IRT: News & Events: TechUpdates: March 11 2005

Faculty members will show off four innovative uses of WebCT technology at Drexel's annual WebCT Faculty Showcase from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, 2005, in the Living Arts Lounge (MacAlister Hall, 33rd and Chestnut Streets).

Each of the presentations will include a demonstration and a time for questions and discussion.

Featured presenters and their topics are:

Dr. Eva Thury and Dr. Donna Rondolone, College of Arts and Sciences, "WebCT and Pedagogical Techniques"
Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley, College of Arts and Sciences, "Using Camtasia to Capture Lectures and Enhance WebCT Courses"
David Welsh and Khedra Conrad, Lebow College of Business, "Using WebCT to Create Collaborative Environments for Cohorts of Executive MBA Students"
Dr. Stephen Smith, College of Engineering, "Using WebCT Across the Curriculum for Graduate Students in Engineering Management"

The Faculty Showcase is a forum for disseminating creative uses of technology to enhance instruction at Drexel. It is open to all faculty members. Lunch will be served.

Seating is limited so please register with an email to webct@drexel.edu by the end of the day on Tuesday, March 15.

02. IRT Will Host SAP Workshop

Drexel's SAP University Competency Center (SAP/UCC) is sponsoring a one-day seminar and sharing session for faculty members from Drexel and nearby colleges from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 14, 2005, in the Living Arts Lounge (MacAlister Hall, 33rd and Chestnut Streets).

The seminar will provide an opportunity for faculty to share how they are using R/3 and MySAP in their courses, curricular materials they are using, and pedagogical techniques that are working well. There is no charge; continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Drexel's SAP/UCC provides access to SAP/ERP software for academic use to Drexel faculty and students, as well as to 17 colleges and universities in the U.S. and 5 in the UK. The headquarters of SAP, Inc., is in Newtown Square, PA. It is the world's largest ERP software company with 26,000 installations worldwide. SAP gives students highly marketable skills.

To register for this second Drexel SAP/UCC Faculty Seminar, and for more information, visit http://www.drexel.edu/irt/sap.

03. Spam: New Face to an Old Nuisance

Cheap mortgages, cheap drugs, cheap software, cheap whatever ... you name it, and somebody will offer it to you via the Internet. If it seems to you that spam has been growing exponentially, you're right!

The volume of junk mail reaching our inboxes, despite the best efforts of IRT techies and computer experts, continues to be noticable. Our email postmaster recently calculated that for every message (spam and non-spam) our mail servers receive, we are blocking approximately 19 spam messages. So Drexel is blocking around 2 million spam attempts per day.

If you receive spam in your Drexel mailbox, you can do your part by reporting it. Send it (including the full internet headers) to IRT at spamreports@drexel.edu. Those internet headers are crucial. Read about how to get the internet headers, and more about spam, at http://inside.drexel.edu/systems/email/spam.asp.

04. It's Faculty Computer Upgrade Time Again

Once again, President Papadakis is facilitating the upgrade of computer technology for faculty members. Notices went out last month from the Provost's Office to approximately a quarter of Drexel's full-time faculty, instructing them how to choose among the computer systems available this year.

Deadline for registering your choice is Friday, March 18,2005, at http://www.drexel.edu/irt/facultyupgrades.

Faculty members may choose a laptop, desktop or tablet computer, and Windows or Macintosh platform. Choices will be governed by their need for wireless, online course materials, graphics, and increased mobility.

The selection of eligible faculty members each year originates with the academic departments.

05. Configuration Changes for Discussion Lists

To reduce the inundation of spam, IRT has recently changed the configurations for open discussion lists on @lists.drexel.edu.

List members are now asked to "confirm" their postings. That is, when a discussion list member sends in a comment, ListServ sends back to them a notice asking them to confirm - by Replying with "OK" - that they did indeed send this message and do indeed want it to be sent to list members.

ListServ compares the addresses of the original posting, the confirmation Reply, and the subscribed members of the list, and only then sends out the message to the list. The process usually takes less than ten minutes.

This weeds out much junk mail, which is typically sent from a fake address that will not receive the confirmation request and hence will be unable to confirm.

If you have questions, contact IRT's mass mailing group at mailreq@drexel.edu.

06. Communicating Electronically with Groups

As this past year's election campaign demonstrated, electronic communication is becoming an ever more effective tool for organizing. There are several options for group communication available to the Drexel community.

* DrexelOne Groups:
This feature is available for students, faculty, and staff for recognized and approved academic, service, athletic, and social activities.

The registered leader of the group makes the request within DrexelOne. Select the Groups icon and then click on Create Group.

For a student organization, this leader should be the president; for an academic project or research group encompassing more than a single course, a group leader designated by the professor or instructor; for an athletic or service group, a team captain or student advisor or coordinator.

For questions, contact consult@drexel.edu.

* WebCT Group Management:
For study or work groups within a single course or section, the WebCT collaboration tool is an easy option.

WebCT can set up groups automatically through its group generator feature (by size of group or number of groups). Or, the instructor or designer can set up and modify the groups manually, with associated file-sharing space on the WebCT server. Students, who may belong to multiple groups, collaborate within the groups. Instructors may opt themselves in or out of the course's collaboration groups.

For questions, contact webct@drexel.edu or 215-895-1224.

* ListServ Mailing Lists:
If your list is very large - hundreds of addresses - and you are mainly interested in one-way communication, a ListServ list may be the preferred way to go. This is available to faculty, staff, and registered student organizations.

Read about Managing Mailing Lists with ListServ at http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/services/listserv/, which includes instructions for requesting a list. Faculty members may also set up lists for their classes through the Course Management Service at http://www.drexel.edu/classlist.

For questions and advice, contact mailreq@drexel.edu.

07. Learn About Dreamweaver

Workshops for training in Dreamweaver, a highly recommended web development tool, are scheduled as follows in Korman Center room 116:

Thursday, March 17, 2-4 p.m. - Intermediate Dreamweaver
Thursday, April 14, 2-4 p.m. - Intermediate Dreamweaver

The workshops are described at http://www.drexel.edu/irt/services/workshops/dwdesc.html. To register, send email to dreamweaver@drexel.edu.

WebCT News

08. No More Snow Days!

If Drexel closes or you are simply "snowed in" at home - with or without gross quantities of the white stuff - you can meet your students online via WebCT.

Here are some choices:

You can hold a Chat session in real time.
You can post topics in Discussions and talk about them asynchronously.
You can have students complete an Assignment.
You can give a quiz or practice test.

You'll never need to miss a class, reschedule a class, extend other class sessions to make up for lost time, or skip scheduled material.

All of your registered students are already in your WebCT course, so all you need do is decide how to use it. With or without snow.

09. Brown Bag Sessions: Join Us

The next IRT Brown Bagger will be held at noon on Wednesday, April 6, 2005, in Korman Center Room 116.