The Office of Information Technology provides support to the academic community through many different avenues. Support and services enable faculty to use technology to support teaching and learning both in and out of the classroom. Specialized support for scientific visualization and statistical analysis is available to assist faculty and graduate students in their research efforts. For more localized support, college-based liaisons provide the communications channels to enable OIT to better serve and understand the needs of our user community.

Technology is rapidly becoming integrated into the teaching and learning process. Partnering with the Center for Teaching Excellence, OIT has offered faculty training through the Institute for Instructional Technology (http://www.oit.umd.edu/IIT). This training opportunity provides faculty with an intensive immersion into new technologies with a pedagogical emphasis on how those technologies can be used in the teaching/learning process. Coupled with this effort, the Center for Teaching Excellence also co-sponsors with OIT the annual Teaching with Technology Conference that provides a forum for faculty to share their experiences about how they integrate technology into their curricula. The newly reorganized Academic Support unit within OIT provides access to instructional designers and technologists who work with faculty on how best to integrate technology into the teaching/learning process, whether it involves physical facilities, such as the Teaching Theaters or Technology Classrooms, online tools such as WebCT, Hypernews, or Webchat, or other multimedia approaches.

Specialized research support is provided through the Statistics Lab (http://www.oit.umd.edu/statlab) and the Visualization & Presentation Lab (http://www.vpl.umd.edu). The Statistics Lab assists faculty, staff, graduate students, and other consultees with study design, statistical methodology, and data analysis while the Visualization & Presentation Lab provides support for visualization and computer graphics technology needs in partnership with the University research community and actively pursues joint projects and grant proposals with researchers to develop visualization tools for their particular requirements.

Communication between the colleges and OIT is critical to the successful creation of support and services to faculty. The Campus Computing Associates (CCA) program has traditionally provided that link between OIT’s centralized, University-wide services and the unique, discipline-specific needs of faculty, administrators, and others across the University. Through OIT’s reorganization efforts, the CCA program has been reconfigured to provide better support to the University. Each CCA’s function and the needs of their particular college have been re-examined, and each CCA has been realigned with the appropriate OIT unit. This will allow increased communication and coordination between appropriate OIT units and the colleges and also provides the individual with appropriate organizational support and professional development opportunities. The CCAs whose function is more academically focused will remain in the Academic Support unit and are now being called Academic Technology Coordinators. CCAs who have a more technical focus will be realigned with the appropriate OIT technical support unit.

We are constantly receiving feedback from faculty in regard to their changing needs. As the number of faculty we have trained through the IIT has grown, so also has the demand for new services. There has been a growing demand for a faculty development center where faculty can obtain consulting services and resources for designing and creating online materials and activities. Plans are in the works for creating a Teaching/Learning Technology Center where faculty can work with instructional designers or web developers on creating educational materials. This Center will also be a place for faculty to test newer technologies and experiment with new possibilities for integration into teaching and learning.

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