December 5, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Jim Groom Delivers Three Invited Presentations

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Over the course of two weeks, Jim Groom was invited to give presentations about the innovative work the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies has been doing recently. On May 16th, Jim Groom delivered a talk titled “Syndication-Oriented Architecture: a Solution to Problem of Coherence” for Campus Technology’s Virtual Leadership Summit. You can read more about the conceptual thinking about the ideas presented here.

On May 22, he was invited to speak about the open, online class ds106 to the College of Wooster, you can watch the presentation in its entirety below, and read more details here.

Finally, on May 30 he presented once gain about ds106 to the University System of New Hampshire, a presentation you can read more about and listen to the audio here. The slides can be found below.

UMW’s ThinkLab Makerspace featured in EDUCAUSE

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8104216938_f27446563b_z-150x150The innovative ThinkLab Makerspace in the Simpson Library of UMW has been featured in the latest publication from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s 7 Things series on rapid innovation. UMW is cited alongside Stanford, Rutgers, and Case Westerns among other institutions for recognizing early on the importance of makerspaces as a way to inspire self-directed and hands-on learning using emerging technologies like 3D printing, robotics, and e-textiles. DTLT and UMW’s work has been featured in past issues of the 7 Things series on a variety of topics including MOOCs, WordPress, and 3D Printing technology. The full paper can be found on the EDUCAUSE website in PDF and ePub format.

Jim Groom Interviewed for Ohio State University’s Writers Talk series

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On May 6th an interview with Jim Groom was aired on the Ohio State University’s radio program Writers Talk. The discussion focuses on the work he has done as part of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technology: ranging from the formation of UMW Blogs, the popular appeal of the Digital Storytelling class affectionately known as ds106 and its relationship to those confounded MOOCs, as well as DTLT’s current groundbreaking project Domain of One’s Own. The interview runs 30 minutes and you can listen to it below.

OSU Writers Talk

Faculty Recognized for Digital Pedagogy

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A ceremony and reception on Friday, April 12 celebrated the work of faculty members in the realm of digital pedagogy.

Professor of Spanish Elizabeth Lewis and Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation Andrea Livi Smith were awarded the Innovative Digital Pedagogy Fellowship. Assistant Professor in the College of Education Janine Davis, Associate Professor of History Susan Fernsebner and Assistant Professor of Music Mark Snyder received honorariums for their work in digital pedagogy and scholarship. Faculty who participated in UMW’s first Domain of One’s Own Faculty-centered Initiative also were recognized at the ceremony.

President Richard V. Hurley was on-hand to congratulate the award recipients and to express his support for the initiatives. The Innovative Digital Pedagogy Fellowship Award Ceremony was a collaboration between the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Jim Groom invited to Open Learning Hackathon at MIT

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jimgroomAs part of an attempt to start imagining what open systems for publishing and sharing a community’s work—as UMW has done exceptionally well with UMW Blogs, ds106, and Domain of One’s Own—Jim Groom (the Director of the Division of teaching and Learning Technologies) has been invited to the Open Learning Hackathon at MIT this weekend to work with a range of thinkers to start framing an architecture that might harness and expose the power of loosely coupled syndication systems modelled on the qweb rather than monolithic information systems..

Applications for 3rd Online Learning Initiative (OLI) Cohort Due April 8th!

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Screen Shot 2013-03-28 at 4.14.50 PMWe are currently soliciting participation in the third cohort of the UMW Online Learning Initiative, beginning in August 2013. All full-­time, continuing faculty members in any of the three UMW colleges are eligible for this program.

The Online Learning Initiative began in 2011­-2012 with an initial cohort of seven faculty participants, who engaged in a faculty development project to develop quality online or blended1 courses in the liberal arts and sciences tradition. It continued in 2012­-2013, with another six faculty members developing new online courses.

The Initiative is designed to be collaborative, with participants working together and learning from each other as the process unfolds. The project is led by the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT), the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI), and the Committee on Distance and Blended Learning. Project leaders from these three groups facilitate the process but do not prescribe outcomes, preferring to let course planning grow organically out of the conversations about liberal arts teaching and technology innovation.

The project will start with a series of summer workshops in August to explore what it means to teach a quality liberal arts and sciences course online. The workshops, which will be conducted like small seminars, will include conversation and response to selected readings, demonstration of various technology tools and approaches, and advice from former OLI faculty. Overall, what guides the workshops is a focus on teaching excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and how technology can be used to explore disciplinary approaches, build creative and effective teaching environments, and offer learning opportunities that may not be possible in face­to­face classes.

Upon completion of the workshops, participants will write a planning document to guide the development and implementation of their courses. These documents will then undergo a review process, providing faculty with useful feedback and advice for improvement.

