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Category: General Housekeeping

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Published on 2 Comments on You’ve Got Camtasia!

[Camtasia Logo]

Breaking news: Xavier has secured a site license for all faculty to have immediate access to Camtasia 2020.

For those just tuning in, Camtasia is a tool for making videos by recording from your screen and camera. A common use for teachers is to record short lectures. Many Xavier faculty will be familiar with this software already. In recent years, you may even have come to the fifth floor of the Library to use the CAT+FD Camtasia Studio.

Under the current pandemic conditions, we all have limited access to facilities, and our Camtasia Studio is not open for general use. CAT+FD advocated for a site license so that faculty can use Camtasia on their laptops, desktops, and other devices, wherever they may be. Many thanks to the office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs for approving this purchase!

In addition to the software, we have access to TechSmith's tech support as well as extensive training materials, which are quite frankly excellent.

So what are you waiting for? Yes, you can download and install Camtasia now. Here's the link.

Please note: You will need to our freshly-minted Camtasia License key to unlock the software beyond the free trial period. To get the key, please contact me, Bart Everson. You can send me an email or use this form.

Published on Leave a comment on CAT+FD Welcomes Two New Faculty-in-Residence

CAT+FD is pleased to welcome two new members to our staff this Fall!

Dr. Harish Ratnayaka joins us as the new Faculty-in-Residence for First-Year Faculty. In addition to supporting CAT+FD activities and initiatives, Harish will lead the programming for first-year faculty. This includes new faculty orientation, serving as a CAT+FD mentor to first-year faculty, and organizing the new faculty "brown bag" series.

Harish is from the Biology Department, and his research interests include plant ecophysiology. He studies the way different environmental conditions affect plant function. He is especially interested in how light-dependent and carbon assimilatory processes adjust in response to environmental stress, and how useful phytochemicals are elicited during such adjustments.

In addition, we welcome Dr. Lisa Shulte-Gipson as the Faculty-in-Residence for Service Learning. In this role she will work in close partnership with staff in Student Affairs to provide services to faculty incorporating the pedagogy of service learning into the curriculum and promoting civic engagement through meaningful community participation. In addition, she will serve as the CAT+FD liaison for implementation of the new core.

Lisa, a social psychologist by training, is interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Within this realm her past research has focused on community engagement and techniques associated with positive psychology (e.g., gratitude journals) as enhancing well-being, effects of motivation on performance, and effects of assuming responsibility for one’s learning on performance.

We in CAT+FD are enthusiastic about their contributions!

 

Published on Leave a comment on Welcoming a New Team Member to CAT+FD

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development is delighted to welcome Ms. Carla Simmons to our team! Carla is a native New Orleanian and Xavier University of Louisiana alumna, graduating with a degree in psychology. With an interest in serving the community, Carla is pursuing a Master's in Public Administration at the University of New Orleans and served in the Junior League of New Orleans from 2016-2018. Carla is an avid Jazz Fest attendee, reads almost any book she gets her hands on, and loves to practice yoga. Carla will provide administrative support for the Center and we are delighted to have her on board. In the new year, we encourage XULA faculty to stop by and introduce themselves.

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Published on 1 Comment on We’re Encrypted

encrypt

We have been taking steps to make the CAT+FD site more secure. Most recently, we started serving all our content over a secure connection. From this point on, anytime you're visiting our site (including this blog) you may see "https://" at the beginning of the web address in your browser's location field. You may even see a little padlock symbol.

This varies from browser to browser, but here's how it looks on Chrome:

Secure connection (Chrome)

This means that all the content that flows back and forth between your browser and our site is encrypted, encoded, making it harder for anyone else to snoop.

Of course (unless you're CAT+FD staff) you probably aren't exchanging any sensitive data with our site. Still, it's a good idea, with increasing concern in recent years over civil liberties in an age of ubiquitous surveillance.

It might also be the wave of the future. More and more sites are supporting encryption. Google already favors secure sites in its search results.

Some browsers make it easy for you to examine a site's digital certificate. Here's how that looks in Safari:

Certificate in Safari

This shows you that we are who we claim to be. DigiCert is a third party that verifies Xavier's identity.

Sounds pretty good, right? In fact, you may wonder why all your web transactions aren't secure. Well, it's the same reason why we don't all engage in good password behavior. We know it's good in theory, but in practice we defer and delay. Some sites you visit undoubtedly do support secure transactions — but only if you ask for it. You can encrypt as much as possible by using a browser extension like the Electronic Frontier Foundations's HTTPS Everywhere, available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Android.

Thanks to ITC for helping us to implement HTTPS.

Published on Leave a comment on Email Newsletter Transition

Those of you who get these blog posts by email are in for a treat. (If you aren't already signed up, please subscribe now so you never miss a post.) We're upgrading to MailChimp, and going forward, our email newsletter should look better than ever. We're retiring our FeedBurner newsletter (for good reason), and we have high hopes for a smooth transition.

What do you need to do? Nothing! We'll make the switch in a few days. Just relax and enjoy.

The old newsletter usually went out at 4PM, whereas the new newsletter goes out at 4AM. You may get one duplicate issue. Please bear with us!

Actually, however, there is one potential "gotcha" for those who use the tabbed inbox in Gmail.

...continue reading "Email Newsletter Transition"

Published on Leave a comment on The Thrivers and the Divers

Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post about high achieving high school students who bomb once they get into college. We all know things like socioeconomic class and, to a lesser degree, standardized test scores factor in.  However, this study used personality traits that correlated to academic success in college.

Two categories were created, the thrivers and the divers. The “thrivers” were those who did much better in college than their high school grades would have predicted. The “divers” were those who did much worse.

"What the divers had in common was a tendency toward rashness and disorder. In particular, they lacked a trait that psychologists call “conscientiousness.” Compared with the average student, divers were less likely to describe themselves as organized or detail-oriented, less likely to say that they are prepared, that they follow a schedule or that they get work done right away. Divers were also more likely to say they crammed for exams and more likely to score highly on measures of impatience."

It looks like all of us, especially our students, could benefit from mindfulness and contemplative practices. If only CAT+FD offered resources for those things...

You can read the full article here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/21/why-students-who-do-well-in-high-school-bomb-in-college/

And check out the CAT+FD calendar for the Monday Quarter of Quiet and Contemplative Inquiry Team here:

http://cat.xula.edu/events/?id=01495

http://xulacat.wikispaces.com/Xavier+Contemplative+Inquiry+Team

Published on Leave a comment on Expanding Our Scope

by Bart Everson

Spirostar I

Xavier faculty certainly do a lot to advance the University's mission.

That's why here at CAT we are excited to be expanding the scope of our support for Xavier's faculty. Our newly revised mission is focused on "the development of faculty across all career stages and areas of professional responsibility."

Read our complete statement of Mission, Vision & Values.

Photo credit: "Spirostar I" by Heartlover1717

Published on Leave a comment on Why We Stopped Buying Bottle Water

Hopefully by now you've gotten in the habit of using your CAT XX water bottle, bringing it with you to CAT events, and refilling it at our shiny new bottle-filling station.

You may wonder why we decided to stop purchasing flats of bottled water.

Here's why.

(Thanks to Olivia for spotting this amazing video.)

Published on Leave a comment on The bottle-filling station is here!

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching has been part of Xavier's culture for 20 years. Therefore we have selected sustainability as the theme for our 20th anniversary year – teaching sustainability in our disciplines, providing offerings to sustain faculty in their professional development, and engaging in sustainable practices of our own – all to promote Xavier's mission of creating a more just and humane society.

water2

In line with our sustainability theme, we are no longer serving bottled water. With the support of Academic Affairs, we've installed a bottle-filling station on the fifth floor of the library. Please remember to bring your water bottle when you come to CAT!