University of Toronto 2009 Update

Linda Murphy-Boyer University of Toronto

Challenges

Reviews reviews reviews...

Discussion of an RCAT review has been under way for two years now. For that same amount of time, out of a staff of ten people (myself included) I’ve filled two very critical positions with casual staff. Hiring appointed staff to fill those positions will be dependent on the implementation of the review. Furthermore, I just received news that two additional positions will need to be filled in a few weeks. All four positions are on hold until the reorganization is better understood - with September rolling in very quickly. Many other departments that we collaborate with are also under review, making decisions and planning difficult. Our new faculty orientation, planned focus groups, hiring and all of our fall programming is on hold.

Implementing a Podcasting tool/streaming server

Try as we might we just can’t seem to get a podcast tool or even a functioning central streaming server in place. I have been in discussion with a number of groups to review the use of home-grown products, i-tunes, and/or a workflow for our new (8 months old) streaming server that no one knows how to access. Still no results. Politics and lack of will/ownership stymie us.

Moving beyond a Blackboard implementation state to model the pedagogical use of Blackboard.

Even though we offer a number of advanced (pedagogically focused) courses in the use of BlackBoard, they are less well attended than our introductory (basic) courses. Although we have almost complete saturation with the use of the Blackboard system, the majority of faculty use the system for delivering one dimensional course materials like syllabi and PowerPoint slides. It is a small comfort to know that we are not alone in trying to encourage our faculty to experiment with Blackboard’s more interactive features. In summer 2008, the Educause community undertook the task of identifying the top five challenges in teaching and learning with technology by conducting focus groups and sending out a community survey. Number four on that list was encouraging faculty in the adoption and innovation of teaching and learning with IT. We continue to revamp our workshop offerings this summer and search for “star” instructors who will speak to other instructors about their use of BlackBoard. There is much interest in blogs, wikis and podcasts. I imagine the uptake for these tools will increase when/if we make them readily available.

Triumphs

New and useful tools for Blackboard

With the assistance of a developer and much consultation with users, we have developed a simple building block that allows our clients to download grades from Opscan (bubble sheet) results directly to Blackboard. The tool was built without stress or tears, came in on time and works beautifully! The tool will be very useful as last year alone over 100,000 tests were scanned at RCAT.

A successful upgrade to BB 8.0

We recently upgraded to Blackboard 8.0 without any fuss muss or tears. I hear that the upgrade to 9 will be a bit tougher though.

New website redesign

We completely revised the RCAT website to add a blog, twitter and a resource page. Take a peek – [1]

Improved student experience with consistent use of Blackboard

We have achieved almost complete saturation of Blackboard with over 65,000 users. This gives students a more consistent experience as all courses are on Blackboard and allows for a measure of convenience –overall, enriching the student experience.

People are talking about new technology and teaching tools.

Even though we do not have a standard lecture capture system on campus and even though I remain unconvinced that on demand university wide lecture capture is a good thing, users are engaged in talks involving the use of lecture capture on campus. I’ve been boning up on LC and have become a bit of a defacto expert on it. Getting faculty engaged in the use of technology is always a triumph for me – for better or worse – at least they’re thinking about it.