Report from Educational Technology Subcommittee of CCFIT May 18, 2011 Co-Chairs: Lori Lubin, Physics, and Susan Keen, Evolution and Ecology The Educational Technology subcommittee focuses on how technology can enhance teaching and learning at UC Davis and how it can directly, and through CCFIT, promote information-sharing and effective practices among the faculty, staff, students, support units, and administration. The committee met every three weeks. Issues before the committee were those from previous years, such as the transition to a vendor-hosted SmartSite and improvements to the SmartSite gradebook, as well as new issues such as on-line learning, access to and function of clickers, and access to software requested by faculty (e.g., anti-plagiarism and Browser lock-down software). Four new issues were transferred to other committees or deferred for budgetary reasons: (1) On-line courses. Liaison with the UCOP On-line course initiative was delegated to CETL (Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) following the recommendations of former Provost Lavernia. Rosemary Capps from CETL serves on both committees; see the CETL annual report for progess on this initiative. (2) Clickers. UCD uses the PRS Interwrite clicker system, but the company has been sold to new owners and the UCD clickers are many years behind the version the company currently sells. Students are reporting problems with aging clickers. The operating software does not work well with many new computers, MacIntosh in particular. ATS used to provide technical support for faculty use of the software, but this was discontinued after the retirement of Robert Ralston. The campus runs a clicker buy-back system through the bookstore with the intent that students can recoup half the costs of a clicker upon resale. Switching to a new system would entail significant cost if the buy-back program were honored. Given the current budget, the issue was tabled. Recommendation: The 2012 committee may wish to revisit the issue and consider other vendors or a clicker application associated with a smart phone. (3) Exploration of large-scale Gradebook enhancements. A partnership with the Sakai community on other campuses to further develop the SmartSite Gradebook has been proposed. To date UC Davis is the only member of the Sakai open source consortium to develop a gradebook, apparently because of the complexity of the task. However, some campuses have expressed interest in accessing the UCD Gradebook and in contributing to enhancements. rSmart would act as a facilitator/coordinator for the Sakai community, collecting two-years of funds from interested universities to pay for a programmers and a QA person. rSmart proposes building on the UCD gradebook, but the selection of particular items to be developed would be decided by voting members. UCD would have 25% voting rights as the Gradebook founder, but input from other campuses would be important. This potential partnership would bring more FTE to getting bugs, etc. taken care of quickly, but involves collaborative development. Recommendation: 2011/12 committee members work with the ASCIT and the full CCFIT to discuss and respond to this proposal. (4) Educational Software. Consideration of new software designed to prevent plagiarism or to control access to the internet during class was delayed pending the outcome of the faculty survey on the State of Technologies for Teaching and Learning (see survey results in Appendix A and summary on page xx below). Issues from 2009/10 continued to be important to members of Ed Tech. (5) On-line course evaluation. The issue of on-line course evaluation is of great interest to ADMAN because of the significant staff time spent on processing paper and scantron course evaluations, but all discussion of this issue was deferred pending an Academic Senate report. No report from the Academic Senate was received in 2010/11. Recommendation: 2011/12 committee members may revisit this issue once the Academic Senate report is released in light of the potential budgetary savings associated with a reduced burden on staff or as a way to deal with staff reductions already in place. (6) Survey of State of Technologies for Teaching and Learning. One part of the charge to the Ed Tech subcommittee is “generating recommendations and proposing initiatives to further the accessibility, effectiveness, and availability of appropriate educational technologies to further the campus instructional mission.” The 2009 Ed Tech subcommittee surveyed faculty about the value of the services available, but by the time the survey was analyzed there had been many changes in the campus in terms of services provided and budget available to implement change. In May 2011 a new survey designed to assess faculty perception of the state of facilities and educational technology was completed. The survey was sent to all 1500 faculty and received 171 responses, as well as four comments sent directly to Co-Chair Keen. Survey questions with numerical and free responses are contained in Appendix A. Below are brief summaries of the results. Comments on classrooms: Faculty were asked to discuss facilities in one to three classrooms in which they regularly teach. Most faculty (169) discussed one classroom, with 96 and 38 respondents, respectively, discussing a second and third classroom. Responses were limited to 4 categories: satisfied to a great extent, satisfied to a small extent, not at all satisfied, and not applicable. Removing the fraction to whom the issue was not applicable, 50% to 70% of the faculty were satisfied to a great extent with available facilities. Satisfaction was greatest with screens, AV consoles, seating, acoustics, microphones and amplification, temperature, and room shape, but least for lighting, blackboards, air quality, and wireless internet access. The opportunity for written responses generated 242 comments on specific classrooms. The top issues noted were: projection and audio in classrooms with 80 comments; room size, seating and arrangement of chairs (requests for flexible seating) with 66 comments; visibility and functionality of black and white boards with 51 comments; lighting with 40 comments, cleanliness and overall quality with 36 comments, ventilation and temperature issues with 33 comments. There were a significant number of requests for two projection screens in classrooms, along with requests for simultaneous access to screens and boards; these sentiments were expressed in several different parts of the survey. The written responses were telling because they contained relatively few criticisms related to technology and significantly greater concerns with very fundamental structural issues such as lighting, cleanliness, moveable chairs, modern surroundings, boards, and access to boards and screens together. For example, a respondent described a room in Olson Hall as follows: “My class was packed tightly into this small space, with almost no room available for me to lecture. The projector was so poor that it was unusable. The room as an astonishing mess. I spent one day there and then moved my lectures to the room I teach the lab part of the course in. In all honestly, I was horrified at this room, and the poor condition in was in, and I was embarrassed as a member of the faculty at UCD.” Very similar responses emerged in question 7, asking about rooms that were functional, but flawed. For example, one respondent said: “ Overall, the classrooms are deteriorating. LCD projectors are getting old, so resolution is decreasing. More maintenance is required. Overall, I do not like the rigid seats, although I understand their purpose. There is often no chalk, or insufficient little pieces with the chalkboard. Quality of chalk has also declined over the years. For large rooms or rooms with poor lighting, this is important. Almost every classroom has lights that are burned out and/or temperature control problems. On a positive note, I use the document viewers often. Please keep them.” Another respondent said: “All the classrooms I have been teaching in the last few years are increasingly dirty. I believe we should not use carpet, and where there is carpet, it should be pulled out. Also, whoever assigns the classrooms must be looking at the enrollment # only - or primarily. However, certain classrooms are not suitable to some subjects (e.g., those whose seats are bolted to the floor, or where the seats are connected to each other, are not suitable for group work, or other activities). I think that instructors should be able to state their preferences for the type of classroom that is most suitable to their teaching methods/activities before the rooms are assigned, not after (i.e., "complaining" about them)”. The room-by-room responses represent a very detailed list of issues specific to each space. The challenge will be to address so many structural issues in times of tight budgets. Recommendation: 2011/12 committee members should ensure that the detailed list is passed to Registrar Frank Wada and Vice-Chancellor (check title) Fred Wood. The committee should further ensure that a plan of action is developed and communicated to the faculty (perhaps via Facultysupport.ucdavis.edu). It is essential that the time taken to complete the survey in this level of detail be rewarded. Comments on technology: Respondents were asked to select the five most technologies most critical to their teaching. This style of question annoyed a significant number of respondents who either did not use any technology in teaching or used less than five technologies. In spite of this design flaw within the survey, three items emerged as important: 84% of respondents identified Smartsite as critical, 56% of respondents identified the Gradebook as critical, and 55% of respondents wanted classroom internet access for faculty only. Embedded within the written responses in this and other sections is dissatisfaction with the Smartsite learning management system, with the suggestion that the campus switch to Moodle (see later discussion in item 7 of this report, p. xx). Two other written responses are notable: (i) “Lecture capture on this campus is a total joke. Two years ago, I tried to capture my lectures for podcasting. First I was given an audio recorder that was incapable of recording an entire lecture. When that problem was finally solved, two weeks into the course, I asked for help in editing the audio to create a podcast. I was told that I had to do it myself using free-ware that I could download from the Internet. In the end, I got so far behind that I just gave up. I can't believe that MIT, whose courses are now used by people all over the world, does things this way. If we want to compete with the "big boys", we have to act like the "big boys".” (ii) “The gradebooks are killing me. I have 400 students. 10-15 are in University Extension. I ahve to keep everybody in my grade book but when it comes time to submit grades I need to pull out the University Extension (open enrollement) students. We end up with issues of our grade book not matching the class roster and it casues issues with getting grades submitted. can somebody please bring University Extension into the 20th century. I know they think they are the leading edge, but I have to submit hardcopy grades. They should have their grades come in with the class roster. Their students should be listed in the class roster, I should not have to enter them into the roster and then pull them out when it comes time to submit grades. I am rapidly getting to the point that I am going to refuse to take University Extension Sudents until they are transparent from the instructor end. So the gradebook has some real limitation, but you can blame UE. Call if you want backup!” The second comment results from a problem with Banner integration. Banner now falls under Student Affairs and has a limited budget for programmers, but this fix might be accelerated given that the faculty member is close to rejecting Extension students because of the difficulties in handling them. Instructor use of the internet with students: Quite a few instructors listed more than one use, which is why the total listed uses exceed the total responses. Seventy-five of the 117 faculty responding said that they do use the internet with students during class. Their listed uses included video clips such as YouTube (35), relevant websites/material/news (33), demonstrating functions or accessing materials on SmartSite (16), accessing online databases so that students can analyze data (11), student group work to find or create resources in class (10), relevant simulations or images (9), library or literature searches (5), online textbooks or online supplements to hardcopy textbooks (4), and one or two mentions each of TED talks, Second Life, online homeworks, newspapers, Skype, catalogs, podcasts, wikis, blogs, and faculty creating their own websites with primary materials. One particularly heartening faculty comment was the following: “I have large (350-420) classes of upper division and grad students. They ask a question and I can show them how to get their answer. I will ask a question and we will rapidly develop answers with new questions and directions. I use it to get them to think. Much of the material is on internet sites (that I did not make). I show how easy it is to do research and how to protect themselves from getting bad information.” Forty-two of the 117 faculty responding said they do not use the internet with students during class. Of this group, 22 gave specific reasons: two said that they don’t have the skills or technological sophistication, 10 said that internet connections are not available or reliable in the classrooms where they teach, and 11 said that it distracts students or obviates their thinking. Several in this last group wished that they could control wireless access with a switch, so that students could access the web for instructional purposes, but not when it is not assigned. Two faculty members said that they would like to use it more to help students prepare for class if hardware and wireless connections were available. Instructor use of other facilities and technologies: When specifically asked about clocks, 40% of respondents asked for clocks in classrooms, but this request also emerged in the free response sections throughout the survey. Respondents noted that students cannot use cell phone clocks in exams. Some respondents would like to use lecture capture and video-conferencing. Availability of help for faculty via the Library, Student Judicial Affairs and other services: Questions 12 to 15 deal with access to help for teachers outside of direct instruction. Faculty are asked about the use of a wide range of campus services. It should be noted that services used occasionally or rarely may be those for which the facilities are quite functional. It should also be noted that mention of some services, such as training sessions, led to surprise that such services existed; thus the survey itself has an educational element. Many services listed as rarely used were scored as beneficial, nonetheless. For example, few faculty might use CAPS (student counseling), but be very glad of its existence during a crisis. One respondent asked for greater transparency from CAPS. Less than 7% of respondents scored the listed campus services as “never sufficient” indicating that the campus has done a good job of supporting faculty in these areas. Some respondents noted that TA funds are needed more urgently than technology or support services. The UC Davis faculty acknowledged strong support for the University Library’s importance to their teaching function and their students’ learning. Over sixty-one percent (61.2%) of the 104 faculty responding indicated that the Library’s electronic resources (databases, journals and books) were one of the top five educational technologies critical to their teaching. Fifty-five (55) faculty members (33.4%) also pointed to the value of the Library catalogs (Harvest Catalog or Melvyl Catalog). Faculty members recognize that having a well-developed collection of readily available online and print resources is an important underlying factor for a rich teaching/learning/and research environment. Faculty further indicated that they made use of several library services for teaching, with 70.2% (113 faculty respondents out of 161) indicating that they used Library course reserves while only 29.8% (48 faculty) indicated that they did not use this service. The new Library reserves online form for placing items on Library Reserves also seems to be gaining fast acceptance with 47.8% (75 faculty) indicating that they had already used this new service while 52.2% (82 faculty) indicated they did not use it. Other services used and mentioned include interlibrary loan, the engineering library and librarians, and electronic scientific journals. In response to the question about receiving Library support for administrative and co-curricular student issues: 31.2% (49) strongly agreed while 37.6% (59) agreed. So a total of 68.8% or 108 out of 157 respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that the Library was supporting them. Summary of Free Responses: A comment from the final free-response section seems to adequately capture much of the sentiment expressed throughout the survey: “Nearly everyone now teaches with multi-media. You MUST improve ALL the general classrooms to have adequate lighting and screens to support this vital teaching methodology. Honestly, I can't believe you haven't had protests from the students the facilities are so bad. I guess they just don't know how good it could be with a few relatively minor changes. I am so tired of everyone saying they care so much about teaching around here and then we have such lousy classrooms in Olson and Wellman - and probably elsewhere that I have yet to experience. I Roessler things are much improved which leads me to wonder if the science end of the campus has adequate classrooms but the social science and humanities end of campus has been left to rot. If so, shame on UCD! Before you waste time and money on adding more technologies - you must first fix the basics like lighting, etc. or your money on further technologies will simply be wasted.” Recommendation: 2011/12 committee members should further analyze results of the survey and communicate the outcomes to the relevant sections of the campus. It may be that a comprehensive approach to the issues raised should be developed rather than passing on comments piecemeal. The results of this survey indicate that faculty have significant concerns about the state of teaching on the campus. (7) Smartsite oversight: The committee was informed that vendor hosting of SmartSite through RSmart was working well, but there were several issues with faculty use of the Smartsite Learning Management System (LMS) that remained unresolved throughout the year. An ATS internal audit of Gradebook functions uncovered a problem with rounding error when the equal weighting category was used. This issue has been addressed. The committee learned that a future upgrade to Smartsite 3.0 would entail some change in the LMS that might be noticeable to users, although a stepping process for changes is proposed. Given some dissatisfaction with the current LMS (clunky interface and related comments within the survey reported above), it makes sense to discuss replacing Smartsite with another LMS such as Moodle. Recommendation: 2011/12 committee members should analyze the financial and social/cultural costs and benefits of a change in the Learning Management System in light of faculty comment from the recent survey. Because a change would be disruptive to many, this issue may be passed to ASCIT (Academic Senate Committee on Information Technology) before investing significant time in analysis within the Ed Tech Subcommittee. Faculty input into the decision-making process for IT was a challenging issue for the Ed Tech subcommittee in 2011. The Ed Tech subcommittee requested a member from ASCIT, but no one was provided. In the previous year the AS representative on this subcommittee attended only a single meeting. Recommendation: the number of ASCIT representatives on the committee should be significantly increased. We further recommend that the 2012 committee work with ASCIT to ensure closer collaboration and consider the proposal that each college or department appoint a member to the committee. ASCIT suggested more faculty surveys in advance of IT changes in the future. The approval process for surveys is quite lengthy, so if this suggestion is adopted, surveys will have to be developed at least one quarter prior to the planned administration. To make users aware of the status of known bugs, faculty trouble tickets, requested improvements and new functions, the Smartsite home page now includes a link to these items. All bugs and enhancement requests will be numbered and recorded on a schedule showing the date of each request, its priority, and the anticipated completion date. Requested enhancements include the addition of more data from the Registar to the Gradebook rosters. The Ed Tech subcommittee met to prioritize bug fixes and the development of new services. The guiding principles for these improvements were: o o o o Issues that affect large classes; Issues that are noted most frequently on calls to help desk and calls to IET-Academic Technology Services staff; Issues that significantly improve functionality and ease of use; and Issues that keep up with new releases and system upgrades for Sakai. Based on these guiding principles, the faculty on the subcommittee made recommendations as to what they considered to be the top priorities for Gradebook2. Appendix B is a list of the fixes being addressed over the course of the two-part upgrade this summer. Importing and exporting functions for the Gradebook were identified as problematic to users. ATS programmers have created a SmartSite Wizard to guide users through these aspects of the Gradebook. Members of the Ed Tech subcommittee participated in a demonstration of the wizard and requested many small changes to improve usability. A workshop for “live” testing of the Wizard by ATS programmers and faculty on the campus will be offered in July 2011, during Summer Sessions II. To accurately gauge faculty needs on particular SmartSite tools, a set of forums on specific tools has been proposed. By mining the use data for the Gradebook and other items, faculty using specific tools could be identified and invited to a forum specific to tools of interest. Recommendation: the 2011/12 committee may wish to develop these forums along with other means of determining the needs of faculty. Faculty criticism of the Ed Tech decision-making process, as well as the functionality within Smartsite, came from three sources in 2011: (1) a memo from Professor Powell, Chair of the Academic Senate, to Jeff Barrett; (2) a letter from Letters and Sciences Chair, Senior Lecturer Boeshaar, to the Academic Senate; and (3) a letter to Elizabeth Gibson, head of ATS-Mediaworks from Professor Casey, Chemistry. The Ed Tech subcommittee discussed the criticisms in each of these cases, finding that some had merit whereas others resulted from insufficient familiarity with the options available within Smartsite. Critical documents and the Ed Tech responses are in Appendix C. Many of the concerns were resolved by discussion, but next year’s committee should regularly reassess priorities for fixes and enhancements in consultation with ASCIT. Respectfully submitted, Lori Lubin and Susan Keen Co-chairs. Appendix A. Results of the CCFIT Ed Tech Subcommittee Survey on Infrastructure for Teaching. Written responses : GA Classroom s: Q1 - Q6 Any additional information you would like to share ? Art 204 Art 204 ART 217 Art 217 Art 217 Art 217 Art 217 Bainer 1060 (55 students) Bainer 1062 Bainer 10xx 40 students bainer 1128 Bainer 1130 Bainer Hall 1060? Bowley Center Classroom Briggs 122 Briggs Hall 158 Chem 179 Chem 179 from 2-4pm the heat in the room became almost too much. Only 1 window in the front opens partially. Needs better ventilation. Art history courses need to close the windows to block out the light. In the hot months, temperature is very uncomfortable. If Smart Panel was upgraded, may also Need a set of instructions for SMart Panel in Art 204. Lighting is bad. AHI courses need to be able to dim the lights so students can take notes in the dark while studying images on the screen. Can't be done with existing lighting. This would be my top priority of things to fix in this room. There is a need for more and larger classrooms like Art 217 and 204 that have side-by-side dual projection. I use this room for upper division Art History courses (AHI 178A, B, C), with enrollments upwards of 60 students. It is impossible to set good lighting over the desks, so that students can write, without shedding light on the screens so that the images are washed out. The situation is even worse in Fall and Spring because the room becomes an oven. Students keep opening the windows so they can breathe, which wipes out the projected imagery even more. Finally, the old Smart Panel requires a Matrox device to interface between it and a laptop for Powerpoint projection. The connection is unreliable. Needs better ventilation. Art history courses need to close the windows to block out the light. In the hot months, temperature is very uncomfortable. Need a set of instructions for SMart Panel. They were removed with update of the SmartPanel in 217 Art. This room was worked well for me. I prefer to use document projection and the location of the document device is awkward to reach for purposes of writing on. Our current setting up requires a instructor to bring a laptop for ppt presentation. Hope one day we can do that by only using a USB stick drive. 