Celebrating Your Success
For our first "Celebrating Your Success" piece,
we are pleased to recognize the following four instructors and
their recent accomplishments. Please visit
www.cel.cmich.edu/faculty for more details on their
outstanding achievements.
Dr. Ralph Davis (PHL 318, 325, 518, and HUM
597) published an article, "Thoughts on Art & Geometry," in
the September-October 2008 issue of Hyperseeing and
presented a paper, "Art & the Political: the Illusion of
Failure," at the New York School of Visual Arts' 22nd Annual
Natl. Conf. on Liberal Arts and the Education of Artists, in
October. He also offered an NSF-style Chautauqua Short Course
and wrote multiple reviews for The American Journal of
Physics and for Choice.
Dr. Michael Stacey (EDU 614 and CED 655) has
recently published a book titled "Observations Skills"
through Pearson. Dr. Stacey and his two co-authors are also
working on three more books, due out this year.
Dr. Hosep Torossian (EDL 645, 662, 670, 672,
692, 731) has received a $308,000 Charter School
Dissemination Grant through the Department of Education for
his work with targeted interventions to help students who
are at risk of failing the MEAP tests.
Dr. Cande Tschetter (JRN 350, 360 and MKT
300) received her Ph.D. in Business, Management and
Organization from Capella University in December. Her
dissertation was titled: Emergence of A Purposeful Career
Among Mid-life Women: Phenomenological Case Study. Her
mentor was fellow CMU instructor Dr. Marilyn Harris.
So that we may celebrate your successes,
e-mail Sarah Young at
young2sa@cmich.edu!
Blackboard Tips and Solutions
Missing test/quiz questions
The first issue manifests itself when a student enters
an online quiz/exam using Internet Explorer to find that
only some of the questions are displayed. For
example, the quiz might contain a total of 30 questions, but
nothing past question #18 appears onscreen. Students
accessing the test with other browsers (Firefox for
example) experience no issues with the question display. One
obvious workaround, of course, is to encourage students to
use Firefox; however, given their locations and testing
environments that may not always be an option. Missing text
is caused by the accidental inclusion of extraneous code
(usually XML code from MS Word 2007) into Blackboard’s test
canvas while creating the question. The extra code is
included when content for a quiz or exam is copied from MS
Word 2007 directly into Blackboard’s test canvas. To prevent
this issue, the instructor (or the test creator/editor)
should copy and paste copied text into a plain-text only
editor (e.g. Notepad) prior to pasting the text into
Blackboard. Test questions which have already been created
may be edited to remove the extraneous code.
Quiz Timer Covers Submit Button
Another issue occurs when a student enters an online
quiz/exam only to discover that the quiz timer is extending
down the entire length of the page, covering up the Submit
button, and thereby preventing submission of the exam. This
generally occurs when using Internet Explorer 8 and/or other
non-supported browsers in Blackboard. If you have already
installed IE8, try changing to compatibility view (click
Tools, Compatibility View) or use Firefox, but at this time
upgrading to IE8 is not recommended. A matrix of
operating systems and browsers which are currently supported
for use in Blackboard is available at:
http://www.ddlcampus/browsercheck/cgi-bin/bb8_matrix.pdf.
Forum Grading Error
Finally, if you employ graded discussion forums within
your course and you inadvertently remove the corresponding
forum’s column from the Grade Center, the following error
will appear when you attempt to grade the forum: “The
connection for the gradebook has been lost. It must be
redefined in Modify Forum.” Attempts to modify the forum
also result in the error and manually re-creating the grade
center column does not restore the broken link. The simplest
solution is to delete and re-create the graded forum again,
however if the forum already contains student postings, this
course of action is not helpful as the posts would then be
lost as well. For cases like this, instructors should
contact the IT Helpdesk to have a support ticket created – it
may be possible to search the grade center database and
manually restore the connection. However, as this process is
quite resource intensive, please be very careful when
deleting columns from the Grade Center – if you no longer
want the forum to be graded, simply modify the forum and
select “No grading” under the forum settings area.
