What's New at the FTRC?
by Michael Lively
With the new academic year, UCit's Faculty Technology Resources Center (FTRC) has begun some new and exciting projects. The faculty multimedia training center is almost completed and classes will begin in mid-October. The twelve seat training center, located in 406 Zimmer Hall, has been constructed with faculty as the central focus. Courses range from "Fun with digital cameras" to "Using live communication on the web." Our nineteen-course training program, jointly published with the Libraries' training schedule, is available at the following location:
http://www.libraries.uc.edu/instruction/workshop/list_current.php
Skill sets learned in our training program will prepare faculty to actively engage students in both recorded and live, online sessions.
Active learning is at the heart of what we do. Working closely with faculty is the key to our success in creating this engaging content. We have created a series of faculty-designed templates which we will freely distributed as part of our FTRC training. Our faculty-designed templates are already being used in online classrooms and range from web-push programs to audio textbooks with student record options. Since the templates are based on a simple drag-and-drop model, our faculty can concentrate on content development and pedagogy, as opposed to tedious multimedia programming.
Our new A&S GenEd Online program, which has the goal of putting 47 GenEd courses online, is benefitting from this approach. Several instructors are using pre-made templates for rapid e-learning content development.
Pushing the technology envelope is what the FTRC is all about. Our technology endeavors range from building a joint WebTV/WebRadio station with Hebrew Union College to programming mobile devices for rich multi-chat room learning experiences.
We look forward to an exciting academic year. Faculty are at the heart of what we do. They bring us ideas; we make their ideas a reality.
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