CFC September Update
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WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence
Milestones
September is a marker month in academia. It is particularly a measure when we pass together through a memorable part of a journey and come to a particular marker. Roughly a month ago, we were preparing for the return of our student body in what we knew would be record numbers. We prepared and they came. Most things went as planned. Some did not, but we are still here together on this road moving ahead and helping others on the journey.
At the last Faculty Senate meeting our Acting Provost, Dr. Carol Burton, noted that this year marks the 130th year of this institution. This year also marks the 30th year of having a distinct department in this university that is focused on improving teaching and learning, the department now known as the Coulter Faculty Commons.
The staff at the CFC has made some progress in our efforts to support you and remain open to improving our processes and services as we continue forward. We've expanded the training of the IT Helpdesk so that they can partner with us to address your Blackboard needs with greater timeliness and greater availability. We've adjusted our schedule and are busy training our student workers so that we can have more confidence that someone will be available when you walk into our office. And we are collaborating with the Office of the Provost, emeritus professors, and willing and eager innovators among the current faculty to provide expanded opportunities for growth, reflection, and connection. I am very thankful to have a team that continues to work to aid the faculty, to support the work of student learning, and to ensure the sustainable improvement and growth of the institution. For examples of all of the above, keep reading.
Please let me know if there is any way that we can be of better assistance.
Here for You,
Jonathan D. Wade, PhD
Acting Director, Coulter Faculty Commons
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Coulter Faculty Commons at 828-227-7196. If you have a basic Blackboard question or need, the ITHelp Desk can get you started at 828-227-7487.
Check out our webpage at cfc.wcu.edu
Blackboard Crash Course/Pit Stop - Today from 3-5 PM
Hunter Library Room 166
A two-part crash course to get you kick-started in Blackboard
Arriving just-in-time for your needs today.
Agenda
3 – 4 PM, An overview of Blackboard
4 – 5 PM, One on One Time with the LMS Team to address your specific questions or concerns
If you can't make it, feel free to watch the live stream of our last Blackboard 101 or email lmssupport@wcu.edu to set up a one on one consultation.
Faculty Collaborations
Innovation Unconference
Sept. 28, 2018
1:30-4:30 - FPAC 150 - Program
4:30-6:30 - Reception
Conceived and hosted by the distinguished professors of WCU, this will be a fantastic opportunity to explore the possibilities of collaboration for our faculty members. The key feature of an unconference is the pooling of the expertise, passion, and interests of the participants in a structure that allows for new combinations and launches collaborative innovation.
For more information contact Lisa Bloom or register using this link: Register for the Unconference
Faculty Innovation Team
The Coulter Endowment at the CFC allows for a small amount of financial investment in the work and scholarship of teaching and learning at WCU. This year the grants will be in orbit of two primary areas of inquiry and collaboration: active learning and effective use of educational technologies. One particular technological tool that is available to all instructors at WCU that has been used in active learning is PollEverywhere. Dr. Bethany Van Brown has agreed to serve as the chair of the 2018-19 Faculty Innovation Team at the CFC. If you have any interest in joining this community of practice, please contact the Bethany Van Brown or for more information contact Jonathan Wade.
CFC Support of Online Faculty
If you teach online, have you ever wondered the following?
- Am I assigning enough work? Too much?
- Can I design my content in ways that minimize cheating?
- Can I use content in my online course that I found on the Internet?
- How do I transition to this teaching modality?
- Can I self-evaluate my own impact/efficacy?
- Am I compliant with universal design principles?
- Am I engaging my students?
- Are my students engaging with one another?
The CFC team has been asked all of these questions. We have been discussing how to share our expertise in a scope that exceeds our one-on-one consultations. We are happy to announce that we have finished the development of a new online course to support you in your development as online faculty.
The course contains required and optional modules. Required modules include Universal Design, Design, the CFC Blackboard Framework, Creating Online Presence, and the Syllabus Template. The optional modules—which faculty can self-select, will include Acclimating to Online Teaching, Academic Integrity, Copyright, Fair Use, Finding and Using Web Content, Workload and Time Management, and Evaluating Your Impact.
The course will be piloted this fall with a group of faculty from various academic departments.