1/2 of lights were out for a few weeks. odd shaped room with corridor by door, temp is frequently too warm (winter heating) The temperature control in this room was terrible. It was always cold, and the HVAC was always blowing. The LCD projector did not have very good resolution, and overheats. Need to have pod-cast capability Room can be overrun by flies for some reason - other than that this is an ideal teaching situation - students have plenty of space, very open and airy. This is a laboratory and lecture room. For the most part it is fine but it desperately needs a paint job. It might also help to remove a large raised podium at the front that is a tripping hazard, and install another lab bench in the West end of the room to add more seats. This is a small laboratory room that is also used for lectures. It lacks a projector and a good clock. I don't know if internet is available there. None The first few rows are so close and the screen is too high so that it is uncomfortable and difficult to have to look up at the screen. Really, you have to sit in rows 5 or higher. The smartpanel may also have the same audio problem (microphone vs other input) as I described for Chem 194, but I have not directly used this in this room. It would also be EXTREMELY USEFUL to have the ability to show the document camera and a computer input (video or ppt) at the same time (or even have two document cameras at the same time). we should have two screens and have the ability to project both inputs at the same time. Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 Chem 194 400 students All upper division and grad students Chemistry 166 chemistry 176 chemistry 179 Chemistry 194 Chemistry I do not use the black board and so have checked NA for that reason I had occasional problems with the audio not working The battery life on the wireless microphone is distressingly short I have not used the wireless internet and so checked NA; students do access the internet and mostly, it appears, not for the purpose of enhancing their educational experience the new smart panel appears to have one flaw that I have particularly noticed. you cannot control or separate the microphone volume from the overall volume and it also appears that when there is another audio input, then the microphone is diverted or amplified. for example, if you have music, a video or news clip showing, then you cannot use the microphone and talk with or over the other audio. it seems that the audio input overrides the microphone input. It would also be EXTREMELY USEFUL to have the ability to show the document camera and a computer input (video or ppt) at the same time (or even have two document cameras at the same time). we should have two screens and have the ability to project both inputs at the same time. A first step, would be to have the ability to easily toggle between the document camera and the computer, as is the case in SCILEC 123. Just a dreary room. If one can dim the lights in the front and keep the lights in the back bright (like you can do in 1100 Social Sci) that would help. Also the projector does nto project a true color. The Smart Panel has a recurring problem with the internet model connection point. I know that ITS is aware of this situation. but it needs to be fixed (2 quarters now...). THe shape of the room doesn't meet my needs fully because I find that wide, shallow rooms create a much better climate for interaction with students (I can actually see the faces and eyes of the folks in the back row), whereas this room is fully shotgun - narrow and straight back to the next county. The wireless connectivity is not something I bother with (although if the modem point sin't fixed, I may change that practice), but I'm sure it works just fine for my students since many of them see fit to multitask through lecture using Facebook, etc to entertain themselves in the interstices between the "important' information.... The size of the room doesn't meet my instructional needs AT ALL since it is built with the assumption that a class should number 400 in size when 40 is an appropriate class size for quality learning, but that is another point altogether... this room needs to be renovated; it is very hard to hear lectures even with the mike all the way up. The room gets hot and wet like a sauna, the ventilation needs work. The appearance is dingy; the AV cart with the document camera feels jerry-rigged. You cannot see the blackboards with the screen down. The lighting controls are crazy and you cannot get a middle light level. The blackboards are ancient. At least put in blackboards or Whiteboards that can go up and down, not side to side! Lighting for the boards is bad at best. Social Sciecne 1100 has a superior board arrangement campared to Chem194. This is the nicest of the rooms I've taught in. Its a bit hard to get the lighting right when using power points but that's not much of an issue. Chairs squek when students move around and room can get warm enough to cause some students to be uncomfortable when the room is full. The black board is hidden behind the screen so cant be used until the screen is put up. 60 students Chemistry Building, 179 Conferenc e Room, Research 1 (UCDHS) Davis Tower 1704 Education Building Sacrament o Education Building, Sacrament o Campus Room 1222 Education building, Sacrament o campus, Room 1204 Education building, Sacrament o campus, Room 1226 Everson 176 Everson 176 Everson 176 Room does not have a projector. Does not have internet access. LCD projector on it's last legs. Images dark. Big problem because this is a radiology conference room. This classroom is set up in lecture style - good for that use. Would be nice to have two rows per level, so that students could turn around and work in small groups more easily. I prefer to use more participative approaches to teaching than the "talking heads" This classroom is set up in lecture style - good for that use. It is a U-shape that promotes intimacy among the group and good opportunity for interaction among students who can see each other as well as the instructor. Would be nice to have two rows per level, so that students could turn around and work in small groups more easily. I prefer to use more participative approaches to teaching than the "talking heads" This classroom has table top monitors and students face each other - so is amenable to group work as well as lecture. It is cramped though, with tables very close to one another I mostly use the document camera for projection since I don't like carrying my laptop around, and also so I can project student work, books, and other non-electronic items. I only use my laptop when I want internet access, and actually sometimes I just decide I don't need internet access enough to make it worth carrying my laptop around. I appreciate the fact that the document camera stays plugged into the VGA cable so I don't have to do that every time. It would be even better if the document camera would stay plugged into the electricity, but someone always unplugs it, so I have to unwind the cord at the beginning of every class. The shape of the classroom and the acoustics are good, but I like students to be able to work in pairs or even small groups. Pairs are OK, but when the TAs and I are walking around, we can really only reach the pairs seated near the aisles. Small groups are basically impossible. I would love to have moveable seats with real aisles between them so I could interact with students more, and they could interact with each other, even in a class of 200. On warm days, opening the outside door is a must for air quality. The screens cover the blackboard, so I can't use both the projection and the blackboard. Also, when I adjust the lighting to work with the screen projection, it is bad for seeing anything on the blackboard. Nevertheless, I would say that this is the best large-ish lecture hall I have taught in at UCD. There have been several problems with the A/V this year, and the room temperature fluctuates a lot (generally too hot) Everson 176 Everson 176 Geidt 1001 (not sure of room no.) Geidt 1003 Geidt 1003 Geidt 150 students Geidt Hall 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1001 Giedt 1002 Giedt 1003 GIEDT 1007 30 students Giedt Hall (n=25 students) I use this room for my lower division art history course (AHI 1B), with enrollments averaging about 180 students. It is impossible to light the room enough for students to take notes without wiping out the projected images. I often turn out the lights altogether so that students can see the material under discussion. Also, there is only a single projector, not double projection. Therefore the Powerpoint reaches less than half the screen area and is very small for people at the back of the room. The room gets uncomfortable in Fall and Spring. The wireless microphone is better than the one that goes around your neck, but both do not provide a crisp sound, and sound is lost when you turn your head, etc. Microphone quality could be much better. The lighting for the blackboard was inadequate. No change when I reported this to those in charge of the classroom. Fantastic facility! I like the style of blackboard, in which there are layers and the instructor can push a blackboard up after filling it, to leave the writing in view while writing on new space. However, the rollup blackboards are too high, and I can't reach a board that's been pushed up. I've had a hook made to allow me to do this, but I know I'm not the only one with this problem ( I'm 5'2"). Board lighting is terrible - no light can be directed onto the blackboards. The side projection screen is excellent and essential. I like having the right side screen. Lighting system around the podium/chalk board does not seem to be working. It's a fine classroom, but the smartpanel is too cluttered with cables and locks and stuff left on top. There's also always chalk dust on the surface that I use for my laptop. White boards would be nice. I have poor handwriting, and it is difficult to see my writing from the back of the room on dirty blackboards. The great thing about this room is that I can project images to the side on a full screen while not blocking backboard space. I wish this was possible in other rooms! One day during a rain storm in the winter of 2010, the front space flooded. I spent the entire lecture standing in an inch of water that spanned the whole blackboard! I almost slipped many times. The response to fixing this serious hazard was poor. I don't think they have done anything to prevent this in the future. This room has a better seating arrangement than haring 2205. Same issues with chalkboards, often dirty and chalk of poor quality--can't read from a distance. Microphone sometimes missing or not working. Table lecterns too high for shorter teachers. The vga cable in the smart panel does not allow for projection using my Mac laptop computer. This was not a problem last year. I was informed that the cables were replaced recently and do not work with some mac computers. I am having to run my laptop through the document reader in the class room. While this is functional, it is not an optimal situation and requires the presence of an additional piece of equipment. Needs a periodic table on the wall and also a clock. This is a GREAT, beautiful classroom. Comfortable and well-equipped for the instructor, comfortable and spread out enough for the students. ART 204 40 students Cleaning in the room in Giedt Hall was a problem. I finally called Facilities Services and asked that the 4-week accumulation of chalk dust be removed from the front of the room. I *love* black boards and writing on them. Some blackboard chalk is great. Some brands are too hard and do not erase. I generally bring a stash of my own chalk and my own (chamois) eraser. I profoundly dislike white boards. Giedt large lecture hall Giedt lecture hall -- about 200 students HARCS: Almost all of the lecture halls available to HARCS Haring 100 students Haring (about 270 students) Haring 1227 Haring 2016 Haring 2016 Haring 2016 Haring 2205 Haring 2205 Haring 2205 (185 students) Haring Hall 1204 I am not up to date on the latest technologies. I would not know how to identify what might be lacking. I use whatever is presently available. I understand that other institutions have far superior technological support for the classroom. I would be interested in acquiring greater knowledge and experience with these technologies. White boards should be eliminated in favor of black boards. It should remain possible for faculty to give lectures with chalk rather than A-V. None of the rooms in Harcs have an adequate song system, and the internet and projection are really poor. The sound gives feedback, the rooms do not have blackout capabilities, and the quality of the projections is poor. For new media courses that need multiple screens and projectors there are only two rooms and the seating and sound are not up to par. It would be nice to have at least one general assignment classroom with some flexibility in seating arrangements to facilitate group interaction even in a lecture space. The room was exceptionally hot, and we had issues with cheating during exams because of close proximity between students. This is a very poor room for a political science class. It is difficult to sustain any kind of discussion in a class with this layout and seating design. It is obviously a lab science classroom and unsuited for social science instruction. Room was uncomfortably hot, very loud (disruptive construction ongoing throughout the quarter), and yet very hard to hear students. Awful. The room does not get dark enough (blinds don't block out sun) to use the screen effectively. The screen is not positioned very well, instructor can bump into it very easily. The room is often too cold or too hot. Document camera is very much appreciated in there. Also, the ability to move the chairs around is more important than any of these things and this classroom allows chair to be moved into small groups. So don't change that, please. I spent most of the *winter* opening up windows in the room because it was so hot. Then we got the noise of the construction from across the street, plus glare from the windows. Not a good situation. I don't know if "room shape" literally means the shape, or if it means the condition of the room, but neither were particularly good. wired internet not reliable (never got it to work) Haring 2205 has bad temperature control. the room is extremely warm in spring and fall, and also part of winter. just walking up the stairs, you can feel the temperature increase a few degrees. i don't know how the students can stay awake, and as the temperature increases outside, the classroom will become even more uncomfortable. this is especially a problem when practically every seat is filled. I would however like to comment that this classroom has not been upgraded yet (still has the original smartpanel rather than the new one I have seen in Chem 194 and 179) and this means that there is separate microphone volume control, and you can have two audio inputs without the microphone amplification being canceled. It would also be EXTREMELY USEFUL to have the ability to show the document camera and a computer input (video or ppt) at the same time (or even have two document cameras at the same time). we should have two screens and have the ability to project both inputs at the same time. There also is NOT a clock in this room. This room is like a steep funnel and the steps are very slippery, esp. for teachers who would like the ability to walk around the classroom and be closer to students in discussion. I find this room hazardous for talking and walking. The cordless mic was sometimes missing or not working. Chalkboards and chalk of poor quality and legibility, probably because they are not cleaned frequently. Chalk is light white, hard for students to read. It should be possible for faculty to connect to the internet via a login required. Haring Hall 1204 Haring Hall 2205 Harring 1227, apprx 70 students Hart 1102 Hart 1116 Hart 1128 Hart Hall 10? Hart Hall 90 students Hart Hall large classroom at north end 45 students Hart Hall, 9 students Hart 1153 health sci bldg amphithea tres health sciences ed bldg -sac campus Hoagland 108 Hoagland 113 Hoagland 168 Hoagland 168 Hunt 100 This classroom backs up to the Unitrans area. It is so noisy you cannot lecture in it. I had to move and was given an almost as bad classroom in Wellman. Replace blackboards with white boards AV systems was more modern and podcasting was easier here. A wire-less system though would be greatly beneficially to avoid all the wires which create a trip hazard. Also, the system made loud noises that cycled continuously when I plugged in my laptop. This probably shouldnt be occurring. Seating here was better distributed and more modern with more space for the student to write. I definitely preferred this classroom overall. There are no windows in that room and the ventilation is very poor. I teach there for several hours and we have to keep the door open with a chair because it gets too stuffy. This room has several issues: there are many windows, which is OK for natural light, but the shades do not work well; and it is very easy to hear outside noises (e.g., lawnmowers) Too many chairs in this classroom I no longer have the classroom number. It was on the first floor, but I have had similar problems with the classrooms in Hart's basement. All are lecture halls. All have been modernized so that various electronic devices can be played. However, the classrooms have not been insulated to protect those outside each classroom from its enhanced sound. Therefore the sound from one classroom booms into that whose wall it shares. I shared a wall with a class in African music and dance; and my class heard the African music and dance instead of my lecture. Moral of the story: when new equipment is installed enabling sound to be broadcast, new insulation should be installed protecting those outside each classroom from its enhanced sound. Everything was fine except that the room frequently had no chalk. For the first two lectures I had to scrounge up some from the neighboring classrooms. After that I brought my own with me. With all the push to high technology, please let's not forget about the basics! fixed seats with no aisle in the middle is a problem. the fixed seating in these amphitheatre classrooms prohibit small group work. 2206 could be an excellent room for 30 students, but the mistake was putting computers in the room - now everyone has a laptop, no need for in-place computers except for the instructor. The room was cramped and the air quality was not great. The classroom is old and seemed run down. (20 students in discussion section) As with many classrooms, lowering the screen almost completely obscured the blackboard, so it made it hard to switch back and forth between board and screen. Also, I think in this room as well as in others, the sliding blackboards leave a "well" beneath them, into which erasers fall and never seem to be rescued... As seems to be common (106? Olson had a similar problem despite repeated requests to have it fixed) the vertical sliding blackboard does not stay where put. The acoustics in this room are terrible. I had to yell all quarter, and I have a loud voice. Some of this was due to a constant droning noise from the... a/c? something in the ceiling. I don't know if "room shape" literally means the shape, or if it means the condition of the room, but neither were particularly good. The air conditioning is extremely loud and the temperature overly cold. Hunt 110 Hunt 110 Hunt 110 Hunt Hall 100 Hutchison 115 Hutchison Hall 102 Kleiber 3 Kleiber 3 Kleiber 3 Kleiber Hall Klieber 3 Klieber 3 Main Theatre (Not GA) Meyer Hall 1312 Meyer; Hurley Rm, Music 105 Music 115 MUSIC: NUT 116a NUT 129 Olson Olson Olson (60 students) I had repeated problems in getting good video quality using my computer (a MacBook Pro). There seemed to be some sort of configuration problem. I need projectors that will automatically configure themselves for my computer, so I don't need to spend time at the beginning of a class figuring it out. Overall it's a pretty nice room. Main drawback is inability to make it dark enough for slide presentations. Blinds are ineffective and time-consuming to adjust. Ventilation in this room is very poor. Even in the winter we need to open the windows so we can breathe. This room is TERRIBLE. The ventilation is so noisy that even with a throat mike students complain they can't hear. The screen interferes with the blackboard, and the blackboards are too small. I use Powerpoint and blackboards simultaneously, and this room was a nightmare. The projector screen should be offset to one side of the blackboard instead of being located in the middle. The screen location leaves only two small areas open on the extreme edges of the blackboard. This is not specific to this room for some reason all rooms I have ever been in are set up this way. The screen is awkwardly placed with regard to the seating arrangement for the students. It takes away a lot of space and one is never quite sure where to stand Kleiber 3 is okay, but it has some problems. In the first place, the microphone situation is poor. The microphone is of barely tolerable quality. In the second place, there was no adequate podium or place to set my laptop while I was lecturing. The table in the room was often upstairs, and I had to ask my male TAs to carry it down, which was unsafe for them or the students sitting along the aisles. How could I possibly have lectured to 250 students with no podium or place to sit my laptop. Absurd situation. Screen covers black boards - this is a huge problem. There is a large table at the front of the class. Different instructors use it differently, some not at all. It has to be moved by each instructor to where she/he wants it. It is extremely heavy! Very awkward board and screen layout. When using the projector, it becomes very difficult to use the black boards (only a small portion is not obscured by the screen). Cannot use clicker -- signal is not there for half of the room The screen can not be used at the same time as the blackboard. Also, white boards would be better than blackboards. Introductory note: the whole problem here is non GEN ASSN classrooms. So: I have taught only in Music Department classrooms (not generally assigned because we need pianos) and the Main Theatre (for Music 10 only). The answers below are about the Main Theatre only. Sound system, piano, student desks have not changed in the 20+ years I've been teaching there. Needs more space for instrument room NUT 253 a and b met in the Hurley Room inin Meyer on the office side., enrollment ranges from a low of 20 to a high of 152. It was too warm in the classroom with the door closed but we had too close the door because of outside noise. Primitive Primitive. I'm not sure whether a space like this is relevant to your survey or not. It's one-of-a-kind but quite hard to teach in despite the valiant efforts of the Theatre & Dance stage crew. I would give the class room a B+. too cold in the room...... but this is a problem in Meyer Hall in the winter and spring quarters and not in fall quarter when it's too hot. chairs are extremely uncomfortable and old. internet interface requiring unnecessary extra setup is stupid protocols set up by well-meaning non-teachers, no doubt The console just die in the middle of a Keynote presentation. doesn't happen often, but enough to notice and remember. Breaking down big group into discussion or collaborative projects extremely difficult. Chairs not moveable, deters dialogue and communication in class. Huge drawback as chairs are nailed down to the floor. Chalkboards and chalk of varying quaility. Blinds often broken and dirty. Table lectern often missing or too high for shorter teachers. Olson (smaller room, first floor, 35 students) Olson 1 Olson 105 Olson 106 Olson 106 Olson 109 Olson 118 Olson 118 Olson 151 olson 156 Olson 159 Olson 163 Olson 206 Olson 206 Olson 206 (aprox 117) Olson 207 Unfixed desks in this room are nice. It's pretty tight in there, though, and it's difficult for all students to sit so that they can see the screen. great classroom The screen for the room is located in one corner and the SmartPanel console in another with desks and a table crowding between making it very awkward to stand at the panel or at the table with a laptop (or use the document projector) and see what's on the screen. The blackboards rattled quite a bit if I ever tried the uppermost sliding panes--I always had to slide those up and use only the board attached to the wall. Overall the room was cramped so that I had a hard time circulating among the desks to help students. I would like to have rooms where the chairs aren't nailed to the floor--it makes it impossible to do small group work which is important to the kind of courses humanities faculty teach. Otherwise, the room is good and I love the document camera-Room is okay, not too small or too large for a 75 person class. However, the air quality is very poor, and room temperature was generally uncomfortable. Two major problems with this room: the design, and the interaction with my laptop (Dell) and the Smart Panel. Regarding the first issue, the room is circular but it is not a good seminar