January 2008 Archives

On Monday, January 28th a team from Seton Hall University presented at the Educause Learning Initiative's Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Tracy Gottlieb, Paul Fisher and Danielle Mirliss presented on the use of electronic portfolios in the Freshman Studies program.
Session abstract:

Seton Hall University utilizes eportfolios to support the development of first year students. By providing an interactive window of exchange, eportfolios provide greater access and the capacity to explore issues of student adjustment, person-environment fit solutions, student self-expression, and identity development backed by an evidence-based repository of artifacts for analysis.

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CircaVie is an exciting and interactive way to record a series of events. It allows you to attach photos and videos associated with dates, creating a flashy visual while navigating through time. Timelines can be made public or private, can be shared and commented on. The possibilities are endless!!

It's that time of year when the call for proposals for the 2008-2009 Faculty Innovation and Online Arts and Science courses grants are launched! The official launch is Thursday, February 14, 2008 during the TLTR/TLT Center's Annual Best Practices event. This year's event, appropriately called 'Show Your Love for Faculty Innovation', will highlight Faculty Innovation projects and Online Arts and Sciences courses in various stages of completion. You will have the opportunity to see what faculty have done, the process of creating the projects and experiences they've gained.

Join us on February 14th from 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm for the TLTR/TLT Center Grant Launch and Showcase. Learn about internal grant opportunities available through the TLT Center. This event will take place in the Beck rooms on the ground floor of Walsh Library.

Grant opportunities include:

- Faculty Innovation Grants (FIG's)

- A&S Online Course Development Grants

- ReSoft (Research Software) Grants

Current grant recipients will showcase their projects and share their experiences. Lunch will be served. Click here to register for this event today!

Faculty at Seton Hall University have been actively exploring distance education as an option for many of the courses offered through the School of Arts and Sciences. Renee Cicchino, Senior Instructional Designer, has been supporting their efforts and leading the Instructional Design team in developing online offerings using the standards set by Quality Matters. Renee's extensive training on how to incorporate the Quality Matters rubric has enabled her to develop a template for all Arts and Sciences online offerings that ensures key components of the course are present.

Turn the chalkboard into a smartboard with the digital ink functionality of the TabletPC. Handwritten notes, diagrams, and mathematical equations can be developed prior to class or created on the fly. This material can then be distributed to students via Blackboard, and can be viewed by students using a traditional laptop or a TabletPC.

With Microsoft Journal, users can create hand-written notes, diagrams, and mathematical equations as they would with a traditional paper notepad.

Last week, an Educause event, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference 2008 was held in Baltimore, Maryland. Two members from the TLTC, Mary Zedeck and Heidi Trotta presented with Dr. Mary Balkun, Chair of the English Department. The presentation was entitled "Exploring Literary Texts Through Virtual Worlds." There was a lot of interest from other universities expressed during and after the presentation pointing especially toward the student use of Second Life as "co-creators" of Seton Hall's virtual island.

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The TLTC recently held a digital storytelling workshop. During the workshop, we were fortunate to have Dr. Cheree Quizon present a digital story that she created as an example for her class that will be creating cultural "textile stories" this semester. Dr. Quizon is working on this project as a recipient of a 2007-2008 Faculty Innovation Grant (FIG) and plans to have students conduct research on Southeast Asian communities using new online resources, track textile travel and history over time, interview the Southeast Asian community and, finally, document their research in the form of digital stories.

On Saturday, January 12, 2008, the TLTC held a technology orientation targeting Seton Hall's adjunct professors. The four hour session proved to be a big hit as 65 professors attended.

The session covered various technology topics such as file management, keeping your laptop up-to-date, a who's who in the IT department, Webmail and an overview of Blackboard features the professors may want to employ in their courses.

Faculty, if you missed the Blackboard Days conducted last Thursday and Friday, don't fret! The TLTC wants to help you get your courses up and running for this semester, so we are repeating the sessions over the next few weeks starting on Monday, January 8th. The sessions are topic-specific so check them out below and go to http://tltc.shu.edu/register to sign up for the appropriate session. We look forward to seeing you!

Are your e-mail messages disappearing after you open and read them? If so, it's a simple fix. From your Inbox, move to the last action button on the far right of your screen. It probably says "View All" on it. If it does, just click it and your mail that was disappearing will magically reappear and the button will now display "View Unread".

What happened was that you inadvertently clicked the "View Unread" button at some point and the system did just that. It was only showing you documents you haven't read yet. Once you opened an unread document, it technically became a read document, so it was not displayed to you anymore.

The TLTC has been busy! Conferences are a wonderful opportunity for faculty and the TLTC to meet individuals from other Universities as well as to learn about how others manage issues and foster initiatives. We have presented at several conferences during the Fall 2007 Semester and we will also be presenting during the Spring 2008 semester.

Each year the TLT Center funds projects that exemplify the pioneering use of educational technology through its Faculty Innovation Grant program (FIG). During the Spring 2007 semester, Monsignor Liddy was one of 10 faculty chosen to receive a FIG for his proposal targeting his Catholicism and Art course (offered Fall 2007).

Digital Storytelling Adventures at SHU!

On Thursday, January 3, 2008, the TLT Center held a Digital Storytelling workshop for 12 faculty members from a variety of departments around campus. Digital Storytelling is defined as a process of using various multimedia tools and objects to create a personal story. These multimedia objects can include images, video, music, voice narration, and animation, to name a few examples. Digital stories can be focused on any topic or subject area and can vary in length (typically they are fairly short). Elements of a digital story might include interviews, personal narration, or clips from previously recorded audio or video.

The web today, commonly known as Web 2.0, is about accessibility, remixibility and participation. SlideShare is one such tool that enables this to happen. A social networking site, it allows the user to share Powerpoint presentations with others. Free of charge, it consists entirely of user-generated content that is shareable, searchable, and often downloadable. As its name suggests, slideshare hosts slideshows; and anyone can create a free account and upload their slides which can include PowerPoint presentations and pdfs.

Does Quality Matter?
Quality is something we look for in whatever we purchase whether it is food, clothing, or anything else we want and have in our lives. Quality is not limited to these items alone; it is also an important factor when registering for a course or finding a college. Since online education is changing the way people take courses and earn degrees, are there quality control devices for online education? The answer is yes!