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FITS and its sister programs, START, DML, MITC, and GIS offer a wide array of services and support for faculty projects, instructional technologies, and student projects. Our mission is to assist faculty members in enhancing their teaching and their students’ learning through technology. FITS is primarily concerned with the pedagogical applications of technology. As new technologies become available and old ones are adapted to play a role in teaching and learning, FITS will be involved in learning about them and assisting in their incorporation into the curriculum. Popular technologies FITS is currently supporting include but are not limited to:
While FITS endorses the use of many technologies for teaching and learning, we believe technology is only a tool used to improve teaching and learning. The technology should be carefully implemented to help achieve a learning outcome. We provide the necessary training and recommendations to faculty members on an individual basis to make sure those who use technology are comfortable with it and that it has the potential to improve instruction. If technology is to be used by students for a project, Student Technology Assessment Resources and Training (START) may be called upon to offer student lead training and peer tutoring for students.
This newsletter is just one of the many ways FITS disseminates ideas, project showcases, and new technologies. FITS has a full schedule of events for this fall and as always, we invite you to engage in conversation with us on how to incorporate technology for the improvement of student learning. More information about FITS can be found at http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits/ or by contacting a FITS instructional technologist:
Most of us who are experienced instructors at the collegiate level are forward focused. We are concerned with where our students will be once they complete our courses and leave our tree-shaded environment for other worlds. We think about the skills we have taught and want them to take with them, the literature that we have read together and the promise that they too will find joy in the written word. We are future focused because we are continually working toward our goals, both for our students and for ourselves.
But while we are future focused there is a beginning reality that all of us must address: how do we plan our pathways to the future we desire. Course design is a highly idiosyncratic process involving an instructor’s background knowledge, their values and beliefs about that knowledge, the purposes they want their students to put their new-found knowledge to, and literally a thousand other concerns. However, good course design is generally composed of four distinct parts: content knowledge, skills and abilities that students will acquire, the audience for the course, and time.
These four general components of course design are also interwoven together; no one element exists unto itself. Each component interacts with the other three components and in turn, is influenced by them as well. These four general components are situated, in today’s classroom, around the technology tool of a learning management system (LMS). Learning management systems, such as Moodle, provide a tool for the delivery of the course content, a vehicle to help shape student skills and abilities, a structure for student learners to use, and a means to extend classroom time.
The synergy between content knowledge, skills and abilities, audience and time
Instructors at this level have a profound task in front of them; with so much information available, with so much knowledge that instructors have amassed through patient study, reading, and research (in addition to the years of course preparation), it becomes overwhelming at times to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. At this point, instructors often step back and assess the content knowledge they want to focus upon in relation to the other three general course components (skills and abilities, audience and time).
For example, an instructor may have a first-year introductory course which would heavily influence the scope of what might be possible to deal with in relation to content. As well, an instructor might also consider if these first-year students have any prior exposure to this content area or if this will be their first formal study of this content.
All of the four general course components will make their own demands and the give-and-take between and among these features is what makes each course design unique. Even within a single discipline, in a multi-section offering, individual instructors have wide latitude within these four design components. What is most pertinent today is that in addition to this synergy between and among the four general course components there is another element to be considered: the tools of the learning management system.
Learning management systems: A tools approach
Learning management systems are not a core component to the four general course components of content knowledge, skills and abilities, audience and time. Instead, they are tools to help individual instructors more appropriately manage their teaching and student learning. For example, while none of us are Dr. Who and can manipulate time, we can extend the time outside of the classroom through our use of forum discussions, student blogs, or collaborative wikis. Just as a classroom contains a range of teaching tools–chalkboards, overhead projectors, and moveable desks that could be arranged into discussion groups–a learning management system (i.e., medium) operates in similar fashion. The components of a learning management system should be viewed as individual tools (i.e., forums, blogs, wikis, etc.), within a medium (Moodle, for example) that extend our opportunities for teaching and learning. Further, and in particular with Moodle, these tools provide us with myriad means of feedback—on individual course journals, through pre-structured comments on quizzes, or elaboration of a concept on a class discussion forum.
Linking general course design components and learning management systems
One of the truly visionary elements of a learning management system is that individual instructors can use as much or as little as they need. There is, in other words, no prescribed amount of a learning management system to use; it is totally dependent on an instructor’s vision of their course and the four general course design components.
During your initial planning for a new course next semester or a major or minor revision on a long-taught course, these elements are available to you in whatever combination you see fit. That is, after all, what makes conceptualizing a course such an individual and forward-focused exercise.
Thursday, September 25th
Moodle Faculty Showcase
Art Evans will facilitate a discussion focusing on the faculty perspective on transitioning to Moodle.
4:10 p.m. - 5:00 pm Roy O. West Media Classroom
Tuesday, September 30th
Moodle Open Lab
An informal lab session where you can stop by to learn about Moodle as your time permits. Moodle administrators will be available for training and discussion as you prepare your course sites for the semester.
