical issues need to be addressed?
•Have you addressed appropriate dress and behavior, transportation, and safety issues?
•What campus resources are available to assist you along the way?


Permalink: http://www.facultyfocus.com?p=12772

Faculty Focus: Six Steps to Designing Effective Service-Learning Courses