F-LIGHT

E-Newsletter for the Flashlight Program

• Using Data to Improve a Student Technology Fellows Program
• Research ideas: Transformative Assessment
• Upcoming Assessment-related Online Workshops and Conferences  
• New TLT/Flashlight subscription options (more benefits, lower prices, and the Seven Principles, too)
• New subscribing institutions
• Learning More About Flashlight( free demo accounts), The TLT Group and F-LIGHT

Using Data to Improve a Student Technology Fellows Program

In this month's lead story, Allan Jones reports on a study done at South Dakota State University.  SDSU has an ambitious program to train undergraduates to provide sophisticated support for faculty using technology to improve teaching and learning at the University.  A study helped SDSU realize that the service would work better if students better understood how adults (such as faculty members) sometimes learn differently than traditional college age students. These and other findings were used to improve training for the Student Technology Fellow. 

If you're interested in this program, or other Student Technology Assistant Programs, look below at our upcoming events for a free webcast as well as an intensive online workshop on organizing and enriching STA programs.

Steve Ehrmann

PS Check out our growing list of ideas for dissertations and grant proposals.

Upcoming Assessment-Related Online Workshops and Conferences

Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning, Bloomington MN, February 20-21, 2003.

Steve Ehrmann gives the opening keynote at this regional conference. The topic, "Improving Education with Technology: The Seven Principles and Beyond." Participants are being asked, before the conference, to respond to a Flashlight Online survey about their uses of technology in each of the 'seven principles' areas (e.g., enhancing faculty-student contact, active learning), especially ideas that are easy to share with peers. The first part of Dr. Ehrmann's talk will focus on such ideas, while the second will look at more transformative uses of technology that have begun to emerge. Dr. Ehrmann's preconference workshop focuses on Flashlight's assessment ideas and tools. If you're coming to the conference and would like to make an individual appointment with Steve Ehrmann, please contact us.

Free Webcast on Student Technology Assistant Programs - Start-Up Processes, February 25, 2002.

This free webcast, moderated by Steve Saltzberg, TLT Group Senior Consultant, and Joe Douglas of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, will discuss how much better and more powerful STA programs can be than the normal quota of students who monitor computer laboratories. This event will not discuss assessment, but it does serve as an introduction for the intensive workshop in March which will deal in part with the role of data in improving STA programs.

Online Workshop: Best Practices in Information Literacy for Undergraduates March 3-21, 2003.  

Led by Nancy Becker (St. John's Univ.) and Margit Watts (Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa) 

For the past several years, Becker, Watts , and other members of the ACRL's Institute for Information Literacy's Best Practices Project Team have been working with colleagues in the field on

1. Criteria for developing, assessing, and improving information literacy programs in undergraduate education; and

2. Identifying categories and case studies of best practices in undergraduate information literacy programs.

In this 3-week online workshop, co-sponsored by ACRL and The TLT Group, Becker and Watts will introduce a variety of related resources, present the findings of the Best Practices team, describe key elements of model programs, invite feedback and discussion, and engage participants in activities to help them advance the work of their own Information Literacy Programs.

Online Workshop on Student Technology Assistant Programs, March 10-28, 2003

This online workshop will be moderated by Steven A. Saltzberg, Senior Consultant, The TLT Group and Robert Harris of Seton Hall University.  People interested in the feature story in this issue may also be interested in this online workshop on how to organize, upgrade, and extend sophisticated programs to train and use students to provide consulting help to faculty, staff and other students on the use of technology for teaching and learning. This is one of the most cost-effective strategies to cope with the support service crisis while providing an important service learning experience for the students involved. The workshop will deal with the use of data to guide and improve STA Programs.

14th Annual International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, Jacksonville FL, April 1-15, 2003

Steve Gilbert will be a featured speaker at the conference.  The TLT Group is also helping to manage one track of the conference on mass engagement.

