A minimum of 20 faculty
development workshops will be offered each semester in a multi-tiered
series so as to reach faculty working at different levels of expertise. The
workshops will be available to all CUNY faculty.
In the fall semester 2002 we launched our most ambitious faculty workshop schedule to date. Many weeks we offered a workshop literally every day, Monday through Friday. The more popular sessions were repeated on days with alternating class patterns. All CUNY faculty (including adjuncts) were welcome to attend, under a new fall 2001 policy.Our workshops were publicized in Academic IT's fall and spring Faculty Bulletin, and on the AIT Web site. They were also listed in the College's "smart calendar" under a new topic, Faculty/Staff Workshops . However, one of the more effective public relations tools proved to be the weekly reminders prepared by Howard Spivak and sent out over announce-l.
Presentations fell into four categories: Pedagogical Workshops, Blackboard Workshops, Technology Workshops, and Web Design and Development Workshops.
Fall 2002: 39 workshops Spring 2003: 54 workshops
The College expects to license and implement
level 2 of Blackboard; create an intensive Blackboard Institute to be held
during intersession; increase the number of Blackboard courses by 10%; and
incorporate Blackboard and other instructional tools into the orientation for
new students.
The University is licensing level 2 of Blackboard and the College will implement it. We have held three 3-week intensive Blackboard Institutes, accepting faculty from throughout CUNY and the entire metropolitan area:
The number of Blackboard courses will increase
by 10%. Here, we completely outstripped our goal:
Total courses created as of June 2002: 183 Total courses created as of June 2003: 361 Increase: 98%
Active courses, 2001-02 99 Active courses, 2002-03 164 Increase 65%
Students will be introduced to
Blackboard at orientation sessions. Orientation sessions were done at fall
freshman orientation, and fall and spring graduate orientation.
Academic Information Technologies and
Human Resources will jointly devise plans to involve adjuncts in
teaching-with-technology projects.
We have made presentations about our workshop and training opportunities at HR's adjunct open houses and included adjuncts in department mailings.
Presentations will be made at two
national/international conferences; one University-wide conference on
technology will be conducted.
On April 11, 2003, we presented not just a University-wide but a metropolitan-area-wide day-long conference, Building the 21st Century Library. 135 participants heard morning presentations from architects, technology consultants, and others about the elements necessary for the modern library. After lunch, attendees chose among a variety of special topic presentations, including technology.Other 2002-2003 presentations include:
A series of technology workshops for
students will be delivered in the Library Café. This series was
delivered in both the fall 2002 and spring 2003 semesters.
Summer workshops: 7 Fall workshops: 24 Spring workshops: 24
The College will establish a college-wide
roundtable, composed of faculty, staff, and students, modeled on the
Teaching-Learning-Technology Roundtables that have worked well at other
colleges. The roundtable will work on policy for academic technology and on a
system for the organized expenditure of the Technology Fee.
The TLTR was established and met three times in 2002-2003. Policies approved by the TLTR include those for hardware replacement and software acquisition. Members heard a presentation about the University's policy on intellectual property. At its November 2002 meeting the TLTR approved the Brooklyn College Information Technology Master Plan.A Student Technology Fee committee, with TLTR representation, met twice in the spring, 2003, to develop recommendations for Tech Fee expenditures for the 2003-2004 academic year.
When the new Library opens this fall, a
Web-based user interface will be created (a) to promote the Library's
full-text electronic journal subscriptions and (b) to complete the merger of
the Audiovisual Center, the Music Library, and the New Media into the New
Media Center.
E-Journals Finder has been implemented. It is a marvelous tool, built by Academic IT staff, and unique within academic libraries. http://dewey.brooklyn.cuny.edu/eJFinder/
Working together with the media consultants for the new Library (Shen Milsom & Wilkie), staff from the Library, Academic IT, and Information Technology Services selected Artesia's TEAM product as the multimedia distribution system for the new Library. The TEAM implementation has begun.
The Digital Supplemental Instruction (DSI) initiative builds on a proven model of Supplemental Instruction (SI) developed at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Its objective is to stem the flow of attrition in gateway courses using an interactive syllabus and multimedia components ("learning objects" and simulations, videotaped faculty lectures, PowerPoint lecture notes with audio files, etc.). The College's goal is to have complete DSI for at least 9 courses during the year and to provide faculty training and development in using DSI to improve learning. Academic IT staff have created nine such sites:
Cell and Molecular Biology Elementary Macroeconomics Elementary Macroeconomics 101A General Chemistry 1 General Chemistry 1.1 General Chemistry 1.2 Accounting 1 Economics 10.1A PrecalculusWe are presently recruiting for a DSI Specialist who will join the Academic IT staff, significantly increasing our work in this area.
A proposal for an Advanced
Certificate Program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA)
will be [was] submitted for approval to the Board of Trustees in fall 2002.
Several of the new PIMA courses will be offered during the next academic
year [2003/04]. The Brooklyn College Foundation has included PIMA among its
"centers of excellence" and will seek external funding for it. The new
Library is hosting and staffing PIMA's technology needs.