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. FITS Center, Roy O. West Library Lower Level
Tuesday, October 14th
Moodle Users Group (MUG) Meeting
Join your Moodle colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, and discuss ways that Moodle can be used in teaching and learning. This meeting will feature a focused help session on the gradebook feature in Moodle.
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Instruction Room A, Roy O. West Library Lower Level
Friday, October 17th
Tablet Users Meeting
Share Tablet PC pedagogies with colleagues, learn some tips for using tablets, and receive updates on up and coming technologies related to Tablet PCs.
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 a.m. Location TBA
The Week of October 27-31, 2008
Faculty Showcase
Planning for this event is still underway. More details to be provided soon.
Thursday, November 6th
Moodle Open Lab
An informal lab session where you can stop by to learn about Moodle as your time permits. Moodle administrators will be available for training and discussion as you prepare your course sites for the semester.
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. FITS Center, Roy O. West Library Lower Level
Wednesday, November 12th
Moodle Users Group (MUG) Meeting
Join your Moodle colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, and discuss ways that Moodle can be used in teaching and learning. This meeting will feature a focused help session on the gradebook feature in Moodle. Pizza to be provided, please RSVP to moodle@depauw.edu if you plan to attend.
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Instruction Room A, Roy O. West Library Lower Level
Wednesday, November 19th
GIS Day
The DePauw GIS Center will participate in the tenth annual international GIS Day celebration on Wednesday, November 19, 2008, by hosting a GIS Day event in the Julian Atrium at DePauw University. This event will showcase GIS projects and concepts via posters, displays, and activities. Refreshments and prizes will be available as well, so join us for this world-wide celebration.
3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Julian Atrium
Thursday, November 20th
Tablet Users Meeting
Share Tablet PC pedagogies with colleagues, learn some tips for using tablets, and receive updates on up and coming technologies related to Tablet PCs.
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Location TBA
The week of December 1-5, 2008
Faculty Showcase
Planning for this event is underway. More details will be provided as soon as possible.
Now that you’ve archived all your Blackboard courses, you may be wondering “what now?”
For those who have already transitioned to Moodle, I recommend saving your archives to a CD or DVD to place with your physical course files. By doing so, you will not only have a record of your students’ grades, but you will also have a digital history of your class materials.
For those who are in the process of transitioning to Moodle, you can reuse the material saved with your Blackboard archive. This can be accomplished by using a Blackboard course content extractor program named bFree. For more information about this process, contact moodle@depauw.edu or any FITS instructional technologist:
DePauw’s mitc Lab is one of many new spaces for teaching and learning in the new Green Center for the Performing Arts, completed this summer. Located in GCPA 1151 within the Music Library, the lab features some of the most technically advanced workstations on campus, specially configured for music production, synthesis and notation. Because it is contained within the Music Library, the mitc Lab is open during the Music Library’s normal hours of operation.
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Reason, a virtual music studio environment |
Students busy at work in the lab |
Each workstation is configured with professional quality audio input/output, and quality headphones are available for checkout at the Music Library circulation desk for monitoring your work. Special keyboards with 3 octaves of velocity-sensitive, transposable keys make score-creation and music sequencing simple.
The layout of the mitc Lab may look simple, because the power of the lab’s workstations is in the installed software suite, which includes powerful tools for computer-based music making.
This fall, a variety of courses are taking advantage of the mitc Lab’s unique resources; however, when not being used for scheduled classes or presentations, the mitc Lab is open to the DePauw University community for general use. When scheduled classes and presentations are underway in the lab, there are two additional workstations with identical configurations available for student use on the lower level of the Music Library.
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mitc workstation keyboard |
View from the lab |
With an expansive glass façade to the north, the mitc Lab has a commanding view of campus and allows ambient light to fill the space. The lab’s unique architecture makes for a most productive place to study and work on computer based music projects. Students wishing to experiment with creative uses of digital audio are especially encouraged to investigate the lab’s resources, whether or not they are School of Music students.
Hannah Kerns joined FITS as the new Instructional Technology Graduate Intern for the START program in August. After being raised in Putnam County and graduating from North Putnam High School, she completed her undergraduate degree at Indiana State University with a double major in Communications and Geography and a minor in Business Administration. She is currently completing her Masters from the Roy H. Park school of Communications at Ithaca College in central New York, with a focus of Instructional Design. Hannah is a member of the Alpha Chi Omega social sorority (Epsilon Omicron, Indiana State University), IABC (International Association of Business Communicators, Ithaca College), and ISPI (International Society for Performance Improvement, Ithaca College). She plans to continue her education at Indiana University with a certificate in Instructional Systems Technology.
Fun Fact:
Hannah’s goal is to visit all fifty states.
