NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

The survey on technology needs for faculty. Many of you filled out an e-mail survey for this office late last spring. Thanks to the Pathways Grant from CCHE & the President's Office, most of the major needs identified in that survey were met. Some materials are under late delivery, but take heart?they are coming. Another survey will go out again this coming year.

Lap-tops available for checkout. It's obvious that portable computers are the practical way to bring prepared materials to internet-wired classrooms. We matched Pathways with CINS funds & procured 10 PC and 5 Mac lap-tops that can be checked out to classes. Files from your office computer can easily be transferred to these via zip drives, which CINS also has. These lap-tops will be managed by CINS. To make reservations, contact Dallas Jensen at 556-4307. You might want to start this process now if you know your schedule.

Teaching Learning Technology Roundtable (TLTR): As result of Pathways and several other initiatives, we nearly workshopped ourselves to death last semester in technology training sessions. For that reason we held few TLTR spring gatherings. This year we have training needs, and also several important policy and service areas that should be addressed by faculty involvement. Included among these issues are the assessment and evaluation of distance learning and technology-based instruction, the valuation of time consumed by mastering new instructional technology (in the context of teaching-research-service), strengthening our ability to apply successfully for technology grants, establishing support networks for faculty in the form of training of a cadre of colleague-consultants to assist us at the departmental level, establishing a web-based "help-line," and bringing support services such as our Writing Center and tutoring services on-line. The TLTR groups are an excellent place to discuss and develop awareness about these needs. We are not seeking to create committee work. Rather we're looking to TLTR as a forum to view both problems and success stories and to hear recommendations for policies and support. We'll call an initial lunchtime meeting soon after classes begin. We want a core of interested participants , so if you wish to join this first event with a free lunch, please e-mail to enuhfer@carbon.cudenver.edu and you'll be notified.

Help on the way. On August 1, our new Coordinator for Instructional Technology, Carl Pletsch, will join the Office of Teaching Effectiveness. Carl comes from Miami University where he was an early and very succesful innovator at incorporating instructional technology into history courses. He was selected via a national search to spend two years as a visiting Research Professor at the USAF Academy, where he pursued research in networked learning at the Armstrong Laboratory. Carl retains his interest and activity in the discipline of history, so he also joins us as an Associate Professor in UCD's History Department. We are extremely lucky to have an individual who is both an excellent academic and an authority in use of instructional technology. Kudos to the Search Committee, the History Department, Chancellor Georgia Lesh-Laurie, Michael Murphy, CU System's Dave Groth, the TLE Initiiative, and others for support in making this possible for us?and WELCOME, Carl!!

Teaching in the New Urban University is the theme chosen for 1997-98 by the UCD Teaching Committee. This theme provides a golden opportunity to draw together past years' themes and to consider how the instructional needs of our unique university are best met in practice. We'll kick off the year with a fun event titled "The Teacher in the Movies" presented on August 29 (see back of this page) by James Rhem, editor and publisher of "National Teaching and Learning Forum."-ENJOY SUMMER!