Faculty Development Digest, October 2023

By October 18th 2023

The Faculty Development Digest highlights events and resources that may be of interest to faculty and other educators on campus. The Digest will be posted on the Faculty Resources site periodically throughout the year. If you have an item that you would like to suggest for inclusion in a future issue, please send the details to Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir at rweir@allegheny.edu.

Gator Day Faculty Events

Please join us for these two Gator Day (Tuesday, October 24) events for faculty.

Using Assessment Instruments. (Tillotson Room, 9:00am-10:00am) A hands-on workshop that guides faculty through the process of implementing assessment instruments such as the DR rubrics (in courses that carry an ME or CL tag) and those identified in program assessment plans.

Caffeine and Cupcakes. (Tippie Alumni Center, 10:00am-11:00am) The Office of the Provost invites you to stop by to connect with colleagues, eat some cupcakes, and pick up some Allegheny goodies.

Professional Development Opportunities

Community-Engaged Learning Series. Three workshops focused on community-engaged learning and its transformative impact on students and the community will take place from October 18 to October 20. For more information and to register, click here.

ALIC Workshops. The Art department is offering a series of one hour digital art workshops. The first round of workshops includes:
– A Guide to Cell Phone Photography (October 18 & 25)
– Photoshop Comes to the Rescue (November 1 & 8).
Sign up for a workshop here. More details are available in this post on My Allegheny.

Informer 5. ITS will be offering multiple Lunch & Learn sessions on using Informer 5. These include introductory sessions on October 26 and November 3, an Advanced Usage session on November 16, and a Visualizations session on December 14. Lunch will be provided and all sessions will take place in Murray 120 at 12 pm. See more details here and use this form to sign up for sessions. More information about Informer is available here.

Professional Opportunity

Director of General Education. Applications are now open for the new Director of General Education position. Interested tenured faculty are invited to apply for this five-year, renewable position by November 1. As described in the job description, the Director of General Education will report to Peter Bradley (Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness, Strategic Planning, and Assessment) and will lead the college-wide strategic developments, implementation, analysis, and reporting of general education student learning outcomes and assessment.

Teaching Conference

Ohio PKAL Conference. The eighth annual Ohio Project Kaleidoscope (OH-PKAL) conference, Navigating Current Challenges & Opportunities in STEM Higher Education, will be held at Otterbein University on Saturday, April 6, 2024. The keynote speaker is Dr. Lynne Parker, Associate Vice Chancellor of The University of Tennessee at Knoxville and expert in Artificial Intelligence. OH-PKAL is a network of STEM faculty and graduate students promoting and enhancing evidence-based, learner-centered STEM undergraduate education. Check out the call for proposals to learn more about the conference’s themes and to submit a proposal for a poster, presentation, or workshop. If you’re interested in carpooling with other faculty, contact Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir.

Fundraising and You

Are you interested in learning more about how fundraising at Allegheny works? This could include: how to identify and engage with potential donors; how to effectively communicate possible donor opportunities; how Institutional Advancement can help departments and programs connect with donors; the role of faculty in donor stewardship; or understanding fundraising responsibilities for faculty who move into administrative roles. Interested faculty are invited to complete this form, briefly indicating the kinds of topics they would like to learn more about. Responses will be collected by Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir and shared with Institutional Advancement in order to plan possible training opportunities.

In the Library

Each month we will highlight a resource in Pelletier.

During the pandemic, the Pelletier library provided subscriptions to Screencast-O-Matic, a tool used to capture screenshots, edit images, and create web recordings. On October 23, this tool will be renamed ScreenPal and will be upgraded to include the following capabilities:
– Interactive video quizzes, polls, and ratings
– Advanced video analytics
– Royalty-free stock media.
See this page for more details.

Allegheny has 25 licenses, which can be accessed here. Each license provides a month of access and can be renewed each month, if licenses are still available.

Canvas Information

Assignment Submission Issues. If your students are reporting that they cannot upload their assignments to Canvas, please have them work through the steps below, which were communicated in a Canvas announcement on October 18. In short, make sure they are logged into their Allegheny account and have authorized Google Drive on Canvas. Also, both students and faculty should use the Google Drive (LTI 1.3) option in Canvas. The other option (Google Drive) is an older version with less functionality.

For many assignments, your instructor may offer the option of uploading a file from your Google Drive, such as a Doc, a Sheet, or Slides. Before you can make use of this feature within Canvas, you will need to authorize the Google Drive app within Canvas. Here’s how:
1. Before you start, log out of ALL Gmail accounts on your device. Then log into only your @allegheny.edu account and no other Gmail in the same browser. Sometimes the process will glitch if you are logged into a non-Allegheny Gmail account.
2. From the Canvas navigation menu, click on “Account” and then choose “Settings”.
3. Under “Web Services”, check whether you see Google listed in the “Registered Services” section or in the “Other Services” section. If it is in the “Other Services” section, click on it and proceed to step 4. If it’s listed under “Registered Services”, you’ve already authorized it, so you can skip to step 6.
4. Click on Canvas may prompt you to log into your Google account. Use ONLY your @allegheny.edu Gmail.
5. Once you’ve logged in, it should show Google listed in the “Registered Services” section of your account settings.
6. When submitting an assignment, make sure you use the Google Drive (LTI 1.3) option, and not the Google Drive option.

If you still encounter issues with uploading files from Google Drive even after Google Drive is listed in the “Registered Services”, please let the Canvas Team know by emailing canvasteam@allegheny.edu, and we will reach out to you to help troubleshoot. Including screenshots and exact wording of any error messages you encounter will help tremendously!

Canvas and RSEs. Don’t forget that because the end of semester Reports of Student Experience (RSEs) are administered via Canvas, all courses that are eligible for RSEs must have published Canvas sites. This doesn’t mean that entire courses need to be managed through Canvas. You can find instructions on how to create a minimal Canvas course in this document.

Events

Upcoming Events

Past Events and Materials

See the Faculty Development Opportunities page for additional links to previous events.