WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence

Hello!

I smile as I write to welcome you to the 2017-2018 academic year!  I’m delighted to offer a quick peek at what the CFC can do for you in the coming year. Face-to-face teaching: Student Feedback Opportunities; Applying the Quality Matters Rubric course; Active Learning; Community Engagement; and frameworks are for you.  Any or all of these can help you to level up your teaching.  Teaching online: Applying the Quality Matters Rubric course; frameworks; assignments and tests that promote student integrity are for you.  We can do one-on-one consultations or work with you and a group of your colleagues to move your online teaching up an additional notch.  At the writing stage of scholarship: writing groups (meet weekly to write, just to write, and we hide you from your calendar and phone); writer’s retreats (write with coaching); and follow-ups have proven effective in moving your agenda ahead.  Starting a scholarly project: talk with CK (CFC) and Andrea Moshier (Sponsored Research) before you begin.  You may have a project that a grant is begging to see, and you put yourself in the best position to gather complete data.  Tenure and Promotion coming up: come to a tenure and promotion open office hour in the CFC where Drs. Brandon Schwab and Martha Diede will answer as many questions as we can.

The CFC focuses on supporting instructors at WCU, so send an email or come by. Ask questions. Share a smile!

Martha Diede, PhD

Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

P.S.: The CFC is currently undergoing renovations and have temporarily relocated to HL166.  If you get a chance, stop by and visit with us!

Changes in the CFC:

With the start of the new fall term comes several changes in personnel at the CFC.  The CFC has the pleasure of welcoming two new staff members - Terry Pollard, Senior Instructional Developer and Kong Chen (CK), Faculty Research Support Specialist.  Terry has been working at the CFC for a little over a month and CK will be arriving in mid-August.  Stephen LeBeau, Instructional Developer and member of the Educational Development Team has decided to leave the CFC and go back to teaching full time in the Communication Department.  It is with heavy hearts that we bid Steve farewell and wish him much success as he journeys back into the classroom. If you see him around campus be sure to wish him well, and if you get a chance, please come by and meet the new members of the CFC staff!

Important Information for Faculty:

Panopto Upgrade Outage

On Saturday, August 12, 2017 from 8:00pm – 11:00pm, WCU’s cloud-based video and audio hosting service, Panopto, will be offline.  Panopto will be upgraded to version 5.5 and during this time, you will not be able to access recordings on the server, and any attempt to upload files will result in a "Server unable to connect" message.  Thank you for your patience and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the Educational Technology Team at the Coulter Faculty Commons at 828-227-2927, or click here to send an email.  

After this update, you will get the best experience from Panopto by using the "Download Panopto" feature and reinstalling the recorder.  If you have any questions about how to do so, we will be glad to help.

Board of Governors Award

Calls are now open for the 2018 Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching at Western Carolina University.  Deans, faculty, and alumni may make a nomination through completion of this short survey. Remember, the nomination period closes September 1st.  Nominees will then submit a teaching statement before the close of September. Finalists will be selected in October, with committee members conducting faculty teaching observations in the weeks prior to Thanksgiving. Faculty portfolios will also be due at this time, with interviews and a final recommendation to follow. We encourage faculty, deans, and alumni to nominate a worthy candidate!

Eligibility for the Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching at Western Carolina University includes earned tenure and employment at Western Carolina for at least seven years; demonstrated excellence in teaching for a sustained period; and teaching in the academic year selected. The winning faculty member is eligible to receive the Board of Governors' Award only once. Faculty members on scholarly leave are eligible but will still need to be observed in a teaching setting.

To learn more about this award and others given out by the Board of Governors, please click here to check out their web page.

Blackboard Course Checklist

Things tend to get a bit busy just before the start of the semester and as hard as it is for the LMS Team to believe, sometimes Blackboard isn’t your top priority.  Be that as it may, there are some things you need to keep in mind with August 21st looming like a shadow so that your online content isn’t eclipsed by other events.  To keep your students from being lost in a penumbra of online darkness, the CFC has a created a checklist to help remind you of those Blackboard tasks that are important – even if you only have to worry about them once a semester.  To see the checklist, please click here.

2017-2018 Faculty Community Engagement Development Institute (FCEDI)

Are you interested in being one of 10 selected faculty members focused on learning more about and enhancing your service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) theory, best practices, assessment, and scholarship? Over five sessions facilitated during the spring 2018 semester all facets of SLCE will be addressed and applied. Upon successful completion, participants will receive a $1,000 professional development grant and NC Campus Compact conference attendance support.

More details and the application will be made available from August 14 – September 29, 2017. Continue to watch your email box for the invitation! You are an important piece of service and learning on our campus and within our communities, and we’d like to invite you to join others for deepening understanding of SLCE through the 2017-2018 FCEDI. For more information contact Dr. Lane Perry (laneperry@wcu.edu) or Associate Professor Beth Wall-Basset (ebassett@wcu.edu).

Global Learning Academy 2017-2018

The Western Carolina University Global Learning Academy (GLA) exists to develop a team of WCU faculty who work with professionals to internationalize their curriculum (i.e., integrate global dimensions into academic courses).  The GLA meets one Thursday afternoon a month starting on September 14th, 2017 through April 26th, 2018, from 3:15-5:00pm.  Each month there is a different guest lecturer and the topics discussed will focus on various aspects of global learning and curriculum integration.  If you want to globalize your courses and curriculum, the Global Learning Academy is a great place to start. Any faculty member is welcome to attend any one of the events, for full participation, be sure to contact Dr. Ling LeBeau.

For more information click here, or to reserve a seat, please email Dr. Ling Lebeau.

Please click here to see the GLA Agenda.

International Interest?

New to WCU?  Why not join the “We Walk Together” town and gown group!

The purpose of this group is to: Focus on intercultural dialogue and understanding; Enjoy sharing traditional food (delicious, plentiful and diverse); Participate together doing service (in the local community); Show and learn how different people can interact peacefully; Support international students, faculty & staff at WCU.  Please plan to come to the Welcome Back Potluck and Meeting on Thursday, August 31, 2017, starting at 6:30pm, in the Camp building, room 134.

The dining area in Camp has a kitchen and there is ample parking nearby.  WCU students, faculty, staff and greater community members are invited.  You can bring a “traditional dish”—whatever that means to you—or allow the rest of us to feed you!  Either is fine.  For more information, please contact the Group Coordinators: Ling LeBeau at 828-227-3433, Berna Karayaka  at 828-227-3656, and Katerina Spasovska at 828-227-2730.

You Asked for It...You Got It!

Some good news related to faculty requests in relation to educational technology:

BYOD/Active-Learning Rooms in Forsyth:  For those faculty using the pilot BYOD spaces in Forsyth, the CFC has been working with Instructional Technology to update some of the features and interfaces in the new rooms.  All of the new room configurations now have lecture and multi-screen modes, and while the wireless connection capabilities remain available, hard wire connections and high-resolution document cameras have been added back to the new spaces.

Mark Your Calendar for an Open House for the New Business School Classrooms on August 30, 2017, from 4:30 p.m. - 6 p.m.  It will occur in Forsyth 214 and opening comments will be at 5:15 p.m. so that the Faculty Senate can attend after their meeting.

Panopto Upgrades:  You can now easily make your videos closed-captioned and add in-video quizzes.  See the video resources at the end of this email for more information.

Streaming Video Options for Online Courses: The CFC has been working for the past two years with the library, the Provost's office, and the General Counsel for the University to find a video-streaming solution for our online and blended course offerings that are compliant with current copyright laws and accessibility regulations.  We are proud to announce a pilot program hosted by the library that will allow us to keep serving the needs of our students for access to video programming.  For more information click the link below, or go to the Research Guide for streaming video hosted by Hunter Library.

If you have any questions about any of these issues, please feel free to give Jonathan Wade a call at 828-227-3309.

More Resources:

CFC Automated Appointments
Quality customer service is our goal at the Coulter Faculty Commons (CFC).  So, in order to serve our faculty better, we have created a new form to request an appointment with any member of our team.  Please click here to request an appointment.

Course Syllabus Template
Trying to write your syllabus? The CFC has the tools and templates for you to help make the process much easier.  The template provides you with all of the required elements along with an outline into which you can fill in all of your course information. To view the syllabus template, along with some other documents you might find useful as you build your course, please click here.

Blackboard Online Help
As the Learning Management System used at WCU, Blackboard enhances the quality of online and face-to-face instruction and is used to monitor, document, and manage online and classroom events and assignments.  The LMS Team at the CFC has put together a handy list of resources for Blackboard, tailored to meet the needs of the WCU Community.

Highlighted Learning Videos on WCU's Panopto Features Page
We've customized the first entry landing page on the Panopto home page.  We'll be putting up-to-date focused videos in this space and changing them monthly, so make sure to take a look and to suggest more content.  To view the videos, please click the link above and log into Panopto.

Provost's List of Faculty Resources
The Office of the Provost provides a considerable amount of helpful information on this web page. Information concerning faculty awards and recognition, support and development, to forums, gender equity, and policy and procedures is available on this site.

CFC Resources Online
The CFC works to keep our main web page updated.  We'd love to have you click in for a visit.  We also have a Faculty Resources Blog where we post additional resources and announcements as we get them.

IT Training Opportunities
The Division of  IT continues to provide training opportunities on Microsoft products for faculty and staff.

CFC Feedback
We would greatly appreciate any feedback you could give us about how we can improve or add to our services.  We regularly monitor all inputs and try to respond to suggestions as quickly as possible. We thank you for taking the time to provide us with your constructive and formative feedback!

Video Resources:

Blackboard Team Tips for Starting Off the Semester

The Fall 2017 semester is approaching and the Coulter Faculty Commons would like to share a checklist of things you may need to think about as you are working to get your courses ready. If you need assistance, please do not hesitate to let us know how we can assist you.

1. Combine Course enrollments (Merge courses) https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1yHNiwgjPCF5BvT
2. Course copy -- https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8IVpBSbhRfvOoEl
3. Update/create your Syllabus - https://www.wcu.edu/learn/faculty/coulter-faculty-commons/teaching-and-learning/syllabus-resources.aspx
4. Post textbook info to Blackboard or send an email to students regarding the textbook.
5. Do you want a different folder/unit/module organization in Bb – Modules?
6. If you have Panopto content, configure your courses.
7. Posted links to content – Discussed material access (including videos) with librarian. Check all links to materials.
8. Preview site.
9. Make the course Available. (Customization, Properties, Yes to option, and Submit)