IST puts emphasis on teaching support

Lots of titles are new and the lines run in different places, as reorganization is complete in UW’s department of information systems and technology.

IST, one of the largest departments in the university, is responsible for “computing” services that range from the wires and routers of the campus network to development and maintenance of software for financial and academic systems. It’s headed by an associate provost, Alan George, who announced the early stages of the reorganization last fall and now has more to report.

The change is “more of a vertical integration”, says George, noting that under the former structure, there were some artificial separations between the staff who created new systems and those who maintained them. Because of “the blurry nature of when you hand off something from exploration and testing to production”, such people are now mostly grouped together in the five main IST units.

A sixth unit, formerly called Applications Technology, has been broken up into three “information systems” branches: one each for “finance, research and infrastructure” systems (with Roy Wagler as director), “human resources and student information” systems (David Mason, director), and “academic support and ancillaries” (David Kibble, director).

Applications Technology was formerly headed by long-time data processing and IST staff member Bob Blackburn, who has now left UW and is much missed, George said.

The other major change since last fall’s adjustments in IST is a new name for the division whose director is Andrea Chappell. It’s now “Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Services”, reflecting the merger of the former audio-visual centre with IST.

The work of that division in supporting UW’s teaching — and especially the UW-ACE online system — is “a core system supporting our core business”, the associate provost says. “That’s a major change in IST’s responsibilities,” he notes, as the department moves to fill a gap that wasn’t being completely filled by the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (mostly involved with research on new pedagogical techniques) and a few computing specialists in the faculties.

Now, “working in harmony” with LT3 and the distance and continuing education office, IST can make the needed contribution to teaching and learning at UW, he said. He noted that there’s also a UW-ACE steering committee with representation from all the faculties.

The other four divisions of IST are now Administrative Support, which includes telephone services (director, Bill Futher); Client Services, responsible for consulting and user training (director, Paul Snyder); Network Services, including operation of the campus network (director, Roger Watt); and Computing Systems Services, in charge of hundreds of servers and other central machinery (Martin Timmerman, director).

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Librarian and ‘gamer’ mixes her skills

by Andrew Dilts

UW librarian Christy Branson has been doing research that mixes two seemingly unlikely fields: information literacy and video gaming. UW's government information and economics librarian, based in the Dana Porter Library, Branston (right) has been researching ways in which engaging activities – notably, video games – can help others to develop the skills required for conducting effective research.

Branston has been with UW since 2002, and it was here that she first came across the concept of mixing video games with library science: “When I first started working at the UW library, I stumbled on the book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, by James Paul Gee. Being a gamer myself as well as an educator of sorts, I found the book intriguing as it looks at the underlying cognitive learning aspects involved in digital game play.”

After pursuing her interest for a few years, including time spent enrolled in an Arts 303 course called “Simulations and Games for Learning,” Branston took advantage of an opportunity to engage others in the collaborative field: “I had an opportunity to test out game-play on staff who I needed to train for offering government information reference service in the library.

“I divided the staff of about 30 into teams, and designed a web-based training program that took about three months to work through. The program was done online and involved interactive quizzes where the teams were given points based on their answers. The interactive, competitive nature of the training made learning a lot of fun for the staff, and although the participation was voluntary, participation was encouraging and I received positive feedback from staff — so I was sold on the idea of using games to teach, especially for 'boring' topics.”

In December 2005, she presented her findings from this trial, as well as the module she developed, at the Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium in Chicago.

Branston's interest in gaming goes beyond video games, as she discussed in her public blog, “Bibliographic Gaming.” “My interest in using games to teach,” she writes, “extends beyond gaming in the video game context. Any tactic, tool or technique that motivates a person to master new content is an effective teaching tool. Using video games in particular might be an effective way to reach our learners remotely — in the online world. The potential for games or gaming to be an effective teaching tool comes down to the level of engagement that is ultimately achieved.”

Branston holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Western Ontario and has worked in a number of different business sectors including the Toronto Stock Exchange, the federal government and various academic libraries.

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A few other notes for this morning

It's been a good year for the WOMBaTs – the Waterloo Off-road Mini-Baja Team, based in the mechanical engineering department, which took its vehicle to race in Wisconsin at the end of May and reports "the best year to date". Says team leader Jeff Moulton: "The team placed 66th out of 140 teams at the competition with some outstanding finishes in the individual events. The judges responded positively to the design of our 2006 Warrior car — we placed first for our vehicle design report. At the competition we presented our design to a panel of judges and completed the design portion of the competition in 15th place. In the chain pull, the goal was to drag a heavy chain back over itself until the vehicle comes to a halt. We successfully pulled the chain 33 feet to finish 9th place overall. We finished above average in the maneuverability event, ranking 54th. The acceleration track was slick when our turn came around and the car fishtailed off the starting line. Despite this we still managed to achieve above average results with a 60th place finish. The endurance race went well as we were still racing when the checkered flag signaled the end of the race. We finished in 73rd place, 2 hours behind the leader, due to the failure of the steering rack that broke when jumping over a series of logs on the course, requiring a challenging repair that cost us nearly 2 hours of race time. Overall the team had a great experience and gained excellent practical engineering experience through the design and construction of the car." Some photos of the competition appear in the most recent engineering faculty e-newsletter.

A new resource for UW's history is a set of CDs that have been produced with the complete back run of the university's main student newspapers dating back to the beginning. Neil Moogk-Soulis of the Imprint staff responded to a request for a description of the project: "We digitized everything from the Cord Weekly of 1957 through to the Imprint of 2003. After that, we have been saving PDF copies of every page. The work was done as part of the 25th Anniversary of Imprint (2003) with the goal of having everything accessible online in a searchable database. Graphics scanned each page of the Feds' bound volumes. This was the only complete set of bound volumes (outside of the Porter archives we believe) that we were able to slice apart for the process. We have the CDs (including several sets to be distibuted around campus, including Feds), but haven't yet finished uploading everything onto our web site. The Imprint web site is currently undergoing a radical redesign and it set for a launch in the fall, with new online features, and the archives hopefully among them."

A note arrives from the school of optometry: "The Centre for Contact Lens Research is conducting a dry eye study requiring post-menopausal women who do not wear contact lenses. Time commitment is 1 1/2 hours. For further information please contact Sruthi Srinivasan at s2sriniv@uwaterloo.ca, 519-888-4567 ext. 7312, or Roz Exton at rexton@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 7187."

The Federation of Students is advertising for students to "show your support" for the Fed Bus program by attending a regulatory hearing July 24 and 25 (details 519-888-4042). . . . Details aren't announced, but signs indicate that the City of Waterloo will be doing road work on Seagram Drive all this week, which could interfere with access to parking lots A and C. . . . Nominations are due August 4 in the election of a staff representative (one of two) on the UW board of governors. . . .

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