DELTA Plays a Hand in ‘Preparing the Professoriate’

DELTA’s Instructional Support Services recently participated alongside representatives from the NC State Libraries and Office of Information Technology in a technology expo fair, presented by The Graduate School and hosted in Hunt Library. With the goal of providing Preparing the Professoriate (PTP) doctoral students an opportunity to experience technologies they may soon use in instructor roles, Dr. Beth Overman, assistant director of Graduate Academic and Professional Development Programs and her colleagues, directed 19 fellows through a round of instructional technology demonstrations. Dinesh Ayyala, a PTP fellow and Ph.D. student in Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, found new ways to use NC State-supported technologies for student communication.

“Though I have been a regular user of Moodle as an instructor for the past three years, the Blackboard Collaborate and Video tools were really helpful and made me think of new ways to get in touch with students outside office hours,” said Ayyala.

Scott Watkins, associate director for Instructional Technology Support, provided attendees with a brief overview of the DELTA Knowledge Base  and  Moodle, followed by a Q&A session. A few of the key improvements and new features of NC State’s learning management system covered in the demo were Conditional Activities, File Management and Completion Tracking. Many of the attendees had limited Moodle experience in an instructor role, and were grateful for the opportunity to view Moodle and all of its capabilities from this perspective.

DELTA staff also demonstrated Blackboard Collaborate, NC State’s synchronous learning management system (SLMS). Anthony Holderied, instructional technology specialist and SLMS lead, provided attendees a glimpse into the wide world of synchronous learning and all that it has to offer faculty. After a brief overview of the roles and tools of Collaborate, attendees received hands-on experience, as well as suggestions for instructional use such as presentations, study sessions, class discussions, recorded lectures and office hours.

Participating in the PTP Technology Fair allowed DELTA to play a part in paving the way for successful teaching with technology in our future faculty.

“There are so many challenges to college teaching in the 21st century, and keeping up with all of the different technological tools is one of them!” said Dr. Overman. “This event was a success because of the university experts who participated, helping expose future faculty to all of the technology tools they can use to enrich their classrooms. The fellows enjoyed not only learning about all of the kinds of software and programs they could use, but also getting to practice using them. They left with many ideas of how they’ll put technology to use in their classrooms!”.

For more information about teaching with technology training opportunities, visit https://delta.ncsu.edu/workshops/. DELTA workshops and seminars are available to and free of charge to all faculty, staff and graduate students of NC State.