CIRTL BRIEF
NUMBER 3
It Would Be Great If…..: Texas A&M’s Graduate Teaching Academy
Bruce Herbert1, Kitch Barnicle2, Will Fulton3, Dave Hatfield3, PJ Bennet4, Rique Campa5, and Mai Abdul
Rahman6
1
TAMU-CIRTL; 2 CIRTL Central; 3 WISC-CIRTL; 4 COLO-CIRTL; 5 MSU-CIRTL, and 6 Howard-CIRTL
The Portal Team is sharing a series of briefs that highlight possible ways to use the CIRTL Café
(http://cirtlcafe.net/) to link the local learning communities at each CIRTL campus. In each
case, we ask the local CIRTL leaders to ask questions that start: “It would be great if……”. The
portal team will brainstorm some possible solutions and strategies.
The Graduate Teaching Academy
The Graduate Teaching Academy is a graduate student learning community sponsored by the Center for
Teaching Excellence (CTE) and supported by CIRTL. The GTA is a workshop-based program focused on the
development of effective teaching practices to enhance the current and future careers of graduates
students and post-docs. This one year program includes a seminar series by professors recognized for
excellence in teaching, hands-on workshops, and small group discussions. Participants may enter at the
beginning of the fall or spring semester. Participants may choose to work towards a certification
designation as a “GTA Fellow” by completing program requirements.
The GTA Steering Committee (GTASC), a group of experienced graduate students, organizes and
implements the GTA program. GTASC members set the tone and direction for each year with the help of
the Center for Teaching Excellence.
It would be great if we can take GTASC meetings online…..
Question: In reference to attempting to have the GTASC meeting online, what equipment do GTASC
members need to make this happen. They'd like to know so they can start to possibly gather whatever
they need, if they don't already have it. Will this meeting be via Elluminate or the Cafe, or are they one in
the same in this regard?
Answer: This is a really good idea because the GTASC could directly experience some of technology that
CIRTL has developed. This technology is available to enhance both the work of GTASC (perhaps you will
want to meet online more often) or the overall GTA program.
I suggest we meet online at a set time using our emeeting software, Eluminate. I can take you on a tour
of the other tools CIRTL is using through Eluminate.
Eluminate uses (voice over internet protocol) VoIP to communicate. Everyone would need the following
equipment to participate: (1) a computer connected to the Internet and (2) a microphone and speakers
or headset to hear and talk using VoIP. Eluminate will send out an invitation to the meeting through
email. The first time anyone uses Eluminate, the system will install a Java program that works in your
browser. This software can be preloaded before the meeting by going to this web site:
http://www.elluminate.com/support/.
Let me know when you would like to hold the online meeting (herbert@geo.tamu.edu).
The CIRTL Café Tools
Question: GTASC is searching for a way to track workshop attendance more efficiently than by
spreadsheet since someone would have to go into eLearning and input the data from the spreadsheet. In
addition, it takes too much time at the start of workshops to have people sign in directly on a computer
as there are too many workshop participants for one or even two computers. Can you think of a way to
help them solve this problem? Is there anyway we can utilize the cafe for this? This way we can collect
http://cirtlcafe.net/
CIRTL BRIEF
NUMBER 3
additional information from workshop participants; maybe by including a short survey about the
workshop as they record their attendance.
Answer: This is also a really good question and is better answered in a setting where we can bounce
ideas around. Three non-paper possibilities come to mind:

Attendance could be monitored by having participants check their names on a spreadsheet,
surveys could be administered after the fact through an online service (including the CIRTL
Café), such as survey monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) and email notification.

Attendance and surveys monitored during the meeting by using clickers. You would need to
buy the hand-held clicker units and a base station. One example is H-itt (http://www.hitt.com/howitworks.html). It looks like it may be a one time costs of around $1k. The system
can be moved to different rooms.

You can also follow attendance and receive feedback (in fact encourage conversation) during or
after the program using Twitter, a free social networking service that restricts messages to 128
characters.
Here is a news story on using Twitter in a classroom
(http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-professors-tips-for-using-twitter-in-theclassroom). Participants would have to sign up for the service (http://twitter.com/). They could
then use cell phone that can send text messages to send a twitter to one of the GTASC
members. The feed of twitters could be shown on a screen with a computer projector. We
should be able to capture the twitter feed.
http://cirtlcafe.net/