CTELT Newsletter Fort Hays State University

Fall 2006 was a semester filled with excitement and achievement in the Center for Teaching Excellence and Learning Technology (CTELT) at Fort Hays State University (FHSU). With our good memories of the previous semester still fresh in our minds, we are ready for a new semester that will offer communication, collaboration, and information.

CTELT strengthened our technology training program with a focus on mobile computing in the fall. We made learning objectives available for each workshop before enrollment and we provided handouts for most workshop sessions. We also split Blackboard into multiple sessions dealing with specific issues. We sponsored a number of new workshops and infobytes in CTELT’s training program: Advanced PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat 7, Introduction to Tablet PCs, Microsoft OneNote, Mobile Teaching and Learning Pedagogies, A Free Tool Kit: Teaching with Tablets, DyKnow Basics, and DyKnow Pedagogies. In total, CTELT offered 69 sessions of workshops and infobytes in the fall, and the total number of attendees was 327. Tablet presentation and training was also done in six departments.

In addition, we offered to the FHSU community five audio conferences, six Brown Bag Lunches, two presentations by guest speakers from other institutions, two mobile computing panels, one satellite downlink, three video conferences, and six web conferences. The total number of attendees for these events was 262. In the fall CTELT offered more workshops and professional development sessions on more topics than in any previous semester, and these sessions attracted bigger audiences than ever before.

We joined three professional organizations and launched our new website. By associating our unit with Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab, New Media Consortium, and the Teaching, Learning and Technology Group, we hope to network with professionals in other institutions and share resources, ideas, and practices in instructional technology. We added our new mission, goals, and values statements to the new website so that people will better understand our role in the institution. By adding new features such as event posting, video testimony, online tour, online evaluation, and more resources, we also hope to provide faculty and staff better navigation and one-stop shopping services.

With the vision of the University administration, the enhancement of the course development process is under way. CTELT is excited to get involved in this process and to provide instructors more support in online education. To meet this need, we have planned a new track of workshops in e-learning. Two new workshops in this track will be offered to help faculty design and implement
e-learning. Dr. Robert Luehrs, our Teaching Excellence Coordinator, will also offer a new infobyte on the experience of being a faculty member and instructor at FHSU. We are also in the process of enhancing our computer lab. By adding more equipment and a presentation station, the lab will create a more user-friendly environment for the workshop participants.

To meet changes and challenges brought by rapidly evolving technologies in education, we need passion and persistence to propel us to success. With participation and collaboration from each of you, we are making each day on FHSU campus a rewarding one and together we are building a more powerful TIGER…