Teaching & Learning Excellence

Academic Affairs Division

Faculty Development Archives

Archived sessions of the Faculty Development Series are available for viewing on USG YouTube by selecting the session title.

Academic Year 2013-2014

Accessibility Considerations for Desire2Learn 10.2 Courses

What accessibility features are built into the new Desire2Learn (D2L) ver.10.2 learning environment? How do instructors leverage those features to develop accessible courses and content? What tools should they use? What tools should they avoid? In this seminar, we will discuss and demonstrate how to utilize key accessibility features of D2L ver. 10.2 to develop online courses that are accessible to all students.

Accessibility Solutions for Online Educational Environments

Online education, including MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses), can provide a wonderful opportunity for people with disabilities if the course materials are made accessible for them. Join the presenters as they lay a framework and highlight techniques for ensuring MOOC and other online learning environments are accessible to all. This presentation will provide the faculty and support staff a tool kit of resources and strategies. The presenters will also review current accessibility trends and research in the field of virtual learning.

All Aboard! USG eMajor

The University System of Georgia eMajor Initiative launched in Fall 2012. Today, eMajor includes three undergraduate degrees and two affiliate institutions, Dalton State College and Valdosta State University. The eMajor programs exist to provide online undergraduate degrees of the highest quality Georgia learners. With majors and concentrations that focus on preparing adults to advance on their careers or to pursue new career paths, eMajor is a student-focused option offering access to online programs, targeted student support to promote student retention and graduation, and a demonstrated commitment to standardized Prior Learning Assessments (AP, CLEP, CBE) to ensure adult learners earn credit for the professional learning and experiences they have accumulated during their career. eMajor offers new opportunities for partnership and collaborative success across the USG. In this session we will discuss the process for institutional affiliation, how institutions can increase retention and graduation rates for adult learners through eMajor partnership, and the opportunities that eMajor offers for faculty, administrators, and students across the University System of Georgia. Join us to learn about the opportunities of becoming an eMajor Affiliate!

How’s it Going Really? Assessing Student Learning in the Classroom

This session is designed to help participants choose and use a variety of assessment tools and techniques that can help us better understand our students’ performance in the classroom. Important concepts underpinning successful classroom assessment will be introduced, a variety of classroom assessment tools and techniques will be described, and connections to helpful literature will be provided. During the session each participant will have an opportunity to articulate their own assessment needs, select several options for their own course from among a variety of effective assessment tools and techniques, and plan for initial implementation of one or two tools and techniques.

Implementing the 4 R’s of Open Textbooks

A growing number of open textbooks are freely available to reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix by anyone, anywhere. They are one way to help mitigate the high cost of textbooks for students and their families. But what exactly is an open textbook? Do open textbooks match commercial ones in terms of content and instructional design? Are all open textbooks quality-controlled through editorial and peer review? Is writing an open textbook considered scholarly work that counts towards professional development in tenure review? How can you apply your professional skills to reuse, adapt, and build upon the works of others and improve upon the quality of the works already available? The presenters for this session served on a collaborative team to develop an open textbook and will consider these and other questions.

Affordable Textbook Solutions in the USG: E, Free and Open

Team members present a new USG project to help student success by providing affordable textbook alternatives, based on The California State University’s Affordable Learning Solutions project. This one-stop service helps identify electronic, open, and free textbook and educational resources, as well as online materials in GALILEO and at USG libraries.

Introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

At its most basic level, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can be thought of as the systematic study of teaching and learning; it involves asking a question, gathering evidence, drawing conclusions based on that evidence, and making those findings public for the benefit of others. The purpose of this session is to introduce participants to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and to discuss ways to get started in SoTL research.

Measuring Grit: Do Non-Cognitive Attributes Impact Academic Success, Engagement, Satisfaction and Retention?

Learn about how schools measure and remediate non-cognitive factors such as students’ availability of time, support from family, levels of motivation, willingness to ask for help, and technical skills.

MERLOT 101: Finding, Evaluating & Integrating Open Educational Resources

If you’re reluctant to use open education resources because you’re concerned about quality and longevity or think they take too long to find and are too hard to integrate then give us an hour of your time to change your mind. This webinar shows you how to use MERLOT find and evaluate content-specific resources and demonstrates how to browse, search and use tools such as the Federated Search and Personal Collections to quickly build your collection of OER.

Reforming Remediation: Math on Wire

This presentation explores the challenges, (real and perceived) of both students and faculty of Learning Support Math at College of Coastal Georgia. Common misconceptions around a modular redesign will be discussed as well as the “Do’s and Dont’s” learned from the implementation at College of Coastal Georgia. Join us to see how this high wire analogy can help us address these challenges and propose solutions to overcome them.

Scholarly Open-Access Publishing and the Peril of Predatory Publishers

Emerging scholarly publishing models are changing the culture of scholarly communication. One of these new models, gold open access, provides free, universal access to scholarly literature. However, this model, financed by article processing charges paid for by authors or their funders, has led to the publication of questionable research. Numerous unscrupulous or “predatory” publishers using the gold open-access model have appeared, accepting papers just to earn the author fees. Greater scrutiny is required by all involved in scholarly communication from authors, to reviewers, editors, and even tenure and promotion committees. This talk will tell the story of the emergence of questionable publishers and explain how scholars and academic librarians can identify them. A particular journal’s inclusion in a library database doesn’t always mean it is legitimate. This webinar will provide an overview of the issues related to scholarly open-access publishing of importance to academic librarians, focusing on the unintended consequences such as predatory publishers and their abuse of the gold open-access model.

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