Scholarly Communication: Tools to Measure Journal Impact with Elizabeth Hartig
Choose from one of two dates (both sessions are the same):
Monday February 18, 12:00–1:00 pm in the ARC Testing and Training Room
Thursday February 21, 11:30 — 12:30 pm in the Manor Ballroom
This presentation is for faculty and will cover scholarly metrics or the measurement of the impact of a journal or article. Scholarly metrics helps faculty decide where to publish. This presentation will discuss the benefits and limitations of scholarly metrics. Attendees will be shown tools to find scholarly metrics and a new tool for CUAA, Browzine.
Concordia Faculty Seminar with Mark Looker and Michael Kalmes
27 Degrees of Separation: Social Network Analysis and Literary Texts
Wednesday April 10, 4:00 – 5:00 in Krieger 107
Our project adapts UCINET, a software program for doing advanced social network research, to explore what it might reveal or highlight about the relationships of characters in novels through the lenses of such categories as family, race, gender, social status, and geographical location. The resulting data, once entered into UCINET and pushed through a related program called NETDRAW, provides a unique way to sort out, compare, and visualize social relationships of various kinds in fairly dramatic fashion.
As we began to see the range of possibilities in adapting UCINET to the analysis of literary texts, it struck us that a) the modifications that we had made to the software might be used with any kind of text, and b) a simplified version of the process could be adapted for use in the classroom as an additional pedagogical tool. In fact, just the process of creating the Excel files—asking students which attributes (e.g., gender, age, race, centrality, and the like) are important to a novel and why, which relationships in a novel are most intense and why, etc., before entering them into an Excel sheet—can stimulate classroom discussion and debate (as borne out by trial runs in two courses during spring 2018 and spring 2019). One of the things we’ve noticed is that such analysis can make readers more sensitive to various kinds of diversity, encouraging them to think about texts in a way that reveals hitherto unlooked for patterns and trends and raises unexpected questions. Given the importance of visual learning in today’s educational environment, the resulting ability to visualize the generated data and make hypotheses about a novel based on that could be a powerful pedagogical tool in middle and secondary English classrooms as well as university-level (with the bonus that a basic version of UCINET is available for free).
Concordia Faculty Seminars are informal interactive presentations and conversations on faculty projects including grants, research, and service designed to promote scholarship, spark new ideas, provide opportunities for meaningful discussion, and increase collaboration.
Faculty Book Club: A continuation of What the Best College Teachers Do
Wednesday May 1, 3:30 – 5:00 pm in Krieger 107
The finish line of the spring semester is within sight. Come gather with faculty to talk about your successes and struggles this past term. After thirty minutes, we will move to a discussion of chapters 5 and 6 of this book written by Ken Bains. Those who have not read it are still welcome to stay for the book club meeting, which will begin around 4:00.
Blackboard Courses
CUAA ONLY – Blackboard Basics with Susan Gallanis and Justin Frisque
Tuesday January 22, 10:00 – 11:00 am (ET)
Learn how to log in and find your courses, add a folder, upload a document, create an Assignment (“drop box”), set up the grade center, open course for students, copy a course. This session will be a webinar streamed from the Mequon campus. Join from your own computer using Zoom.
CUAA ONLY – Blackboard Tests and Respondus LockDown Browser with Susan Gallanis and Justin Frisque
Thursday January 24, 10:00 – 11:00 am (ET)
This session is for faculty. During the first part of this session, you will learn how to create online tests using a variety of test questions. During the second part of this session, learn how to use Respondus LockDown Browser, a deterrent to cheating, for a test in Blackboard when the instructor is in the room during the test. When using LockDown Browser, students cannot print, make screen captures, access other web pages, or access other applications while taking the exam.