Heather Schilling
Edtec 685
IT Profile
July 9, 2006
Manchester College is a private, liberal arts institution located in northeast Indiana with an enrollment of just over 1,200 students. As it makes its way into the 21st century and works to compete at other schools with more resources, technology is one way to stay competitive. Making student data accessible to professors and making professors accessible to students via a variety of platforms is an important aspect of making Manchester College a competitive institution.
Professors who use Blackboard have the capability of using the Inquisit function to create online assessments and surveys. One of the interesting aspects of Blackboard allows professors to track student use of Blackboard. For example, my Blackboard site for my Educ 340 course I taught this past spring had 19,367 times during the course of the semester. What I find particularly useful from this feedback is whether or not the time I spent working on the Blackboard site was worth my time. I also found it useful when comparing students’ grades with the number of times they used my Blackboard site.
Our education department at Manchester College has also taken the steps to adopt Taskstream as a data collection tool and online portfolio platform for our students. While we are just beginning the process, Taskstream provides our faculty and our students with a computer-based method for designing standards-driven lessons that are linked with standards-based rubrics. Students will be able to submit their work to their education professors who can provide feedback via the Internet or they can grade it using the online rubric. From there, data can be generated for each standard or for broader categories.
Manchester College has recently moved to a program they call MC Connect, a WebAdvisor based program. MC Connect allows students to see their schedules online as well as check their grades for particular semesters. Professors can view their advisees’ schedules as well as their grades. They can also login and view course registrations. For example, I can login and view the students enrolled in each of my fall 2006 courses. From those lists, I can look at their profiles, which include their majors, their addresses and phone numbers, as well as their advisors’ names. Eventually MC Collect will allow students to register for classes online and do a variety of other housekeeping functions through the Internet. Manchester students currently have to register for classes by hand, filling out a registration card, getting their advisors’ signature, and standing in line on their designated registration day. Faculty also still submit hardcopy grades, written on a form generated by the Registrar’s office. Eventually, MC Connect will modernize all of these situations.
While our education department does not have to create an AYP report as public schools must, we are required to track data for each of our courses as well as for our education majors in general. Using a program like Taskstream will make this much easier to collect than it has been in the past when we have done data collection by hand. Using Taskstream, education professors will be able to generate data for their classes, looking at specific INTASC standards.
Currently, the education department does not use technology to test and diagnose students. Blackboard does provide this ability, but to my knowledge few professors use this element of Blackboard.
Because of the freedom professors have enjoyed for decades, curriculum is often left to them. However, because our education department at Manchester College is NCATE accredited, we must make sure we follow the INTASC principles in the same manner that public schools must follow state standards. Until we adopted Taskstream, we generated matrices that demonstrate which activities in each class meet which INTASC standards. None of us in the program ever looked at all of the matrices to see the development of curriculum and to examine where overlaps exist. With the adoption of Taskstream, our department will be able to better align our curriculum by seeing online where specific INTASC standards are taught and measured.
Manchester College has a beautifully designed and well-maintained web-site using Contribute. Departments are given a template and specific guidelines for creating and maintaining their own department sites. In order to keep a uniform site, the public relations department has given specific guidelines in color schemes and font choices. They also provide a great deal of technical support.
Most professors, however, create their own web pages using Microsoft’s FontPage because they are so comfortable with the Microsoft package. Students enrolled in my courses must create a variety of online projects and they use FrontPage as a platform. For example, students enrolled in my EDUC 352 (Adolescent Exceptional Learners) course must create a webquest for their unit they design for their student teaching placement. Students enrolled in EDUC 340 (Literacy Block) must create an online reading activity for a science-related children’s book. I have always had them create these pages in FrontPage because it is a program they can find on every computer on campus. As our department begins to ask our students to create more and more online projects, we may have to examine the best platform for the college’s needs.
Students and faculty have two drives on which they can save their materials: H and I. The H drive is a secure drive and the I drive is accessible; the latter is the drive we use to publish our web sites.
At Manchester College, professors can use Frontpage, Blackboard, and Inquisit to generate surveys for student use. In fact, this past spring, for the first time, professor evaluations were done online using a Blackboard survey. When the Dean’s office made the move from the paper surveys to the online survey, they warned us that for several semesters the number of responses might drop. However, I was quite impressed that we had over 85% of students respond to the online surveys. Collecting feedback this way certainly made the reporting easier than running the bubble sheets through the scantron machine as they had done for so many years.
Manchester College has a lot to offer faculty and students when it comes to technology, especially for a small liberal arts school. Because of limited funds, professors must be creative with integrating technology into their classes. In the education department, we have entered a new project, as a team consisting of two from the education department, one from the science department, and one from the library were selected to participate as one of twenty teams in the program “Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century.” The team participates in a virtual community in the Tapped In platform.
We are also fortunate to have a strong support staff. Because of our size, we have faculty helping faculty. We also have a knowledgeable technology staff who take the time to work with professors to implement the tools we have available.
NEEDS
The major need I see is training. I would like to see periodic workshops offered for faculty and students as we integrate new packages and programs. For example, several of the computers, especially the lab designated for faculty and staff, have Adobe Premier, and yet few professors know the program is there, and even fewer know how to use the program to its potential.
I would also like my colleagues to realize the importance of embracing technology in every aspect of learning. Not only can we motivate students through Blackboard and Course Web Sites, but we can engage them through having them create online activities as well. We also have great potential in the adoption of Taskstream in the education department. Instead of creating cumbersome portfolio compiled in a 3-inch binder, education majors can create an online portfolio linked to INTASC standards. These online portfolios as well as rubrics and lessons can demonstrate student knowledge and provide our department with important feedback.
RESOURCES
For more information on Manchester College’s IT services, visit http://its.manchester.edu/