room because there is no central table and the chairs do not move. The shape of the room also makes it difficult for everyone to see the screen. Regarding the second issue, I cannot plug my laptop into an outlet and have it connected to the Smart Panel without getting loud static. This was a horrific room and I had to be moved. The lights do NOT dim which makes the room absolutely useless for using multi-media. The lights had to be off for the students to be able to see the images and then they could not take notes. It was 85 degrees in the room and despite many calls to have it fixed, it was not fixed. I had to be moved out of this room it was so unbearable. In my short experience here at UCD (3 years) I have found the great majority of the classrooms to have severe problems with lighting that make teaching with multi-media (even just images) a real trial. It is embarrassing to have such poor conditions on a UC campus. UT Austin where where I was previously had stellar classrooms with adequate lighting and great computer, camera and screen set up. Nearly all the projecting screens in the UCD classrooms I have had are far too small to allow all the students to see the images or text being projected. It was also FAR too hot and stuffy in the classroom and many students actually complained of headaches! I am generally happy with this room. Acoustics and room shape (which affects acoustics) are key in language teaching. windowless classrooms in olson are a problem. My class was packed tightly into this small space, with almost no room available for me to lecture. The projector was so poor that it was unusable. The room as an astonishing mess. I spent one day there and then moved my lectures to the room I teach the lab part of the course in. In all honestly, I was horrified at this room, and the poor condition in was in, and I was embarrassed as a member of the faculty at UCD. Room size and arrangement works very well for lecture and also small groups. This room is very wide and not very deep. I usually don't have to use a microphone but I do in this room -- and it is available. A significant problem is in engaging the students in interaction. The students want to contribute but cannot be heard from one side of the room to the other. I asked for a portable microphone to give to the students but there are apparently only two on the entire campus and they were already in use. I am not thrilled teaching 120 students in an upper division class but when it is virtually impossible to engage them in conversation, it makes my job just that much more difficult. The chairs in this classroom are very disturbing as the constantly give off loud squeaks and creaks. I have had several guests who are appalled by the constant distraction of the noisy seats. The projector is ok for general powerpoint but poor brightness and color quality for videos which are used more and more in the classes. The lighting is flaky and the dimmers need replacing. Really appreciated the prompt help from IT when equipment failed. It would be great, however, if equipment was checked by IT before each quarter, to prevent last-minute failures and fixes. Olson 241 olson 6 Olson 6 Olson 6 Olson and Wellman Olson fixed chair classroom 45 students Olson or Giedt small classroom s Olson, 1st floor, midsized lecture (70 students) Olson, about 60, on 2nd floor Physical Science 48 Physics 130 Physics 185 physics/ge ology ??, about 40 students Physics; 25 Roesller 55 Roesller 66 Roessler Compared w Olson 1 and 7 Olson 241 is cramped and hard to do group work in; I know, however, that other faculty prefer it over Olson 1 and Olson 7. But it is my least favorite of those three rooms. Much better tech support in Olson than in Veihmeyer in my experience. The quality of projected images, specifically their brightness, was unacceptable. I emailed about this problem, but there was no followup. I moved my class to another room. Also, having two screens is poor when you have images that you have to point things out on (only one part of the class gets the pointing -- or you spend too much time pointing things out on two screens). Basically, this room is not useful for projecting things other than text. Dream: movable seating, ability for small groups of students to gather around their own panel, internet by wire only so students do not surf on own http://studentofthemonth.steelcase.com/student/dr.-lennie-scott-webber Olson 6 is a much better example of a large lecture room -- shallow and wide, with much more space between the desks, cooler air, and better acoustics. There is also blackboard space on either side of the screen, allowing for multiple forms of overhead at once. Same comments as above but in the rooms with windows at least I could adjust the blinds so that I could project the images but the students cold take notes with the lights off. You REALLY need to do something about the lighting in your classrooms to make projecting possible. Even just taking out the bank of lights at the front of the room where the screen is would be a huge improvement! Air quality was also very poor. Fixed chairs are annoying. Interfere with small discussion groups and with the ability to arrange all seats in a circle. Equally annoying in large and small classrooms. I think that more rooms should be set up in a seminar style--with tables rather than desk chairs. This is a major problem for those of us who teach in the humanities in smaller classes (30 and under). Rows do not facilitate intellectual exchange and desk chairs always need to be rearranged to facilitate a round table situation. Fixed seating is annoying and stymies thoughts of group work. Again, I prefer White board. The seats are fixed on the floor, making group work for students especially difficult. I want students to talk to one another in small groups. This room makes it difficult. I really like having the blackboards that slide up and down. Blackboards are too short in height. This room needs general refurbishment. These are great LITTLE classrooms used for physics and math sections. They have loads of blackboard space but cannot accommodate many students. We need more lecture halls like this -- but large enough for 50-70 students, There is a fine such room in Giedt. Screens cover white boards. Too much light on screens when lights in the front are turned on. Too dark with them off Same comments as Roesller 66 Many lights are always out and students find it had to see in certain places in the room. Lousy accoustics. And this room is too hot when Roesller 55 is fine, as is usually the case. The air in both rooms seems to be connected...so if one is changed, the other is either too hot or too cold. Roe 55 could really use a digital voice recorder in the smart panel! 55 Roessler 55 Roessler 55 Roessler 55 AND 66 Roessler 66 Sci Lect 123 Sci Lect 123 Sci Lect 123 Sci Lect 123 Science Lecture Building Science Lecture hall Science Lecture Hall scilec 123 Social Sci 1100 Social Sci 1100 Social Sci 1100 Social Sci 1100 Social Sci 1100 Social Science 1100 360 students All upper division and grad students Electrical outlets should be in the podium/island. The island is setup for a lab science with a sink, etc. which is awkward. This is a model classroom in many ways. The lights are dimmable and the screen is big enough that all the students can see the information. Air quality is sometimes an issue but usually much better than in Olson and Wellman. This year, the chalk boards in both 55 and 66 Roessler have not been working as well as they used to. I'm not sure if this is due to the change in chalk, which I did not like, or that the boards are not being cleaned as well overnight. In any case, it's now harder to read for the students. It's now chalk that makes a lighter line on a dirtier board. Lighting is a perennial problem in Roe 66. Burned-out lights (or possibly it's a problem with the light socket itself) in the back create very dark areas. I feel sorry for students who have to take exams in those areas. This room needs a BIG clock in the back so that the instructor can have a clock to monitor the pace of the lecture. Presently there is no clock except in front (which is hidden by the screen). Haven't tried to access the internet except with ethernet in that classroom. Very nice room. Can use the chalkboard and screen together. Blackboards are covered when the screen is down. Two screens and two projectors would be nice in this room so that you can project the lecture and write notes on the document camera at the same time. I believe that there is no clock in there; clocks are great . If it isn't Science lecture Hall it was 1100 Soc Sci. Clicker reception erratically spotty during lectures. the same equipment was used in Soc Sci 1100 without problem, so some effect of the room with the clicker receiver. not sure there is anything to do about that, but it would be good to warn the prof. This room is so large that blackboard use is not feasible. I occasionally use Internet Access, but whether it is wired or wireless is not important. as faculty I should automatically be connected to the internet; there is no instruction for switching between my laptop and a projector that is hooked up via a vga cable; there is no such thing and I ended up having to scan everything to my laptop; the quality as a result of the displays is compromised. I should be able to hook up several devices and switch back and forth with a touch on a key pad; I'd like to see these rooms equipped with computers so that I don't have to take my own laptop to every lecture for Pwer Point presentations (like computer-equipped classrooms in Hutchison). The single screen that largely covers all of the blackboards is terrible for an instructor like myself who needs to simultaneously do projection and make use of the blackboard. This is a fairly functional room. It is impossible to see the screens with the lights on. With the lights off it is too dark to take notes. One cannot use the screens and the while boards simultaneously Be nice to be able to use the chalkboard and the screen easily during the same lecture. One chalkboard will not stay up. Also, has an unfinished look about it. Always dirty. Be nice if there was a "mud room" so to speak in the back so the back doors do not open right onto the street. When students come in late it is distracting to sit in the back--you hear the road noise. I don't believe that this room has wireles, but that is not a disadvantage to me as long as I can continue to hook to the internet connection on the multimedia podium. Social Sciences 1100 Social Sciences 80 Social Sciences Building, bottom level, room 70 I think. 9 students. Sproul Hall SS1100. SSH 80, 81 Storer 1322 Storer 1322 Storer 1322 Storer 1342 Storer 1344 Surge 3 Room 1309 Surge III Surge III -22 students Surge III (Aprox 100 students) Surge III 1309 The room is configured in a way that allows use of the chalkboard OR the main screen for powerpoint, but NOT BOTH. This is a bit of a problem for me. As a result, I use the chalkboard only. Students are unable to concentrate in this room. Their responsiveness in this room os much lower than their responsiveness in any other room I have taught in. The ceiling lights for the blackboard were obscured by a screen fixture hanging directly below them, and there was never enough light on the blacboard. The room itself was quite dark too. These seminar rooms really are in need of careful redesign with console/equipment support and any other state-of-the-art technological developments. This is a great place to teach. Great in all regards The acoustics in this room are so poor that it is impossible to teach a foreign language. Why don't these rooms have working clocks? I find this terribly annoying. This room needs renovation. Also, better indication of where the lighting panel is would be helpful (e.g., next to the actual light switch, a notice that dimmer light controls are on the lab bench), as it's not an intuitive location and took me a couple of weeks to find it the first time I taught in the room. problems with the room: The DVI cable does not work with my computer. I can't use the VGA since I don't have a vga adapter for my computer (new mac). The new microphone is no longer has a way to clip it on. Not all professors wear clothes with pockets to put the mic in. The volume control on the mic on the console does not work. It is not possible control the lights with the the panel and light up the board effectively. I have used the room in the past with none of these problems. I *love* black boards and writing on them. Some blackboard chalk is great. Some brands are too hard and do not erase. I generally bring a stash of my own chalk and my own (chamois) eraser. I profoundly dislike white boards. The screen faces the windows, which are so bright as to make the projection poor. The projector is not powerful enough to illuminate dark slides (the same slides show perfectly in SS1100, where I have taught). Twice the internet has been nonfunctional in this classroom. Once I called the number, and a polite and thoroughly competent person has arrived. The second time I simply gave the lecture without calling the tech. I will request not to have this classroom next time I teach this class owing to the direction of the screen and the weak projector. The MAJOR problem I have at UCD is that there is no large classroom on campus with moveable tables and chairs. I need a flexible setup in order to do "active learning" exercises with classes, generally breaking the class into small groups for role plays, sketch exercises, etc. PLEASE ensure that such a room is available. Not having one locks all instructors into a traditional lecture mode of instruction. Pens for the white boards could be stored in the locked console drawer. Room is nice and intimate for a class of 15. For 22, some have to pile into chairs behind a set of tables arranged in a "U". The whole building, however, is decrepit and going to class there can be a depressing experience. The room is too wide and the projection quality is only adequate. It would be helpful for the lighting control to be such that the screen can be darker and some lights in the front and rear of the room controlled by zones. The continuous desk seating is great, I wish more of the large lecture classrooms had this. However, the width of the room means it's hard to see the far ends of the whiteboards from the opposite end of the class, and the far ends are the only spots available when the screen is down, which makes it impossible to do a combination of PowerPoint slide and whiteboard material during lecture. Surge III. surge IV, 135 students the thrre many halls in Giedt University Club dance studio aka Nelson Hall studio Veihmeyer 212 Veihmeyer 212 Wellman Wellman small rooms 109, similar Wellman 01 Wellman 02 Wellman 06 Wellman 105 Wellman 105 Wellman 106 Wellman 106 Wellman 11? - 25 Wellman 111 Wellman 119 Don't like the placement of the podium/console. To far to the left. Since I use iPad to project Keynote presentations, I have no remote to advance the slides. So, I alway have to walk all the way over to the podium in order to advance the slides. If the VGA cable were longer, that might help. This room shape works well for lecture, as no students are too far away. The screen is awkwardly placed to use the whiteboard, however. These rooms are models, and a delight to use this room needs a lot of work to bring it up to general standard for technologically assisted teaching and movement. I use it a lot with skype visual conferencing and it could do with some ability to create a slightly darker area to project the images. could be solved with a couple of curtains... AV Console hook up requires restarting when using a Mac rather than plug and play as w/ most projectors. Strange. And requires arriving early to make sure it will work and not delay start of class. Two things. There is no means of podcasting lectures from this classroom or, to my understanding, other classrooms of this size. And I became worried about the amount of chalk dust in the room and its risks to the laptop I used for Powerpoint. The rooms in Wellman are terrible for air quality and temperature The chalk dust makes the room an occupational hazard - I have come to live with the chalk stripe across my tush, but I'm really tired of spending the entire quarter coughing for several days a week. Need projector ready for iPad2 use. It would be nice if the lighting were set up so that the lecturer could be well lit without the lighting also making it difficult to see the screen. The last time I taught in this room, several of the desks were broken. The shape of the room is awful (long and narrow). The students in the back of the room feel anonymous and disconnected from the lecture. I really don't care for (hate) using black boards and chalk!!! I much rather use white boards and markers. Dimmable lights would really help. Internet is spotty and practically unusable here. The number of desks makes room seem too crowded, and it's hard for students to work together in a small group-arrangement. Smart panel controls are slow to respond. would like to have more uniform podcast technology throughout campus Same problem with the quality of the video projection and the lighting control in the front of the room is often not working properly....It is either dim or out Room was too small The room is fine for a grad seminar of 8-10 but would be REALLY crowded with 15, which I believe is the actual seat limit. Air temperature has gotten better in the last couple years, they used to really crank the heat in winter. I haven't taught in this room since fall, and the last class in which I used a lot of internet was over a year ago, so I don't remember details, but I remember it was a bit of a hassle. 119 Wellman is a good room for my classes and I hope to teach in this room in the future. Wellman 119 Wellman 126 Wellman 126 Wellman 2 Wellman 2 Wellman 2 Wellman 2 Wellman 2 Wellman 2 Wellman 207 Wellman 209 Wellman 216 Wellman 216 Wellman 226 Wellman 226 Wellman 229 If this is the room I am remembering, the audio system is terrible -- weak and lacking sufficient control. The lighting similarly is problematic -- lights failing and not well controllable. Fixed seats are fine for lecture, but make it impossible to reconfigure for break out discussion. In general, these general assignment classrooms enforce the podium lecture format we all claim is dead. Finally, the chalkboards in Wellman get used in the evenings by student groups and the maintenance staff cannot keep them clean. There is so much chalk dust in some that it provokes my allergies. On one occasion (again, I'm not sure it was 119), an electrical plug had been broken off in the outet, obviously shorted out, and posed a serious electrocution hazard until I called for repair. Chairs are often broken, tossed around, and on two occasions I had to have tables replaced because they had broken legs and would not support my laptop. The room is REALLY crammed. It's uncomfortable for students to sit so jam packed for 2-hour lectures. The seats come far too close to where the professor stands and lectures. It's really difficult to turn in tests because there is no space for an aisle if someone sits behind the table. The blackboard / screen arrangement is unworkable. When the screen is down, you have almost no blackboard space accessible. Even without the screen, there is too little blackboard space. Needs movable blackboards so you can have more information showing simultaneously. The universal remote control does not work well if you need to go back to DVD menus and move to a different chapter. I can't seem to locate a button that will take you back to the menu. In addition, the display only gives you the current time location of the DVD, but not the Chapter number. The VGA cable is stored in the same drawer as the wireless mic which means that I occasionally come to class and the drawer is locked. Why not store both of the cables in the same drawer and move the mic to a dedicated drawer that can be locked? Would also be nice if the classroom could be cleaned--it's filthy. Although the shape of the room is somewhat awkward in that students on one side have difficulty seeing the board on the other, it is better than the long, thin rooms like 6 Wellman with limited blackboard space. In general, this is a very good room for both screen and blackboard presentations. Generally, I have few concerns. Another room that needs renovation, perhaps more so: the seats are falling apart, and the lighting is terrible with limited control. The projection screen is too small, and it blocks the blackboard. This arrangement for a room this size is ridiculous. Students seated toward the sides of the room can't see the screen At one point during the winter quarter, a couple of the ceiling lights were flicking on and off like a strobe light when I tried to lower the lights in order to use the computer projector. It took a few weeks and several attempts to notify the classroom hotline in order to rectify the problem. This room is OK, but very small; the blackboards are OK, but the ones in the back are difficult to access, b/c there are many students, many desks, and some students are sitting w/their back against the blackboards. Also, the other (front) blackboards are scratched, and have not been thoroughly cleaned in a long time. Therefore, since someone decided to use colored chalk that "embedded" itself in the surface, it is sometimes useless to try to use those blackboards. And, this classroom is very very dirty:( The room is almost always quite warm. This seems to be the case generally in Wellman--from the basement up through the second floor. I can prop the door open for air. The wireless is sporadic in there and so I use a cable with the laptop. In other Wellman classrooms, I have had various compatibility issues with the projector. Apparently, when projectors are replaced, the default settings are kept. In this way, the settings vary from room to room. the wired internet isn't reliable, either It is very hard for students at the back to see the board. Welllman is in general very poor and has some of the worst rooms on campus The room only has 80 seats and I expect students to attend class. The room is 4 rows of 20 nailed down chairs. It is impossible to have a discussion and it is like teaching sideways in an airplane. This room is filthy; there is chalk dust on everything. The seating is chaotic. I was forced to cap my class to fit the room. to top it off frats and other student organizations must use the room after hours and the chalk boards are covered with notes and messages. the only board that is consistently cleaned off is the one at the front of the room at arm level. No clock. The room is like a dungeon. Wellman 233 Wellman 25 Wellman 26 Wellman 26 Wellman 26 Wellman 3 Wellman 5 Wellman 6 Wellman 6 Wellman 80 students Wellman Hall Wellman Hall, over 100 students Wellman room 1 (20-40) I've had this classroom several times, and students never fail to complain about feeling claustrophobic, although I will say that it is one of the few rooms where I feel the students aren't drowning in a sea of space or far too separated from the front of the room. For some reason, things are always getting stolen from this room: the front table, the chairs, etc., and it takes a long time to get them replaced. Someone vomited on the floor at the beginning of the quarter, and that took weeks to get cleaned up. I like having 2 screens, since the room is rectangular; I still do not like teaching in the basement, w/out windows This is a dismal room -- hot, airless, long and narrow, with bolted-down seats and no way for students to move around easily. A cordless mike would help, but mostly, they are packed like miserable sardines. The media cabinet is horribly placed and is actually dangerous. As a left-handed person I back across the room from left to right as I use the board, and I often bump into the media cabinet. When we first were in the room this quarter I removed a hook that sticks out toward the instructor. I kept it with me so that it would not be reinstalled. It is very dangerous and could cause serious harm, such as spine or kidney damage. I have reported this kind of thing for years and thus think this is a lawsuit waiting to happen if somebody gets injured. The media cabinet is very badly placed also -- it should be a bit out of the way of the board, perhaps over hear the door and in front of that seat in the first row. I bump into it regularly. Also, the board is hard to erase, as it is often very dirty, and things are hard for the students to see on them. My students are less comfortable in 26 Wellman than in other classrooms. In Wellman 3 it is impossible to dim the lights, which makes viewing the computer projection difficult while maintaining enough light for students to take notes. The other problem is that the A/V smartpanel automatically shuts off after a couple hours, without warning, which can be disruptive to whatever I'm projecting on the screen at the time. As the lights can only be turned on or off, the image quality of the screen when using the projector is really poor and the slides can be barely seen. Unfortunately, if one turns the light off everybody would fall asleep. There should be an intermediate lighting level that allows a better visualization of the slides on screen. Th right hand side of the blackboard (right when facing the board) is inaccessible; it is blocked by the AV console. This room also has a problem with the media cabinet, but it is not as bad as 26 Wellman since the board is bigger and the cabinet is next to the side wall. I thus have some sense that I am getting close to it when I back across the room, since I know the wall is approaching. It should be moved away from the board also. It had a hook on it when we moved there this quarter, so I took it off and took it over to 26 Wellman. Ditto about the board being somewhat hard to see. long, narrow room, hardly any blackboard space; blackboards are not good--not erased cleanly Some class rooms in Wellman Hall are simply too crowded. Students in the back of the room hard to see. Writing on old chalkboords often barely visible (poor quality of chalk?) Instructors get covered with dust chalk, students have a hard time reading what is on the board. Not having a highly visible clock makes it very challenging to maintain a good pace during lectures. I rarely use a watch and it's difficult to monitor the time on my laptop during my powerpoint presentation. I would prefer the screen and posiibly two screens for powerpoint projections to be sitauated in the upper front corner or corners of the room for two reasons. 