Thursday, April 17, 2008

What is Instructional Technology @ SBU?

Hello blogosphere, this is Neal Cross, Director of Instructional Technology at Southwest Baptist University. I thought I would open up my blogging efforts by describing both what I do, and what my intentions are with this. My area of SBU's Information and Technology Services has three main hubs; first is Learning Management Systems (or LMS). Also referred to as Course Management Systems (CMS), this is a web-based system that provides SBU courses with a web site. When I first moved into the department of Instructional Technology several years ago, LMS is all I did. And the LMS then was Blackboard CourseInfo 4.0, which was soon followed by version 5.5. In the Fall of 2005 we began using Blackboard Academic Suite 6.3, and during the 2008-2009 year, we will be transitioning away from Blackboard to ANGEL. This transition is one reason for my wanting to start blogging, and perhaps start using a wiki as well, but before going off on that tangent…

The second Instructional Technology hub is Interactive TeleVision (ITV), or video conferencing. Within a year of being in the Instructional Technology department, we started gathering the equipment, and then the office space, to have rooms on the Bolivar campus capable of conducting video conferences for class use. Over the years, we have put in three Bolivar rooms, three Mountain View rooms, two Salem rooms, and even added some ITV abilities to the Springfield campus most recently. The course load for ITV occupies the afternoons and evenings of Mondays through Thursdays, and often involves Fridays and Saturdays as well. Both undergraduate classes and Graduate Education classes benefit from the ability of putting students from many locations together with a teacher in one location.

The third hub is Electronic Classrooms (EC). This effort has resulted in nearly all classrooms on the Bolivar campus in being equipped with a computer and AV system, so that teachers and students can incorporate various types of multimedia in their learning experiences. Similar efforts have equipped most rooms at the Springfield, Mountain View and Salem campuses. While there are common features to all rooms, there have been different levels of customization applied to help rooms work in the way departments have wanted.

So, Instructional Technology (IT) helps provide support for all of this. If you have questions or problems with Blackboard, ITV or classroom equipment, IT is your direct connection. In partnership with the rest of the Information and Technology Services departments and personnel, IT provides both support for problems happening now, to training and encouragement for better utilization of SBU resources to enhance teaching and learning in the future. The future is here now with Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, and with upcoming efforts like Bb to ANGEL, this blog will be a channel of communication from Instructional Technology to the rest of the SBU family.