Tag Archives: Academic Technology

SWEEP: Vietnamese fellows settle in for Social Work Academy in March

The College of Applied Sciences and Arts at San José State University is hosting its second Social Work Education Enhancement Project Fellows Academy, with eight Vietnamese professors visiting for three weeks in March to learn skills they will be able to bring home to their own universities in Vietnam. The 2015 fellows arrived in San José on March 1 and have been involved in lectures and workshops all week. The Fellows Academy is March 2-20.

Many SJSU social work faculty are involved in sharing knowledge about how to teach social work for the fellows, but other departments at SJSU are also providing support including the School of Information, the Center for Faculty Development, the SJSU Global Leadership Advancement Center, Academic Technology, and the University Library. The fellows will also have a chance to visit social service agencies in the Bay Area to see what types of services are provided in the United States as the field of Social Work is relatively new in Vietnam, established 10 years ago.

Interim Dean Alice Hines is the director of SWEEP, while Social Work Professor Ed Cohen serves as a co-director. SWEEP is an international consortium which includes USAID, SJSU, eight universities in Vietnam, government ministries, Cisco Systems, Inc., and community agencies and stakeholders. The purpose of SWEEP is to assist eight universities in Vietnam with improving their undergraduate social work educational programs. The project, which is funded through September, 2015, aims to improve:

  • The administration of social work programs
  • Faculty capabilities in teaching and research
  • Social work curriculum, and
  • Network communication among the universities through the use of improved technology

Faculty Academic Technology/eCampus Teaching Tools

by eCampus

Welcome back to the spring semester at SJSU! There have been many new developments in teaching with technology this year, here are some tools that we have available.

eCampus, at http://www.sjsu.edu/at/ec/ (within the Academic Technology unit), has webpages and workshops, as well as one-on-one support to help you learn these technologies and use them in your courses. Please enroll in workshops at http://www.sjsu.edu/at/ec/aboutus/ecampusevents/index.html

  • Canvas is our new learning management system that will continue to be supported for the future. You can post files like syllabi, create discussion groups, create and post videos, create online quizzes graded by the software, keep track of grades, etc. in Canvas.
  • Desire2Learn is our old learning management system that will be shut down on June 30, 2013. eCampus will help you convert your courses to Canvas.
  • WebEx, is a new webinar or web-conferencing space that allows you to have synchronous online meetings, with a large whiteboard or presentation space, audio, video, and text chat. There is a simple Meeting Center, Training Center (best for teaching classes), Event Center, and a Scheduler.
  • iPads  This initiative was a pilot Faculty Learning Community project coordinated through the Center for Faculty Development.
  • Adobe CS6. Free Adobe software is still available. It includes a suite of web creation tools like Photoshop for editing images, Dreamweaver for creating webpages, Adobe Acrobat for creating static forms, Illustrator for drawing, Premiere for editing video, and others.
  • Criterion, This software is a standalone product by ETS that allows students to upload their writing and get machine-graded responses about their spelling, grammar and other writing mechanics. Faculty can use it to pre-grade student writing and to communicate online about writing with the students.
  • Elluminate/Collaborate This is our old web-conferencing software that is integrated into D2L. When D2L is gone after June 30, 2012, the integrated version will no longer be available. WebEx can be used for the same purpose.
  • iTunesU This is free space to upload videos or audio files for public distribution. If you would like to put an entire course here, that is now possible.

We will soon be adding a new survey program called Qualtrics and are in the process of picking out a classroom-clicker or online audience response system.