News

Course Workspace Project: MyUW Enhancements, Catalyst CommonView, and an Online Gradebook

Along with several campus partners, the Catalyst team is making it easier to manage and access online teaching tools and resources. We have been working closely with UW faculty and students to develop and create tools to meet their needs. As a result, we have enhanced existing Catalyst Tools and developed improved, "one-stop shopping" class-related channels in MyUW. The new MyUW faculty channel was released last week.

We are also excited to announce the Spring 2008 release of CommonView. With this new tool, instructors can quickly create a home base for their courses online. CommonView makes it easy to assemble, organize, and manage course resources to provide a friendly online interface for announcements, files, images, links, and Catalyst Web Tools.

The next new tool on the way is an online gradebook that will make it possible for instructors to securely post grades online and allow students to review their grades throughout the quarter.

To learn more, visit: http://catalyst.washington.edu/research_development/course_workspace.html

Faculty, Teaching Assistant, and Student Surveys on Learning and Scholarly Technologies

In order to better understand why and how UW researchers, instructors, and students use current technologies, several campus units are again collaborating on an institutional survey about learning and scholarly technologies. The survey findings will also help us anticipate future technology needs. The survey team conducted focus groups last fall, and these findings shaped the 2008 faculty, student, and TA surveys. The surveys will go out in the spring, and the survey team will share complete quantitative results in the autumn. Learn more about the collaborators, focus group findings, and the surveys' goals.

Catalyst Software Development Process Puts Users at the Center

To develop flexible Web applications that can be used in many contextsincluding teaching, learning, research, and everyday work the Catalyst team follows an iterative, user-centered design and development process that focuses on understanding the needs and experiences of our users. Whether we are creating a new tool or improving an existing one, our design decisions are based on direct feedback, user research, and findings from usability studies. Each Catalyst Web Tool remains in ongoing development throughout its life-cycle, with essential and core functionality released first, followed by the rapid release of enhancements and advanced features developed in response to user needs and experiences.

To learn more, visit: http://catalyst.washington.edu/research_development/dev_process.html

Access to Catalyst Tools Expanded for Collaboration Outside UW

To support Web-based communication and collaboration with individuals outside the UW community, Catalyst Web Tools can now be accessed with a free ProtectNetwork ID (PN ID). This access, available for GoPost discussion boards since last November, has now been extended to Collect It, Group Manager, QuickPoll, ShareSpaces, UMail, and WebQ. Non-UW colleagues with a PN ID can now log in to Catalyst Tools to submit or share files, take or collaborate on a survey or quiz, participate in or moderate a discussion board, and more. Learn more about using ProtectNetwork IDs, or visit the Catalyst Web Tools to start working with your UW and non-UW colleagues. Additional user interface enhancements will be released in the upcoming months to further facilitate the use of PN IDs.

Internet2 K20 Initiative Launches Muse A Social Networking Site for Faculty, Administrators, and Students

The Internet2 K20 Initiative recently launched a brand new social networking site called Muse which seeks to radically enhance collaboration, information-sharing, and technology opportunities between and amongst the Internet2-enabled higher education community and the 50,000 K-12 schools, community colleges, libraries, museums, zoos, and aquaria in the 38 states now connected to the Internet2 network. The site is also expected to provide a better bridge between the U.S. K-20 community and international counterparts worldwide. University of Washington staff and faculty looking to expand their network of collaborators around the use of advanced teaching and learning applications will find Muse to be a useful tool.

To read the full story, visit: http://www.washington.edu/lst/newsletter/2008_mar/muse.html

Mentoring Students at a Distance

How do you mentor students and track their progress from hundreds of miles away? Every summer, students in Family Medicine learn to practice medicine by working with physicians in locations ranging from Chennai, India to Thermopolis, Wyoming. Their Seattle-based mentors have recently started using Catalyst Collect It to keep in touch with their students, gather assignments, and provide feedback.

To read the full story, visit: http://catalyst.washington.edu/help/profiles/corrigan.html

The iTeam Students Help Train the UW Community

Since 2002, Catalyst student employees have been offering regularly scheduled computer workshops, free of charge, to the UW community. The course offerings are varied, including everything from computing survival skills to PHP with MySQL and a variety of topics in between. (See: http://catalyst.washington.edu/workshops/index.html) The student instructors publish their own workshop curriculum, create how-to guides, research new software, and structure their own teaching schedules.

To read the full story, visit: http://www.washington.edu/lst/newsletter/2008_mar/iteam.html