FITS has undergone several changes over the past few years and continues to evolve as the needs of DePauw faculty members and students change. Our mission to assist in enhancing teaching and learning through technology remains consistent, though. FITS continues to be primarily concerned with the pedagogical applications of technology.

FITS consists of several team members who are available to support a wide range of technologies and projects. As we begin the new academic year, we would like to reacquaint you with the FITS team and introduce a few new faces. The core team of instructional technologists, who work closely together to provide leadership for the program, includes Alicia Louden, Sherry Mou and myself, Lynda LaRoche. Alicia, Sherry and I can be found in the FITS Center in the lower level of Roy O. West Library and are available for consultation about the use of technology in teaching, whether this means introducing new technologies, re-evaluating current use of technology or just exploring options for resolving a pedagogical concern. Services are very individualized and may range from long-term project consultation to short-term training support.

Our vision for how this team of leadership will work is that we are a “Circle of Leadership.” I remember reading somewhere that a circle is composed of individual arcs that have their own individual characteristics, but, when placed together form a continuous line, always moving forward and never ending. I believe this describes the model we hope to achieve – three individuals with their own experiences, viewpoints and expertise, working together to provide continuous support to faculty members, moving forward in teaching and learning, with a never ending desire to do the best we can in our service to the DePauw community.

In addition to this team, there are a variety of FITS team members who are available to support more specialized uses of technology. The Music Instructional Technology Center (MITC), located in the Green Center for Performing Arts, provides digital audio support services and is now being jointly coordinated by Emily Frame, a second-year graduate intern, and Ron Pejril, a new graduate intern who joined the team this fall. Additionally, Beth Wilkerson, FITS Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist, works closely with those wishing to leverage this powerful tool for creating interactive environments to manage, model, manipulate, visualize and analyze geographic data both spatially and temporally.

Finally, FITS support is always offered in collaboration with partners in Instructional & Learning Services under the direction of Associate CIO Carol L. Smith. Alicia’s addition to the FITS team as an instructional technologist strengthens the relationship between FITS and the START (Student Technology Assessment, Resources & Training) program. Other ILS collaborations include technical training provided by David Diedriech and multi-media production support provided by Jin Kim.

For more information about the FITS program, please visit http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits. Profiles for team members, including specific expertise, can be found on the “People” page. Please do not hesitate to contact one of us if you would like to learn more or need any support for your projects. We look forward to working with you in the coming year!

Additional resources:

MITC Web site: http://www.depauw.edu/music/mitc/
GIS Web site: http://www.depauw.edu/univ/gis/
START Web site: http://www.depauw.edu/it/start
ILS Web site: http://www.depauw.edu/it/ils/

Last spring, Meryl Altman, incoming Faculty Development Coordinator, called a meeting among various program coordinators to brainstorm ways to streamline faculty workshops with the hope that, through joint efforts, we could maximize faculty members' time (read: fewer individual events and more collaboration). We are pleased to announce that the first of these joint events will be a half-day faculty workshop co-sponsored by FITS, the W Center and the S Center. This workshop, titled "Beyond Good and Evil: Technology in the Classroom," will be held on Saturday, September 16th, 8:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., and offers an opportunity for us to share experiences, both good and bad, with each other to help foster new ideas for how to enhance our teaching.

For this first joint venture, we will focus on pertinent things at hand: how instructional technologies affect our teaching and our students' learning. We have invited Dave Berque (Computer Science), Bob Hershberger (Modern Languages), and Neal Abraham (VPAA) to start the workshop with some critical thinking about issues and opportunities that result and can be anticipated from a fast-shifting landscape of teaching and learning. We have asked them to provide provocative questions for us all to consider. We have also invited colleagues from various disciplines who have been using technological tools in their teaching: Rebecca Bordt (Sociology), Harry Brown (English), Mac Mackenzie (Art History), Brett O'Bannon (Political Science), Jackie Roberts (Chemistry), Scott Spiegelberg (Music), David Worthington (Communication). In addition to sharing with us their experiences, they will explore with the audience ways to address concerns and issues surfaced with these new approaches. To round out the workshop, we have also invited some very engaging students (S and W Consultants and ITAP Associates) to share with us their perspectives and explore how students feel about and benefit from various methods of instruction.

Finally, I want to mention a conversation I had with a librarian this summer. She said that her university is so thoroughly wireless that students take their laptops outside to work online at the campus pond.  This may or may not be happening at Bowman Park any time soon. What is sure is that the design, layout, and functions of classrooms (especially in new and renovated buildings) are changing. They are changing because our students are changing. With apologies to my English and Music colleagues, I would like to offer the following question as food for thought about a future that is already here.

The classroom walls're falling down, falling down, falling down!
The classroom walls're falling down,
Are we ready?

For more details about the workshop, including a detailed schedule, please visit: http://www.depauw.edu/acad/women/tech%20workshop.htm. We hope you will come to the workshop on September 16th to join an engaging, ongoing conversation about teaching, learning, and the new technologies!

The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) brings together higher education institutions such as DePauw and other organizations with the goal of advancing learning through IT innovation. One of their activities to broaden awareness of these innovations, as well as promote best practices is the ELI Web Seminars series.

The ELI Web Seminars is a series of hour-long interactive Web conferences focusing on teaching, learning, and technology issues in higher education. The seminars are live, online events in which participants can pose questions for the presenters and chat with other attendees. Usually, there is one seminar each month during the academic year.

Topics for the coming semester include:

To participate…

FITS will host all of the ELI Web Seminars in a classroom where folks can come together and discuss the topic with each other as well as with the other ELI participants online. Watch for an announcement soon from FITS about the locations and confirmed times for the upcoming events.

To learn more ELI Web Seminars, visit:
http://www.educause.edu/UpcomingSeminars/9321.

Additional references:
EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) – www.educause.edu/eli - The ELI is a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to advancing learning through learner-focused strategy and IT innovation.

Ten faculty members participated in the 8th Annual FITS Summer Workshop, which was held May 30-June 5, 2006. Similar to past workshops, the event was a project based program designed to help faculty link methods to course goals. Project proposals were submitted and reviewed by the FITS team for acceptance into the intensive, hands-on workshop. As in the past, a series of plenary sessions, discussion groups and mini-courses focused on developing skills and reflecting on how technology impacts teaching.

Participants received significant hands-on training in technologieswhich included Web design and development using Dreamweaver, image manipulation using Fireworks, digital audio and video tools, Blackboard, Luna and others. In addition to these skills based sessions and individualized project support, participants had the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts from colleagues about using technology to teach during a veteran’s panel. Discussions were also held on the topics of emerging social software tools, such as blogs and other online tools like Flickr, and the use of laptops in the classroom.

Similar to the 2004 and 2005 events,this workshop included an additional event to integrate the broader campus community into the FITS workshop. This year, support from the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) enabled us to offer a concurrent workshop titled “Digital Video Production with iMovie,” which ran May 30-June 1, 2006. This workshop was co-led by DePauw staff and a NITLE videographer and helped participants from DePauw and other colleges gain a firm understanding of what it takes to produce usable raw video footage and to capture, compress, and edit video for pedagogical use with iMovie.

For more information about the 8th Annual FITS Summer Workshop, including faculty project abstracts, please visit:
http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits/sum06/.

Notes from selected sessions and images taken during the workshop can also be found on the workshop blog at http://blog.depauw.edu/fits2006/.

For past workshop Web sites, please visit:
http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits/workshop/.