EDUCAUSE | All Content

CNI Podcast: Perpetual Reinvention: An Interview with Director of MIT Libraries, Ann Wolpert

gbayne — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:55:25 -0600

This seventeen minute podcast features an interview with Ann J. Wolpert, Director of Libraries at MIT. It was recorded at the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2008 Task Force Meeting.

As Director of Libraries, Ann J. Wolpert is responsible for the MIT Libraries and MIT Press. The MIT Libraries consist of five major collections, a number of smaller branch libraries in specialized subject areas, a fee-for-services group, and the Institute Archives. In addition, the development of DSpace, MIT's online institutional repository contains MIT Research in digital form, including preprints, technical reports, working papers, theses, conference papers, images, and more.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2008 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Engaging today's learners: Making Library Instruction and Outreach Dynamic

drupal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:42:21 -0600

This panel will represent various perspectives on library engagement and show how librarians at a small liberal arts school and a large research institution moved beyond traditional outreach and instruction techniques and creatively employed technology to connect with their communities in new and exciting ways. We will focus on strategies used to implement and promote Flickr and Ellumniate for library workshops, classes, and outreach activities. Results and lessons learned will be discussed.

Help Desk Outsourcing: Lessons Learned

drupal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:02:09 -0600

This presentation will examine the implementation and evaluation of help desk outsourcing projects from the perspective of two colleges with different experiences and outcomes. The IT help desk plays a strategic role in fulfilling the academic institution's mission and goals. Today's students expect electronic services on campus 24 x 7. The combined pressure of supporting a diverse technology environment while providing expanded support services has a growing number of institutions considering alternatives like outsourcing the help desk function.

Incorporating Online Human Touch: Instruction and Programming to Increase Online Student Engagement and Retention

drupal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:29:14 -0600

The long-term sustainability of online education programs is highly dependent on student enrollment and retention. Therefore, administrators need to identify strategies and models that engage, connect, and retain students. To proactively address student attrition, Drexel University's Master of Science in Higher Education Program has developed and implemented the concept of online human touch (OHT) instruction and programming. This interactive and personalized approach to online education has resulted in high student retention rates and high levels of student satisfaction. This session will present the conceptual framework for OHT instruction and programming as well as provide OHT strategies and supporting data.

No Free Lunch: A Condensed Strategic Planning Process

drupal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:46:06 -0600

Strategic planning is frequently associated with glazed eyes and endless meetings to craft vision and mission statements, goals, and action plans. Few look forward to the experience or reflect on it positively. Can the process be condensed into a few short hours? Can a condensed process produce an effective, flexible document? Can participants actually enjoy the process? Yes, yes, and yes. This presentation will describe a highly interactive and collaborative strategic planning process at Penn State Berks that required less than five hours of meetings. Guidelines will be provided for adapting and implementing the process. It can be done!

Tune In January 13: Copyright Balance and Fair Use in Networked Learning

pkurkowski — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:20:02 -0600

Copyright balancing has become a critical issue in the academy as digital practices increasingly have challenged creaky policies and practices. Scholars, academic administrators, librarians, and intellectuals, as well as their students and mentees, need reasonable access to copyrighted culture to research and produce new knowledge. Academics have begun to explore their rights under copyright law to quote copyrighted culture, especially under the doctrine of fair use.

In this free January 13 EDUCAUSE Live! Web Seminar, Copyright Balance and Fair Use in Networked Learning: Lessons from Creators' Codes of Best Practices, presenters Patricia Aufderheide, professor and director, Center for Social Media, School of Communication, and Peter Jaszi, professor of law, American University, will discuss their collaboration to facilitate the creation of these codes and discuss how this model might apply to the academic environment.

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Copyright, Fair Use, Federal Copyright Law, and Intellectual Property.

Using Clickers to Control Access to Online Recordings of In-Class Lectures

drupal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:03:05 -0600

If you record in-class lectures and make them available online, why would students still come to class? If they don't—but can pass exams—does it matter? While faculty have mixed feelings about recorded lectures, a combination of new technologies makes it possible to allow only students who attend class to access recorded lectures online, for the purposes of review (not discovery). This presentation will show how UMBC is exploring the use of clickers (or audience response systems), a course management system, and simple lecture capture tools to give faculty fine-grained control of who reviews online recordings of their in-class lectures.

2008 ResNet Survey

ckeller — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:24:39 -0600

The 2008 ResNet Survey seeks to develop a longitudinal view on certain topics from the 2005 survey, assess technology and other changes in residential student computing support since that time, and take a peek into the future as to what issues might be over the horizon. The results offer an assessment on the present status of student computing in higher education, assist you in understanding your program's present status and how it aligns with other residential support programs, and provides insight into potential future challenges.

CNI Podcast: The Digital Scholarship Lab - Experiments in Twenty-First Century Research and Teaching

gbayne — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:07:40 -0600

This twenty minute podcast features an interview with Andrew Torget, Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. It was recorded at the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2008 Task Force Meeting.

The Digital Scholarship Lab is a center for innovation, bringing together scholars, technologists, and the public in order to explore how emerging technology can change the ways we understand the human past, present, and future. Two of the projects discussed in this interview include “Voting America” and the “History Engine.” Both projects experiment with what the future of teaching and research might be in the digital age. “Voting America” employs visualizations and cinematic techniques to make a massive amount of data--the 1.6 billion votes that have been cast in presidential elections during the last 164 years--more accessible to students of history and politics. The “History Engine” captures the research of undergraduate students and aggregates their work to produce a very detailed, very large resource about the American past, one that is valuable both to students within the classroom and to a larger public. Both projects are designed to model how colleges and universities might seize new opportunities and meet the challenges presented by digitized resources and digital techniques.

Decentralization in a Centralized IT Environment

drupal — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:59:33 -0600

This presentation will review IUP's journey to build an IT infrastructure that takes advantage of decentralized expertise while maintaining a core centralized IT environment. This environment allows us to address the dramatic and continuing increase in demand for emerging IT in higher education. The central IT organization can focus on the expansion of mission while increasing decentralized expertise in the functional areas of the organization. Other institutions may want to consider how we developed this infrastructure to create a best-practice deployment in preparing for emerging IT trends in higher education.