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Instructional Development (ID) never ceases in its commitment to provide the highest quality consultation and assistance to the UCSB faculty in support of quality instruction. The hallmarks of ID’s support for faculty are professionalism, creativity and service. From one organization, faculty can receive guidance on course design and evaluation, grants to support faculty and TA curricular development, professional media production of course materials, as well as services supporting classroom presentation of those materials.
In the past year ID has had a more proactive faculty outreach program, especially for new faculty, to make them aware of the range of services and support available to them. To that end we have offered a “Welcome and New Faculty Orientation” specifically targeted to new faculty in both the Fall and Winter quarters. These orientation sessions have been well attended, and have resulted in several Faculty Mini-Grant and Instructional Improvement Grant proposals, as well as significant use of production services for new classes and use of the two course management systems supported by ID. In addition, ID hosted a Faculty Forum this past Spring that focused on the challenges of “Working with Under-Prepared Students” with panelists representing faculty, staff and then administration offering valuable insights, tips, and suggestions for future work in this area of concern.
Grant proposals for this past year were very competitive, emphasizing the high degree of interest among our faculty in improving the quality of instruction in our undergraduate courses. Innovative projects supported by Instructional Improvement Grants included developing a fully online version of Music 4 A,B, and C within the context of the course management system; a project to produce digital video clips of authentic visiting student experiences in Russia for incorporation into web accessible Introductory Russian courses; to name only two.
Innovation has always been a key characteristic in the production and classroom services areas of ID as well. Classroom Services continues to explore the possibilities of Student Response Systems for real-time assessment in large lecture classes. Classroom Services has also implemented a design process for the specification and deployment of classroom technologies. The first fruits of the new process are the new standard computer lecterns which were installed in the two new general assignment classrooms in the new Theater and Dance building this past spring. Six more classrooms will get the new lecterns this fall. Video Services has maintained a consistently busy production schedule generating more programming (25%) for UCTV over the past year than any other UC campus except San Diego (28%). Both Video Services and Artworks have been able to hire additional personnel to meet increasing demand for their services in support of instruction and research.
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