This Issue Mediaworks Embraces Digital Age Want to Be an ET Partner? Previous Issues: Students and Faculty Brave Technology Together (May 2002) Educational Technology Pairs Students with Faculty (Dec 2001) Bringing ET to UC Davis: New Training Program to Partner Faculty with Students (Oct/Nov 2001) What's New at Mediaworks? (Jan/Feb 2001) Mediaworks Web site Arbor Web site Educational Technology Grants Summer Institute for Technology in Teaching

A few years ago, Simone Monnier Clay would have laughed at the idea that she would become actively engaged in the use of educational technology at UC Davis. Back then, her computer "was just a word processing machine that was a little more convenient than a typewriter," shares Clay, a lecturer in the French and Italian Department. Expanding her computer skills seemed a daunting task. "It's frightening when you haven't handled technology much."

Since then, Monnier Clay has come a long way, learning all sorts of educational technology skills, including how to build a Web site, use automated class lists, and incorporate interactive software and MyUCDavis to supplement her French classes. In fact, she became so adept with educational technology that she was asked to do a presentation at last year's Summer Institute for Technology in Teaching (SITT). She then participated in the Educational Technology Partners Program which pairs technology-trained students with faculty members. Next, Clay intends to present at the upcoming SITT conference.

Of course, learning so much in such a short period of time is quite an accomplishment, especially since Monnier Clay also teaches. How did she manage to do this? With a lot of hard work and much assistance from Mediaworks staff. "The Arbor staff were so patient and helpful, and as I started working on one thing, it led to another," she says, "and with the help of my ET Partner, I got excited and wanted to do more and more."

Mediaworks, the campus resource for instructional technology and digital media is celebrating its second year on campus. Its evolutionary path over the past two years has been similar to Monnier Clay's.

The formation of Mediaworks traces back to 1999, when Acting Associate Vice Chancellor Jerry Hallee proposed creating a new "Technology and Media Services Unit" to provide more focused educational technology and media services support for faculty. The proposed unit was intended to address concerns that surfaced during the Administrative Unit Review of the Division of Information Technology.

Upon his appointment in September 1999, Vice Provost John Bruno moved forward with the creation of the Information Technology and Digital Media Center (ITDMC for short), combining two IET units and creating a group of educational technology specialists. In July 2000, Dr. Harry Matthews was appointed to serve as the Director of the new center, which was later renamed "Mediaworks."

Over the past two years, Mediaworks has successfully made a series of important accomplishments, particularly in the field of educational technology. "Working with key campus partners like the Teaching Resources Center (TRC) and the Library, we have established a proposal review process for educational technology grants, and helped develop hybrid online courses to help deal with classroom overcrowding," states Dr. Matthews. "We have also partnered with students to develop the new Educational Technology Partners Program to train faculty in the effective use of technology."

To encourage the use of educational technology, the TRC and Mediaworks have awarded over $100,000 in Educational Technology Grants for course enhancement projects. This program is in addition to the grants already offered by the TRC and the Vice-Provost of Undergraduate studies. Dr. Naomi Janowitz, a professor in the Religious Studies department, is a recent recipient of an ET grant. She solicited the talents of the audio/video group in Mediaworks to film each of her lectures. Mediaworks then digitized her filmed lectures so they could be made available to students via DVD, public access television, and streaming video files posted on Janowitz's Web site. "As an instructor, I get about 30 hours per quarter with my students. I decided to use these hours for discussion, rather than lecture," explains Janowitz. Having viewed the lectures in the format of their choice, the students were able to use precious class time to directly engage Janowitz in a discussion of the material covered in the lecture. One student remarks: "Everyone has times when they are too busy, or sick, or just not motivated. With the video lectures, I was able to watch when I had time and motivation to learn from them. If I became confused on a certain topic, I could go back and watch it again, and the professor was then available in class if I had any questions."

Janowitz explains, "The technology Mediaworks offers is powerful, since it allows me to experiment with different modes of delivering instruction to a wide variety of students who all have different learning styles."

Mediaworks has also helped tackle the problem of growing student enrollment and classroom overcrowding. The unit has helped several campus departments put high-demand general education courses online. Made possible through the UC Davis-Mellon Project, students in certain Anthropology, Viticulture, Statistics, and Asian Art History classes (among many others) now have the choice of taking these courses either via computer or within a classroom setting.

According to Matthews, these "hybrid" online courses are becoming increasingly common in higher education, and Mediaworks is well prepared to provide assistance to departments looking in this direction. "Online courses, CDs, and the Web are growing elements of our services," says Matthews. "We also expect to develop additional courses beyond the Mellon Project and move toward more Web-based materials."

Another new development is the Educational Technology (ET) Partners Program. Initiated by Mediaworks, this innovative program pairs specially-trained students with faculty members for one-on-one technology training. The goal: helping instructors effectively integrate educational technology in the classroom.

So far, these partnerships have involved everything from the use of multimedia software to Web site creation to the assembly of a digital image archive. Using the skills and resources developed with their student partners, instructors are able to save themselves time and effort. "This program is so great..." says Miyo Uchida of the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department. "As a lecturer, I have a large teaching and grading workload. But now that MyUCDavis makes it possible to create a course Web site without needing to know programming code, and now that we have ET Partners with ongoing support at the Arbor, using this technology has actually become a reality for me."

While Mediaworks is proud of the many accomplishments in its first two years, Dr. Matthews is not allowing it to rest on its laurels. "We fully intend to further enhance the quality of our service delivery to clients and strengthen support of instructional technology," he affirms. Case in point, the Art and Photography group recently purchased a number of high-quality digital cameras so it can offer the speed and convenience of digital photography to its clients.

As the future brings new ideas and technologies, Mediaworks will continue to adapt and evolve as it supports instructors of all technical skill levels, from the new learners to the more experienced ones like Dr. Monnier Clay, who use technology to supplement effective teaching and learning. According to Monnier Clay, Mediaworks' vision is in line with instructors' goals: "to provide students with a way to learn that is adaptable."