Services for Law Faculty: Educational Technology
Steve Donweber (x3-8854) serves as the law school’s Educational Technology Librarian and is available for consultations on the use of technology in the classroom. Steve serves as the library expert on the use of Blackboard 8, student response systems (“clickers”), web portals, blogs, wikis, and podcasts.
Blackboard 8 * Clickers * Portals * Tutorials * Blogs and Wikis * Podcasts
The library offers resources for Blackboard 8 to aid in the building and maintaining of law faculty sites. The law library has created two tools to help you use Blackboard 8: a basic guide and an interactive tutorial. Faculty or their assistants may set up course pages and obtain technical support for Blackboard 8 by visiting Blackboard Help. Librarian liaisons are also available to locate course content and may create a Library Resources tab with selected resources for your course.
Student Response Systems (Clickers)
"Clickers" may be used to survey students in class. Law faculty members incorporate clicker use to promote participation, take opinion polls, and to obtain feedback on current class topics. The law library owns 150 TurningPoint clickers that may be borrowed for single classes or for an entire semester. The law library has created a basic guide to creating PowerPoint presentations that incorporate clickers. Please contact Terri Geiger (x3-8881) or Russell Sweet (x3-8877) for loan details.
Portals
A library created web portal provides a collection of links for easy access to materials and other resources that a professor needs for teaching or research. Research portals, as opposed to those created for a course, are maintained in a secure location to ensure the privacy of law faculty research. Portals developed for law school courses and a sample customized research portal can be found on the law library's website.
Tutorials
The library provides over 80 tutorials on electronic resources and research techniques. The librarians would be happy to create tutorials for use in conjunction with classes. Please contact Stefanie Weigmann ( x8-4997) to request a research tutorial for your students.
Blogs and wikis are interactive websites that can be used by faculty for courses, research projects, or other scholarly communication. They enable users in remote locations to write posts, comment on existing posts, and share documents. Posts, comments, and documents may be categorized, searched, and archived for later use. For examples of blogs related to law, see the library's Law Blogs Portal.
An RSS feed allows users to monitor syndicated content in blogs and webpages. For example, the law school's RSS feeds page provides feeds for different users. RSS feeds are monitored using a feed reader like Google Reader, MyYahoo, and Bloglines. Your librarian liaison can provide assistance in setting up and using RSS feeds.
Podcasting can be an effective way to communicate with students, faculty, and staff. Audio files can be listened to on computers, iPods, or other MP3 players. To learn more about podcasting check out these websites: