On April 5 two Healey Library Reference Librarians, Frances Schlesinger and Louisa
Tseng attended the University of Massachusetts Instructional
Technology Conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Frances remarked, “The IT conference was a terrific opportunity to get together with colleagues from all of the UMass campuses and find out how technology is being used to enhance learning, teaching, and research at UMass.” The keynote speaker was Randy Bass, an
English professor from Georgetown University and Executive Director of Center New Design in Learning. Professor Bass focused on two key points – student learning thought processes and the importance of faculty to share their insights on student learning.
The presentations during the one day conference included topics such as electronic portfolios, digital material,
mobile learning, and PDAs in health. The Electronic
Portfolio Initiatives was a collaborative
project between UMass Boston and UMass Dartmouth. Although e-portfolios
were well received by faculty and students in the projects on both campuses,
the open source initiatives were hard to create and maintain. Neither
campus has now the staff and technical support required to make the open source
e-portfolio succeed for the long term. Professor Susan Gallagher and Cheryl Gray
shared their project Beyond Wikipedia,
which provides students with alternatives to Wikipedia and the overwhelming
amount of material on the web. Check out Professor Gallagher’s website, http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/,
for an interesting array of online resources.
There were two sessions that addressed mobile learning. Professor
Luvai Motiwalla described mobile learning or M-learning as individualized
education which can be accessed anytime or anywhere. Motiwalla explained the benefits of M-learning such as, “allowing students and instructors to utilize their spare time while traveling in a train or bus to finish their homework or lesson preparation.” Transforming Health Care: The PDA at the Point of Contact was presented by Kathleen Kafel and Apurva Mehta of UMass Boston and Patrick Scollin, John Callahan and Judith Healey of UMass Lowell. This pilot program explored the experience of nursing faculty and students using PDAs in clinical rotation. The PDAs provided to students were loaded with 5 medical and nursing reference databases for their information needs during the clinical sessions. At the presentation, the similarities and differences between the two campuses was compared. To learn more about this project, look at PDAs in Healthcare.
The conference concluded with a panel discussion on Faculty
Development for Teaching, Learning, Scholarship, and Technology -- Challenges
and Opportunities. Thank you Frances and Louisa for sharing these
exciting new technologies.
