WAC’ed at Baruch

Baruch and LaGuardia faculty
Now before you think that I am involved with something out of the Sopranos I just need to state that that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I met with a group of faculty members today from LaGuardia and Baruch to discuss issues surrounding the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program that both schools have initiated. Selected faculty members from both schools have been meeting all year long to discuss how WAC, also referred to as Writing in the Disciplines (WID), can impact students and faculty in transformative ways.

The discussions that we have engaged in during the group sessions have honestly been some of most interesting conversations that I have had in while. I had been fighting the flu all week so I was very glad that I was up to attending. The opportunity to directly interact with a faculty cohort from a sister CUNY institution, and to discuss our different approaches to pedagogy, has helped me a great deal in thinking through the restructuring of the curriculum for the LaGuardia New Media Technology degree.

ePortfolio Capstone Research team: 1st week

Today was the first meeting of the LaGuardia ePortfolio Capstone research team. The purpose of the research group is to help develop a list of best practices for capstone courses at LaGuardia. I am fairly comfortable working with ePortfolio because I was part of the original research team and helped to flesh out some of the technical solutions that were needed to move the project forward. I was honored to be asked to participate in this new research effort. While we will be looking at capstone courses from LaGuardia as a whole, I think that many of the issues that we will be investigating in this research will also directly help me improve some of the course work within the New Media program. Continue reading “ePortfolio Capstone Research team: 1st week”

New Media Capstone course

Since being appointed the Program Director for LaGuardia’s New Media Technology degree I have started to make revisions to the overall curriculum. One of my priorities is in establishing a more effective capstone course for LaGuardia’s New Media program. The final capstone course in the major, the New Media Project Lab, is being restructured to better prepare students for transfer to a four year university or for employment. During the past semester I have focused heavily on developing new Continue reading “New Media Capstone course”

ePortfolio systems testing

Today the IT department piloted a new open source eportfolio system in one of my capstone classes. The team from LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning, who are main champions of the LaGuardia ePortfolio Initiative, were eager to test out the system in front of some real students. The proposed new system may someday replace the existing ePortfolio system in use today at LaGuardia. However prior to a switch being made, a new system will need to be throughly tested before it can be deployed in a production environment that must support up to 11,000 users. Since I had done much of the preliminary work in reviewing and selecting LaGuardia’s current eportfolio system, I was asked to review the new system which is being considered. Continue reading “ePortfolio systems testing”