The ARTStor image database is now available through the UW Libraries. ARTstor is a digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

ARTStor is available at http://www.artstor.org, or can be accessed at http://www.artstor.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/index.shtml from off-campus (you must log in with your UWNet ID). ARTStor can also be found on the Libraries’ Image Collections page at http://www.lib.washington.edu/types/images/, and in the UW WorldCat and Libraries catalogs.

ARTStor images can be downloaded for use in PowerPoint or other presentation tools, or images can be used within ARTStor’s OIV image presentation tool. ARTStor offers excellent online help documents through their web site at http://help.artstor.org/wiki/index.php/Welcome_to_ARTstor_Help , including live email and phone support, video demonstrations, and printable help documents. You can also contact Jackie Belanger (jbelanger@uwb.edu), Reference & Instruction / Arts & Humanities Librarian, or Denise Hattwig (dhattwig@uwb.edu), Curator, Visual Resources, in the Campus Library with questions about ARTStor.

If you would like to receive updates about ARTStor features and content, and information about training opportunities and other support offered by the Libraries, please email dhattwig@u.washington.edu with “ARTStor update emails” in the header. You will be added to an ARTStor information email list.

2008 Surveys on Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Final Report
Catalyst / University of Washington

RESOURCES

2008 Surveys on Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Final Report
2008 Survey on Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Faculty
2008 Survey on Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Teaching Assistants
2008 Survey on Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Students
2008 Survey Data Summary: Faculty
2008 Survey Data Summary: Teaching Assistants
2008 Survey Data Summary: Students

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In order for the University of Washington (UW) to provide essential technology resources and services that meet the changing needs of the UW community, it is vital to gather reliable information about evolving trends. To this end Learning & Scholarly Technologies partnered with other UW Technology units, UW Libraries, UW Teaching Academy, the Office of Information Management, the Faculty Council on Educational Technology, the School of Medicine, and the Office of Educational Assessment (OEA) to survey faculty, teaching assistants (TAs), and students in spring 2008 about their technology use and needs. This is our third triennial survey on this topic.

The data we share in this report reveal the complexities of technology and support needs at the UW, going beyond the personal anecdotes which can often dominate technology discussions. This report will be valuable to anyone who wishes to increase their understanding of technology use and users’ needs. We summarize key findings below.

• Uniformity of Current Technology Use – We specifically designed the survey to help us capture differences in technology use. We found that technology use was much more uniform than we had anticipated: a few technologies were widely used across contexts and goals, while others were seldom used.
• The Need for Infrastructure Improvements – The highest priorities for faculty, TAs, and students involved infrastructure. Improvements to classroom equipment and wireless access were at the top of the list for all populations. Students also prioritized enhancements to campus computer labs.
• Point-of-Need Support – Faculty, TAs, and students all relied on sources of support that were available at the point of need. They first looked to knowledgeable peers for support then to online resources. These sources of support were among the most consistently used by all respondents and the sources rated as the most helpful.
• Integrated and Flexible Online Technology – Faculty and TAs desired greater integration of online tools and aggregation of information about available tools and resources. Technologies supported centrally at the UW need to integrate easily with each other, as well as with other online tools or department-created solutions—since there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to meeting faculty, TAs, and students’ technology needs.
• Unique Needs of Faculty, TAs, and Students – There were specific areas where faculty, TAs, and students had unique needs and support challenges. The main challenge going forward in supporting faculty in their use of learning and scholarly technologies is how to help them better understand their options and opportunities with the technologies available to them. For TAs, it is important to support them while they are at the UW, while simultaneously helping them develop technological knowledge that can transfer to other settings. The main challenge in student support involves understanding how they are using technologies, particularly emerging ones, to support their learning.

The data we share in the final report both confirm and challenge conventional beliefs about technology use. Our discussion reveals the complexities of technology and support needs at the UW, going beyond the personal anecdotes which can often dominate technology discussions. We briefly outline the history of the surveys, describe our methods, share key findings, and discuss the implications of this data for the UW. We not only compare faculty, TA, and students’ responses across all three surveys, but also explore differences in technology use based on discipline, technological expertise, demographics, and experience. In our conclusion, we identify unmet needs, highlight trends in the data that go against conventional wisdom, and point out needs for centralized or departmental services. This report will be valuable to anyone who wishes to increase their understanding of technology use and users’ needs.

Link: http://catalyst.washington.edu/research_development/research_projects/LSTsurvey.html

WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card. WebAnywhere was developed by UW computer science graduate student Jeffrey Bigham, and more information, including a video illustrating its use, is available online.

Link: http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/

Just call her Wikipedia wonk: UWB prof in spotlight for guiding students through online editing process
Peter Kelley / University Week

Maybe you’ve read about Martha Groom. An associate professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at UW Bothell, she won some media attention recently for involving her students with Wikipedia, the publicly edited online encyclopedia. Get to know this interesting teacher.

