Western Carolina University proved to be a major presence at the recent 2005 UNC Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference in Raleigh (March 30 - April 1). Of the 16 UNC institutions participating, Western scored the second highest attendance of the conference after NC State University. The event was co-sponsored by the UNC Faculty Assembly and the UNC TLT Collaborative (TLTC).
Western's team of 30 registered participants included faculty, staff, administrators, and students. A record number of faculty (17) gave presentations and participated in panel discussions and poster sessions.
Anna T. McFadden, associate professor and head of Western's educational leadership and foundations department, demonstrated the first asynchronous on-line class developed and taught in the Master of School Administration Program at Western. Four more faculty members from the department also presented at the conference.
“The feedback from our presentations affirmed that Western is doing some exciting things in teaching and learning in an on-line environment,” said McFadden. “Educational leadership faculty are usually considered the last to embrace on-line learning so it's affirming for our efforts to be recognized.”
McFadden's presentation “They Said It Couldn't and Shouldn't Be Done: An On-Line Course in Educational Leadership” was one of the 150 presentations that took place during the two-day conference.
Mary Anne Nixon, professor of project management in Western's College of Business was part of the panel discussion “Promoting Effective Communication between Faculty and IT Administrators.” According to Nixon, Western's method of communication is “everything and anything that works!”
To illustrate how Western faculty and staff partner with each other to provide the best possible Web and Web-enhanced material for students, Nixon listed the Educational Technologies department within Western's IT Division, hardware/software committees in each academic college, a WebCT Process Committee, informal information gathering and support structures, and IT Faculty Fellows in each college.
Nixon also presented “Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparison of the Sixteen UNC University Policies” with Jim Addison, Western's director of graduate studies in English.
Representatives from the College of Arts and Sciences included Associate Professor Barry A. Wilkinson and Professor Mark A. Holliday of the mathematics and computer science department who gave the presentation “State-Wide Collaborative Grid Computing Course.” In the presentation they described the experiences of a new collaborative undergraduate grid computing course involving several NC universities.
Representatives from the College of Applied Sciences included Mary Teslow and Irene Mueller, assistant professors in Western's health sciences department, who teamed with Charles Tucker, visiting assistant professor, and Barbara St. John, assistant professor, of the nursing department to demonstrate “Creating a Virtual Healthcare Community in WebCT: The WCU Model for Collaborative Teaching.”
For a complete listing of presentations and related materials, view the conference program at http://conference.unctlt.org/content.php/program/index.php .
The TLTC was recently recognized as a permanent unit within the Division of Information Resources at UNC-GA.
For more information on TLTC, contact Bob Orr, Western's TLTC representative, at orr@email.wcu.edu .
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