1) Students in the back can see the screen more clearly rather than being obstructed in view when the screen is in the middle in the front of the room. The second reason is that the screen/s will be more out of the way so the the lecturer can write in the middle of the white or blackboard while a powerpoint is being displayed to expand or answer questions while writing on the board. This screen arrangement should be applied to all classrooms on campus particulalrly in those rooms where the student seating and floor is level. wellmen 1 Wohlers 234 Wright 101 Young 198 Young 198 Young 184 Young 192 YOUNG 198 young 198, apprx 170 students Young Hall 184 Young Hall. Seats about 120 students. Theater setting. I'd prefer white board to black board.. Chalks produce powder that stick to my lap book. Chalks are not healthy, period. the lights in the front of the room should have the ability to dim so as to not cast glare on the screen. also moobilenet is iffy from this room--sometimes I can get on and other times not--but the ethernet is inaccessible since the built-in cord is too short to reach the podium desk. since the new technology went in it's great. Good room if you happen to have under 300 students in your class I request that sliding boards will be installed. Having only one board is not very useful for efficient teaching. This room is terribly uncomfortable in the fall and spring quarters. If the A/C units are turned on, students won't be able to hear. This room is usually too hot and stuffy. The configuration of seatings of this room is not suitable for exams. Not much space between the seats. I appreciate very much your consideration of these issues and thank you in advance for your time. The AV console consistently crashed on me in the middle of lecture. This happened at least 10 times during the quarter. I would be able to display from my mac laptop fine for the first hour but then it would crash about half way through. I needed to reboot the whole system to get it to work again. I feel like this was disruptive to students learning and should not be happening. We either need a new system or better technical check-ups. Also, whenever I plugged in at the beginning of lecture, the systems made loud static noises that reverberated and cycled. I dont know why this should happen and in general think that the system should be compatible with both windows and mac systems. Finally, the cables frequently got tangled. Is there a way to set up a remote system for display? This would make things much easier. In general, the AV projector system was outdated compared to what I have worked with in the past. Could podcasting be made easier here? We had to purchase a podcasting recorder which my TA had to have in his lap. Student seating is too close and makes it too easy for them to cheat. But this is likely difficult to remedy. Many of the chairs, however, were broken, at least when I taught there. I appreciate very much your consideration of these issues and thank you for your time. The lighting in this room does not work with the boards. From the back of the room you cannot read the writing on the blackboard. The rigid seats are undesirable, but of greater concern is that the room is fairly deep, so the students in the back are far away from the instructor and cannot see well. For 70 students you really need a sloped floor. Too many students for such a small space. Chalks and blackboard are unhealthy and messy. No idea what a "general assignment classroom" is… by instructor/ Wireless access needs to be controllable Q 7: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Is there a classroom that you believe is functionally working but is fundamentally flawed in some way? Or, is there a comment that you would like to share regarding the current state of our classrooms ? Open-Ended Response Many classrooms in Olson and Wellman have the same serious problems with lighting and air quality/temperature as described above and are thus fundamentally flawed and actually barely usable or unusable as with Olson 118. You need to go through in a systematic way with someone who understands the lighting needs for projecting screen images and conduct an inventory of the absolutely unacceptable lighting conditions and then systematically correct them. Do the same thing with air quality/temperature. The comments about the universal remotes and SmartPanel displays applies to every classroom I have used. Because there is very little functionality in terms of controlling DVDs (and none for the VCR) on the actual smartpanel, the remote needs to be programmed in such a way that you have full control--beyond basic commands like play, stop, pause, fast forward, etc. Also, most of the classrooms in Wellman are filthy. Would appreciate a cleaning of the front desk, podium, chair, etc. Only lock up the wireless mics, not the VGA cables--move them if necessary. The Internet access in most of the rooms in Wellman is poor. I cannot get a reliable enough connection to show short videos from the Internet. Contrast this with teaching in Giedt where I am able to show entire films via the Internet. Every classroom in which blackboards have been eliminated in favor of white boards and screens. Why, why, why can't the classrooms be equipped with a basic, functioning computer so that faculty could just bring thumb drives rather than schlepping their laptops around? It has to cost the university more in wear and tear on the laptops than it would to provide such basic functions. No. Wellman 5 or 6, one of the narrow ones. The narrow dimension is from back to front, perpendicular to the screen. I was assigned it for a freshman seminar on animated film, and many of the students had a very diagonal view of the screen. It would be better if the screen were on the side of the room with the door. The noisy chairs in Olsen are the greatest distraction to teaching. health sci Sac campus classrooms new and in much better shape than many Davis campus classrooms, but still way behind the best they could be -- with flexible space for group work and problem solving See the above regarding 109 Olson. That room should be re-designed. Overall, the classrooms are deteriorating. LCD projectors are getting old, so resolution is decreasing. More maintenance is required. Overall, I do not like the rigid seats, although I understand their purpose. There is often no chalk, or insufficient little pieces with the chalkboard. Quality of chalk has also declined over the years. For large rooms or rooms with poor lighting, this is important. Almost every classroom has lights that are burned out and/or temperature control problems. On a positive note, I use the document viewers often. Please keep them. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 The problem we face--it is slowly being resolved--is that NON-generally assignable spaces like Music Dept classrooms don't get regular updates along with the rest of the campus. When I arrived 8 years ago, we have no projectors installed and only one for the whole department, which had to be carted around and set up fresh each time. Things are better now, but only because we have spent departmental money and had help from the Dean's office. We could make these rooms generally assignable, of course, but ONLY if we can be assured of DECENT pianos, white boards WITH music staff lines, etc.--a real hassle for all schedulers. Much easier to update non-generally assignable rooms to a basic standard of operation. see above: Chalkboards poor condition. Nailed chairs which do not allow for discussion or collaborative projects in class. Not enough classrooms. I think it's time to give up on "General Assignment" and non-GA and find out where the important large classes are taught and make them right. Things like: sound interference in the wiring, bringing a loud hum into all music; projectors that need tuning for color (but can't be got at to fix), etc., are a daily vexation. BLACKBOARDS (or Whitboards) The older classrooms have poor board systems. A board is an importatn piece of hardware when trying toengage a class in discussion, especially a large class! Temporary Classroom 3 is ridiculous. There's an LCD projector and a screen, but the room is so short (height-wise) and so wide (side to side) but shallow (front to back), that hardly any of the students have an unobstructed view of the screen. You might as well not use PowerPoint at all. Fixed chairs are fundamentally flawed except in auditorium-type classrooms. Overall, the classrooms are nice and well maintained (clean & orderly). The MAJOR problem I have at UCD is that there is no large classroom on campus with moveable tables and chairs. I need a flexible setup in order to do "active learning" exercises with classes, generally breaking the class into small groups for role plays, sketch exercises, etc. PLEASE ensure that such a room is available. Not having one locks all instructors into a traditional lecture mode of instruction. I love the fact that they all have SmartPanels and projectors as well as wireless connections. I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO SEE MORE CLASSROOMS WITH MOVEABLE SEATING TO FACILITATE SMALL GROUP WORK. This is particularly important in classrooms that seat 30-70, but I would like to see this in ALL classrooms. Also, I wish I didn't have to carry my own laptop around if I want to go on the Internet. SocSci 1100 - the podium set-up requires the lecturer to stay anchored at the podium rather than setting up the computer elsewhere for mobility (could be solved by remote mouse, I guess)....If students are to use laptops in class, wireless access really must function at high capacity AND there need to be electrical ports for battery charging (since we don't have really good battery technology yet). Additionally, there needs to be more space per student to use the laptop efficiently. The AV support is generally excellent... really no complaints there... very easy to use and consistent among classrooms, which is great. The classrooms feel very dated however, lighting is poor, seating is in poor condition, the air is often stale and smelly, and the large classrooms I typically teach in feel like they belong more in a community college than a first rate university. Clicker support is poor as campus clickers are not well supported by MACs despite the fact that many of us use MACs... we need another option. In general, most classroom in which I have taught are pleasant and conducive to learning. One general problem that surfaces in the transitional period between winter and spring is that most if not all rooms do not permit local climate control. Sometimes it's warm outside and the heat is still on inside, which makes the temperature uncomfortable in the classroom. In general the smartPanel are useful but classroom are often not clean; too many students crammed into small spaces. Our classrooms are an embarrassment. They are run-down and dingy. Internet connections are flaky. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 I've been impressed that most large classrooms now have SmartPanels that work! It would be great if it were possible to turn off or block internet access to rooms during exams and even lectures. 27 Olson, last time I taught there (Winter 2011), had HORRIBLE air and climate control. We desperately need more mid-to-large classrooms (i.e., seat 150-250 students) in the main campus area. Scheduling a class for >100 students where they don't end up in a room where they're on top of each other is difficult. 216 Wellman - poor visibility. They all have problems. We cope. But nothing stands out. Replacing the black boards with white boards will be a good idea. No. no, but they are mostly overheated in winter Classrooms are barely adequate. I would like to do more with technology in the classroom, but the consoles currently in use are no longer state-of-the-art. Showing videos is particular problematic; using a laptop to show videos is also very difficult to impossible. Microphones are often barely functional. Room climate is very uncomfortable in general. And, lighting is inadequate. Chairs are uncomfortable. In general, things are looking pretty dilapidated. See comment above re screens obscuring the blackboard. Also, I LOVE the document cameras, but not all of the smaller classrooms have them yet. Also -- netbooks are so cheap now -- they're probably not too expensive compared to the A-V console that's already there. Couldn't we have a little netbook (with a USB port) permanently stationed in a classroom, so that we wouldn't have to lug our own notebook PCs around in order to show something on our computers or access the internet? Well, just a wish. Also, I'd love to use clickers, but from what I've heard of them so far, they are not that easy and spontaneous to use. So I'm not jumping in yet -- who has time to learn and prepare for that? See above for 1001 Giedt SocSci 1100--I don't teach there anymore, but it certainly was a dreary experience when I did. both of the above in the areas indicated They could be better but could also be worse. As far as he classrooms I have attended, I think that they are pretty much OK. The classrooms in Wellman and Olson I usually use are pretty good in general, but the student seating is not very adaptable. Specifically, the older "tablet-arm chairs" should be updated. Desk part too small, too slanted—books fall off all the time. adfsg The classrooms aren't perfect, but they work. Don't know No For my purposes, none encountered No The new General Education requirements expect students to complete 12 units in Visual Literacy. We don't have general assignment classrooms equipped to meet this need. There are users, likely at night or on the weekends, that leave the front teaching area of the classroom in complete disarray, with cables strewn about and debris (cups, papers, stuff) left behind. no, I don't use many classrooms on the main campus 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 All the classrooms I have been teaching in the last few years are increasingly dirty. I believe we should not use carpet, and where there is carpet, it should be pulled out. Also, whoever assigns the classrooms must be looking at the enrollment # only - or primarily. However, certain classrooms are not suitable to some subjects (e.g., those whose seats are bolted to the floor, or where the seats are connected to each other, are not suitable for group work, or other activities). I think that instructors should be able to state their preferences for the type of classroom that is most suitable to their teaching methods/activities before the rooms are assigned, not after (i.e., "complaining" about them) No. So many of the campus classrooms are grubby, gloomy places, technology can only solve so many issues. If its actually unpleasant to sit in a room its hard to imagine students are going to focus very well. The other issue is the blinds in these classrooms. Many are old and barely functional, sometimes not coming down evenly or opening properly Some Hart classrooms are too wide and shallow -- it's difficult to track students in them. there should be a way to eliminate lights on the screen while allowing dim lights for the student seating. Nobody seems to design this in. See above -- Olson 206 not applicable None No The issue of compatibility of Mac laptops with the consoles is a chronic problem. Adapters are not usually available on short notice. I teach courses in which students give presentations. I warn them to scope out the equipment first, but being students they usually don't! no.... but I have less success in dealing with you than with my tech staff in our department. you are slow to respond and you don't always help me with my specific problem chairs that don't move is fundamental flaw None in particular Again, see comment above about Wellman rooms not that i know of 67 Veihmeyer 212's fixed seats are a major problem for group work 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 Many classrooms have a sad, depressing feel and could use updating. Most, however, perform adequately as lecture halls and discussion spaces. The placement of the media cabinets is very poor in many rooms, particularly in Wellman. It is almost as if the designers of the rooms have little clue of the variety of activities that might go on in them. Many of the erasers are poor, and while maintenance seems to vacuum carpets and empty trash, the most important part of the room to me, the boards, are often left quite dirty. The help buttons on most of the Smart Panels don't work. Some of the rooms in old buildings. They are old and not very conducive to getting students involved in discussion. They are suited to an older style of lecturing rather than interaction. I generally feel that classrooms are very uneven in quality and upkeep. NA 184 Young Hall - has an issue with air temperature and climate. Large lecture hall in Young-- room shape is unworkable! Most classrooms I teach in are fine for my needs. This survey is a good way to catch the few that have problems. 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 There aren't enough large classrooms. If enrollment is increasing and faculty are decreasing, this is not sustainable. No. Repeating myself: Nice to have computers in classrooms no I would like to see more flexible seating in at least one or two general assignment classrooms. Outdated and not equipped for nwe tecnlogies Overall, I feel that the current state of our classrooms is sub-optimal for modern teaching and does not allow faculty to utilize resources and educational technologies that would benefit our students for more interactive learning. UC Riverside was recently featured on Undercover Boss and one of their lecture hall classrooms (for 250300 students) was shown and it was more impressive than any classroom I have seen at UC Davis. In addition to looking more modern, it had two screens, two projection methods, and better seating. Instead of replacing classes with online lectures and having all course content online, we need to improve our educational technologies in the classroom to maximize the benefits of technologies as well as interactions and student engagement. Art 204: Lighting is bad. AHI courses need to be able to dim the lights so students can take notes in the dark while studying images on the screen. Can't be done with existing lighting. This would be my top priority of things to fix in this room. Need better temperature control! And if we could ever afford it...better seating so students could easily get in and out in the middle of the room. Not enough space. In Welman and in Haring Hall i have on occasion been in classrooms where the wireless connection does not work - i always report it when this occurs and have usually been told the problem is localized, known (reported before) but there appears to be no fix. No see above No. young 198. please see above, i.e., The AV console consistently crashed on me in the middle of lecture. This happened at least 10 times during the quarter. I would be able to display from my mac laptop fine for the first hour but then it would crash about half way through. I needed to reboot the whole system to get it to work again. I feel like this was disruptive to students learning and should not be happening. We either need a new system or better technical check-ups. The seating is too close and encouraged cheating. 100 Hunt Please see comment above. Also please provide a chart with instructions for lecturers how to turn on the powerpoint and other basic requirments. I recently had to give a lecture in the Vet School and had to call someone to help me turn on the projector which was not was not very obvious no They could be cleaner. I suppose janitorial activities have been cut, but sometimes the rooms get really dirty, especially Young 198. no, I'm really happy with both scilec and 3 Kleiber- its amazing how well you can see the students in such a large hall, and the classrooms are always funcitional. no no No n/a 1322 storer. I added my comments above. no 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 I did not likely teaching in Wellman 126 due to reasons described above Yes, 1003 Geidt Hall is a terrific classroom with terrible lighting by the blackboard. Having come from schools without such extensive and well-maintained instructional technology, I want to say how wonderful it is to have computer classrooms, on-site technical support. and the SmartPanel, all of which allow me to integrate many useful exercises into my classes. The single biggest problem I face is the lack of large classrooms. I would and could teach a much larger class, but the campus does not have an adequate number of classrooms for large classes!!! I would say that the SmartPanels are flawed insofar as they are off to the side, with cords you can easily trip over, and strange doodads you need to project from your laptop not available in the drawers. Some classrooms have blackboards up on the side of bolted-down desks, useless to the instructor. And why do we not have clocks in the classrooms? I realize, too, that cordless mikes might walk away, but they are key in large lecture classes. No comment. As noted above - board lighting in 1001 Giedt is terrible, screens covering blackboards with no alternative option in other listed rooms make teaching very difficult for me. no No. Storer 1344 if the internet or laptop projector is needed. From my days teaching large lecture sections...I am not crazy about the acoustics in 1100 Social Sciences and Humanities. I generally leave the blackboard and wander up and down aisles. The acoustics in 1100 SSH are such that sound does not travel well from the seating area. Because I do not lecture with voice amplification, this makes it harder for students to hear me. (I do not use a microphone because if I do, students ask me to turn it up so that they can hear. If I don't, they ask classmates to be quiet. My voice carries well enough that this works.) Not really. The classroom is old and not very nice, but I make it work. n/a Research 1, conference room, UCDHS see above, all are fundamentally flawed in the location of the screen that covers up the bulk of the black or white boards 164 Art. The indirect lighting is poor, and this is critical for showing visual images in Art History classes. no None I've only taught in GH. 198 Young is a ridiculous shape--you cannot use any of the room except the very center. Q8: From the list below, please check the five educational technologies most critical to your teaching. (Even if the technology is not currently available in your classroom, but nonetheless you believe it is critical to your teaching and/or your students' learning). If there is something not on this list, please list it here. 1 5 The wireless on campus is incredibly and embarrassingly spotty and often does not work in the classrooms. Why do you not provide ethernet connections that work? I have tried in countless occasions to use the ethernet port with my own cord (that I have tested elsewhere) and the ethernet ports NEVER work! Why not? Why have you not fixed these. As you can tell i have been extremely frustrated with the classroom technology at this university and I have even considered leaving because of it. It is really not acceptable. Abundant blackboard space -- preferably of the two-layered sort that allows you to keep something visible while writing the next bits up. 13 15 18 20 25 27 30 36 37 38 55 56 58 60 61 64 65 67 71 72 It would be very helpful to have clicker software and smartsite integrated. I should note that by comparison to a widely-used platform like Blackboard, the SmartSite and Gradebook platforms seem awkward and difficult to use. I have never been able to understand why UCD has never adopted Blackboard, and I still find SmartSite requires new learning with every iteration of my teaching. Some of the audio I use is podcast, but most is CD, also DVD and, yes, VHS for operas that are otherwise unavailable. I need a piano or keyboard. The capacity to project powerpoint Markers for the whiteboard. in order to use smartsite for online teaching it needs to be available 24/7. It can't go down for periodic maintenance. SmartSite wasted a lots of my time. It is not user friendly. The gradebooks are killing me. I have 400 students. 