n o t e s&NEWS Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology
Volume 6, Issue 4 • March 2005
New Directions in a Changing Climate
by Dan Madigan
Since its inception in 1996, CTLT has experienced remarkable growth. Our first office was small—a converted faculty lounge in Olscamp Hall. Our mission at the time: to develop a faculty development center that specialized in helping faculty balance technology needs with their pedagogical needs. With a small amount of start-up funds to get “everything” up and running, including a lab and programs, we began. Today, we have meeting spaces that allow for all kinds of professional development support. For example, we have a state-of-the-art studio where faculty and graduate students can develop digital projects to complement and enhance their teaching. We have a conference room and other meeting areas where groups of colleagues can meet to discuss a myriad of topics related to teaching and research. We have a growing library of books, articles and tapes that reflect seminal research in the professional development area. We have come a long way since we first began 9 years ago. Yet we must continue to evolve within the changing university climate. With that in mind, CTLT is increasing its efforts to develop and deliver workshops and activities that are integrally linked to notions of student learning and the scholarship of teaching. In the future, we will emphasize even more activities, programs and workshops that support communities of scholars. For example, we want to make the learning community experience available to more faculty so we will develop creative ways to bring faculty together for extended periods of time. And, we want our technologyrelated workshops to reflect a blend that emphasizes not only the technology skills, but also how such new skills can be translated into best practices for teaching and research.
System support will be offered by ITS as they too evolve in response to our changing climate in higher education. In the future, CTLT will focus more broadly on technology/ pedagogical issues. We will continue to be leaders on campus in both pedagogical and technology innovation.
New Assistant Director CTLT is proud to announce the hiring of Carrie Rathsack for the position of Assistant Dirctor. Carrie is currently a biology teacher at Perrysburg High School whose interest is in student learning and computer technologies. She has a background in learning theory and has taught technology courses in the College of Education at BGSU. Carrie also has been involved in several large grant projects and has presented at numerous conferences on the topics of technology and student learning. Carrie’s background in the sciences will complement other staff members at the Center who have backgrounds in such fields as the humanities, arts and business. She is expected to work closely with faculty in investigating the way technologies can enhance student learning and teaching in general. Although her workshops, consulting and other activities will have a technology focus, they will be fully integrated into other workshops and activities that primarily focus on student learning and pedagogy. We look forward to Carrie joining our staff as we continue to evolve and move towards the future.
As we have evolved over the years, so our responsibilities have changed at the Center—especially in the area of technology support. Where we once did a lot of production work in our studio, we now concentrate more on helping faculty with their production work. And where we once were one of the key technical support units on campus for WebCT and Blackboard, that kind of Course Management
201 University Hall • (419) 372-6898 • http://ctlt.bgsu.edu