Following the development of the course plan, faculty will work in conjunction with DTLT and CTEI to refine their plans and develop their courses, in time to teach either summer or fall 2014.

Schedule and Deadlines

April 8, 2013: Deadline for Proposals

April 22, 2013: OLI Awards Announced

Summer 2013: OLI Program Workshops.

Attendance at these workshops is mandatory. Currently, we plan to have 2-­3 full­-day workshops in mid-August. However, we are requesting information about summer availability during the proposal process so that we can adjust the schedule according to participants’ calendars.

Fall 2013-Spring 2014: Course Development

Throughout the 2013­-2014 academic year, faculty participants will work with DTLT and the Center for Teaching Innovation & Excellence on developing their courses. This will be an ongoing process, enveloping (and informed by) the course plan reviews.

October 1, 2013*: Course Plans Due

November 15, 2013*: Course Plan Review Complete

Summer & Fall 2014:  Courses Taught

* These dates are tentative and are subject to change.

Application Process

Please discuss your grant idea with your department chair/associate dean and college dean before applying. Your submission indicates that your chair or associate dean endorses your participation in this program and agrees to allow you to offer the course online no later than Fall 2014.

To apply, submit a letter of application with the following information:

  • Your Name, Department/Discipline & College
  • What course do you propose to modify for teaching online? Can you attach a recent syllabus, ideally modified for online teaching?
  • When will this course be first offered online?
  • How will offering the course online support the academic program of your department or college?
  • Describe your current competency with instructional technologies (no experience necessary) and identify those technologies you are interested in learning as part of the project.
  • Briefly outline your vision for the course:
    • Will the course be fully online or blended (and if the latter, to what extent online)?
    • To the extent that you can, describe the online environment that you imagine for the course. For example, can you identify any instructional resources, tools, technologies, or online Web spaces that you plan to use and briefly explain how you plan to use them?

Please limit your application to no more than five pages, double­-spaced. Applications should be emailed to mkayler@umw.edu by 5:00 pm on April 8, 2013. Awards will be announced by April 22, 2013.

Preference will be given to proposals with any of the following characteristics: courses targeting UMW undergraduate students away from campus during the summer term, and/or courses with high demand and low time­-slot availability.

Award Details

Each participant will receive a grant of $3,500 to develop and teach a course in a fully online or blended format. The grant award will be distributed in two payments; $2,000 upon completion of the orientation seminars and $1,500 upon teaching the course online. The grant recipient authorizes the university to use the course as a model with other faculty members subsequently developing other online courses. The grantee otherwise retains the intellectual property rights to all faculty­-created instructional content.

In order to ensure that the course delivery meets the traditional standards of excellence for a model UMW course, the faculty member acknowledges that during the semester of offering, frequent, if not daily, interaction with students in the course is expected. Grant recipients will be asked to share their experience developing and teaching their online class by participating in a campus event no later than Fall 2014.

If you have questions, please contact Mary Kayler (mkayler@umw.edu).

Jim Groom Keynotes OSU’s Ed Tech Conference

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Image credit: innovateOSU “Jim Groom Keynote”

Jim Groom delivered the keynote presentation at Ohio State University’s  fourth annual educational technology conference, innovateOSU, titled “Domain of One’s Own: Open Educational Experiences.” The presentation shared the work that has been happening at UMW over the past eight years, chronicling the fruits of  DTLT‘s experimentations with commodity web hosting which led to innovative projects  such as UMW Blogs, Digital Storytelling (ds106), and most recently Domain of One’s Own. You can see the slides for this presentation here. To see an archived video of the live presentation click here.

Jim Groom Keynotes Regional Technology Conference

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accs-2013_vegasJim Groom delivered the keynote presentation titled “A Domain of One’s Own: A Novel Approach to Open” at the Association of Collegiate Computing Services of Virginia conference. This presentation contextualized the history of innovative work in UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies since 2004 to frame the current Domain of One’s Own pilot that will provide a domain and web hosting account to all Freshman and Transfer students come Fall 2013.

Jim Groom Keynotes JMU’s Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference

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Image Credit: Grover Saunders made this Animated GIF during the presentation with Echograph (neat!)

Jim Groom, director of the Division of teaching and Learning Technologies, delivered the keynote presentation at James Madison University’s 9th Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology conference (you can see video of the presentation here). This presentation focused more specifically on the questions of universities outsourcing their expertise, how to design for online education, and how to build community online. The theme of the presentation was the overstatement of the death of higher ed in the media currently and how we can start to shed some of the reactionary rhetoric and start returning teaching and learning innovation to the colleges and universities rather than corporations like Pearson.

Slides from the presentation along with links are available below: