WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence

Greetings,

If everything goes as planned, this will be my last missive to all of you in this specific role.

I've been watching the changes that have been happening as a part of the construction of the new building.  There is a part of me -- the part, I think, that loved the book Are You My Mother? when I was a child -- that feels/thinks that this dynamic change is a good and formative part of living -- that it is a sign of growth.  There is another part that longs for constancy and mourns the loss of things like the garden of native species that had to be removed so that the library would not be flooded.  It is amazing to watch the change and to know that the plants will be replanted and that they will grow back.  It is astounding to know that this valley, that has so long sheltered human life, and been a cradle and grave for millennia of learners, will continue to change, grow and become, and that I, in my small way, am a part of the whole.  When I truly stop and think about it, it is, truly, a wonder.

I want to thank you all for your engagement with the Commons as we have moved through the process of change as well this year.  I want to thank you, personally, for the way that you've shown support and patience with and for me and for my amazing co-workers.  

Below are some of the ways that we hope to support you in the near future as you face your challenges and as you join us in our mutual challenges and hope.

If I never get to say it to you again publically, let me say it now:  What you do matters.  Thank you for serving the public good.

Serving this mutual purpose with you,

Jonathan Wade, PhD
Acting Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

If you have any questions about academic issues, please do not hesitate to contact the Coulter Faculty Commons at 828-227-7196 or call the ITHelp desk to at 227-7487.

For More Information About the Services of the Coulter Faculty Commons

This year’s Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning is shaping up to be a wonderful event! This year’s theme, Hands on with High-Impact Practices, is all about helping faculty consider, develop, or redesign coursework and curricula based on George Kuh’s high-impact practices. Time-intensive sessions include team-based learning, designing for service learning and global learning, and roleplay/simulation design. Shorter, concurrent sessions include faculty and staff speaking on cooperative learning methods and practices, data visualization, and ways to integrate new and innovative services offered by Hunter Library’s Scholar Studio. Faculty and staff from across WCU are involved in leading sessions.

Teaching Online with Impact Course

The online professional development course we have often discussed in this newsletter is ready for faculty! Stakeholders of online programs were invited to review the course in late fall, and with those suggestions received and addressed, the course has been revised and is ready for faculty to enroll. For more information click here.
 

 Supporting Faculty with Cooperative Learning Implementations

Dr. Maurice Phipps, Professor Emeritus in Parks and Recreation, has initiated a faculty learning community on the topic of cooperative learning. Dr. Phipps developed and utilized cooperative learning techniques in his tenure as a WCU faculty member.

A session has also been scheduled for February 19, 11:00 – 1:00, in Hunter Library 166. Although a specific topic is under development, broad topics of interest to Dr. Phipps include distributed leadership, conflict resolution skills, strategies for setting group norms, and methods for encouraging strong team collaboration, such as jigsaws.

Questions about the faculty learning community can be directed to Dr. Phipps at phipps@email.wcu.edu

To register, please visit the registration link here.

Mid-Semester Assistance

Online Courses

Sometimes online courses don’t go as well as we’d like, and as faculty, we aren’t sure why. The CFC established a service for all Western faculty last fall in order to help faculty determine the experiences of their online students in case mid-semester adjustments are needed. The service is similar to what we have offered in traditional courses for years, but it is tailored for online students and courses.

We piloted this service last fall and faculty were pleased with the service. The process is intended to solicit student’s experiences and feelings about the course. Questions pertaining to student regulation, procrastination, preparation, etc. tend to emerge as themes that faculty can then address in ways that are helpful.

For more information please click here.

Face to Face Courses

Schedule Mid-Semester Analysis

The midterm of the semester is approaching, and faculty interested in a mid-semester course analysis should schedule with Terry Pollard or Jeanine Irons in the next few weeks. One of us, with assistance from Kelsey Woodburn, our graduate assistant, will visit your class at a time of your choosing and conduct a focus group. The process works as follows:

Contact Jeanine Irons or Terry Pollard for more information

The next Third Thursday Brown Bag Session Topic - High Impact practices

February 21, 2019, noon to 1 pm

In this session, we will share the high-impact educational practices of George Kuh and how the Commons supports many of these practices, such as OneBook, first-year seminars and experiences, and collaborative learning.

For more information, contact Jeanine Irons

CFC Hosting Educause Encore! Event on March 5-6

Join us as we host a broadcast of the best of this year's EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's annual meeting.  We'll be meeting in Hunter 156 and discussing the content between sessions.

Session Times and More Information

Educational Technology Team

The Educational Technology team in the CFC would like to thank the members of the Help Desk and the Technology Commons for helping us work through a significant number of requests during the month of January.

Panopto Update

The Panopto folder features have been upgraded.  

For regular users, you may remember when the company added the "My Folder" personal storage and creation space in the upper left menu.

They have now made it more simple to navigate all of the folders to which you have access, too.  Unfortunately, they've named it "My Folders."  That one "s," and the fact that you'll be looking to the lower left instead of the upper left of the screen, may be enough to save you some confusion.  We're doing a bit of housecleaning in order to make the experience as frictionless as possible.

Panopto Alert: Share Settings Notice

Panopto share settings for folders and videos visible to the any Panopto user at WCU will now be set to “Anyone at the Institution with the Link”.

The folders and videos will not continue to be listed in the “Everything” menu. Folders will be accessible to those in courses and anyone at the institution with the link. 

If you have a video or folder that needs to be accessible publicly please contact the CFC.

All course folders will continue to default when created to “Specific people.”

Blackboard Best Practice Tip:

When you are preparing for the next semester never edit a past course in Blackboard.  State law requires that courses be archived as taught for audit and/or grade challenge purposes.  If you don’t have access to a course you will be teaching go to https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/support/bb-support/ and click on the Development Course Request button  We’ll create a Blackboard shell for you to work in.

Microsoft Teams

A focused introduction to Microsoft Teams for Higher Education
CFC - Room 156
February 27
10 am-11am

Join the CFC as we meet virtually with the Microsoft for Higher Education Teams University project lead, Manny Sandhu.  We’ll get an overview of the features in Teams that we aren’t yet fully using and will be able to talk about how other universities are using the tool.

Please join us if you are able.  If it won't work for you, we'll be very happy to follow up with you as a part of our continuing innovation initiatives. 

For more information, contact Jonathan Wade

As part of its Scholar Studio initiative, Hunter Library’s has created and now expanded the Virtual Reality (VR) Room offerings.  Its new location, HL 184, is located beside the library electronic classroom (HL 186) and was previously the Interlibrary Loan office.

Reservations for each station are required at https://wcu.libcal.com/reserve/VR. 

More Information about the VR Room in Hunter

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.

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.

Provost's List of Faculty Resources
The Office of the Provost provides a considerable amount of helpful information on this web page.