Who Are We?

The UTD eLearning Team is a cross departmental team of eLearning professionals within Information Resources. The team consists of two primary and one secondary System Administrators who are responsible for supporting, maintaining, and developing the campus course management system, WebCT, and two Instructional Technologists who are responsible for customer support, communication, and education.

How Can We Help?

The UTD eLearning Team was formed to help meet the current and future eLearning needs of faculty, staff, and students on and off campus. Our primary responsibilities are to ensure the functionality of the campus course management system, WebCT, and to help faculty effectively use technologies such as WebCT to enhance their classes. The team also works with the UTD Helpdesk to provide customer support for WebCT, Respondus, and other eLearning products on the campus. Additionally, we are responsible for researching emerging technologies that could be beneficial to our campus.

Current Services These are the services we currently offer to the campus: WebCT customer support WebCT system administration WebCT training Instructional Design assistance Office 2007 training eLearning product support and evaluation eLearning special events (WebCT Boot Camp, eLearning Colloquium)

Future Development Here are some of the future developments the eLearning Team is currently researching: Wikis Podcasting Blogging Social Networking Interactive Multimedia course content Secure online testing environment Expanded Instructional Design assistance The UTD Exemplary Course Project

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Mary Dziorny

I'm the Instructional Technology Coordinator for UTD and the Customer Support and Training lead for the eLearning Team. When I'm not at work, I enjoy playing with my two dogs, cooking, Medieval reenactment, and belly dancing. I'm also a member of UTD's Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).

 

Melissa D. Stokely

I am a Technical Trainer providing Microsoft Office 2007 suite application training. Additionally, as part of the elearning team I support the use of WebCT 6. Two of my favorite literary figures are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

 

Aaron B. Simpson

I am the eLearning Technical Team Lead (aka alpha geek) and Senior WebCT Administrator. In addition to my eLearning Team duties, I'm a UNIX systems administrator, and help maintain various central systems for Information Resources. I've been at UTD since 1993, and received my B.S. in C.S here. I enjoy various geeky pursuits such as video games, RPGs and medieval reenactment. My personal website is at http://www.utdallas.edu/~asimpson/

Su Wadlow

I'm one of the systems admininstrators for the UTD WebCT server. I also provide some of the end user support. I have 3 children (2 daughters and a son) and one grandchild. When I'm not at work I like (in no particular order) to go camping, reading, various arts and crafts, Renaissance festivals, Celtic music, Rock music, and Harley Davidson motorcycles. I'm also involved with the Boy Scouts of America. My personal website is at http://www.utdallas.edu/~swadlow/.

 

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Statistics

The number of campus community members logging into WebCT has steadily grown over the past three years. In Fall 2005, 10,420 faculty, students, and staff members logged into WebCT. That number increased slightly to 10,836 in Spring 2006. In Fall 2006, the number increased significantly to approximately 12,000 and rose again to approximately 14,500 in Spring 2007. Over the past three years, we have made numerous improvements and upgrades to WebCT including migrating to the newest version of the product, adding multiple expansion modules, upgrading the database server, adding multiple nodes to the system, and adding memory to the nodes. These improvements have quadrupled the number of users the system can support as well as adding many new features and capabilities to the system. The hardware upgrades have greatly improved the overall stability and availability of WebCT for the campus community, as well as vastly improving the reliability of the WebCT-SIS connection for enrollment updates and grade submissions. Additionally, we have increased support staff from two to five, improved issue resolution times, and established online resources to help faculty and students use WebCT more efficiently. Finally, we have developed and established a training curriculum for faculty and teaching assistants to help them more effectively design and deliver their classes using WebCT. This curriculum includes structured training classes; Brown Bag information sessions; individual consultation sessions; customized training sessions; and eLearning events such as the WebCT Bootcamp (a two day session including such topics as writing instructional objectives, incorporating library resources into classes, instructional design, and complying with copyright law) and the eLearning Colloquium (a one day session designed to showcase the eLearning services and tools available to faculty).

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