After the pilot, the course will be modified accordingly and made available for other WCU faculty to complete asynchronously. We anticipate running the course several times during a semester with a Monday start date and a conclusion date the following Friday. All activity can be completed at faculty discretion and dialogue will guide the overall course experience. In addition to the main course facilitator, staffed through the CFC, the course will have at least one guest facilitator. Scottie Kapel, Outreach and Scholarly Communications Librarian, will facilitate the Copyright and Fair Use module, encouraging faculty conversations and questions.
For more information, please reach out to Terry Pollard.
Collaborative Learning Workshop
Location: Hunter Library 186
Time: November 6, 1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
Join Dr. Maurice Phipps and the Coulter Faculty Commons in Hunter Library 186 on November 6 from 1:30-3:00, to learn more about collaborative learning, particularly how to use low and no tech sorting strategies to more effectively engage students in group activities.
This workshop is for professors who wish to use group work in their teaching or are already using groups that may not be working very well. The use of groups without some specific strategies can produce conflict and ineffective learning. Cooperative Learning is a method that can enhance learning by making groups functional. It can include concepts like distributed leadership, skills like conflict resolution and strategies like setting group norms and jigsaws.
This initial workshop is to give a basic understanding of Cooperative Learning including the five elements required to make it work but also to stimulate many other ideas on making group work enjoyable as well as effective.
The workshop will be followed up with the formation of a support group for anyone wishing to dive deeper into cooperative learning, experiential learning, and making groups work effectively.
To register, visit this link. Registration will close October 5. If you have any questions please contact Jonathan Wade.
Tenure and Promotion Support
Announcing the Faculty Associate for Tenure and Promotion and the Faculty Activity Database
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Tony Roberson as the new faculty associate for Tenure and Promotion and the Faculty Activity Database. Tony will be working with the CFC and the Office of the Provost to help guide faculty through the T&P process and will serve as the faculty liaison for continuous improvement of the FAD.
Open Door Consulting Sessions
The Office of the Provost will be hosting open door sessions at the Coulter Faculty Commons during the month of September for tenure-track faculty who wish to participate in Dossier Preparation and Coaching.
Who:
Brandon Schwab, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs
Tony Roberson, Professor and Director of the WCU School of Nursing and Faculty
Jonathan Wade, Acting Director of Coulter Faculty Commons
Where: Coulter Faculty Commons, Hunter Library Room 182
When:
Tuesday, September 4th 1:00pm-4:00pm
Tuesday, September 11th 10:00am-1:00pm
Thursday, September 20th 9:30am-12:30pm
Monday, September 24th 9:30am-12:30pm
**Other times available by appointment.
What: One on one assistance in strengthening and improving your Dossier. This workshop is structured to offer guidance in organizing your necessary and relevant documentation as well as the overall structure of your Dossier. This is an opportunity to work with those experienced in the tenure and promotion process to offer guidance as you build supportive evidence of your teaching, scholarship, and service.
Also: The Coulter Faculty Commons houses a ‘Dossier Library’ where tenured faculty members have given copies of their Dossiers to be kept for others to use as a resource for preparing their own Dossiers. Contact Annette Parris for an appointment to view this collection: aparris@wcu.edu or 227-3427.
We hope you can find a time to join us during these open door sessions and please, always contact us with any questions or concerns you may have in the TPR process.
If you need a place to work in peace, consider coming to the Commons.
Although we often have all of our rooms in use, on regular occasions we usually have a table or a room open in which you could do some uninterrupted work. We are particularly excited to offer room 166 as a place where adjunct faculty and faculty whose office location is not on the main campus to come and to use our Learning Studio. Our computers have up to date software and all faculty with WCU credentials can enter them and use the regular suite of WCU supported applications.
To make certain you have a space call ahead, but drop-ins are always welcome and we will find you a place for you.
Team-Based Learning
Do you assign group work?
Are you looking for ways to form more equitable and productive teams?
HHS and CEAP faculty who recently participated in week-long professional development on team-based learning will be sharing tips and best practices for forming student groups in late September. They will be sharing information from team-based literature in addition to practices they have tried. Successes and failures will be shared (and encouraged from the audience).
Stop by between classes!
Two sessions will be held:
September 25
HHS Room 204
12:10 to 1:00 p.m.
September 26
Killian Room 204
9:10 to 10:00 a.m.
