Author: Nardina Mein
Welcome back! I hope you’re settling into a productive Winter semester. As we start off a new year, I’d like to inform you of some exciting projects the OTL has been involved in. Second Life, as many of you know, is a three dimensional virtual world which is arranged in a number of [...]
Author: Julie Thompson Klein
In our last newsletter, we introduced a new topic – the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). When Ernest Boyer coined the term in 1990, he broadened the definition of scholarship to include four types of faculty work: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Since then, teaching effectiveness has been the subject of [...]
Author: Kristi Verbeke
As part of our commitment to the Scholarship of Teaching Learning (SoTL), we are highlighting SoTL projects in the literature. This issue, we feature a coaching study conducted by Susan Chaplin at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. Chaplin’s study attempted to address the difficulty students (freshman, in particular) often [...]
Author: Anne-Marie Armstrong
Friends meet
You may have seen articles about a new technology called Second Life in the Chronicle of Higher Education or other academic publications, but are unsure of what it is. Second Life is a multi-user virtual world, created by its users, that has a global population of over 8 million. To participate in [...]
Author: Kristi Verbeke
As teachers, we’re always looking for new ways to engage our students in course material. Additionally, many faculty express frustration when students do not prepare for class and fail to read the assigned materials. If either of these sounds familiar, you might consider having students participate in an online discussion using the Discussion [...]
Author: Bill Warters
For this edition of the OTL newsletter, I’d like to call people’s attention to the power of using the Presentation feature in the online tool suite known as Google Docs. To get started, visit http://docs.google.com/. After creating and activating a Google Docs account you can create spreadsheets, text documents and presentations all using [...]
Author: Annette Feravich
James E. Zull targets educators interested in brain structure and function in his book, The Art of Changing the Brain. Using current neurological research, Zull makes a strong case for creating an active learning environment that helps students fully process incoming information. Zull reduces brain structure and functions to two main areas of [...]
Author: Annette Feravich
Since 2003, the Provost’s Office has awarded Innovative Technology Faculty Grants to WSU faculty. Originally, grants were awarded biannually for up to $5,000. During 2006, awards increased to up to $30,000, given annually. Since the grant’s inception, the Provost’s office has granted over $300,000 in technology funding to almost 100 faculty members.
During Semester [...]
Author: Kimberly Conely
Latika Gupta
Graduate students from all over the world attend WSU. According to Latika Gupta, she traveled over 7,500 miles from New Delhi, India, because of WSU’s Ph.D. program in International Macro Economics. Susumu Suzuki’s flight from Fukushima, Japan, was over 16 hours; he enrolled at WSU specifically because of the research interests of [...]