10-15 are in University Extension. I ahve to keep everybody in my grade book but when it comes time to submit grades I need to pull out the University Extension (open enrollement) students. We end up with issues of our grade book not matching the class roster and it casues issues with getting grades submitted. can somebody please bring University Extension into the 20th century. I know they think they are the leading edge, but I have to submit hardcopy grades. They should have their grades come in with the class roster. Their students should be listed in the class roster, I should not have to enter them into the roster and then pull them out when it comes time to submit grades. I am rapidly getting to the point that I am going to refuse to take University Extension Sudents until they are transparent from the instructor end. So the gradebook has some real limitation, but you can blame UE. Call if you want backup! I was going to put SmartSite, since having a CMS is vital to the way I teach, but the truth is that I hate SmartSite, and I'd much rather the campus support Moodle instead. Would like a YouTube-type feature without having to use Google/YouTube. Would like access to LE editing equipment and software to make use of smartphone video shot by students. sometimes the web conferencing does not support skype and this is centrally important to my teaching. computer plus projector for showing slides with examples, results from analysis, graphics, etc. Flexible classroom space, with moveable tables and chairs. It is ridiculous that the campus focuses so much on various electronic technology when this most basic educational option isn't available. Some type of collaborative real-time writing software for students to write papers together either in the computer labs or perhaps on a site. Also, some way to take attendance using SmartSite would be nice. smartsite would be critical if it was not such a flawed, counter-intuitive interface. They must have a great sales team though! Newsgroups that have the functionality of Outlook Express and/or Thunderbird. As mentioned above, infrastructure items like electrical outlets for charging and desks with room to work on laptop efficiently. O/T: my ability to teach large classes while simultaneously maximizing internet technologies currently available elsewhere would be enhanced if we had testing centers where students could take online exams that are PROCTORED and ID REQUIRED. As a language class, we use the DVD player and the laptop daily. None of the above are particularly important for my teaching. I maintain my own gradebooks, of course. So I am not sure what is meant by that category. It would be great if classrooms could be set up so that cell phone access is completely blocked. More and more in recent years, students are using smartphones in class, which is not always easy to spot in large lecture classes. Instructors end up having to repeat requests not to use such technology. This is becoming a problem not just at UC Davis but at institutions around the country. If such access could be automatically blocked somehow, this would become a non-issue for many instructors. 73 74 75 77 80 82 83 86 89 90 92 94 96 103 107 108 110 116 120 123 125 128 129 130 Usable white board markers and erasers A screen that does not block the blackboard. Lecture capture on this campus is a total joke. Two years ago, I tried to capture my lectures for podcasting. First I was given an audio recorder that was incapable of recording an entire lecture. When that problem was finally solved, two weeks into the course, I asked for help in editing the audio to create a podcast. I was told that I had to do it myself using free-ware that I could download from the Internet. In the end, I got so far behind that I just gave up. I can't believe that MIT, whose courses are now used by people all over the world, does things this way. If we want to compete with the "big boys", we have to act like the "big boys". classroom network I hate SmartSite. It's clunky, ugly, and awful. Don't know anyone who likes it. Just thought I'd share. Now I'm annoyed. I'm trying to advance to the next page of this survey and it won't, even though I've answered every question on this page. Oh, I see, you want 5 answers even though I don't use any of the ones listed. Why? So, I'll just pick some. Since this is my first year, (after a few years break) I was wondering if there are workshops to learn what is available, technology wise. It will be very usefull to learn how students can use the technology in language classes and language lab. I use clickers in BIS 1A, but do not consider them critical. Actually, probably none of the listed technologies are critical. I do consider my web site critical, but I don't use SmartSite (because it is so clunky). Document cameras -- love 'em! working A-V, temperature control , better shape for better acoustics Library books Something like SmartSite, only better. I know such things exist. This is a poorly crafted survey. You force me to choose 5, when I don't necessarily find 5 of these critical. Answers will necessarily be biased and false. Admin support I'm old fashioned--I expect face-to-face dialog and handwritten bluebooks. I've listed the ones that are most important I don't think any of these things are critical. excellent sound and video playback, conferencing (remote lecture) technology Your survey is flawed -- it made me choose 5 boxes, and I included 2 in this "other" box. So I added a random answer that is *not* really part of what I believe to satisfy the survey's insistence on 5 answers. I put SmartSite down but any teaching software that performs the same functions would be OK. Smartsite finally seems to be working reasonably well. Decent projection for powerpoint presentations in the classroom Camera projector At this time the most important things to me would be 1) safely placed media cabinets, 2) media cabinets whose placement does not interfere with use of the board, and 3) good erasers and clean boards. A SmartSite that is actually smart and useful rather than an awful interface. THIS QUESTION IS POORLY POSED. IT MAKES AN ASSUMPTION. ANSWER IS MEANINGLESS BECAUSE OF BAD DESIGN. I do not find 5 of these important. it is ANNOYING that you are making me choose non-relevant technologies!!!! The only ones I think are useful are: (1) gradebook, (2) library electronic resources, (3) smartsite The ability to use screens and blackboards at the same time USB drive presentation without bringing your own computer. 131 141 142 143 146 152 156 162 163 164 166 167 1 2 3 (1) Computers would be nice. (2) This question was a bit vague. I use and need gradebook and smart site, but not in the classroom. I don't consider ANY of these critical to my teaching. Library resources can be nice supplements. I've occasionally used Internet access in the classroom, but there is no reason I couldn't download the relevant material to my laptop before class. I don't use SmartSite at all, and I only checked it because this silly survey wouldn't let me submit with fewer than 5 checkmarks. AV access! I would love to have video AND audio lecture capture...where is this actually available? clean backboards, TAs to run Discussion Sections and help grade essay exams NOTE: ignore "GRadebook". I was forced to name a fifth item, but I don't and won't use an on-line grade book nothing else none There isn't anything else, but the survey is insisting that I check five items. LCD projector and Powerpoint Sufficiently powerful laptop computer projector in room. Movable desks. i ask students to work in small groups throughout class and wander among groups. (nb: this question required 5 answers. I generally do not use the internet during class) Smartpanels. Room simply needs a projector (not a SLIDE projector). We would be interested to learn how you use the internet with your students during your classroom sessions. Note: This is not a required response, but this information would help inform future planning. Open-Ended Response I only use it occasionally to show a news clip or something - or access the course smart site page. In fact, the students should not have internet access during class as it only distracts them. This is why it is a really good idea to have ethernet ports that actually work in the so called "smart panel". Articles and resources needed for class are often on SmartSite. Yes. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 As we discuss health issues, we ask the students to go on-line to large data bases to research questions during class. We access videos on YouTube and other sources. Some of our students are working in Second Life We regularly use online databases in the computer lab associated with one of my upperdivision classes. I do not use it in my lecture classes. To date very little. Internet access is simply too unreliable to use in large lecture classes. In small classrooms I've used it, but even there the unreliablity is a huge problem, especially wireless. I use websites such as YouTube, catalogs, and video demos. The class website has become and integral part of the classroom depending on the course. we go to publicly available data sources such as World Health Org, Or OECD, or US census. invaluable sources, ready for data manipulation and analysis I use online homework systems; it requires internet access so I can demonstrate features of the system. I show examples of concepts or processes online, mostly demonstrations in the form of video from Youtube or other websites (e.g., Frontline or HBO documentary segments). I do not use the internet during classroom sessions, but I would like to use web-based testing more regularly prior to class sessions as a means of fostering student preparation for class. I realize that this could be done via SmartSite, but that platform remains so awkward and hard to use that I have not developed the materials to enable this to happen yet. My best hope at present is to find a publisher who has developed proprietary software associated with the adoption of their text for my class. I show students video and audio clips from the internet, as well as websites that relate to course content or to opportunities outside of class related to course content. To share up to date information with them and help them navigate websites to learn upto-date material that is not in books. Also for current events. I would like to experiment with this in my smaller classes. In the larger survey courses, I prefer not to introduce potentially distracting internet activities but to have students interact in discussion. I do not use internet. I would prefer no internet access for students- they spend alot of time surfing the web. I find simulations, pictures, etc. (on the web) and project them on a screen for discussion. I show videos from the internet. I sometimes show them a website or images on the projector. Internet resources are fundamental to research assignments. The internet also provides many of the reading assignments. However, I use the internet in class only in seminar, and the seminar is not given in the general assignment classrooms. So far, I have not used it. I would probably use it some to access things on line to show to students directly using a data projector. I have created my own web site for a humanities course on the blues. The site includes a password protected section with music assignments. I depend on this for lectures to illustrate points. I also use YouTube in the classroom at times to discuss performances. Frequent joint look at SmartSite information, e-textbook, podcasts, etc. Increasing use of YouTube clips and Wiki-Images. I have large (350-420) classes of upper division and grad students. They ask a questoin and I can show them how to get their answer. I will ask a question and we will rapidly develop answers with new questions and directions. I use it to get them to think. Much of the material is on internet sites (that I did not make). I show how easy it is to do research and how to protect themselves from getting bad information. YouTube videos, TED talks, walking students through what their assignments are on SmartSite and where to find them. I do not use it live with the students You-tube videos on all sorts of topics Images Relevant websites We explore the NCBI databases and access to them. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 Running online video clips, displaying technical information on web sites, browsing the class smartsite/syllabus. Not used. I don't, but it would be nice to have better internet connectivity in all classrooms (e.g. missing from Hutchison 115). I often show them websites that have current information on them. not at all--they do enough internet surfing outside the class room I don't yet because it's not available in the classrooms I've been assigned. I sometimes show YouTube video clips, but otherwise the internet is not an active part of my lectures. It would be nice, on some occasions, to be able to look things up on the internet during a lecture, but I find it too cumbersome to switch between powerpoint and a browser. Mostly this is because the last laptop computer issued by the university to me is over 8 years old, and it's too slow. lots of skype visuals for practical tutorials, workshops and research. web connections need to be faster, and right now often get interference. Depends on class - access to online study design software, journal articles, material previously posted to smartsite. Also showing them government resources (pubmed, CDC information). I don't use the internet during lectures. I do get information from the internet for my lectures. I show an increasing number of short YouTube videos as part of classes. I teach a paperless UWP writing course now thanks to SmartSite. viewing video clips and websties Sometimes I want to show them relevant websites. This is very important in some classes, less important in others. To show online resources, datasets, relevant video clips, etc. Primarily access to videos. Also looking into a clicker technology that is fully cloudbased (TopHat Monocle), but also includes texting capabilities for students without laptops or smartphones. I would LOVE to be able to shut off the internet in my classroom as students mostly use it for facebook or IM-ing... its a distraction that they can't resist... they think they are paying attention, but they are not and its actually a hindrance. I would LOVE the ability to turn off the wireless in my classrooms... to allow them to use wireless ocassionally when its needed but to have it off most of the time to remove the temptation for them to wander in e-space When I use it, it is usually something that I am demonstrating on the screen rather than them using something along with me... only a fraction of students bring laptops to class, so I don't think I would ever have anything required that they had to use on their laptops in class. Students find topic related clips on the internet, show them to the class and talk about them. I haven't, because discouraged by lack of access in classroom during the last two years.. No To show web pages that have information relevant to lecture topics or to demonstrate technological resources relevant to the course material I do NOT do this during classroom sessions Since I can't rely on the internet working, I usually don't, other than to (try to) show them SmartSite at the beginning of the quarter. I always provide a summary of current news stories that are relevant to the course and I do that by connecting in class to webpages that have those stories. I sometimes use websites to demonstrate interactive models on websites or show movie clips library presentations on research methods students researching individual topics projecting materials from the internet students send class materials to do at home or pick up in class 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 During the class, the only thing I use internet for is when showing online videos or websites as part of lecture. I don't use the internet; too unreliable to depend on. I don't like them using the web when I'm lecturing, but I put them to work when I notice. I tell them to look things up. My TAs say that many of them are surfing the web while I'm lecturing -- and I'm not especially boring. I accept that they are able to divide their attention. Still, why encourage divided attention? I occasionally will show animated sequences from the web. Other than that, I don't use the Internet during classroom sessions. I do use Podcast and put recordings on my web site, but that isn't using the Internet during the sessions. showing videos, downloading files, demonstrating how to do literature searches I do not use the internet while teaching. My efforts to do so have not been a success. I would like very much to access internet-based video materials and show during my lectures, but my efforts to do this (with the very limited technological support I received via the phone) were a failure. I don't, yet, partly because of what I mentioned above, having to lug a notebook PC around in order to do so. There are some online animations I'd love to show in my stats class, and some short video clips here and there that would be cool to use. See earlier "wish" re having "built-in" PCs in the classrooms that we could use. We are working on small team projects throughout the quarter that require the collection of information and data during the second half of the lecture. Internet is a great tool for that as all students nowadays roam around campus with either their laptop or smartphone/tablet and permits a real-time interaction and feedback from the instructor. Use it to access and present to student primary materials including video & audio clips, music, websites, relevant to course content. No Showing upper level classes how to use the Web of Science no we access information such as Youtube videos, online newspapers, online resources (e.g., visuals such as museums virtual tours) to complement and update, even in real time, what we are doing in class. I have also used Skype to allow a student to fully participate in the class activities when this student could not be physically present; it worked pretty well. I would rather not have student Internet access in the classroom. I have enough problems with keeping student's attention in lecture as many of them are texting, doing email and surfing the web. I occasionally show things on web sites, show students how to find things on the class smartsite, or check information for a student (e.g., grade info). I generally don't use it, because it is so unreliable in classrooms. I use internet access for teaching purposes -- showing students sites where they can engage in research and streaming videos. I actually would prefer that students NOT have internet access in the classroom. Many are multi-tasking during class rather than focusing on the material. I don't use it unless I need to demonstrate an online tool (smartsite info etc) Not used. I seldom do--but occasionally I tell them to go to a particular url to get an image, or whatever. Last night in a graduate seminar the pineal gland and parietal eyes came up unexpectedly, and they went on-line to get info quickly and efficiently. I show charts, film clips all sorts of stuff but NO powerpoint. Surprising finding: Students in my largest lecture class said they were prefer that I ban computers since they find their fellow students' use of computers during class a major distraction. Because of my area in the humanities, there are phenomenal web support materials. I use these regularly. Do not use and would rather not have internet in the classroom since students spend their time surfing and generally not paying attention. 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 only occassionally to show video clips students work in small groups to complete activities involving web research and UC available databases collaborative writing in Google Docs access Smartsite for various activities I don't do much with it, but sometimes show videos and artworks that are online. Do not use it. I have them do what I am doing, or try slight variations of what I have projected on the screen. Accessing data Accessing Web pages Developing Web content with the students (Network) Remote login to remote servers I frequently access videos to show, and sometimes still images on websites. I ask students to do tasks on the internet, sometimes during class. I do not use it. I try to motivate students to think and not to turn to the internet for answers that seemingly obviate thinking. I show intrenet content during lectures I don't use it much in the classroom. I only use internet during the after class communications with students. Smartsite In order to connect concepts to the real world, I like to show news clips, videos and news articles from the internet that can be discussed or used as case studies. I teach students how to access library resources and how to find course materials on SmartSite. As well, my lectures for AHI 1DV are online, and I need to train students how to access these. Not used in the classrooms specifically. all class material is posted to the smart site or other sites with higher functionality than smartsite. Smartsite is limited in its capabilities and there are better programs out there that can be used. That allow students to input class data and to be more interactive on student projects. Last year i used the DANR protal tools for class, Adobe connect for webinar type teaching sessions, as well as a departmental website in order to have all of the features I need - it would be nice to have this all in one place and to have tools that were quite simple to use and cost-effective (watch the recharges for adobe connect you will prohibit us from using it if it gets too high!). I have become a fan of Joomla! because of its highly intuitive nature and the fact that the help function is in fact truly helpful. I also prefer Moodle to Smart site, having used both of them. Moodle likewise seems more versatile, and has a "cleaner" look to it. We show videos online or show websites with computer simulations or maps. First day of class we show them the course web stie and where to find things and also sometimes we show them the textbook web site. We show websites and have students engage with authentic materials in small groups. We also show videos through Youtoob. We blog as well. It is also useful for collaborative writing. I've accessed files on my office computer and demonstrated certain instructional websites. I dont typically use the internet during teaching but this could be useful if the wireless connections were faster. I don't and don't plan to To show video clips on Youtube and elsewhere. just to show film clips I don't. I'm not technologically sophisticated enough to use it during my classroom time. recommend reading materials found in internet. I show information posted on the wiki in smartsite sometimes to show videoclips that are only accessible via the web I occasionally show them protein structures and instructional videos from the internet. 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 The Internet is actually less important to me than the interactive features I can control through the main computer. For example, I regularly project student work onto the screen to discuss with the whole class. I also project my computer when I am demonstrating something. What would be nice is a way to lock down the *internet* access on student computers with out locking down the entire computer. Sometimes I want students to be able to write, but not web surf. Is that possible? I have already do this. Actually, I wish that students could not go online without me flipping a switch. While I use it occasionally, they surf, text, and otherwise disturb. i sometimes show videos, we do some library database searches together. I connect to websites and youtube-like videos to illustrate principles that we are studying. I do not use the internet during class. I am in touch with my students at least weekly via SmartSite and email. I sometimes share resources and visuals with my students in support of my lectures. Can't use internet at all, since neither hardwire nor wireless access is provided in the Research 1 Conference Room. I do not use the internet during classroom sessions. I use the internet to post syllabi, lecture notes, images, etc. I don't use the internet in class, though I do use it in other ways. My lecture notes often have to links to content from external sites. We also often run computer programs and simulations that are hosted on the Internet. I sometimes show you-tube or other videos during class. I access materials from the textbook publisher's web sites. From the list below please check the web based technologies most critical to your teaching. (Even if the technology is not available as a campus technology, but nonetheless you believe it is critical to your teaching and/or your students' learning). Please list other web based technologies you are/would use 1 2 3 33 34 None of these are necessary for teaching at all. SmartSite SmartSite manufacturer's cut sheets and instructional videos, CAD programs and special databases related to various types of design. Museum and library websites second life, gaming sites for competitive learning Just SmartSite I realy primarily on smartsite (including its chatroom function, though my students rarely use it) and library databases such as the Naxos Music Library. I do not interact with students via social media, but I encourage them to do so. I don't use any of those YouTube The internet with SmartSite and I have wesites I developed for each class. For my online class, Adobe Connect and Skype are critically important. I don't use social media with my students. I use it personally, and they can use it, but it doesn't currently have a place in my teaching. I've used wikis and blogs before, but only for graduate courses, and even then it wasn't a huge success---I had to spend a lot of time doing triage and hand-holding with students who were unfamiliar with media authoring. Need larger MP3 file capacity to mail audio to students. SmartSite web conferencing. I used Adobe Connect (at my own expense) to run an experimental virtual discussion section. Students loved the chat and whiteboard archiving. But I will not pay $10 per month for the service. YouTube. smartsite announcements and resources youtube Websites relevant to course content. None of these -- just internet, but it would be great if it was only available to faculty in the classrooms I use news server that I maintain, news.cs.ucdavis.edu I use chat as venue for online office hours Facebook is EVIL and a hindrance to teaching. Sorry. None of these technologies is critical or even used in my teaching. None of the above would be useful in classroom settings Forums (discussion boards) None of these are critical to my teaching. None Can't think of anything now. None of the above. I would like to show online news videos. I also use SmartSite. Google Scholar and searches in general; Google Maps. pubmed None of the above. I had considered briefly Facebook as an alternative to Smartsite, as I thought it would have been more engaging, but in truth the student really do not think at the class much beween lectures and they do not follow the blog or wall or chat or whatever. audio podcasts 35 Are you kidding me. How about "the internet"? 