WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence

May 2017

Hello,

The end of the spring term is finally upon us.  Now is the perfect time to look back and review your spring courses to learn what worked and what didn't.  You can be pedagogically proactive and re-design your summer and/or fall courses to reflect your successes.  This can lower your stress level while also making the classroom experience more enjoyable and successful for your students.  Don't forget about creating clear, concise, and measurable Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) in each of your courses, too.  As always, please don't hesitate to give us a call or drop by the CFC - we're here all summer to help you you with all of your teaching needs!

Martha Diede, PhD
Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

P.S.: The CFC is currently undergoing renovations and have temporarily relocated to HL156 and HL166.  If you get a chance, stop by and visit with us!

Important Information for Faculty:

Pilot Classroom Design Feedback Survey

As WCU explores Active Learning/BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) classrooms, like Forsyth 313, the Coulter Faculty Commons is gathering feedback to gain a better understanding of what faculty think about these pilot classrooms.  Based on feedback, we've already added a document camera to the classroom and are planning to add additional outlets. Your input will guide the design of future WCU classrooms.  By completing this survey, you will help WCU to move forward with classroom designs that successfully integrate innovative technology, which in turn will help to promote group learning and allow students to become more engaged, invested, and enthusiastic active learners.  Your input need not be restricted to Forsyth 313.  If you have feedback about another room on campus, please feel free to send that to us by using the CFC Suggestion Box located here.

If you have visited or used Forsyth 313 since it was redesigned in January 2017, please take a moment to complete this survey by clicking here.

Blackboard Process Upgrade

The LMS Team at the CFC is planning a minor upgrade to the processing between Banner and Blackboard on Wednesday, May 25, 2017. There is no downtime expected and we hope to shorten the time between updates during the day to Blackboard to every hour instead of every two hours. We are also working as part of the upgrade to include users “preferred” name rather than their formal names in our Blackboard Environment. Please be looking for these changes starting during the summer term.

Blackboard Summer Upgrade

The LMS Team at the CFC is planning an upgrade of the WCU Blackboard environment starting at 5:00 pm on Friday, July 14th through 5:00 pm on Saturday, July 15th. This upgrade includes several tool updates that will help make certain actions easier for both instructors and students to accomplish. Below are some of the major updates that will be included in this upgrade:

•  A Drag-and-Drop feature for both instructors and students to use to attach files to assignments.
• Instructors will be able to access Submission Receipts that will capture the date, time and attached file information which will assist with grade disputes.
• Instructors will be able to send Reminders from within the Grade Center to students who have missing work.
• Assessments with multiple attempts will only show the first or last attempt in Needs Grading according to how the assessment was initially setup.

For more information about the summer Blackboard upgrade, please contact the LMS Team at 227-2930 or email them at lmssupport@wcu.edu.

We Want to Help Share Your Innovative Work

Please continue to think of the CFC as one of your continuing resources as you constantly work to improve your practice.  We are often asked to make recommendations about technologies, innovative classroom practices, methods of student engagement, and modifications in course structure.  We are also often asked about how faculty members use innovative practices at Western, and we are charged with helping faculty and programs to scale effective practices when possible.   If you are doing innovative work in the classroom and want to share your methods more broadly, we would love to help multiply your efforts.   

Please let us know more about what you are doing by taking the "Let Us Help You Multiply Your Innovation" survey.  Please click here to take the survey.

More Resources:

Looking Forward to a Productive Summer?
The three summer months are quickly approaching and you have been so busy with teaching, grading, and committee work that you have probably put off working on other important goals such as course preparation, research, and writing.  The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a series of articles about all the planned work faculty really want to get done over the summer and how to not fall  short of attaining those goals. To check out these articles, please click here.

Blackboard Online Help
As the Learning Management System utilized here 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.

Blackboard Supported OS and Browsers
We all know that technology is changing more rapidly than most of us can keep up. With that said, the link above shows the operating systems and browsers that are currently supported in our version of Blackboard here at WCU. As always, please make sure you have stable Internet connection and that your computer is free of malware.

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
There is a considerable amount of helpful information on this web page provided by the Office of the Provost. 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 Suggestion Box
We would greatly appreciate any feedback you could give us about how we can improve or add to our services.  We regularly monitor this suggestion box, located on our main web page, 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!