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Academic

Computing

 

2005

Summer

Update

Academic-Computing@trincoll.edu

Ann Marie Krupski, Director                     2181

David Tatem, Social Sciences                  2124

Scott Vanek, Humanities                         2109

Michael Williams, Natural Sciences          2096

 

Winter Institute
January 19, 2006

Mark your calendars!

Join fellow faculty members for a day of discussion and exploration of the various academic support services and resources available to enhance teaching at Trinity College.

Winter Institute on Teaching
 Diversity in the Trinity Classroom:
Helping Every Student Achieve
Thursday, January 19, 2006,
LITC Joslin Family 1823 Room
Time:  TBA

"Diversity" in the Trinity classroom refers not only to our students' wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but to their varied learning styles, degree of preparation, and innate abilities and skills.  Building on Professor Claude Steele's all-campus lecture and faculty workshop (scheduled for September 13 and 14) the Winter Institute will focus on classroom strategies that allow us to teach all students effectively and that provide the best odds for every individual student's success.  Through informal presentations, discussions, and workshops, faculty will share and learn about specific teaching strategies that support student learning.

Faculty who are interested in presenting should contact:

Ann Marie Krupski, Director of Academic Computing, or
Clare Rossini, Director of TCCTR.

This event sponsored by:

Office of the Dean of Faculty
Writing Center | Academic Computing
Trinity College Library
Media Technology Services | Math Center
Trinity Center for Collaborative Teaching & Research

Thursday, January 19, 2006
Save the Date

Private Labs

     In early 2004, a group of Department Chairs met with John Langeland, Director of Information Technology, to review the situation of private lab computers managed by individual faculty members.  These computers are often connected to instrumentation for collecting data for teaching and research.It was agreed upon that the Computing Center will now support  these computers.  During the summer of 2004, all private lab equipment was inventoried and a number of computers received operating system upgrades to improve the Computing Center’s network security. This past summer, forty-eight computers were upgraded with either new or better used CPUs.  This action should greatly enhance teaching and research on the Trinity campus, and the stability of the campus network as a whole.

 

Faculty       
Interviews

This past year, Academic Computing requested interviews with every faculty member to discuss how our department could provide assistance with the use of technology in the instruction/learning process. Overall, these interviews were well received. Personal relationships were formed with new faculty and faculty with whom we have had limited contact in the past. General feedback has indicated these conversations were useful and faculty have asked that they be continued.

Some services that were further developed using input from the interviews are discussed throughout this newsletter, including:

  • The formation of a GIS Technology Support Circle for faculty

  • Personalized, assignment-based classroom training for students on topics including Excel, PowerPoint and web design

  • Moved from a "general workshop" training model for faculty to providing specific training based on need; timing of the training is scheduled by those who expressed an interest

  • A six-week online workshop, "Build Your Blackboard Course Site", was held during July and August to provide more convenient wherever/whenever training

  • Additional tutorials and help guides are being developed for Excel and PowerPoint

  • Support services for digital images are being developed, in particular with regard to the College's acquisition of Luna Insight

We would like to continue these conversations from this past year, and will be contacting you to offer to meet again.  We would like to discuss your ideas and concerns as they relate to instructional technology and the Computing Center.

      
Blackboard

Blackboard was upgraded this summer to the latest application pack. This new release will provide many enhanced features, including:

  • Advanced course menu and map

  • Asyllabus builder, which provides more design options when creating your syllabus

  • Multi-language support - Blackboard menus can now be set by an instructor to Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese languages (content you provide will default to whatever language it was written in and will not be changed)

  • Ten new assessment question types have been added, including: numeric response, file response, multiple fill-in-the-blank, jumbled sentence, opinion scale questions

New courses created in the spring will also have these enhanced features:

  • Adaptive release, which allows the instructor to tailor content availability for students based on certain criteria

  • Performance dashboard, which provides instructors an overview of student performance results via the gradebook (although this feature is visible in fall course sites, it will have enhanced features in spring courses)

  •  The ability to calculate Running Total and Running Weighted Total grades in the gradebook (ungraded/uncorrected entries are not included in the total)

 For more information on these new features, please visit the Trinity Blackboard help site  or talk to your Resource Specialist. 


