Lightning Round Presentations – CLAC 2015 Conference

When: 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM, Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Where: Room 224, Oechsle Hall

Getting to the Sweet Spot: Building an integrated service catalog from the ground up
Melissa Cresswell, Bryn Mawr College, Director of Planning & Communication

Bryn Mawr College Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) is in the midst of a multi-phase Service Catalog project, and we’re pretty excited about how it’s going so far. Using a highly iterative process, our catalog started with thousands of post-it notes and will result in a public-facing menu of cross-listed services and a behind-the-scenes rubric for service evaluation. Learn one merged organization’s approach to cataloging everything from exhibitions to classroom technology to library circulation to infrastructure services!

Putting the Tech on Deck: Removing the Sage on the Stage from Faculty Development
Heather Woods, Wellesley College Director, Research & Instructional Support

Wellesley has struggled to engage faculty in communities of learning around the use of technology in their pedagogies. Our faculty development programs had whimpered into non-existence due to low interest and attendance and efforts to build enthusiastic communities of faculty around instructional technologies never lasted beyond an initial meeting. In needs assessment meetings with academic departments we consistently heard that faculty wanted LTS to take a leadership role in this area, but how? This year we explored a new active learning model which took a small group of faculty through a more contextualized and in some cases experimental experience. While the overall outcomes are still being determined we have been able to compare initial feedback to previous “tech-led” workshops held a year ago and those results are encouraging.

Lasercutting for the printing press: makerspace collaborations
Heather Woods, Wellesley College Director, Research & Instructional Support

The Wellesley Book Arts Lab, our library’s original makerspace, has provided students with the opportunity to understand the making of books for decades. Through course work and workshops on paper making, binding, and letterpress printing, students are introduced to an interdisciplinary approach to the Book Arts. In a new collaboration, our Book Arts Director and Instructional Technology staff began to explore the potential use of new makerspace tools, such as a campus laser cutter, to further enhance the Book Arts Program. This semester’s results include the ability to recreate woodblocks for broadside printing.

Using Slack to enable intercollegiate collaboration in the Moodle community
Charles Fulton, Senior Web Applications Developer, Lafayette College

The Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP) is a consortium of over two dozen small liberal arts colleges who work together to develop and support Moodle. Working collaboratively across different institutions and technologies is a constant challenge thanks to different time zones and competing work schedules. Adopting the Slack team collaboration tool erased many of these differences and provided a platform for sustainable intercollegiate collaboration.

About the Presenters

Melissa Cresswell is a PMP-certified project manager with an MS in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Melissa has a background in library service management, and transitioned to her current role in the Office of the CIO in 2010. She manages the Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) project portfolio, consults with colleagues about managing projects, and because 95% of every project is communication, she does that, too!

Heather Woods is the Director of Research & Instructional Support at Wellesley College where she leads a merged team of librarians, technologists and academic specialists in support of Universal Faculty Happiness.

Charles Fulton is a senior web applications developer at Lafayette College. He helps oversee Lafayette’s web infrastructure, including Moodle, WordPress, Drupal, Redmine and MediaWiki. He administers Lafayette’s version control environment and works closely with the server administration team to create and manage the college’s web servers. Fulton also serves on the Development Committee for the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP) and helps integrate the Liberal Arts Edition distribution.