MSA Director Search Update
The search committee for CMU's next MSA
Director is currently reviewing applications and planning to
begin interviews within the next couple weeks. For more
information on the MSA Director position, please visit
www.jobs.cmich.edu
and select "Professional & Admin
–
Salary". If you or anyone you know is interested in
applying, please note that the application deadline is
Sunday, April 26.
CMU Library has a New
Database
The CMU Libraries has recently added a new
database to its collection. It is called Issues and
Controversies and it offers library users excellent
coverage of recent events topics and current issues. While
it is not a collection of journal articles like most of our
databases, it does provide academic-quality essays on a
variety of topics of interest to researchers. One advantage
Issues and Controversies have over many other tools
is that it takes a single issue, such as the mortgage crisis
or outsourcing, and provides a thorough overview of that
topic. The essays also feature a bibliography of sources and
a list of related links. The essays in this new database
will provide your students with excellent overviews and
background information on topics related to their research.
To check out the new Issues and Controversies
database go to
http://0-www.2facts.com.catalog.lib.cmich.edu/ICOF/issues-home-feature.asp.
ProfEd Conference and
Workshop Sponsorships
As part of a new faculty support
initiative, ProfEd will be focusing future conference
and workshop sponsorships on a variety of events
specifically designed for our off-campus instructors. Our
intent is to provide opportunities for a greater number of
instructors to connect with ProfEd staff and each other in
both face-to-face and online formats. The first of these
will be the ProfEd Faculty Institute, May 17-19, as part of
the CMU Conference on Teaching, Learning, and Civic
Engagement. All sponsorship invitations have been delivered
and accepted for this event; however, we are also planning
additional activities for 2009-2010. Sponsorships will be
granted either by direct invitation or an application
process.
We certainly encourage you to
participate in additional professional development
opportunities, such as the Lilly Conference in Traverse City
(www.facit.cmich.edu/lilly);
however ProfEd will not be able to provide funds for these
activities.
2009 Summer
Security Changes
On May 14, 2009, the Office of
Information Technology (OIT) will begin implementation
of its 2009 Online Security Plan. This plan, which will
affect nearly everyone one way or another, is targeted
at reducing the amount of spam and the number and
severity of virus and “phishing” attacks at CMU
accounts. There are two major components for you to be
aware of:
Password Complexity Rules
– Beginning with new users and password
resets, CMU will begin transitioning to “strong”
passwords. This means that passwords must meet the
following minimum requirements:
-
Be at least eight characters in length
-
Contain both upper and lowercase English characters (A/a
through Z/z)
-
Contain base 10 digits (0 through 9, but not at either
end)
-
Contain special characters (for example, !, $, #, %,
but not at either end)
-
Not contain significant portions of account name or full
name
-
Not contain certain words that will be
regular-expression matched to omit, such as various
permutations on the word password (pa$swOrd, etc.)
Faculty
will be required to go to
https://myaccount.cmich.edu to change passwords.
Campus
Firewall – Access to servers from off-campus
locations will be blocked unless those servers are
registered with OIT. This change will disallow anyone
from sending e-mail that appears to come from a
cmich.edu account unless it meets one of the three
qualifications:
-
The message is sent from within the cmich.edu domain
(on-campus network)
-
The message is sent from the OWA (Online Web Access)
for their mail server –
http://mail.cmich.edu for faculty and staff
-
The sender is accessing the campus network via a VPN
(Virtual Private Network)
In other
words you will no longer be able to send e-mail if you
are using a client like Thunderbird or Outlook Express
from an off campus location unless you are connected
through the VPN. VPN software is available from the Help
Desk Software Download Center,
www.it.cmich.edu/secured/helpdesk_download_ctr.asp.
The setup instructions can be found at CMU Helpdesk
Quickguides,
www.oit.cmich.edu/quickguides/qg_vpn.asp.
If you have any questions or
concerns regarding this notification, you can contact
the Office of Information Technology Help Desk at (989)
774-3662.
