LTDC Online News

H1N1 preparation and online help for faculty and instructional staff
The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Learning and Technology Services (LTS) have been engaged in H1N1 Social Distance Teaching preparation over the past few months. A host Webpage was created on the CETL site to help the faculty and instructional staff develop a plan for course continuation in case of a pandemic event on campus. One of the models created was referencing how the instructor is engaging learning in the face-2-face classroom environment and suggesting alternatives using D2L (Rapid Deployment of an existing F2F course, borrowed from Andy Speth/UW-Green Bay, thanks Andy!) and other online options of disseminating content and gathering student assignments and feedback.
Also, as a result of the pandemic preparation planning we have decided to allow faculty and instructional staff to activate their own D2L courses. Approximately a year and a half ago UW-Eau Claire went to the map-all course model (in D2L), now, with this new option it will make course activation faster and easier for the faculty and instructional staff who are not presently using D2L. We are further providing online documentation (and video tutorials—in progress) to step them through this process.
We have also added more D2L Basics and other student/instructor online communication option workshops to the training schedule, in addition to short online video tutorials on the later subjects. We are also encouraging the faculty and instructional staff to engage their students in their contingency plans as soon as possible so their learners will be prepared for the optional learning delivery process if a pandemic event should occur. To date we have not seen much interest in attendance of these workshops, but we are prepared and in wait-mode.

Donna Raleigh is retiring
Donna was the LTDC Rep for UW-Eau Claire for many years (7+) and also the past Chair in 2006-07. She will be retiring on November 3rd after 32 years of employment. We wish her well in her retirement and thank her for all of the years of service and expertise.

Dr. Patricia A. Kleine named Provost
Patricia A. Kleine (Eastern Connecticut State University) became Eau Claire’s Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs this summer. She is the university’s chief academic officer, providing administrative oversight for our four undergraduate Colleges: Arts and Sciences, Business, Education and Human Sciences, and Nursing and Health Sciences; various other academic and co-curricular support programs; the Office of Graduate Studies and the Office of Undergraduate Studies.

College of Business is going QM
UW-Eau Claire’s College of Business (COB) is joining the Quality Matters Consortium. The COB will become a member in November with the plan to certify all of their MBA Online Consortium courses.

Campus Visitors
The past two months have been busy for the campus; we have had a visit from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, September 14-16, and the UWSA Board of Regents, October 15-16.

Submitted by Gene Leisz

Dr. Beth Preston is a member of the English faculty at UW-Eau Claire. I have had the pleasure of working with her on her ascent into instructional technology during the past couple years. She has Camtasia-ed, Dreamweaver-ed, QualityMatters-ed, and D2L-ed (among other-eds) her instructional content to increase student learning and engagement.

Beth describes this foray in the following:

In the spring semester of 2005, one of my students asked me, “Dr. Preston, why don’t you post stuff on D2L? It’s so much easier to use than the W-drive.” I looked at him blankly; I hadn’t even heard of D2L at that point in my career. Following this tip, I started asking around, and by Fall 2006, I was using D2L as an organizational tool from which my students could download handouts and some articles. Little did I know where this new-found path would lead.

By the end of 2006, I began using D2L for much more than “handouts”: I started using the quiz feature for short “did you read the assignment” multiple choice quizzes and the Discussion feature for peer-responses to writing assignments. While the multiple-choice quiz with all its features does take more time to prepare than an in-class quiz, once the questions are created and saved in the Question Library, they are effortlessly available and re-usable. More importantly, I discovered that using the Discussion forum for peer-response resulted in a much higher level of engagement among students. My interest in using D2L and in teaching online heightened, and in Summer of 2008, after taking the Summer Online training offered by LTS, I taught my first completely online course, English 275 (The Novel), and I began developing a blended version of English 110 (we meet half the time online and half the time on D2L), which I taught for the first time in Spring 2008. While my novel course uses a traditional D2L format, my blended course is designed in Dreamweaver, which takes more time to create but results in a highly pleasing aesthetic. Students have responded very favorably to both of these courses.

In addition to using D2L, I have enhanced my courses over the past two years by attending LTS-sponsored workshops on “backwards course design,” Adobe Photoshop, Quality Matters, and Digital Storytelling, learning and then including programs such as Audacity, Camtasia, and MovieMaker. I use them myself as teaching tools, and I teach my students how to use them as well. Audacity allows students to post and hear oral materials; Camtasia provides students with my voice narration through a sequence of PowerPoint slides, and MovieMaker encourages students to use visual mediums with voice and text. Students consistently report that the MovieMaker assignments (which usually focus on their relationship to one or more of UWEC’s liberal education goals) are enjoyable and meaningful, and altogether, we—I and my students—agree that the technology included in both English 110 and English 275 enhances the learning experience.

Submitted by Gene Leisz
UW-Eau Claire LTDC Rep