WCU's Commons for Teaching and Learning Excellence

Greetings,

November is a month of transitions.  The plants in this region are completing their preparation for winter, and as we enjoy the colors of their changing, we are completing the Fall semester and preparing for the Spring.

In this issue, we have a few thoughts about current educational issues and some announcements about our other educational development consulting and services and events and opportunities hosted by our on-campus partners.

Please mark your calendars for the Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning in May.  We'll be returning to the facilities of the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching from May 22-24, 2018.

At this point, the CFC staff is spread across the campus as the mitigation and renewal work in our space in Hunter Library is coming to a close.  In these first few weeks of November, we urge you to call or email us instead of seeking us out physically.   We will get back to you electronically or will make a deskside visit as appropriate during this time period.  We hope to be available for walk-in service again as soon as possible and look forward to highlighting the opportunities our new spaces offer to you and your colleagues in our end-of-year newsletter next month.

Martha Diede, PhD
Director, Coulter Faculty Commons

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Coulter Faculty Commons at 828-227-2930 or email us at LMSsupport@wcu.edu.

Blackboard Updates

Blackboard Upgrade

Event Date/Time: Tuesday, December 19, 2017 5:00 PM - Wednesday, December 20, 2017 5:00 PM

Event Details: The Blackboard system will be upgraded to apply patches and fixes to our environment. We will also be updating the Crocodoc assignment grading tool to a new version called New Box View. New Box View is the same tool as Crocodoc but will accept more file types including but not limited to Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, and Word documents. The Blackboard environment will be unavailable during this upgrade. The LMS Team will work to get our system back up and running as quickly as possible.

Users Impacted: Faculty, Staff, Students

Contact Information: Please contact the IT Help Desk if you have any questions or concerns.

Course Frameworks

Our new faculty who have been introduced to our new framework for courses have been pleased with a design that allows them autonomy and an easy way to develop course by adding their content in the areas provided. The Framework is based off the Quality Matters Rubric and meets the best practices of course design. This, in turn, reduces the administrative overhead of developing a course and provides the greatest opportunity for student success.  

If instructors have a course that they would like to copy forward, this can still be accomplished by using the Course Copy request form (https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8IVpBSbhRfvOoEl).

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Online Blackboard Help

Creating a manual for Blackboard at WCU has been a challenge for the LMS Team. The regular updates have made it nearly impossible to keep training materials current. Fortunately, Blackboard does have a well-developed support site that you can search on topics of interest. Below are the URLs for the Instructor site and the Student site. Of course, for faculty, the LMS Team is only a phone call or email away.

Instructor Blackboard Site: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor

Student Blackboard Site: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Student

Blackboard Collaborate Help Site

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Course Merge Requests
Course Copy Requests

As we are heading downhill toward the end of the fall semester, please take a moment to submit your Blackboard Course Merge requests and your Course Copy requests for the Spring 2018 term as early as possible. This will help you to be ready in January for the new term and remove a few things from your list of items to accomplish. Below are the URLs to the two request forms.

Course Merge Requests: https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1yHNiwgjPCF5BvT

Course Copy Requests: https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8IVpBSbhRfvOoEl

If you have any questions, please let us know how we can assist you.

Educational Development

Being Awestruck

By Terry Pollard, Senior Educational Developer

I’m a sucker for a well-designed book cover.

The older I get, the more I like to stroll Barnes & Noble or Malaprops and pick up a book, admire its cover, and think about what’s inside it. I don’t read the book as much as I’d like—time isn’t forgiving these days—but no matter. The art, the font, the packaging—it’s what draws me in.

I’ve been thinking lately that this experience of being drawn in, of being captivated and awestruck, is very much like other experiences I have in life. It happens in my professional life, too, particularly when the CFC comes to visit a classroom. When faculty ask us to come and perform a focus group activity, for example, in order to understand students’ obstacles to success, we create a safe space for students to unwind and unpack. And in the process, I become inspired. What they reveal is desire. What they suggest is possible. And most importantly, what they hope for are things well within reach -- well within faculty capability.

We learn a lot in those 20 minutes. We gather 3 key pieces of information—what each individual thinks about the course, what small groups think, and what the whole class thinks.**

It begins by creating trust. We start by talking to them about how teachers reach out to us, and how that shows that they care about their teaching. We tell them that teachers don’t have all the answers, but that they’re trying, and the very act of reaching out for help reveals vulnerability, desire to improve, and trust in the process. Trust that the process will work. Trust that students will be open. Trust that the Coulter Faculty Commons will develop a partnership with faculty, one toward the betterment of our teaching mission.

Quick Course Diagnosis

It’s simple to incorporate the Quick Course Diagnosis (QCD) process into a class you teach. If you would like to learn more, contact any of us in the CFC and we can talk through the process.

**Note: All information provided in a Quick Course Diagnosis (QCD) is kept entirely confidential. No student data is gathered during the QCD, and no identifiable information is shared with the faculty member. The process the CFC follows was developed by Barbara J. Millis, faculty developer and member of the POD network.

For more information, contact, Terry Pollard, Senior Educational Developer, Coulter Faculty Commons, twpollard@wcu.edu

Partner Information:

OIPE: Student Learning Outcome Workshops

Meaningful Program Student Learning Outcomes: A Professional Development Workshop Led by OIPE with assistance from the CFC

Monday, November 6, 7, 28, and 29, 2017, 2:30-4:00pm
Hunter Library, room 186

The objectives for the workshop are the following:

·       By the end of the workshop, you will correctly evaluate the quality of a program-level student learning outcome using the WCU Meta-Assessment Rubric.

·       By the end of the workshop, you will improve the quality of an existing program-level student learning outcome so that it achieves the “good” to “exemplary” level of performance on the WCU Meta-Assessment Rubric.

To make the most of this workshop, please bring the following materials:

- Current educational degree program student learning outcomes (you will evaluate and revise one)
- OIPE Assessment Report Feedback (distributed in early October)
- Laptop to revise program student learning outcomes
- Program Curriculum Map (if available)
- Program Assessment Plan (if available)

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Steve Wallace in OIPE.

To register:

https://wcu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3pFNsVq2x7ascdv

We Walk Together
International Dialogue Group

The next meal and meeting is on Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 6:30 PM in CAMP Building 134.  Along with sharing a potluck meal of “traditional” foods, we will learn about Libyan culture from Kamal Butrouna.  He might even cook his signature dish for us to try!

*Formed in Spring 2017 by WCU faculty, staff & students and people from the greater community.

   Contacts:
 Amy McKenzie (amckenzie@wcu.edu), Berna Karayaka (bkarayaka@email.wcu.edu),
 Ling Gao LeBeau (lglebeau@wcu.edu), Julie Ogletree (ogletreejulie@gmail.com)     

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!