On Monday, November 18, the Kotzen Center played host to a day-long seminar focused on how and when faculty are using technology to supplement their teaching, and the impact it has on their students.

Sponsored by CASTL (a committee representing The Center for Excellence in Teaching, Assessment, Simmons Online, Technology, and the Library), the event featured a panel discussion of current trends in online education, and a roundtable discussion of the Horizon Report, a long-term study of technology adoption in higher education.

In addition, teams of faculty and staff members spoke about instructional technologies currently available at Simmons. The topics covered included using Tegrity to create videos, teaching with streaming content, hosting virtual office hours using GoToMeeting, and employing TurningPoint to gather feedback during lectures and presentations. The event was well attended and generated quite a bit of conversation about effectively incorporating new technology into the classroom experience.

If you weren’t able to attend, you can find out more about Tegrity, GoToMeeting, TurningPoint, and content streaming by clicking the preceding links. To find out more about how the Center for Excellence in Teaching can work with you to identify and employ new teaching tools and strategies, please visit their website.

As part of Strategy 2015, we have all been asked to identify opportunities for communicating the value of Simmons College and increasing the visibility of the characteristics that allow us to occupy a unique place in the higher education landscape. For the Technology department, this has meant focusing on how our community uses technology and looking for ways to improve core services. From a visibility standpoint, there is no platform more valuable than our online presence, which is frequently the primary source of information about Simmons for those outside of the College.

The platform we use to manage our website no longer meets the needs of our community and was not designed to handle the rich, interactive content (such as videos, social media, and apps) that have quickly become the backbone of the most successful websites out there today. The need to replace our content management platform has presented us with an opportunity not only to update the way we use our website, but to reassess the entire strategy for our larger digital ecosystem.

To accomplish this, Technology is participating in a College-wide initiative, with representatives from across campus, to create a strategy that focuses on organizing and sharing content, particularly the research of our faculty and the accomplishments of our students and alumnae/i.

Our goal is to have the first phase of the Digital Ecosystem Project complete by September 2014. We will be taking an iterative approach, beginning with a new website, a new mobile app for students, and a new way to manage content. Prior to these services going live, we will work with the community to develop policies to guide content creation, and focus on training stakeholders to use these new tools in order to maximize the visibility and impact of Simmons’s online presence.

In the coming months, we’ll provide updates on the Digital Ecosystem Project as it takes shape and moves forward. We also welcome your feedback, which is vital to the success of this project. Please contact Nephellie Dobie, Director of Project Management and Business Analysis, if you have questions or comments you’d like to share.

You might not have had this circled on your calendars, but October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. NCSAM is part of an ongoing campaign to promote greater understanding of the threats to our computers, mobile devices, and data.

We would strongly encourage everyone to take time to make sure you’re studying, working, and shopping safely online. Here are a few resources to help get you started:

• Simmons College Information Security

• StaySafeOnline.org

• Google’s Guide to Online Safety and Security

• Microsoft’s Safety and Security Center

• McAfee’s Guide to Online Shopping (PDF)

These are just some of the many places to find information about staying safe and secure online. If you have any questions about cyber security, you can always reach out to the Service Desk and we will help you address your concerns.