Profiles of Other Institutional Strategies for
Fostering a Culture of Evidence and
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
 

Vera Polyakova-Norwood, Dan Barron, Jean Henscheid, and Katharine Mason (TLT Group) all contributed information to this article.

The University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC serves almost 38,000 students on their eight campuses.  Its success in promoting the use of data to improve practice is evidenced by the extent of their use of Flashlight Online: over 250 authoring accounts. Over recent years, these authors have created 1,926 surveys and received almost 27,000 responses to their surveys.  USC is one of the most prolific users of Flashlight Online.

Some history: As co-chair of the SACS self-study committee in 1998, Dan Barron, the Director of the School of Library and Information Science, saw the applicability of Flashlight tools.  In 2002, the Instructional Development Group assumed management of Flashlight Online.  Since then, that Group has been exceptionally creative and thorough in using Flashlight to help develop a culture of assessment at the University.

Strategies: The Instructional Development Group devised strategies to encourage the use of Flashlight Online for productive studies:

• 90 minute Flashlight Online workshops are offered two times per semester in a computer lab for an intense hand-on experience.  These include sessions for beginners and for advanced users who wish to explore html customization options.
• Instructional Development provides at the elbow support for users.
• A faculty forum or a brown bag lunch is held at least once a year to demonstrate various applications of Flashlight Online.  This event showcases several projects done on the campus. Each showcase always includes a case about a faculty member using Flashlight Online with students, an administrator using the system to gather data, and a faculty member’s use of Flashlight Online in their research. (Visit http://www.sc.edu/deis/id/highlights-flashlight-online-1.htm to see an example.)
• Instructional Development maintains a Flashlight Online listserv for posting Flashlight Online training events and other information of interest to Flashlight Online users.
• Instructional Development also uses USC Announce listserv to advertise training sessions as well as other TLT events.
• Flashlight Online training is offered at the Blackboard Institute, which is held at the beginning of each fall semester.
• All instructional technology workshops provided by Instructional Development end with a Flashlight Online survey.

Some of the institution's users of Flashlight Online

• Student Affairs and University Housing were among the first and remain among the heaviest campus users of Flashlight Online. 
• Among academic units, heavy users are School of Library and Information Studies (this is due to the fact that they have a large distance education program) and College of Education. 
• The School of Library and Information Science also has used it as the data gathering tool for the South Carolina Public Library Economic Impact Study in addition to other professional organizations.  In this study, he had four surveys for each county system and received almost 4000 responses for this project.
• College of Arts and Sciences and School of Journalism conduct senior exit surveys through Flashlight Online.
• Other active users of Flashlight Online include Arnold School of Public Health, College of Social Work, College of Engineering and Information Technology.
• Many individual faculty members now use Flashlight Online for personal classroom use, usually as an evaluation tool to determine course effectiveness.

HISTORY: Twists and Turns

What follows is a more in-depth historical report on what happened during the last few years to bring them to the point of being the most prolific Flashlight Online users.

In 1998 Dan Barron, the Director of the School of Library and Information Science, read about Flashlight Online; then in 1999 Dan saw Steve Ehrmann speak about Flashlight Online at a conference at Wake Forest University.  Dan included Flashlight in the SACS proposal that was accepted by USC and then by SAC. As co-chair of the SACS self-study committee.  Flashlight Online surveys can be administered online or on paper.  The committee decided to administer most surveys on paper. In retrospect, Barron believes that was a mistake: they got better responses to online surveys than to the paper forms.  Barron believes that

“when a paper copy of a survey comes across the desk, it is too easy to put it off and it gets lost in a stack of papers”.  With an email notice or a convenient URL link from a usual list serve or web page--it appeals to the person to just do it and then there is no hassle with the envelope, return address, etc.  It also could be that the response was better among the more ‘wired’ since it was an info tech centered survey--they liked it better.” 

Barron and his colleague, Jean Henscheid, also made an initial effort to spread the word about the availability of free Flashlight Online accounts to everyone in the USC community to encourage its use both for the self-study and for other surveys, too. 

The University of South Carolina also relied heavily on Flashlight and Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable principles to develop its 2001 Reaffirmation of Accreditation Alternative Self-Study Report to the Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.  The University's self-study combined a review of the institutional effectiveness of the University with a study of the application of information technology in the University. Whereas the former study is a description of the University in the year 2001, the latter measures conditions in 2001 and also casts a look forward to the year 2006.  The TLT Roundtable ideal helped shape a strategy of inclusion; according to Dan Barron, also a professor in the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies and co-chair of the SACS self-study committee,

USC benefited especially from participation in the TLT Group's Summer Institute in 1999, where its team worked on planning for the SACS self-study and learned more about TLTRs and Flashlight.   The Flashlight approach (shining a tight beam on clearly defined aspects of the uses of information technology applications for learning, scholarship, and service) was then used to guide the creation of 15 task forces, each focusing on a narrowly defined topic.

The inclusive, clearly defined nature of the self-study process was designed to influence the culture of communication at the university, and it may have succeeded.  As with many large institutions, members of the USC community generally consider themselves part of loosely coupled smaller organizations.  The self-study process demonstrated that people from different parts of the university could work as a coordinated team on mission-critical issues.

In October 2001, the Instructional Development Group learned about Flashlight Online on campus.  After meeting with Jean Henscheid, who managed Flashlight Online during the SACS self-study, IDG decided it would be a great tool for them and for USC faculty who were using technology for teaching. Initially, they saw it as very useful for their own surveys, and for faculty use to get feedback from students about how they viewed the techniques in class (ex. “How valuable was the video about the life of Victor Hugo to your learning in this class?”).  By that time, however, USC’s Flashlight Online license had already expired and alternative funding sources had to be sought.

When several internal grants for technology-related projects became available, Dr. Doris Stephens, Instructional Development Manager, worked with Dr. Jacque Jacobs, a faculty member in the College of Education, and Dr. Lillian Smith of the Arnold School of Public Health to write a grant proposal to join The TLT Group and receive Flashlight Online.  The proposal was funded and Jacque and Lillian became advocates of Flashlight Online among USC faculty.  In July 2002, USC’s license was renewed and the Instructional Development Group became the official managers of Flashlight Online at USC.  When the grant expired, the CIO picked up the support of Flashlight Online.  The Instructional Development Group has been spreading the good word about Flashlight Online around campus ever since.

Flashlight Evaluation Handbook, Table of Contents