By Paul Jamason. We always need the right tool for the job. But sometimes we don’t know what that tool is.
Thankfully, along came the sold-out Fall 2019 EdTech Showcase on September 20, which highlighted the numerous ETS instructional tools available to faculty at the start of the academic year.
Over 70 UC San Diego faculty, teaching assistants, and department coordinators attended. This was the first year the showcase was co-sponsored by Educational Technology Services (ETS) in IT Services at UC San Diego with The Teaching + Learning Commons (T+LC) .
Katherine Collins, ETS EdTech support manager, said, “While ETS supports instruction through the technical support of these tools, the T+ LC’s role is to support the pedagogical and course design needs of instructors. Given the additional expertise and support with planning the event, we decided to broaden the scale of offerings by adding a dual track style event and a faculty panel.”
The showcase event kicked off with an engaging faculty panel discussing the use of classroom technology on campus. Next, staff from the T+LC and ETS gave presentations highlighting technology tools and services at UC San Diego.
The T+LC presented talks on using educational technology to support course design, addressing accessibility issues, and highlighting funding opportunities for online/hybrid course development.
ETS presentations included the Canvas Learning Management System, third-party instructional applications, classroom technology strategies, and the Data Science and Machine Learning Platform. A Canvas course specifically designed for the showcase with links to presentation PowerPoints and videos is available (UC single sign-on is required to access the course).
The afternoon featured interactive demos and tours of key support facilities. These included an active learning classroom demonstration and visits to ETS’ Media Teaching Lab and StudioU. The Canvas LMS breakout session was especially helpful for getting instructors up and running for the fall quarter.
The success of the event demonstrated the passion and dedication of IT Services staff to provide valuable instructional services to UC San Diego students and faculty. As one professor remarked, “The spirit and content of this event get an A.”
Paul Jamason is supervisor/systems integration engineer, Educational Technology Services, Information Technology Services, UC San Diego.