We are Archiving Large Courses
As a reminder, if you have a course over a gigabyte in size, and have been notified by the CFC, the course needs to be reduced in size by mid Fall semester. Please refer to the instructions sent in a previous email on how to back up your course content and how to move videos to Panopto. Click the purple button below for resources. You may have to sign into Panopto.
Update on Blackboard/Banner Integration
We are having to go back to running Snapshot (integration between Banner and Blackboard) every two hours instead of every hour. Last fall and this past spring, it took between 45-50 minutes to run the updates. However, with the increased enrollment, courses, and instructors, we feel like we are getting too close to overlapping the Snapshot runs. The overlaps have, in the past, caused users and courses to become disabled and thus caused a huge problem for our users.
We will pull the enrollment files from Banner on the even hour (2:00, 4:00, 6:00, etc.) and run Snapshot at ten past each even hour. This was implemented on July 31, 2018.
Logistically, what this means is that if a student adds or drops a course at 2:02 pm, the change in Blackboard will not become available until after 4:10 pm the same day.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask by contacting the IT Help Desk or at 828-227-7487.
Faculty Writing Groups will be starting the week of September 10th!
Do you need a quiet place away from your office to complete some research or work on a manuscript? If so, the Coulter Faculty Commons has started hosting their weekly Faculty Writing Groups.
If you are a professor based on the main Cullowhee campus we will be hosting a group in our Writing Studio on Mondays in Hunter Library room 182 from 10-12.
If you are a professor based at HHS we will be hosting a writing group at the HHS campus on Tuesdays from 1-3 in HHS 333.
If you have any questions or would like to sign up for a group please contact Kelsey Woodburn.
Third Thursday Brown Bag Lunch Sessions are designed to provide proactive and quick training, tips, and tools to help faculty members continually pursue excellence in their teaching. The next session is scheduled for September 20, 2018, 12:00-1:00 in Hunter Library, Rm. 166
September 20: Blackboard Grade Center
This workshop will cover some of the handy how-to’s of the Blackboard Grade Center to maximize your efficiency and minimize your aggravation. We will discuss:
- Creating and using categories
- Setting up Weighted Totals
- Columns for extra credit
- Suggestions for tracking attendance and participation.
Other Sessions Coming Soon
You may register for any Third Thursday event by clicking the button below or by contacting Jeanine Irons.
Faculty Scholarship Celebration
Though the CFC is not officially one of the sponsoring organizations for the annual Faculty Scholarship Celebration, we do celebrate with our faculty for their work and our Faculty Associate will be aiding in the annual examination of data from the Faculty Activity Database (FAD) to collate scholarship materials.
The committee in charge of the celebration asks that you update your FAD profile before December 3, 2018, in order to make certain that your efforts are recoginized. Please contact Elizabeth Marcus at emarcus@wcu.edu or 828-227-3398 with any questions or concerns about your submission.
An Early Thanksgiving to the Staff of the Coulter Faculty Commons
A great amount of often unaccounted work goes into keeping a support unit running. I am grateful for the people who have been walking beside me these past days and would like to publicly thank them for the work they do and to highlight a few of their efforts.
Thank you to Annette Parris for serving as the initial point of contact for our organization. In the past few months, she has helped all of us navigate some of the more difficult communication issues that have been a part of expanding the coverage of some of our Blackboard processes to the IT Helpdesk. She has also been instrumental in helping us to hire our new group of student workers and is in the process of helping them learn how to best serve you as an initial point of contact when the rest of us are working elsewhere.
Thank you to C.K., our intrepid research analyst for the work he does in helping so many of us at the university with our various statistical analyses. His work on our internal measures and his support of Qualtrics and management of the renewal of the other various research software is an invaluable addition to the work of our unit.
Thank you to Daniel Shields for diving in as the newest member of the team and bringing his skills as a technical developer into play to help us improve our systems and services. Daniel’s steady manner, professional outlook, and technical expertise have allowed us to integrate him quickly into our team. We look forward to the ways in which he will continue to enrich our practice.
Thank you to Jack Caldwell for his work for our faculty addressing emerging needs and for the care and consistency with which he has addressed the stability and improvement of the internal processes that keep Blackboard running. Jack should also be commended for his work as a technical liaison for the Academic Integrity Taskforce in regard to working through the initial vetting of some possible vendor “solutions.” Additional thanks to Jack for always being willing to step up and make a difference in day to day service to the institution in general and to our unit in particular.
