The Faculty Innovation in Teaching (FIT) program is part of a larger distributed learning initiative supported by the President and the Provost. The program is designed to allow faculty to develop innovative instructional technology projects that have the potential to improve the educational process. The program provides faculty with the technical staff and other resources necessary to plan and implement their projects, thus allowing faculty to focus on their pedagogical objectives. It is a goal of the Faculty Innovation in Teaching program to support the cycle of innovation beyond implementation of individual projects, and to share information with the larger Cornell teaching community.
Electronic Portfolio pilot allows easy collection and review of student work.
CIT’s Faculty Support Services is partnering with the Center for Teaching Excellence to pilot an educational portfolio and assessment tool based on the Sakai Open Source Portfolio software. OSPortfolio provides tools for faculty to collect student work representing accomplishments, learning, or assignments in formats including documents, audio, video and other multimedia. The software facilitates the review of student-submitted assignments and allows for informal feedback or a formal evaluation process.
Phase I of the pilot was completed in the spring 2009 and the team report and case studies are available at: https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/eportfolio/Home.
In phase II, the pilot will be used by a larger group of courses during the 2009-2010 academic year. To join the pilot or request more information about ePortfolio, send an email to: eportfolio@cornell.edu.
CIT and the College of Engineering are piloting a system that automatically records and posts class lectures to the web. The pilot project is investigating the overall need for this type of technology at Cornell., and has installed capture systems in four rooms to record a variety of lectures and seminars. The pilot team will evaluate the Classroom Capture system, support requirements, usage and audience preferences, and report their findings and recommendations to campus.
For more information about the Classroom Capture pilot, please send an email to video-capture@cornell.edu
Funded by the Mellon Foundation, Project Bamboo is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and inter-organizational effort that brings together researchers in arts and humanities, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists to respond to the question:
"How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?"
Cornell is participating in Project Bamboo's 18-month planning and community design program where through a series of conversations and workshops, participants are mapping out the scholarly practices and common technology challenges across and among disciplines to discover where a coordinated, cross-disciplinary development effort can best foster academic innovation.
Virtual worlds are computer-based simulated environments in which avatars (2D or 3D graphical representations of real world people) can interact, move and build in their online world. While there are many such online environments, including Second Life and Active Worlds, Linden Labs has partnered with the New Media Consortium to develop a higher education community in Second Life where faculty such as Cornell Professor Robert Bloomfield are teaching and doing research; visit his metanomics web site to find out more. While Cornell does not have an "official" island in Second Life, faculty can try building, teaching and holding events in Second Life through the NMC.
The research community sometimes collaborates on specific projects (NSF, NIH, other government grants) via grid based video and Web conferencing systems such as the Access Grid, EVO, etc. CIT can advise you on how these technologies are used and what support resources are available on campus. Contact Tom Every at 254-2821 or tje4@cornell.edu
CIT continues to explore high-resolution graphic image display and collaboration technologies. If you have special needs for classroom or research applications, contact Tom Every at 254-2821 or tje4@cornell.edu for assistance.
These technologies enable multiple people to participate in high quality video conferences and virtual environments. They give participants the feeling that they are interacting face to face in the same physical room. For information on initiatives in these areas on campus, contact Tom Every at 254-2821 or tje4@cornell.edu for assistance.
Faculty Innovation in Teaching Blog
Seven Things series from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
NMC Horizon Report
