Additional Services for Law Faculty: Educational Technology
Educational technology services for law faculty include: CourseInfo support, research and course web portal design, blog and wiki creation, RSS feed set up, podcast assistance, and training on classroom diagnostic devices ("clickers").
If you need assistance with these or other educational technology tools, please contact Steve Donweber, our Educational Technology Librarian at donweber@bu.edu or x8854.
The library offers training and support for CourseInfo to aid in the building and maintaining of law faculty sites. The law library has produced a brief CourseInfo Guide for Law Faculty covering the basic information law faculty will need to set up and administer their CourseInfo sites. A detailed CourseInfo Instructor's Guide is provided by the University.
In addition to CourseInfo, the University now provides Blackboard 8 for courses. Blackboard 8 has many advanced features not included in CourseInfo and provides greater flexibility for faculty. A test site has been created for all faculty members to experiment before creating their sites. The law library has produced two tools to help you learn Blackboard 8: a basic guide and an interactive tutorial.
Classroom Diagnostic Devices (Clickers)
Clickers may be used to survey students in class. Law faculty incorporate clicker use to promote participation, take opinion polls, and to obtain feedback on current class topics. The clicker units are remote control devices that are distributed to students. Software is required on the classroom computer for instant polls and may also be installed on your office computer to build more elaborate surveys. The law library owns 150 clickers that may be borrowed for a semester or for single classes. Please contact Terri Geiger (tgeiger@bu.edu / x8881) or Raquel Ortiz (rmortiz@bu.edu / x8855) for a semester loan.
A portal is a one-page collection of links that provides easy access to materials and other resources that a professor uses in teaching or in 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. Examples of portals developed for law school courses and library training can be found on the law library's website.
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.
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:
Page maintained by Steve Donweber
Last updated: November 2008