Support for Faculty Developers


  • The Academic Information Technologies Staff

    • September 11, 2001, marked the one-year anniversaries of both Web Designer Jim Cai and Multimedia Specialist Sylvie Richards. They do the bulk of AIT's faculty training and development, aided by AIT's Associate Director for Faculty Training and Development Nicholas Irons and some talented part-timers. Both Jim and Sylvie have a raft of satisfied faculty clients, and it would be hard to overstate the impact they have had on teaching with technology at Brooklyn College. Their workshops and one-to-one training are truly top-flight.

  • Library Services for Faculty and Students Teaching & Learning at a Distance


    • The Library Web Site
    http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/

    The Library Web site represents one-stop-shopping for access to 14,000-plus digital journals and reference resources, instructions for proxy server access, links to online tutorials in research and writing, and a list of all Brooklyn College Web-based courses on which students can click and link. In the fall semester 2001 programmer Jim Cai began revising the site to improve the ease with which users access information resources and the ability of the Library to keep Web site content up-to-date: we are moving to a database-driven Web site.

    The first of two new tools, a database of full-text electronic journals http://fulltext.aitlink.net/, is now in test on the Library Web site. A second database (in development) will integrate with the first, providing subject access to both licensed resources and free resources (the latter selected by Library subject specialists and recommended for their academic quality). Each of these databases has been tested with a number of students, faculty, and staff, and shaped to reflect user opinion.

    In the coming year, more and more of the content of the Library Web site will be moved into database structures. At the same time, more Library services will be offered via the site, including real-time reference service. (For more on this, see E-Reference, below.) Automated systems will assess the use of these services, gathering data that enable us continuously to improve them.

    Full-Text Electronic Information Resources
    http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/subjects.htm

    Requiring a student who is learning via the Web to travel to a physical library would be the antithesis of online learning. Students engaged in Web-based education need corollary information resources. The Library supports a broad range of Web-delivered full-text journals and reference resources (accessible by title and subject) to support the research requirements that faculty who are teaching make of their students. There are more than 15,000 e-titles.

    Reference Help via E-Mail
    http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/edesk.htm

    To complement digital collections, from its Web site the Library offers reference service via e-mail. In the coming year, we plan to move from e-mail to real-time e-reference. For more on this, see E-Reference, below.

    Student Access to Faculty Course Sites and Caucus Discussion Groups
    http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/ait/courses.html
    http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/electronic_resources/caucus.htm

    Students are often uncertain about how to locate faculty course sites, and how to enter and participate in Caucus threaded discussions. These areas of the Library Web site allow them to retrieve course sites by their instructors' names and step them through the process of joining a Caucus discussion.