Technology Support for Faculty: Technology Support

The Library provides support for faculty in the use of technology for teaching, learning, and scholarship. To get help with technology, faculty should contact the liaison librarian for their academic department, who will provide the assistance needed or connect you with someone else who can.

1. Blackboard Basics and Beyond

Librarians create course shells, provide training in and assistance with all aspects of designing and using Blackboard courses, contact Blackboard Technical Support, and monitor and attend Blackboard continuing education and networking events.

2. Moodle

In addition to Blackboard, the library also supports an installation of Moodle, another course-management system akin to Blackboard.

3. Questions about using Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 (and other productivity software for presentations, word processing, spreadsheets, and databases [i.e. OpenOffice])

Librarians can answer basic questions about using Microsoft Office. The Library maintains a collection of books and manuals that supports use of this software.

4. Preparing and using digital content for teaching.

Librarians can assist with scanning texts and images, creating new materials in a variety of formats, accessing online text , image, and video collections, and understanding how to integrate them into teaching.

5. Using social networking/Web 2.0 applications.

Librarians can assist with using blogs, wikis, twitter, and other social networking software in teaching. The Library maintains Wordpress software as a blogging platform available to all students, faculty, and staff at Elmhurst College.

6. Institutional Repository

A pilot institutional repository that will serve as a digital archive of faculty and student work is currently being created in cooperation with other area academic libraries. This repository uses DSpace, a popular open-source repository tool.

7. Faculty Technology Lab

Equipment available in the Faculty Technology Lab includes a faculty computer workstation with Microsoft Office, the Adobe product suite, and screen capture and video production applications. In addition, the lab has a 42-inch plotter poster printer, letter-size color printer, double-sided b/w printer, and a document scanner.

8. Web Authoring

There are several web-authoring solutions that the library can facilitate:

• Wordpress, a blogging tool, can be used to create web sites (the library website is a Wordpress site). Student and faculty accounts are automatically created when you acquire a technology account.
• Google Sites is a hosting and web authoring tool that is also available to faculty and staff- accounts are created on an as-needed basis.
• Personal account-based .html file hosting (i.e. elmhurst.edu/~[yourID]) is still available for those who wish to hand-code or use web editing software. The library has Dreamweaver and Nvu editors available for use.

9. Google Apps

The library has created Google Apps help pages.

10. Copyright Consultation

The library can help find answers to questions regarding copyrighted materials such as: uses of materials in the classroom or in online contexts such as Blackboard or Moodle, uses of streaming media in both live and virtual classrooms, and author rights when faculty are submitting materials for publication.

11. Faculty Technology Workshops

Workshops for faculty are held twice each academic year, in December and May. Previous topics have included sustainability, Web 2.0 applications, Advanced Blackboard, and online teaching. Other training for faculty in the use of specific types of technology is offered periodically as needed.