Thank you to Jeanine Irons for continuing to improve and build our support for academic excellence. Jeanine’s work in organizing our Third Thursday topical lunch-and-learn sessions has been instrumental in getting those sessions off of the ground. Her expertise in classroom teaching and experience in evaluation and feedback have already provided many of our faculty with valuable formative feedback that is improving the student experience. Her service on the Academic Integrity Taskforce has provided cross-disciplinary value to the university and has been an important part of keeping our unit engaged in this very important conversation. And she remains one of the important parts of our work in assuring and assessing quality using the tools available to WCU through our association with Quality Matters™.
Thank you to John Hawes for his engagement with the process of improving the services of our Blackboard team and for his willingness to share his expertise with the new members of our team as they continue to learn the ins-and-outs of the system. John continues to be a most accomplished wizard of getting to the core of Blackboard Grade Center issues and I thank him for his efforts in launching and facilitating a Blackboard 101 class at the beginning of the semester and for putting together a seminar on Grade Center for our next Third Thursday meeting. John’s continuing service to the integrated awards process is also noted and appreciated by all of the parts of the university that work to appreciate and recognize our faculty and staff.
Thank you to Kelsey Woodburn our intrepid, daring, and talented graduate assistant. Kelsey’s graduate focus is in professional writing and she has taken great care and expended considerable energy to proactively engage with the challenges of the CFC. She is an instrumental part of the regular publication and assembly of our newsletter. She serves as one of the editors of our websites. And she regularly serves as a beta-tester for new services and processes. All that is in addition to the core work that she does in support of our formative classroom assessment processes and scheduling and organizing the CFC writing group opportunities.
Thank you to Mary-Anne Wike, one of the newer members of our team for diving into the mix of our complicated programming and support structures and helping us to create an increasingly orderly way for our faculty to access helpful information. Mary-Anne’s work on the website and help with advancing our communication with faculty and with other service units has been a real gift to the CFC and has increased our ability to serve. The analytics data for our website indicate better user engagement and Mary-Anne’s work is a central part of that effect. Along with the many faculty members that Mary-Anne has been able to assist with Panopto, I thank her for her continued efforts to help us make the most out of our video hosting and streaming platform, too.
I am very thankful to Sue Grider for patiently and carefully helping us to manage the transitions that we are walking through currently. Sue will be leaving us soon to serve in another part of the institution. The CFC is thankful that Sue’s new home department has allowed her to help us manage and document the transition so that the impact on our services will be minimal. I thank Sue for building a foundation for the future.
Terry Pollard has been with us for less than two years but has already made an incredible impact upon our practice in educational development. Thank you to Terry for being a leader in helping to shape the direction of the Health Educators Academy, a summer program sponsored by the College of Health and Human Services. He will continue to be an important part of our team for advancing and assessing quality using the tools available to WCU through our association with Quality Matters™. I am thankful for Terry’s assistance in helping work through an actionable and reasonable plan for examining the effect of our programming and for being part of the solution for our internal improvement of programming and services.
There are a host of other people who contribute to the work of our unit including a number of people who share their time and efforts from IT like Jeff Tatham, Brad Lewis, and all of the members of the Help Desk and the Technology Commons who work alongside us, too. And there are, of course, many faculty members and other citizens of the university who work to advise and guide us. And I do look forward to getting to know our new student workers, but that is for another time.
For everyone who took the time to read this far, It is my pleasure to serve beside you.
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.
The Educational Horizon
One part of the charge of the CFC is to remain ready to assist in times of change. To do so, we are constantly keeping track of new, re-surfacing, and emerging issues in teaching and learning. If you want a regular digest of what we are reading to be sent via email, feel free to subscribe on the page. We usually post when we've collected about 20 relevant links.
Panopto Support Resources
Panopto is our video and audio hosting service. It is integrated with Blackboard and it has a number of features useful for face to face and online courses. The CFC and Helpdesk have a number of local resources related to using Panopto, but you can also click the link above to go to their support page or click this link to view their instructional videos.
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. Information concerning faculty awards and recognition, support and development, forums, information on 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.
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!
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Western Carolina University
166 Hunter Library
Cullowhee, NC 28723
828.227.7196
