Skip to Main Content

University of Tennessee

About ITC

Newsletter: Spring 2006

Success, Strategies, and Opportunities

by: Dr Julie K. Little

Meeting diverse learner needs, facilitating interaction, conducting effective assessments, facilitating student success, and fostering engagement are themes anchoring past issues of our newsletter. Within each theme, we explored appropriate instructional technologies while connecting you with the ITC’s services and support to utilize these strategies and applications effectively.

This issue departs from a central theme focused on teaching and learning to offer an array of successes, strategies, and opportunities. We’re sharing your colleagues’ success stories for using technology in their teaching practice, suggesting some strategies to incorporate in your practice, and highlighting opportunities to try something new.

Charles Hamilton, College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, and Michael Smith, College of Veterinary Sciences, have taken advantage of the ITC’s free production services to enhance their face-to-face and online courses. Matt Gray, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and Dan Foley, College of Communication and Information, have leveraged their experience with the ITC’s Wireless Instructional Initiatives program to develop new strategies for fostering student-to-student collaboration. Lydia Pulsipher, College of Arts and Sciences, has transformed her large lecture class to foster student engagement. And, if you are teaching a multi-section course, tune in to the information on combining your Online @UT (Blackboard) course sites. It’s a simple but effective strategy for managing multiple course sections.

In addition to these success stories and strategies are some new opportunities for you to consider—clickers (personal response systems), serious gaming, and our “QEP Toolkit” for expanding the boundaries of your classroom. Later this month, Online@UT will be upgraded to bring new tools and features to your virtual classroom. Our Web presence is undergoing an upgrade, and the new ITC and Online@UT sites will launch December 2005 with simplified ways to access and use the wealth of resources available on both sites.

Whatever your interests—from nuts and bolts to high-end applications—the ITC continues to offer you the services and support to build your success story, incorporate effective strategies, or undertake a new direction in your teaching and learning practice. We look forward to working with you in the coming year!