Link: http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?articleID=38236

Using Wikipedia to Reenvision the Term Paper
Martha Groom and Andreas Brockhaus

The structure of the traditional term paper can limit its educational value. To make the assignment more meaningful, students published their papers in Wikipedia. This session will examine how publishing for a large online community motivated students to do better work and deal with issues of voice, knowledge, and community.

Link: http://www.educause.edu/node/162770

The Catalyst Web Tools are a set of Web-based communication and collaboration applications designed for use in teaching, learning, research, and everyday work. Use of the Catalyst Web Tools is free to anyone in the UW community. To access the Catalyst Web Tools, click Web Tools Login and log in with your UW NetID.

• Collect It: File dropboxes
• CommonView: Class or project workspaces
• File Manager: Web-based file management
• GoPost: Discussion boards
• Group Manager: Participant groups
• Peer Review: Collaborative forums
• Portfolio: Online portfolios
• Portfolio Project Builder: Portfolio template building
• QuickPoll: One-question polls
• ShareSpaces: Spaces for file sharing
• SimpleSite: Web sites
• UMail: Web-based email forms
• WebQ: Surveys and quizzes

Link: http://catalyst.washington.edu/web_tools/index.html

Research Projects
Catalyst / University of Washington

During the 2005-6 academic year, Classroom Support Services, Catalyst, Computing & Communications, and Health Sciences Academic Services & Facilities worked together to pilot the use of podcasting in several large-lecture classes on the Seattle campus. Catalyst researchers developed an evaluation plan to learn how students used the podcasts and to capture student and instructor perspectives on the impacts of this technology on teaching and learning. Researchers are continuing to evaluate the ongoing implementation of podcasting on campus.

Selected papers and presentations:

• Podcasting: A Panel Discussion
  Spark Session Presentation
• Podcasting: Evaluation of Year One
  October 2006 Campus Report
• Podcasting at the UW: An Evaluation of Current Use
  February 2006 Campus Report

Link: http://catalyst.washington.edu/research_development/research_projects/index.html

Educational Technology at the University of Washington: Report of the 2005 Instructor and Student Surveys
Catalyst / University of Washington

Read the Full 2005 Survey Report

Overview
As the role of educational technology continues to become more and more central, it is important to understand when, how, and why technology becomes a key feature in the educational landscape. To gain this perspective, six campus units joined forces: the Office of Learning Technologies, Computing & Communications, UW Libraries, Educational Outreach, the Student Technology Fee Committee, and the Office of Undergraduate Education. Headed by the Office of Learning Technologies, this collaborative team developed and distributed instructor and student surveys, building on work begun during a previous iteration of this study conducted in 2001 and 2002.

Additional resources

• OEA Overview and Descriptive Statistics
• 2005 Educational Technology Survey: Instructors
• 2005 Educational Technology Survey: Students

In the two surveys, instructor and student, we asked a series of questions about respondents’ experiences with and perspectives on academic technologies. A large number of the questions were the same across the instructor and student surveys, allowing for a comparison of the two groups; a smaller number of questions carried over from the 2001 and 2002 surveys, allowing for a longitudinal comparison. We divided graduate students across the two instruments: those that held teaching assistantships completed the instructor survey and those that did not teach completed the student survey. In spring 2005, we sent the instructor survey to 4,390 individuals that had taught courses in spring 2004, autumn 2004, or winter 2005. At the same time, we sent the student survey to a random sampling of 3,500 students. The response rate was 34.4% for instructors and 28.2% for students.

We also conducted focus groups in late spring, with 40 instructors and 25 students participating in this portion of the study. We asked focus group attendees to describe their current use of educational technologies, the supports and barriers to that use, and their goals for the future. The focus groups allowed the research team to gain detailed knowledge about participants’ experiences with and perspectives on educational technology.

In this report, we present key findings that emerged from our analysis of this data. The focus of our analysis was a comparison of expertise with technology, use of technology, and beliefs about technology across different campus populations. We list our primary conclusions and provide recommendations based on those conclusions below. The order of these lists follows the chronology of our discussion in the report.

Link: http://catalyst.washington.edu/research_development/papers/2006/edtech_2005…

Librarians at the Bothell, Seattle, and Tacoma campuses (Laura Barrett, Justin Wadland, and Amanda Hornby) collaborated on a guide that highlights the UW Libraries image databases, recommends websites that provide images free for educational use, and provides useful information on citing images and on copyright compliance. Image collections include: UW collections, general collections, advertising, architecture, art, history, maps, medicine, photography, and science.

Link: http://www.lib.washington.edu/types/images/

The Blackboard Learning Management System at the University of Washington Bothell has been upgraded to version 8! Many of the accounts and courses have been archived and removed during the transition process, so you will need to create a new account if you are one of the students who cannot log in with their old one. For more information, see the Blackboard Self-Enrollment Handout.

Faculty members who need a new course to be created or an old one to be restored in the Blackboard System can fill out and submit a Blackboard Course Request Form.

Then see our Classroom Examples page.