E-Learning Showcase This Friday, 11/21

Your attendance is requested at our first E-Learning Showcase this Friday, 11/21, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm in Atkins 271. Three talented instructors will share their best practices, tips, and pointers for creating engaging and effective online learning experiences using a variety of technologies. Dr. Sonya Hardin will spotlight her innovative uses of Second Life, an online virtual world, with her Nursing Theory students. Ms. Monica Belus will discuss engaging students using multimedia, quizzing, and discussion in her hybrid American Studies course. Dr. Richard Hartshorne will discuss his experiences with Moodle, an alternative to the Blackboard Vista learning management system, for teaching and learning in several Educational Leadership courses. Light refreshments will be served.

Lorraine Stanton
Coordinator of e-Learning Programs

Announcing the First Book Discussion Group

Harvard professor Howard Gardner states that we live in a vast time of change that calls for new ways of learning and thinking in school, business, and the professions. In Five Minds for the Future, he defines the cognitive abilities that are needed to equip people for what they need to deal with in the future. Join us to examine the work of Dr. Gardner and discuss how it applies to our work at the university as we prepare students for the 21^st century.

The first meeting will be Wednesday, 12/3 at 2:00 pm in Atkins 149C. At this meeting we will meet each other, organize, and plan meeting times for the discussions that will take place from mid-January to mid-March of 2009.

The first five interested discussants to email Dr. Maria Yon (mgyon@uncc.edu) will receive a copy of the book. An additional copy will be placed on reserve in the library. Contact Dr. Maria Yon for more information or to sign up for the Five Minds for the Future book discussion group.

Dr. Maria Yon
Faculty Associate

Faculty Innovation Spotlight: School of Nursing

This semester, several faculty in the School of Nursing, including Dr. Jackie Dienemann and Dr. Ann Newman, are using Centra to connect their students to guest speakers at a distance. These sessions allow the presenter and students to interact real time using a digital presentation viewed either online or projected in a classroom on campus. Nursing faculty were given the opportunity to gain practice with Centra during a summer workshop with CTL staff including Sam Eneman and Dr. Michael Moore. These nursing sessions conducted through Distance Education grant funding will be archived for future students to access electronically.

Dr. Michael Moore
Instructional Technologist

Check Out Our New Website!

When we updated our name this past spring to better represent our mission of promoting teaching and learning excellence, supporting the integration of learning technologies, and encouraging scholarly teaching, we knew we also had to change our website and its address. We have finally completed the transition! Come see us at teaching.uncc.edu.

We hope you will find a few improvements helpful. Some of our added features:

• a blog that has new posts several times per week
• RSS feeds for the Center Blog, CTL News, and the Teaching and Learning Matters podcasts
• discussion forums, including an online workshop about “teaching dilemmas”
• online signups for all of our workshops
• improved, dynamic workshop calendar

To post comments, participate in discussions, or signup for faculty/staff workshops, all you need to do is login, securely, using your usual NinerNET credentials. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for our new site, since we are trying to make it easy to use and meaningful to the campus community.

Debbie Mowry
Web Design Specialist

CTL Welcomes New Staff

We are pleased to welcome four new members to our team. First is John Champion, Technical Systems Administrator, who leads the technical projects of our Technical Systems Team. John has extensive experience in consulting in higher education and private industry through his own company, and he has also served as an adjunct faculty and a variety of IT leadership roles in higher education.

Dr. Jaesoon An, Instructional Design Specialist, works collaboratively with Drs. Garvey Pyke and Maria Yon to promote scholarly teaching, assist faculty in designing online courses, and redesigning large enrollment courses. With nearly 15 years experience in teaching, research, and instructional design, Jaesoon most recently worked in Indiana University’s Knowledge Acquisition and Projection Lab and also worked as an instructor in IU’s School of Education.

Finally, we have two new graduate assistants. Kris DeAngelis has a background in teaching, and she has been hard at work conducting faculty needs analyses, creating research based tip sheets for best practices, and reorganizing our professional development library, which currently holds over 1000 texts. Saurabh Makol, an MS student in Computer Science and software developer by trade, is working on many programming projects for our department and other vital assignments as needed.

To learn more about these folks or any of our staff, visit the staff page on our website.

Dr. Garvey Pyke
Instructional Programs

Blackboard Help in Barnard, CoED

The Center for Teaching and Learning now offers faculty help with Blackboard Vista in Barnard Room 230B two days per week—Mondays from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm and Thursdays from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm—and in the CoED Room 434 (the Language Resource Center) one day per week—Wednesdays from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Instructional technology consultants will also be available for help with Moodle, Centra, Respondus, and Turnitin. Be sure to bring any files, related documents, and any material to assist in developing your course. Help will be available on a first come, first served basis. No need to make an appointment in advance—just stop by. Hope to see you there!

Caryl Gordon
Instructional Technology Consultant

RSS Feeds

Are you the type to look for news on sites you regularly visit or do you prefer they send you updates or notices? Maybe you did not realize that you can easily subscribe to news or blog sites using RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, and have the news come to you directly.

With the Center for Teaching and Learning’s new website you can subscribe to news feeds we offer, like our Center Blog or Teaching and Learning Matters podcast. If you would like basic directions on how to subscribe, please see to our Subscribing to RSS page. For more information on RSS see our Additional Learning Tools page.

Debbie Mowry
Web Design Specialist

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