36 37 38 I am NOT interested in any of these technologies N/A None of the above is critical to my teaching. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 39 40 There is absolutely no need for any of the above technologies in my classroom. None of these improve student learning. none 41 42 Smartsite. Clickers need GREAT improvement - they are so buggy, and we often have technical difficulties. email 43 I don't want to use any of those technologies in the classroom or in my teaching, except possibly wikis. Once again, your survey MAKES me provide an answer -- a very weak, flawed survey design! 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 I have not used these technologies in teaching. On-line learning environment (Moodle) None None at present access to published papers on pubmed access to newspapers I use none of the above. None none podcasts and videos (YouTube) 53 I post Mathematica demonstrations on my web page, but I do not use them during class. 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 Screen vew -- so they can show me (remotely) exactly what they are doing None Mailing lists Compute servers on which students can run code skype None but the course web site on Smart Site. You tube i do not find any of these important Smartsite I don't use any of the above in my lecturing. None of the above is importyant to my teaching. SmartSite youtube video resources None posting video clips and entries other than just text. Don't use these technologies. I have a life. i do not use any of these in my class. Not sure how one could and maintain the level of confidentiality that is required. If i cannot have a class list on my own computer for fear of release of information on enrolled students and a violation of their privacy I am not sure how i could use a public forum and require that they use it None of the above (it wouldn't let me hit next unless I submitted an answer for this question) Collaborative writing programs. We have tried Facebook and it wasn't effective for our purposes of collaborative writting. Twitter doesn't let students write enough text. None. NONE of the above. Company websites showing procedures and mechanisms of bicohemical pathways etc YouTube none of the above- I use email, smartsite, and the site associated with my textbook Requires an answer but I don't use any of these. none of the above n/a I wish that I could link articles to the smartsite using facebook or other similar I use none of these for teaching 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 SmartSite None of the above. Don't force an answer. Only Gradebook is crucial. The rest, frankly, is stuff they do too much of outside of class. I want them to develop habits of mind that are different than those fostered by social media. Course website. none of these are needed Smartsite Youtube I don't use any of those none None of these are critical to teaching. None of the above are critical to my teaching None none of these are critical to my teaching Other (please specify) If by clocks, you mean clocks on the wall that tell time so that we could see what time it is in the classroom, then by all means yes. It is awful not to have clocks in the classrooms! That is another nice thing about Roessler, it actually has a clock, what a miracle! Course evaluation software - ability to collect evaluation data in the classroom Blackboards Basic computers in the classrooms! I don't use the above 4 examples. I would need some training as to what they can offer me to help be teach effectively. I teach in 123 Sci Lecture Hall and there is no clock in the back of the room that I can see while I am teaching-- hugely inconvenient for me to pace my lecture. Why add podcasting when portable mp3 recorders are both good and cheap? Powerpoint can display the time; why add clocks? Video lecture capture for large classes allows me to do the same class tice a day. Video capture in the morning and then a playback in the afternoon (with me present) so that I can get more students through the same material the same way. Good god, why aren't there clocks!! I mostly keep track of time by the clock on my laptop or my watch, so I didn't think this was a big deal until I gave a final in 234 Wolhers, and I told students they couldn't have their smartphones out (didn't want them looking up the SmartSite readings for answers to the final). But they don't wear watches! They tell time on their phones. So I told them they couldn't have the phones, but then they had no way to tell how much time was left on the exam. Ridiculous. Also, podcasting (just audio) would be ridiculous for my classes, because even in large lectures I do a lot of small-group or think-pair-share activities, and so the audio would just consist of ambient noise for that part of the class. Need iPad2 support. I didn't know about podcasting and lecture capture. I don't see the relevance of any of that for me. Clocks, please! many, many classrooms do not have functional clocks, including SCI 123, a 500 person lecture hall! Moveable chairs!!! Built in computers. Videoconferencing would be great for ONLINE courses. Nothing What do you mean by "clocks"? The dearth of clocks -- in the back of the room, where the lecturer can see it but not the students -- is a real and easily fix-able problem! Clocks? video conferencing is less impt if web conferencing works well. Built-in PC, so we wouldn't have to bring ours in order to access the internet. We are already simulcasting lectures to Taiwan with two-way audio-video from Chem 179. That's potentially a useful sort of ability. I do not understand the importance of clocks; maybe I misunderstood, or I do not know what you meant Get better clicker technology!!! I currently use my laptop to capture the podcast audio. The podcast systems currently in the lecture require me to buy a special flash drive (the kind used in a camera), which is not very convenient. It would be much better if the system would allow me to plug in a USB flash drive. I'm not sure which I would use. I do like having clocks in the classroom. not applicable I have not used web and video conerencing. na I never understood why there aren't clocks in all the classrooms. It seems like such a cheap technology.... USB drive presentation without bringing your own computer. Computers It would be very important to have the ability to show two inputs at the same time. to have two document cameras, or a document camera and a ppt or computer screen projected. two screens would be best to display these. It would also be helpful to be able to more easily switch between computer projection and document camera, but it would be best to have both able to display at the same time. this would transform my teaching to be able to show both instead of choosing one or the other. Currently I often have to decide not even show some videos or news items on the computer because it can be too much time and trouble to switch back and forth. Audio only technology not useful for art history courses, when emphasize the visual. What do you mean by clocks? It would be nice to have clocks in the rooms, but when I lecture from PowerPt, I can see the clock on my screen. The option for lecture capture would be good - we have trialed livecasting via adobe connect and the number of participants outside of the classroom has been disappointing - not sure it is worth it for a handful of people. However i do anticipate a day and age in which people will participate more via livecast lecturing and a way to share classroom instruction across the ten campus system Blackboards or whiteboards, with chalk or working pens. Clocks? Clocks??! Videoconferencing could be very useful for smaller, seminar classrooms. none "Clocks"? Do you mean timepieces that provide information about the time of day? The clock issue is important as students no longer have watches, they use their cell phones whose use is prohibited during exams. Are there other services you use, not listed here ? or other services you would like to have available? I access IT help on the Sacramento campus I have on several occasions called IT Express with questions about SmartSite. The service is fantastic. I have always gotten the information I needed within a couple of minutes. Smart-site is awkward, not user friendly and very buggy. Both my TAs and myself find the gradebook in smartsite frustrating and even with IT help prone to errors that have been challenged by students. We all prefer the retired gradebook despite the many sessions of instruction....IT IS NOT INTUITIVE! huge difference between what is available on Davis campus and what on Sac campus - how come? I use written documentation a lot. I would like to see better written documentation for smartsite and gradebook2. It's little hard for me to answer the questions above. In the past, I have used many of the items heavily and always found them to be useful. Recently, I have not been adding new things and have not need much support. I wish I had known about some of these services (SmartSite/Gradebook trainings), and that they were more accessible (times). Let's save some money by getting rid of alot of this stuff and use it instead to pay for more TAs. The biggest problem is the lack of TAs. (We have one TA for 511 students- unacceptable!). All of this other stuff (except for emergency services to respond to AV and IT problems) is perhaps nice for some, but definitely secondary to TAs. UWP workshop on including writing in courses (found beneficial). I use the scantron grading machines for midterm and final exams and really appreciate having someone there to help me when I do. I think the renaming of CETL one of the silliest things I can remember in decades of thinking about teaching resources. Sillier, even, than the term "SmartSite," and, worse, the little motto underneath. (Remember it?) I really could use advanced technology help in building models for classroom teaching. The model (equations) exist. I need help putting a frontend on these research models so that they become effective teaching models as well. I hate the Gradbook, but am forced to use it. I much prefer using an Excel spreadsheet. I wish there were better upload options so that students could see component grades from an uploaded spreadsheet rather than requiring me to mess with the Gradebook to make these services available to students through Gradebook. Comment: I puzzled out Smartsite on my own, but it was painful. A properly designed Smartsite should not require any trainingl. The current Smartsite is terrible because of the design of the user interface. A proper design would avoid all the current waste of time and money in providing "training." Millions of people use Amazon.com to browse, find the items they want, and purchase them with no training at all. The Apple iMusic Store: the same. I feel that UC Davis purchases or designs software (My UC Davis, Smartsite, My Travel, etc.) that is counter-intuitive and never tested sufficiently in advance by end users, resulting in a subsequent requirement for "training" that shouldn't be necessary. i have not used these but I do refer my junior faculty to them. What I would really like at the moment is a speech therapy referral for one junior faculty member, not a native speaker of English, whose written English is excellent and spoken English fluent and grammatically correct, but who has problems with a few specific sounds that make comprehension very difficult. A good therapist could fix this. smartsite should not require training classes, it should be designed so that a reasonably savvy person could use it. Smartsite must have a great sales team though! Or some sort of connection with university purchasing. Opportunity for faculty feedback to improve SmartSite I've seen the software program that the Sac City Community College uses. And I've seen Blackboard. FAR more intuitive than SmartSite. They don't need to offer all the training, but it's clearer and more efficiently designed. I didn't know training sessions, drop-in sessions etc. were available for SmartSite/Gradebook. They could be very helpful!!! I am fully conversant with SmartSite -- training sessions were not necessary, hence I did not use them. We need technological support that comes to us when we are in the classroom. It is almost impossible to find the time to attend seminars, which turn out to be of questionable value. You mentioned "Faculty SmartSite/Gradebook Training Sessions in your dept."; I did not know they were available; I'd like to have such sessions in my department. Who should contact whom to get this service in one's department? The Writing Center I have teaching assistants who may use the TA program. I do think that the university should provide information on the effectiveness of different classroom technologies. I use what I think works but I don't know the research in this area. better tech support Better substitute for Smartsite?? There are no training sessions in my department and there is no category to indicate their absence!!! my dept uses the TA program so I benefit directly, although I am not using it myself specifically. Don't have the time to attend classes for just one question to be answered - need much improved help tools. usually when i do call and get ahold of someone I find out that the reason i cannot figure out how to do something on smart site is because smart site does not have the capability i am seeking. Guess my problem is being on too many other sites with higher capabilities - smart site appears to be a generation or two behind the state of the art teaching technologies. I didnt know about most of these resources so it would be helpful just to be informed of them before I each. Clean classrooms and clean blackboards I would use all of CETL more regularly if teaching were more valued relative to research here. No I have not used the CETL services for years but regularly refer grad students to their workshops. I would like to attend FMF programs but haven't been able to eke out time. I have used a workshop on writing in the disciplines. I ask my colleagues for help, and find out how they are experimenting in the classroom. I think the on-demand help is critical and must be maintained. Q13: 1 Which of the following library services do you use in association with your teaching? Are there other library services that you use, or would like to have available ? More electronic databases in my field (Chinese). 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Q14: more endnote instruction I didn't know that library instruction for my class was available. There used to be a librarian in Government Documents. Now there is no librarian there, and it is never easy and sometimes impossible to find someone who can answer my questions or those of my students. More sessions for students both undergrad and starting grads about library resources, databases, bibliographic samples online, etc. Streaming Naxos. Every day. Top quaility operation. A very helpful group of people. It would be fabulous if SmartSite (or something OTHER than SmartSite, ha ha) connected up with our library databases somehow, so that way I could search for the pdf articles I want from within my course SmartSite and link to them directly, rather than having to log in to the library, search for articles, download them to my hard drive, then upload them to SmartSite (this is like 40 extra clicks when you think about it). Everyone has to use CAS to log in to both anyway, so I don't see why this isn't possible. Students rely on what they call the "24," which is the all-night study room in Shields Library. Difficult to acquire journal articles Quiety study rooms, which I find very helpful for preparing lectures. When problems arise related to services in support of teaching, and they require rapid responses, do you find response times of the following to be sufficient? Other (please specify) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 I reported the hot house conditions in Olson 118 at least 4 times this spring and the problem was never fixed. It is incredible and completely unacceptable. The classroom tech hotline has a much better record of showing up and helping with whatever the problem is. That service seems to work pretty well and the people are always friendly. The registrar's office will never answer the phone so that makes it practically impossible to get another room assignment when there are problems. I find it unacceptable when Smartsite goes down for extended periods like it did last quarter just before my final exam. Mission critical in the classroom means that the system should be not only robust, but redundant enough to keep it up when some server out of state goes down or "vapor locks." 99.5% up time is not helpful when the 0.,5% happen s before a quiz, exam or final.ou I have found the help desk to be a great resource Equipment failures in the classroom are rare, which I greatly appreciate I'm glad that CAPS and Student Judicial Affairs are available if I did need them, so the "not used" answer there is only representing the fact that I haven't had that kind of student emergency yet (thankfully). But I've never encountered a problem with classroom technology or my SmartSite that either I couldn't solve myself or that just was unsolvable (i.e., the network is down or I want a resource that I then find out doesn't exist). UCD Police Dept. has been very responsive and professional when called to handle obstreperous or disruptive students. CAP has been excellent in addressing problems associated with the current student population raised on "anti-depressants" (female) and ritalin (male), but the problem is escalating. I have never had to contact SJA urgently so I don't know what their response time is. They handle minor plagiarism fine. SmartSite help has been poor. I've had to go elsewhere for an answer. I avoid SJA for other reasons. kirk alexander (?) has been particularly unhelpful at times with regards to critiques and changes to smartsite. that team does not seem particularly open to feedback about bugs. Student Disability Center: Good response, helpful Police - I once had to call and they were very efficient/fast it's the rapid response that is missing. I have not had good experiences with all the tech people at Smartsite. They don't get to have an opinion about how the course is taught or how many courses for which I am the instructor of record (23). It may be unusual for them, but that doesn't make it wrong. I cannot figure out how to use software to check all submitted papers for plagiarism. If the UCD requirement is that I first suspect plagiarism before submission to SJA then the end result is that I will catch exactly ZERO cases of plagiarism because my field and the topic of the papers I assign are so broad that I will not have personal knowledge of the vast majority of the sources that my students use for their writing. Student judicial affairs is fantastic. They are an essential service that has done an exceptional job every time I have needed their services. Student Judicial Affairs staff are wonderful. The disabled student office is a joke. They insist on providing services to students but provide no resources. UCD should look at the way other institutions run their offices. Please indicate your response to the following statement: I receive the necessary support for administrative and co-curricular student issues from the following campus offices: Other (please specify) Under Burtis, CBS Dean's office has shown a lack of leadership in dealing with the shared Bio Sci curriculum. The number of scholarly databases and electronic journals that our library (whether this is a UCD problem or a Melvyl problem I don't know) does NOT subscribe to is fairly pathetic. I used to be on the faculty at the University of Illinois (the largest university library in the country), and there was *never* a time when I couldn't get to the articles I wanted through their library databases. I was actually really sad when they finally discontinued my campusID, because I was still using it to do library searches through U of I instead of UCD. "Sexual Harassment Office" presumes everyone is equally guilty or soon will be. Its growing surveillance empire is a threat to civil liberties by its centralized collection and storage of personal data. Academic Department Office has been decimated due to "reorganization." Result: 1) Massive delays in accounting/reimbursement, 2) noncommunication in merit/promotion processes 3) compromise of mail, parcel, and equipment security. mostly OK, but I hate Smartsite The library responds to my needs appropriately. I have sent students to CAPS and am glad we have the referral service. But my department office is where I have the most interaction. The staff are great but need more resources. One of my students committed suicide during the course of the quarter a few years ago. I received an email notifying me of her death and offering counseling. I only discovered much later that UCD had hushed up the real truth about her gruesome suicide when I read about the case in the Los Angeles Times. The campus CAPS needs to be more transparent about the suicide problems on campus. Q16: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 In the space below, please offer any additional comments you think we might find helpful in this assessment of the instructional environment at UC Davis. Open-Ended Response Nearly everyone now teaches with multi-media. You MUST improve ALL the general classrooms to have adequate lighting and screens to support this vital teaching methodology. Honestly, I can't believe you haven't had protests from the students the facilities are so bad. I guess they just don't know how good it could be with a few relatively minor changes. I am so tired of everyone saying they care so much about teaching around here and then we have such lousy classrooms in Olson and Wellman and probably elsewhere that I have yet to experience. I Roessler things are much improved which leads me to wonder if the science end of the campus has adequate classrooms but the social science and humanities end of campus has been left to rot. If so, shame on UCD! Before you waste time and money on adding more technologies you must first fix the basics like lighting, etc. or your money on further technologies will simply be wasted. Our major problem is lack of TA support for upper-division advanced classes. Most such classes can now be taught only every other year. I would divert funds from the bloated IT budget back to TAships. Smaller classes are necessary if we are expected to teach writing skills in any effective way. The SmartSite user interface is not intuitive, and I spend a lit of time of the IT help staff to explain it. smartsite is poorly designed and an endless source of frustration. Please improve the microphones in large classrooms; please restrict student internet but make faculty internet easily accessible and available in classrooms; please remodel 109 Olson. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 I have not had any problems with class environment- we should be putting our resources into reducing class sizes... It would be very nice to be able access our servers through the smart panel so we would not need to connect a laptop. Because I am in the School of Education, I don't teach in general campus classrooms. The only point I want to make is that my teaching is much constrained by the general absence of well designed and well equipped computer labs. Some hints: a well designed lab has tables at two sides of a student. When facing the screen, the student is oriented towards to back of the room. When looking at the instructor, the student does not see the screen. There should not be too much noise from airco, or from neighboring labs. As language teaching becomes increasingly dependent on on-line materials, and as these materials are part of what students purchase in their "textbook package," I wonder about the long-term planning concerning the Language Learning Center. We are a very long way from being competitive in on-line audio resources (proper libraries have their entire sound collections available now), ditto 2D images, etc. You look at Indiana and Michigan and Rochester and weep. CDL, however, has some very useful attributes. I would say the biggest impediment to the instructional environment in my discipline has been the dead stop to which the Library has come in these matters, libraries if you include visual and audio collections in the departments. The second biggest impediment is the antiquity of approach by everyone having to do with textbooks, starting in the departments and ending in the Bookstore. So over. I'm a big fan of SmartSite and the e-book and its offshoots. If UCD has any hopes of expanding its online course offerings, SmartSite has to go. I'm currently using a self-supported version of Moodle for my online course instead, because SmartSite is utterly unintuitive--from both a faculty and a student perspective. Techno-phobic colleagues (you know, the ones who make the TAs set up their SmartSites) to whom I've shown my Moodle all say, "oh, that looks nice! it looks like an online syllabus with everything linked right there! I can tell where everything is!" And when I use SS in my large on-campus undergraduate course, I have to stand up every single week in class and click through, on the big screen, where exactly students should find the pdf readings, the forum, and the assignment for the following week. When I don't do this (and sometimes even when I do), my inbox explodes later with student messages about "I can't find the [whatever]." In an online course, this would be an utter nightmare. (Oh, and don't tell me about the SS "module" function either, because I've tried that, and students find it *even more* confusing, if that's possible.) Dept. of Asian American Studies needs its central office personnel, services, and academic presence reestablished after having been hit with: 1) Water deprivation (serious health liability) 2) Cut off in Communication (phones) 3) Relocation of Key Personnel and Cut Lines of Communication The above three are keystones in psychological warfare/civilian pacification strategies used against Asians and Asian Americans historically. I would like to make greater use of web conferencing, but the labyrinth of firewalls around campus generally blocks software solutions I would use from my own computers on and off campus and I have yet to see a campus solution that worked and didn't require a fee from me. Faculty need to be able to experiment with a variety of tools to learn what will be useful and I don't find the UCD environment particularly encouraging of experimentation outside programmed training classes that I have little time for or patience with. I would rather learn and try on my own and seek help when I need it rather than rearrange my schedule to attend a class. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 As you can tell, I think that Smartsite is a significant problem (as was My UCDavis before it). The classrooms are generally okay, but the general maintenance is beginning to slip (replacements of light bulbs, etc.). The library is adequate for teaching, but I have serious concerns as to recent proposed cutbacks involving research resources/journal subscriptions. Most of the other "teaching services" listed elsewhere in this survey I have avoided or found unnecessary from my perspective as a faculty member. For example, I've been widely informed that taking an issue to student affairs is likely not worth the time required. There are not enough classrooms with moveable d desks. Our students work in groups and this is not possible in many of the classrooms on campus. I would love to have more time to include new technologies in my teaching, but honestly, I'm so overloaded I don't have the time to update things. I don't even feel like I have the time to learn about new technologies to include in teaching. Basically, I get by in my lectures. The information is there for students to learn. I am also concerned, a bit, that the technology can be distracting from the information that is presented. I think many students expect to be entertained, more than educated. While I'm in favor of podcasting and posting videos of my lectures, because it *can* be an aid, I also think this encourages some students to be lazy and passive, rather than engaging with the subject matter in an active manner. I might be old-fashioned in this respect, but humans are still humans, and learning requires investment of intensive thinking time. One hand on the mouse clicking facebook, while a lecture is playing in the background, does not count as studying. Again, the MAJOR problem I have at UCD is that there is no large classroom on campus with moveable tables and chairs. I need a flexible setup in order to do "active learning" exercises with classes, generally breaking the class into small groups for role plays, sketch exercises, etc. PLEASE ensure that such a room is available. Not having one locks all instructors into a traditional lecture mode of instruction. is this survey really going to change the top-down approach to the design of services? particularly web based services? as it is, this soviet-style approach completely ignores the user end. SmartSite and Gradebook2 can be quite frustrating -- there doesn't seem to be much thought given to day-to-day, intuitive use by faculty, especially faculty using it for large classes (many little issues add up to overall frustration, e.g., limited spreadsheet navigation via keystrokes in Gradebook2, annoying defaults like the 20-student-at-atime view that are not changeable, no capabilities for saving draft messages in Mailtool, limited capabilities for polls such that I typically use SurveyMonkey or GoogleDocs Forms instead, etc. -- there are far too many issues to list here). Perhaps a separate, detail-oriented survey about SmartSite is in order, or a focus group with a small set of faculty. Invest! don't go on the cheap. Get some decent software instead of gerryrigged stuff. I am increasingly concerned by the state of our classrooms. They are run down, dirty, hot and uncomfortable. And, the limited technology available will soon be very much out of date. Technological support is inadequate. Thank you for undertaking the survey to find out what instructors think. Since I use the drop box (SmarSite) function for turning in and returning term papers, I have always though it would be useful to interface software that can automatically check for plagiarism in say uploaded .docx files. I have learned a lot thanks to the (formerly known as ) TRC and their many projects, such as the summer institute, the FMF, the student-assistant project (I don't recall the exact name for that), just to name a few. It seems to me that certain departments take for granted that faculty will always be willing (and able) to use instructional technology effectively -- and maybe creatively:) However, those same departments do not provide direct instruction, or links to and incentives for programs that provide such instruction. I believe that a minimum of instructional technology competence should be a requirement for all instructors, leaving them, of course, the academic freedom to use such technology - or not- according to their pedagogical preferences and needs. Therefore, I hope that more funds, not fewer, will go to instructional services providers such as CETL. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Clickers - please fix the clickers!!! Use of Powerpoint 2004 is limited, and we really need to improve the technical difficulties with these. SmartSite is an abomination. It has too many unnecessary features and lacks critical functionality (e.g., there is no way to link one "page" on SmartSite directly to another page; its html editor always does the wrong thing, and I almost always have to hack my own html code to get things right). It fights good teaching and administration every step of the way (I will never forgive them for leaving out the ability to drop scores in gradebook -- this was eventually fixed, but not after wasting hours of my time, and not even an apology, let alone an offer to help, from the designers). SmartSite designers are unresponsive to faculty needs and requirements. This is an embarrassment to the University and an obscene waste of money that we can ill afford to throw away. With teaching, research and service responsibilities, it is difficult to find the time to be an innovative teacher. The university is undergoing a fiscal crisis and it strikes me that we need to think more systematically about what we offer and how we offer it, especially in the classroom. But there is never enough time to do the research and implement new methods/technologies of teaching. On-line instruction only. Not involved with on campus classroom activities. I'm an old-timer. I have 10,000 Kodachrome slides and I'm not going to scan them all, so I still give Carousel slide shows as well as PowerPoints. My teaching style is, shall we say, mature. I've won a Distinguished Teaching Award and continue to use the techniques I've developed over decades, though the students increasingly expect a ton of bells and whistles. There are times when those bells and whistles are useful, and very rarely they may almost be necessary, but in my field they're basically decorative. The needs and expectations of the younger faculty cohorts, rather than mine, should be driving your planning, so this questionnaire really should have included a question intended to identify the respondent by age or rank or some suitable surrogate thereof! this is not a short survey and I don't find it particularly effective. I was forced to give 5 answers to one question when only 2 were appropriate. I could not go ahead without making up answers. I think it was #8. This should not be required. It is amusing and disheartening to have a survey on technology that does not have active hyperlinks or for which there is not a direct link to the survey in the email announcing it. Smartsite is awful and inconsistent with the registrars databases for the registration in the classes. Smartsite doesn't seem to provide the students major/department. we need better classrooms! No. I believe there are still substantial issues with Smartsite, especially server overload at critical times. I would also like to see some serious attention devoted to thinking about the use of video example and its access for teaching purposes. In addition to improving and expanding our educational technologies, it remains important to connect the faculty who use these technologies so that they/we can share ideas (and frustrations) to help use these more effectively and more to our advantage, and to the advantage of the student learning experience. The CETL plays a crucial role in this and has been a very valuable resource to connect faculty and facilitate interactions and the sharing of teaching and technology usage. The Smartsite Gradebook is still not user friendly...it requires lots of calls to IT Express to find out what has been changed. And I still have to download to a spreadsheet to find out the averages on individual categories...all of which the old "my.ucdavis" gradebook did easily....with a final summary page. When in heavy use...even the clicks to delete columns don't work! It's a mess. Students can't see stats and I can't copy them to a file for students to see...just get computer code. But faculty must use it so students can seet heir grades, even if it takes so much of the instructor's time as to be a pain. Looks like it was designed by programmers for programmers. Several departments in Biosci have refused to use it at all! If it weren't for IT Express I wouldn't use it either. Ditto for Smartsite. 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 We are behind the times. The students know it - many in my class do not use smartsite and prefer the other sites with higher functionality. Our IT folks really need to get out more and understand where the state of the art really is - i know the technology moves very fast and this is not an easy thing to do but the campus has to figure out how to do it so as to not launch something as "new" that is actually quite dated I think reminding certain entities (eg., janitorial, facilities) that their role is to support the mission of teaching and research on this campus. Sometimes when you contact them they seem to not to want to help out, and they are always looking for a way to charge you (for example, during the rains this winter the carpet in Sci Lab in the entranceway was soaked--it was mildwey and we called to get it cleaned but they wanted to charge our department to clean the carpet although it was at an entrance to a major doorway and needed to be cleaned to prevent mold). I think it would be great if a technical rep. could be available on the first day It teach a class to show me how to use the equipment and help me trouble shoot the inevitable problems that arise. One thing that would also be extremely helpful would be calendar of classes. Right now all I can find is when we have holidays etc. If an on-line app could be created that would create dates and times on a syllabus, omitting days that are holidays, this would be extremely helpful. The question that forced five selections of technologies is bogus. I don't use/need/want five of those choices, and the two I gave as "Other" should be enough. More large classrooms will be needed since there are fewer lecturers and us remaining faculty will need to teach larger classes. I think the instructional environment suffers from overcrowding and a devaluation of humanities-style teaching. I think our support system is really good for a large research institution. But with increasing numbers of students packed into classrooms and diminishing TA support, it is almost impossible to teach writing or critical thinking well. As well, teaching simply does not count as much as research, so the incentive for using all this support is somewhat lower than it would otherwise be. I'm concerned about the decline of CETL. I don't see anything being done to promote "excellence" despite that now being their middle name. Although Andy Jones' program was far from perfect, it was something. General comments on faculty development programs: (1) there has been too much emphasis on technology. There are a lot of issues in teaching and learning which have little to do with technology and we should keep the focus on teaching and learning rather than technology. (2) Experienced faculty could benefit more from small "learning communities" in which they share ideas and experiences, than from larger, more rigidly organized events. I have seen this work well at other institutions. (3) INexperienced faculty could benefit more from the kind of top-down information flow typical of organized events. Events in the past have not made much of a distinction between these two audiences. Maybe there should be a boot camp and/or a weekly support group for first- or second-time instructors. Storer 1344 projection facilities are poor. The internet goes down in this classroom. I will attempt to avoid this classroom in the future. My one issue with the registrar's office: I teach a class that meets MWF for 50 minutes with a two-hour lab. I would prefer that the class meet MW for 80 minutes with a two hour lab that begins in the same time slot. The longer lecture times would benefit student learning and using the same time slot for the lab would reduce my students' conflicts with other classes. However, I was told that this is not possible because it does not meet a standard time slot. I wish that we could be more flexible. I would like to see more faculty-centric offerings from the TRC (or whatever they call themselves now). I think facilities are in too short supply--the number of large classrooms has not kept pace with demand. Late evening lectures are not conducive to teaching or learning. If we are going to increase enrollments, then we must provide facilities for students. This includes large classrooms and classes at reasonable times. Many of the rooms are only marginally functional in terms of lights, access to boards that are not covered by the screen, etc. My Division social sciences School of Nursing CBS MPS Engineering HARCS mps Social Sciences HArCS HArCS School of Education HARCS Social Sciences HArCS Social Sciences Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies Humanites, Arts adn Cultural Studies CA&ES School of Education HARCs L&S HArCS My Department Physics Computer Science statistics Psychology Native American Studies Music Physics Nematology Art Studio Physics Sociology French and Italian Music Animal Science Asian American Studies Animal Science Native American Studies Plant Sciences DSS Biological Sciences HARCs Education Social Sciences Statistics Microbiology TCS School of Medicine DSS Social Science Arts HArCS MPS social sciences SocSci SocSci Biological Sciences Social Science Letters and Sciences MPS HARCS College of Biology MPS CBS Math & Physical Science, L & S School of Medicine CAES CAES HArCS Biological Sciences Social Sciences HArCS L&S Extension School of Veterinary Medicine MPS LEtters and Sciences HArCS Social Sciences CAES HARCS L&S Engineering Social Sciences biological sciences Letters & Science CBS College of Engineering CBS L&S MPS College of Biological Sciences HARCS CBS Anthropology theatre and dance Physics mechanical engineering Linguistics Psych Evolution and Ecology Sociology Integrated Studies Program Geology University Writing Program Molecular and Cellular Biology Plant Biology Civil & Environmental Engineering Chemistry Pharmacology Environmental Toxicology Art History French and Italian Plant Biology Psychology Music Political Science Agriculture VM: PMI Physics nutrition Comparative Literature Philosophy HD English Mathematics Computer Science Psychology Statistics evolution and ecology Psychology NPB Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering MCB Economics Environmental Design chemistry Viticulture and Enology Evolution and Ecology German psychology NPB Letters and Science CBS DSS College of Biological Sciences HArCS Biology HARCS MPS Biological Sciences Social Science Biological Science BioSci Letters and Science SOM CBS HArCS HarCS College of Biological Sciences Psychology Plant Bio Plant Biology UWP NPB English Physics MCB Communication Evolution and Ecology EVE Neurology NPB Art History English VM: Surgical & Radiological Sciences Evolution and Ecology Appendix B: Summer, 2011 Bug and Usability Fixes for Gradebook2 The following is a list of Gradebook2 bug fixes and usability issues that are being addressed in the Summer, 2011 upgrades which will be accomplished in two parts. The items listed below as "Ready" or "Resolved" are planned to be included in the first upgrade slated for June 17/18. The remainder will occur in the August 12/13 upgrade. Issue Type Ticket # Status Summary Bug GRBK407 Ready (QAPass) Add the ability to import re-scored Scantron files (from CETL) into the gradebook Usabilit y Issue GRBK525 Ready (QAPass) Export individual section based on export dialog section dropdown Bug GRBK577 Ready (QAPass) Fix "drop lowest" behavior so that this feature is disabled when unequally weighted items are added to a category Bug GRBK592 Ready (QAPass) Menu drop down File>New Item. When you select a category w/ neither "Weight items equally" nor "Weight items by point" selected, the % of category box disappears Bug GRBK676 Ready (QAPass) For Final Grade Submission, an alert is presented to the instructor when extra credit has not been completed by students. This shouldn't happen. Bug GRBK679 Ready (QAPass) When creating a new item, if uncheck "Include in grade," choice is not saved; need to edit the item & uncheck again. Bug GRBK704 Ready (QAPass) Letter Grade mode does not work with Pass/No Pass Bug GRBK772 Ready (QAPass) Improve item creation dialog to keep "% of Category" field from disappearing Bug GRBK794 Ready (QAPass) Improve the behavior of the "Give ungraded no credit" feature Bug GRBK803 Ready (QAPass) For letter grade gradebooks, don't show the grade scale because numeric values are meaningless in a letter grade grading setup Task GRBK806 Ready (QAPass) Post an event in Sakai_Events to log the grade submission event Bug GRBK813 Ready (QAPass) Improve enforcement of "equal weighting" in "drop lowest" categories Bug GRBK831 Ready (QAPass) Blank screen while import transitioning from Percentages to Points Bug GRBK835 Ready (QAPass) Final grade submission confirmation dialog text has a missing space between two sentences Bug GRBK840 Ready (QAPass) When exporting in XLS, we need to format the fields according to their types: number, string, etc. Usabilit y Issue GRBK867 Ready (QAPass) Provide a warning when there is an empty category Usabilit y Issue GRBK868 Ready (QAPass) Add visual grade cutoff chart with drag and drop for adjusting the grade cutoffs Bug GRBK869 Ready (QAPass) Grading only an extra credit grade item throws a null pointer exception Bug GRBK887 Ready (QAPass) GradebookCalculationUnitImpl.calculateWeightedCou rseGrade(...) throws a divide by zero exception Bug GRBK913 Ready (QAPass) Server returns HTTP 500 status code Bug GRBK919 Ready (QAPass) Slow gradebook performance Task GRBK943 Ready (QAPass) Implement warning if edit/create item is called and the Multigrade window page size is bigger than some trigger value Bug GRBK951 Resolved - in QA Extra Credit Category with Weight Items Equally turned on and 3 items included causes gradebook unbalanced condition to be flagged incorrectly Usabilit y Issue GRBK447 Resolved - in QA Add section info to import / export Bug GRBK458 Resolved - in QA Can increase item score to force an extra credit "adjust" for the item, enter newer, higher grade, then lower the points and select NO in recalculation pop-up so the higher grade remains. There is no warning and the Course Grade is no higher than 100% anyway Ticket # Status Summary Bug GRBK680 Resolved - in QA Give Ungraded No Credit' - Zeros given in scores are not marked when dropped. Bug GRBK834 Resolved - in QA Import seems to create multiple items for a imported item when it should not. Bug GRBK880 Resolved - in QA The '..not correctly weighted' message appears above the grade structure, but nothing is highlighted to indicate where the imbalance is located Usabilit y Issue GRBK894 Resolved - in QA Enable the export of multiple (subset of) sections Bug GRBK932 Resolved - in QA In both SS-dev and test, all gradebooks have the Weighted Category headings (% Grade, % Category, Points) in the top row of the tree view, even if the gbs are set up as no category, category Task GRBK942 Resolved - in QA Implement Drop lowest after enough items entered in calculations. Bug GRBK414 In progress Import doesn't handle grade items that have the same name Bug GRBK593 In progress Fix the disappearing "% Category" field when navigating between equal and unequally weighted categories Bug GRBK824 In progress Prevent/notify the Instructor/TA from making grade changes after the final grades have been submitted Bug GRBK833 In progress Only allow extra credit items in an extra credit category. Remove "Extra Credit" checkbox when creating items in an Extra Credit category. Note: recommend blocking this. Issue Type Usabilit y Issue GRBK504 Not started Drop Lowest after enough items are submitted Bug GRBK797 Not Started Drop lowest displays incorrect points when you drop more points than you have Usabilit y Issue GRBK483 Umich; Test UCD Provide toggle to show affect of category weighting when viewing gradebooks entries for single item or all gradebooks or across section gradebooks Usabilit y Issue GRBK485 Umich; Test UCD Add a search field to search for gradebook items for a particular student Import Spreadsheet/Export Gradebook2 Wizard Issue Type Ticket # Status Summary Task GRBK321 In Progress Improve import error checking and reporting process Usabilit y Issue GRBK401 In Progress If imported file has several "item" columns, Import Setup frame needs a "loading dock" of some kind where you can select what items to import and/or delete Usabilit y Issue GRBK404 In Progress Improve export process to allow selective exporting of gradebook elements Usabilit y Issue GRBK408 In Progress Add the ability to import the newer style Excel (.xlsx) files into the gradebook Usabilit y Issue GRBK514 In Progress Add ability to import without grades (just structure) Bug GRBK627 In Progress Gradebook2 export - grades and structure -- some gradebook settings are not included in the export, making an imported gradebook act differently Usabilit y Issue GRBK688 In Progress For import of Scantron/Clicker files, need to have info pop-up that shows the ID #s that cannot be matched to students, instead of having to scroll down to find them. Bug GRBK689 In Progress Create a process to enable Scantron and Clicker files to import into a percentage or letter formatted gradebook Bug GRBK698 In Progress gb2-import structure - import gives blank, grey screen if there is a problem w/imported spreadsheet Usabilit y Issue GRBK752 In Progress Analysis for improvements the import/export process (Wizard) Bug GRBK796 In Progress Fix to prevent the "unreleasing" of existing gradebook items during gradebook import. Bug GRBK801 In Progress Warn user that exported percentage gradebooks cannot be imported Usabilit y Issue GRBK804 In Progress Enable Import for Percentage/Letter Grade Gradebooks Usabilit y Issue GRBK839 In Progress Fix to prevent the "unreleasing" of existing gradebook items during gradebook import Usabilit y Issue GRBK856 In Progress Allow imported GB files to overwrite existing comment fields Bug GRBK859 In Progress Define consistent and accurate methods for converting numeric values from external tools to letter grades Code Servicing Tasks Issue Type Ticket # Status Summary Bug GRBK753 Ready (QAPass) Replace deprecated GWT methods Task GRBK773 Ready (QAPass) Upgrade to newer version of Google Web Toolkit Bug GRBK815 Ready (QAPass) The NumericUtils class functionality needs to be part of the BigDecimalCalculationsWrapper class Status Summary Ready (QAPass) Remove dead code for v1.5.0 Issue Type Bug Ticket # GRBK821 Task GRBK909 Ready (QAPass) Upgrade Google Chart Tools (aka Visualization) Library to from v1.1.0 to v1.1.1 Bug GRBK920 Ready (QAPass) Tool service queries have to be null-aware to avoid missing uninitialized values which should be interpreted as false Patch GRBK921 Ready (QAPass) The InstitutionalAdvisor selection utility does not allow you to deploy more than one impl Task GRBK718 Resolved - in QA Configure Apache to properly cache GWT *.nocache.* file(s) Bug GRBK900 Resolved - in QA GWT Upgrade has caused cells to be uneditable after hitting enter Bug GRBK901 Resolved - in QA Convert Gradebook2ComponentService.getRoster to accept a list of sections via List<String> Bug GRBK902 Resolved - in QA Convert file download to post/put Bug GRBK935 Resolved - in QA Gradebook structure frame - appearing and disappearing folder icons Bug GRBK936 Resolved - in QA Tree Panel entities cannot be opened or closed. Bug GRBK939 Resolved - in QA Replace deprecated JSONParser.parse(...) calls Bug GRBK949 Resolved - in QA Gradebook2ComponentServiceImpl NPE Bug GRBK820 Not Started Review Interfaces and remove unnecessary Spring IoC setters if appropriate. Appendix C. Three documents and related materials critical of the Ed Tech Subcommittee decision process. C1. February 7, 2011—Memo from Bob Powell to Jeff Barrett UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UCDAVIS: ACADEMIC SENATE January 27, 2011 JEFF BARRETT PPM 200-45 Review Coordinator Informational and Educational Technology Re: PPM 200-45 Review: Information Technology Shared Service Center Concept The Davis Division of the Academic Senate forwarded the subject document to all standing committees and the Faculty Executive Committee in each college and school. Comments were received from the committees on Faculty Welfare, Information Technology, and Planning and Budget. The document paints a generalized picture of what might be gained by an ITSM solution for UC Davis. It does not establish any detail of limitations of the current set up. The fact that systems used are “generally thought to be outdated” and “therefore we seek a new better system” does not substantiate the need for an Information Technology Shared Service Center. Vague and unsupported statements fail to articulate sound justification for the expense associated with replacement. In fact, the document fails to articulate how adopting this system will generate net cost savings. In every case, the campus needs to be considering “Do we really NEED this?” If one of the primary goals of a shared service center is to save money, the concept paper should provide specifics on how savings will be achieved. Fundamentally, all Organizational Excellence/Shared Service Center project requests originate with the affected units to ensure optimum performance in conjunction with financial and operational efficiency. To date we have not been provided evidence that centralization provides significant cost savings. Individual departments and centers have special needs, and over the course of time have optimized support to address those needs. Local optimization should be considered and weighed against the benefit of centralization. The creation of a Shared Service Center (SSC) should never have a negative effect on the campus’s educational missions, especially teaching and research. The following administrative units will be affected by the proposed Organizational Excellence/Shared Service Center project. The effects on these units will in turn have a significant impact on Academic Senate authority over curriculum and admissions. Administrative and Resource Management: Provides data necessary for the Senate to conduct annual undergraduate program reviews. Additionally, there should be consultation regarding the impact of consolidation on budgetary matters with the Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget (CPB) and other Senate committees as needed. Offices of the Chancellor and Provost: Centralizing would have a large and possibly detrimental effect on the academic personnel process and might also affect the functions and organization of the Academic Senate Office. Information and Educational Technology: SmartSite contract oversight impacts Academic Senate member interactions with students, communication of curricula and reporting of grades. Student Affairs: There could be a detrimental influence on courses and curriculum, transcript notation, internships, advising, degrees, and admissions and enrollment (ICMS, BANNER). University Relations: Problems might be created for faculty who interact with government officials, including the state legislature, and for gift administration, including faculty endowments. The proposal states that the “goal of the IT SSC is to provide the highest quality customer service at the lowest possible cost.” Faculty members on campus feel that there have been too many programs put into Information Technology Shared Service Center Concept January 27, 2011 Page 2 place with the goal of “saving money” that have, in turn, lowered educational effectiveness and increased dependence on faculty input of data, thereby increasing faculty workload and costs associated with administrative tasks. We do not find it acceptable to sacrifice quality and faculty time and salaries to save money on administrative salaries. Reducing costs should not be the first priority when implementing a new IT system on campus. Before making decisions on centralization vs. decentralization for units on campus, evidence concerning the pros and cons, including a true analysis of savings and effect on the UC mission, should be presented, and the rationale for the decision should be explained. We wish to emphasize how critical Academic Senate input is in these cases. Senate input is needed before the systems are already developed and decisions are already made. A good example of this can be found in the case of SmartSite. There were clear requirements in the CCFIT sub-committee report on the adoption of an alternative to MyUCDavis. The current SmartSite did not meet those requirements. Indeed, the decision to use a commercial vendor is directly opposed to the requirements. The adoption of SmartSite is clearly a case in which the campus has lowered educational effectiveness and increased faculty workload. For example, SmartSite makes it difficult to weight assignments in particular ways, and it insists on computing grades in terms of percentages when faculty members may want raw scores. Even when one attempts to use “grade override,” students end up seeing the unwanted, and often misleading, computations created by SmartSite. The program also makes it difficult to include Extension students in a class roster. Faculty and student time is wasted in efforts to provide access to such students, even though departments benefit greatly from the students’ fees. This is just one of many examples of centralized IT decisions creating work for faculty and students under the banners of ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost savings’. Sincerely, Robert Powell, Chair Davis Division of the Academic Senate Chair & Professor: Chemical Engineering & Materials Science Professor: Food Science & Technology Response to Document C1 To: Pete Siegel, CIO and Vice Provost for IET, and Professor Matt Bishop, Chair, Campus Committee on IT (CCFIT) From: Lori Lubin and Susan Keen, Co-Chairs, CCFIT Educational Technology Subcommittee Date: February 9, 2011 Subject: Memo from Bob Powell to Jeff Barrett, dated January 27, 2011 Dear Pete, We write in response to the January 27, 2011 letter from Robert Powell, as Chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, to Jeff Barrett, RE: PPM 200-445 Review: Information Technology Shared Service Center Concept. Specifically we would like to respond to the final paragraph of this letter dealing with a purported lack of Academic Senate input in the campus Learning Management System, SmartSite. The implementation of Smartsite and the development of the Gradebook and other tools (e.g. guest access, SCORM tool) were developed under the guidance of CCFIT (Campus Committee For Information Technology) where many members, including the Chair, are Senate faculty and the Academic Senate has a designated representative. As Senate faculty who serve as co-chairs of the Educational Technology subcommittee, we wish to make clear that we were involved in the process for over three years. We also wish to make clear that there has been a very long history of requests for input, collaboration, and pilot testing from the campus faculty as shown in documents included with this letter. A list of communications on SmartSite and GradeBook from 2009 fills two entire pages. Faculty response led to improvements in the products developed. The paragraph to which we refer also conflates two issues: the outsourcing of SmartSite and the function of the SmartSite GradeBook. SmartSite was not adopted from a “commercial vendor” as the paragraph states. It is a UC Davis version of community-source software developed initially by a consortium of four universities, with ongoing development now done by the Sakai Foundation, with over 100 educational partners. The UC Davis SmartSite is now hosted by a commercial vendor, rSmart. We note that the SmartSite GradeBook is an in-house tool, developed by UCD, maintained by UCD, and shared with Sakai community. Resolution of GradeBook issues, including fixing bugs, is done in-house, independently of rSmart. We readily admit that GradeBook is not perfect, that it contains bugs, and that every function requested by faculty is not available. However, some of “problems” described in the paragraph are, in fact, due to user error or lack of user training. Other issues are bugs that have been brought to our attention and are currently being addressed. Our committee and IET has always been committed to improving the level of communication to and from faculty about SmartSite, its issues, and the improvement efforts. In fact, there are numerous faculty who are so pleased with SmartSite that they believe that it must be considered as infrastructure required for effective teaching and learning on this campus. As members of the Academic Senate and chairs of the CCFIT EdTech Subcommittee, we are disappointed that the comments contained in the letter to Jeff Barrett were sent without giving us a chance to respond first. A2. February 2011 letter to Academic Senate—Boeshaar Add letter here ATS Point-by-point response to Boeshaar letter from L & S 1) The Help instructions did not correspond to the format layout of the GradeBook. It took many calls to IT Express to find out what did and did not work. Issue: Revised HELP menu documentation for GradeBook was posted on 14-Jul-2010, but was not incorporated into the SmartSite Help files, and resided in a separate location that faculty had difficulty locating (it was posted in Message of the Day, but not everyone reads these messages). Help Files for Gradebook2 were integrated into the general Online Help system for SmartSite in January, making them easier to locate. Status: Complete. All GradeBook help files are now available in the SmartSite Help files. Our additional printable documents are also still available. 2) The Grade view screen was very inconvenient, i.e., all of the grades for a student follow in one long line independent of item, whether it be homework, exams, papers, etc. One was required to delete columns to enter new grades next to a name, and then restore the columns. This is rather onerous compared to the simple MyUCDavis format. MyUCDavis broke the grades into item sections, in which the grade was entered per each individual item, and then combined automatically in a separate category screen. Currently, the only way to see such a screen is to download the data to an Excel spreadsheet and write your own instructions. Issue: This may be a training issue. There are ways to turn off columns, and other tips are available in the help files to customize the grade view screen for convenience. All grades for an individual student can also be entered on a single screen. Status: No fix required. Recommend that the L&S Executive Committee contact the faculty member who reported this issue, suggesting they contact us for training; or, if acceptable, the committee could provide us with the faculty’s name, and we will contact her/him. 3) Often, when entering a grade, the grade failed to be registered unless one goes to another grade already entered. Scroll down did not work. Issue: A fix has been developed and tested for this issue. It will be released Feb 18, 2011. Status: JIRA - GRBK-775; Planned release: v1.4.0, Feb, 18, 2011 4) Nothing was printable from the SmartSite, GradeBook, including the statistics. The grade distribution was presented in a compressed, simplistic format. On December 13, 2010, so many people were attempting to utilize the statistics package that SmartSite was forced offline for several hours. Furthermore, the students were unable to view the statistics, as the software I currently inoperable, even though there such as option was listed. This was not true in the MyUCDavis GradeBook. Every portion was printable, with a well presented statistics view screen. Issue 1: Printing: This may in part be a training issue. Printing of some of the Gradebook is possible using “Printframe”. However the above statement is true for those pages that do not work with Printframe. Therefore, an enhancement request to permit printing of all pages in the gradebook has been created. Status: Enhancement Request for printing capabilities created Jan 25/2011; JIRA #GRBK-810; Planned update v1.4.X TBD. Issue 2: Statistics Tool: The Site Statistics tool had been experiencing occasional slow response times in November. On Dec 1 the SmartSite Program Manager identified the problem as being that the Site Statistics tables needed indexes. Unfortunately, there was not sufficient time to develop and implement a fix prior to final exams. It is our policy not to purposefully take down the system during exam periods. Status: Trouble Ticket #RSN 8309917 (rSmart) addressed this issue which was corrected on Dec/7, 2010, even though it was during the exam period, because the system experienced an outage which provided an opportunity to build the indexes. There have been no reports of issues since that date (which includes Dec 13). 5) The upload option did not work properly. For example, you couldn’t upload ANYTHING into the GradeBook if the GradeBook was configured to track percentage rather than points. Worse, once it was configured to track percentages, you couldn’t change it back to points. Worse still, at the time you chose to track percentages, there was no warning about any of this. Issue 1: Uploads to GradeBook for percentage gradebooks. This is a known bug. Status: Import capabilities planned for implementation in 2011. JIRA #GRBK-804; Planned v1.4.x (TBD). Additionally JIRA #GRBK-752, created August 24, 2010, was created to perform an analysis for improving the import/export process. A wizard tool has been identified recently that can provide this functionality. We are discussing the requirements this week, and the estimate to implement it. Issue 2: Changing percentages to points. This may be a training issue. The GradeBook works in both points and percentages. Status: We will follow up with committee to get more details. Issue 3: We have created a ticket to develop a warning to the user that exported percentage gradebooks cannot be imported. Status: Ticket created 18-Jan-2010; JIRA #GRKB-801; Planned v1.4.x (TBD) 6) Right clicking on a student’s name entered a comment, which promptly disappeared when viewed later. Issue: It is true that you cannot enter comments by right clicking on a student name. However you can enter a comment by right clicking on a student's grade item. Status: We have entered an “Enhancement Request” to allow right clicking on a student’s name to enter a comment. Right clicking on a student’s name implies adding a comment at the student level and not at the item level. If so, this represents a new feature. We have created JIRA #GRBK817, which will be based on a recommendation from CCFIT Ed Tech Subcommittee. (We will be reviewing the right click context functionality and the need for further comment functionality with the CCFIT Ed Tech Subcommittee. We welcome suggestions on how and where to document the use of right click.) 7) One could not reuse an established SmartSite GradeBook format; one must start from scratch, making it unnecessarily onerous for new TA’s teaching labs and recitations. Issue: There was a workaround for this problem, however this is now being corrected in the release due this weekend (Feb 18, 2010). Status: Enhancement request ticket created 5/27/2009; JIRA #GRBK-149; Fix planned V1.4.0 (Feb 18, 2011) 8) Calculating grades by hand indicated that there could be more than a 1 point discrepancy with SmartSite in some final grades, depending on the structure of the course and the gradeweighting method used. Apparently this had to do with rounding-off in the calculated grade of each section. For this reason the Registrar was forced to use a separate verification process for all grades originally calculated using the SmartSite GradeBook in Fall 2010 when the instructors used the “equal weighting” option. The rounding error also was apparently the source of 14 incorrect grades being assigned in a course during UCD Summer Sessions 2010. Issue: This is unfortunate misinformation regarding both the summer session II issue and the fall issue. In addition, the fall rounding issue was both detected by, and the verification process performed by, IET and endorsed by the Registrar, and not actually performed by the Registrar’s office. o SSII: A line of code instructing the program to round up, was commented out, affecting 14 students. o Fall: A rounding error at the 4th decimal place in ONLY the Equal Weighting Option under very specific conditions, had the potential to affect students’ whose letter grades occurred on the border between two letter grades (e.g. B+ and A-). This did not affect the whole Gradebook, and through the verification process, NO student letter grades were affected. Status: o SS 2010 bug was found and fixed in October 2010. 14 grade discrepancies were found and grade changes were handled in cooperation with the Registrar’s office and the Senate Committee on Grade Changes, employing Academic Senate regulations regarding Requests for Grade Change. JIRA #GRBK-721; Fixed v1.3.1 (Oct-2010). o Fall 2010 grade points rounding error was ≤ .0001 (GRBK-774). No letter grade discrepancies were found. JIRA #GRBK-774; Fix planned V1.4.0 (Feb 18, 2011) o We contacted Professor Boeshaar to identify where she saw 1% errors, in order to verify and respond to this specific claim. She reported that it was not her, but rather someone else that reported this large of a discrepancy. We are pursuing this issue, and will report more once we have been able to make contact with the reporting professor (emails have been sent, but no response received). 9) There was no ability to grade different sections of a class separately if one desired to set up a page to send messages via Resources to the entire class. All sections were combined into one list. Issue 1: Grading Sections: Select the section from the drop down and you can grade only that section. Issue 2: Emailing Sections: Faculty of large classes are taught to create multiple sites for a single course (one for each section) to get completely separate gradebooks. This methodology allows for emailing separate sections, while having the ability to roll up the gradebooks into one when needed. Status: We demonstrate to faculty, ways to effectively manage multiple sites to enable messages and other needs of the entire class, while more completely separating activities by section. The workaround stated above in Issue 2, is reported as being an acceptable method by all faculty who have used it to date. A change to support multiple gradebooks in a single site would require significant development work and would involve the Sakai Foundation. This has not been scheduled because faculty report the workarounds as being quite acceptable, and therefore not worth the cost of investment. Tickets for this large effort have been created Feb/March 2010; JIRA #GRBK-477 and 525. However a fix is not scheduled/planned at this time. C2a. Following the official response to the letter from L & S, Ed Tech Co-chair Keen invited Professor Boeshaar’s and two colleagues (Professors McClain and Wittman) who were reported to share concerns to attend the Ed Tech subcommittee meeting, either as a guest or as a member. Professor McClain did not respond, Professor Boeshaar declined (email below) and Professor Wittman wrote detailing his issues. The issues were forwarded to Gibson, emails below. Response from Boeshaar to request to attend Ed Tech subcommittee meeting: Hi There: Unfortunately, I am already committed to an L&S Executive Meeting meeting from 1-2 p.m. on the 23rd which requires some prior preparation. So my regrets, I will be unable to attend. I believe I have already communicated to Liz Gibson the need for better communication between IET and the faculty, especially with improved updates in the HELP section of the Gradebook. I am still calling IT Express since many new changes are not documented and are far from obvious. pat C B Correspondence with Professor Wittman (1) >> On 2/22/11 5:51 PM, David Wittman wrote: Hi Susan, >> >> I won't be able to attend, but I would like to give some input. >> The big issue for me is that I can't use Smartsite Gradebook to drop >> the lowest n scores out of m online quizzes. In theory I should be >> able to do that, but in practice if a student doesn't take a quiz, it >> is recorded as "no score" >> rather than "0". And only the three lowest *numerical* scores are >> dropped, so students who don't take quizzes don't suffer (as long as >> they take one!) >> >> Even if I had the patience to enter 0 where a student had no score on >> a quiz (which I don't, even for a moderate-size class in which a dozen >> quizzes were given), I am not allowed to, because these no-scores came >> straight from the Tests&Quizzes tool. >> >> The bottom line is that I do my grade calculations outside of >> Smartsite and then re-import them so students can see them. A big waste of time. >> >> Cheers, >> >> (2) The above comment was relayed to Liz Gibson with the following response: Elizabeth (Liz) Gibson > Director, IET - Academic Technology Services > UC Davis > > 530-752-3777 > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Susan L. Keen [mailto:slkeen@ucdavis.edu] > Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 10:35 PM > To: David Wittman > Cc: Elizabeth Gibson > Subject: Re: Invitation to Educational Technology meeting > > Dear David, > > Thanks for sending the comment below. > We are checking into this issue and made sure it was discussed at the last meeting. > We will have an answer for you soon. > > Best, > Susan > > On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Elizabeth Gibson <emgibson@ucdavis.edu> wrote: Hello David and Susan > > I am attaching a pdf file that shows you how to convert "nulls" or "not taken" scores to zeros in a gradebook item. It is a two-step process: > (1) double click on the gradebook item, and it opens up a box. Then, > (2) in that box, click on the checkbox for "Give ungraded no credit". > > This will insert zeros in all cells where the quiz score is blank or 'not taken' for that specific gradebook item. You can do this regardless of whether the gradebook item was initiated from assignments, test & quizzes, or in the gradebook itself. > > Now - there is a known bug that I should let you know about. When you do this - it does work properly (i.e. using the new zeros as part of the determination of the lowest n scores), however normally the scores that are being eliminated turn red and are crossed out. When you force the zeros the above way, they ARE used in the determination of n lowest scores, but they do not turn red and do not get crossed out as they should. We have a bug report on file to correct this visual cue. But again, it does work the way it should. > > If we can be of more assistance in this matter or any other issues, please do not hesitate to contact myself, or smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu > > Best regards > > Liz > > Reply from Professor Wittman: Well, that was pretty simple and I feel silly. As long as I have your attention, may I ask a related question? How can I see each student's resulting average grade in a category? In "Edit category" I have checked every box that seems reasonable, such as "Release scores" and "Include in grade" but I can't see the results of any category-wise computation. =============================================== A3. Summary of discussions with Professor Casey, Chemistry on Smartsite Gradebook. Liz—nature of communication with Bill Casey