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The Faculty Computer Camp | ||||||||||||||||
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| The First Camp | ||||||||||||||||
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The first UIC Faculty Computer Camp is over now. The food was good, the session leaders were inspired, the campers were attentive, and the hands-on sessions even went pretty smoothly (the gremlin of computer mischief was kept at bay by the valiant efforts of the ADN consultants and Small Systems Group). Judging from the attendance and from comments overheard in the halls between the sessions, the camp was a genuine success. The Faculty Computer Camp was a joint project of the Faculty Senate and the Academic Computing and Communications Center, but what made it a success were the people from all over the campus who took part, both those who attended and those who worked on it. More than 250 faculty members registered for the camp, each signing up for an average of three sessions. They came to the camp "willing to put themselves back in the role of student and venture forward," as one camp instructor said. Over two-thirds of the campers registered electronically, a testament both to the power of being "online" and to the willingness of our faculty to use it. The eagerness of the more computer-literate among us to share their knowledge was also very evident. The camp's volunteer staff came from computer-intensive fields, computer service units, and other fields too -- education, English, medicine, sociology, and even the OVCR. The camp's sessions were of two varieties: basic sessions, aimed at giving computer novices the basic skills they need to begin to use computers in their research and teaching; and show-and-tell sessions, giving examples of classroom uses of computing at UIC. Whether novice or expert, there were learning experiences for us all. Most of the the basic sessions were full or nearly so. The most popular were "Introduction to Computer Resources for Faculty Who Have Barely Used Them" and "Using Eudora, an Alternative to Old Email Systems." The former were given by Eileen Wynne Ball of education, who only started using computers in her own teaching a year ago. She began her sessions with the fundamental question: "Does everyone know how to use a mouse?" The latter were given by Ahmed Kassem, the ADN's director and a longtime fan of Eudora. Eudora was developed while he was working at UIUC; he is proud to have had the second working copy of Eudora in existence. The show-and-tell sessions were well received but less heavily subscribed. The hot ticket here was the world premiere of the AISS Class Manager system, a spiffy new client/server class management and grading system developed by AISS with the help of a group of UIC faculty members. The Class Manager sessions were taught by Bob Mrtek, a professor in medical education and a member of the faculty team that participated in its design, and Laurie Husak, the leader of its development team at AISS. (If you're interested, contact Laurie Husak, LHusak@uic.edu or (312) 996-7154, for more information.) True to the spirit of the age of information, many of the camp's instructors prepared World Wide Web home pages for their sessions; visit the camp's home page at http://www.uic.edu/orgs/camp/ [This link is long gone. -- Ed.] for a list of the sessions taught with links to their home pages. A sampling of resources available through these pages is given below. The Faculty Computer Camp was a terrific first experience, and discussions are already under way on how it can be improved. Electronic discussions, that is! |
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| Faculty Camp Field Trips | ||||||||||||||||
Comments are welcome; send them to |
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| The ADN Connection, Oct/Nov/Dec 1998 | Previous: May/June 1996 Contents | Next: The ADN Post |
| 2000-1-20 connect@uic.edu |
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