Blackboard
Online Training

This past July, Academic Computing implemented a six-week online Blackboard training workshop for faculty to build their own Blackboard course site. During each week of the course, participants received an email to complete a training module and assignment through the Blackboard system. This allowed participants to work at their own pace and from any location with network access. The workshop generated great interest among faculty, especially those who had been unable to attend traditional training sessions due to scheduling conflicts. Thanks to all who helped make our workshop a success!  Contact your Resource Specialist if you would like to take this course.

Digital Imaging 

Academic Computing would like to share two new developments that have taken place over the summer that will enhance support of digital images in the classroom: 

   1) The Computing Center has purchased Luna Insight. This software can be used to create personal, web accessible, annotated, digital image collections for use in class and/or for research.  Insight also allows digital items to be cataloged, making it easy for faculty to search their collection.   Presentations can be created out of all or part of a personal collection, making it a useful teaching tool.  Additionally, image collections from other colleges and organizations will be available for use through Insight, such as the David Rumsey Map Collection. 

   2)  A new image scanner has been purchased. This professional level scanner offers better quality and faster scans than the current scanners available in the Raether LITC. The scanner includes professional level software which will allow for color correction and other edits during the scanning process. Of course, for the scanning novice, basic image scanning can be done too. The scanner will also scan transparencies and slides to make new digital copies of your old material. Currently, the scanner is located in the Raether LITC on Level 1 in room 121, near Media Technology Services.  

For more information about Insight, contact your Resource Specialist.  For more information on scanning contact your Resource Specialist or a member of Media Technology Services at x2422. 

STA Program

The Academic Computing Department continued the Student Technology Assistant program over this summer. Completed projects included:

  • A Web-based online tutorial for searching the library catalog used in all first year seminars and available to the entire campus community

  • An Excel template that allows students to create population pyramids  based on data downloaded from the Population Prospectus at the United Nations

  • Development of a process for a faculty member to incorporate multimedia into a non-linear  PowerPoint presentation on her own.  Images, video and audio clips will be displayed from a single PowerPoint presentation rather than a variety of cassette tapes, CDs, videos etc.

For more information on the STA Program or to submit a proposal for work to be done during the fall or spring semesters go to:

http://www.trincoll.edu/RaetherCtr/ComputingCenter/Faculty/STA.htm


The First Web-based
Bibliography Manager! 

  
     RefWorks is a Web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create their own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases. RefWorks is available for immediate use ­ no downloading or installation is needed.  Students can more easily manage their references when writing papers and automatically format citations and the bibliography. 

To open an account go to:  http://www.refworks.com/refworks  
on any campus computer. 

     A Tutorial and a Quick Start Guide are both available on the RefWorks website.  Academic Computing and Library staff can provide training for classes on database searching and Refworks use. The most successful training is tied to a class assignment and is offered at a time when students will benefit from the training the most. 

  GIS
 
This summer saw a flurry of activity related to GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

  • All Windows public lab machines have been updated to the newest version of ESRI’s GIS software.

  • A copy of ESRI’s ArcEditor (which contains additional tools and analysis features) was installed on the dedicated data/GIS machine in the Media Library on Level One of LITC.

  • Through the use of a shared student worker partially funded by NITLE, we have started organizing our collection of maps and data on the Hartford area. All GIS data is stored on the server zep at \\zep\data\GIS.

  • Trinity College hosted a NITLE sponsored GIS workshop this summer which brought together faculty, staff, and students from seventeen different colleges to further our use of GIS for teaching and research on Urban areas and issues.

 

For more information see our GIS web page at: http://www.trincoll.edu/RaetherCtr/ComputingCenter/Faculty/GIS/