The TLT Group is also doing a full-day preconference workshop, "Teaching and Learning with Technology for Almost Everyone: Strategies and Materials for Mass Engagement and Institution-Wide Improvement." The workshop will be run by Steve Gilbert and Steve Saltzberg.

Teaching Well Using Technology , Notre Dame University, South Bend, IN, July 14-17, 2003

This Institute, co-sponsored by Notre Dame and The TLT Group, will help a select group of faculty developers and technology consultants learn and implement a seven step workshop model that can help faculty take advantage of technology to make fundamental improvements in courses.  Gathering data is key both for faculty improving courses and for staff running these kinds of workshops. Steve Ehrmann will lead the session on assessment.

For details on this and other Flashlight and TLT Group events, both face to face and online, keep an eye on The TLT Group calendar. 

New TLT/Flashlight Subscription Program! And New Materials

The TLT Group recently combined its two subscription series into one trio of institutional subscription options: the TLT/Flashlight Subscription Program:

• The TLT/Flashlight Basic Collection includes site licenses to dozens of program development and assessment tools and resources, while the 
• The Comprehensive Collection also includes unlimited institutional use of Flashlight Online, our powerful, web-based survey system that includes validated items and peer-reviewed templates for typical educational studies. 
• Network membership includes both the Comprehensive Collection as well as benefits with two free days of consulting and sharply reduced rates for additional days: useful for training, grant-funded studies, accreditation self-studies, and a variety of other purposes. 

All three subscription levels include the option to submit assessment materials for peer review and publication, discounts to TLT Group events, invitations to regular online briefing sessions, and other benefits. There are now approximately 330 institutional subscribers. Is yours one of them? Check our list of participating institutions.

New and upgraded materials are added frequently to the Collection. Now available, or to be added soon, are:

• The second edition of the Flashlight Cost Analysis Handbook,  
• the second edition of the Student Technology Assistant Program Workbook, 
• A survey for collecting easy-to-share teaching ideas from faculty (using the "Seven Principles of Good Practice") and a resource page on the Seven Principles; 
• A guide to gathering data about a college's e-portfolio initiative (asking the right questions in order to increase the program's influence on teaching-learning practices while controlling costs, risk, and stress), and 
• A new, peer-reviewed survey for studying Course Management System use developed by Cheryl Bielema and her colleagues at the University of Missouri St. Louis.  

Each subscribing institution gets free access to all of these materials, along with the rest of the Collection, for its entire faculty, staff and student body.

Among new subscribers in the last few weeks are Duke University School of Nursing; Hibbing Community College; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; New Mexico State University; the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; the University of Florida; and the University of Wyoming.

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The Flashlight Program for the Study and Improvement of Educational Uses of Technology is part of the non-profit TLT Group, Inc. Flashlight was created by Annenberg/CPB in 1993. The TLT Group is headquartered in Washington DC (but moving to the Maryland suburbs on January 1, 2003) with additional staff in Texas, and Senior Associates around the world. Our thanks to Washington State University for their many ways of supporting Flashlight, including developing and administering Flashlight Online and providing the listproc for distribution of F-LIGHT notices.  We are also grateful to St. Edward's University for extensive support for Flashlight; to the corporate sponsors of The TLT Group; and to funders whose dedication to higher education has aided the TLT Group's work, including Annenberg/CPB,  Atlantic Philanthropic Service, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), and the National Science Foundation.

If your institution needs to get a better look at Flashlight Online, the best way is for someone at your institution to request a temporary, free demonstration account.  Send e-mail to Flashlight@tltgroup.org with the header "Free Demo Account" to ask for details. One account per institution, please.

If you know someone else who would like to be alerted to new issues of F-LIGHT, please suggest that they send e-mail to LISTPROC@LISTPROC.WSU.EDU with the one line message
   SUBSCRIBE F-LIGHT (the subscriber's first and last name)

Do the same for yourself if you have changed e-mail addresses.

To stop receiving the bulletin about F-LIGHT, please send e-mail to LISTPROC@LISTPROC.WSU.EDU with the one line message
   SIGNOFF F-LIGHT

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