Results of USG Student Information Technology (SIT) Study

During Spring and Fall Semesters 2006, more than 7,400 students from all 22 USG four-year institutions, participated in this online survey - including 729 students from UWG alone.

Key Findings from the Executive Summary (4-Year Institutions) :

• More than 83 percent of the students reported having experienced classes that used course management systems (CMS). (Q12)
  
• Of the students who have used a course management system (CMS), more than 71 percent report a positive or very positive experience with it. (Q14)
  
• Regarding CMS features, students most valued keeping track of grades on assignments and tests, syllabus, and getting assignments back from instructors with comments and grades for learning purposes. (Q16)


• Students rated their technological expertise highly. More than 88 percent rated themselves at the intermediate or advanced levels for using technology in educational work. (Q4)


• More than 74 percent report having high-speed internet access at home. (Q6)


• Among academic online resources, students chose course schedule, course syllabi, printing, assignments, electronic full-text databases (GALILEO) or library catalog (GIL), grading criteria, and gradebook as the most critical. (Q7)


• More than 66 percent encouraged instructors to have a WebCT (Vista) component for all courses. (Q8)

Aggregated reports for the entire University System of Georgia as well as the sector reports are available here: http://alt.usg.edu/research/studies/sit.phtml

UWG Ranks in Top 5 Vista Users for Fall '06

UWG ranked 5th in the number of active user WebCT Vista accounts and the number of active course sections, across all 33 USG schools during Fall 2006. Keep in mind that most of our Arts & Sciences courses were not migrated until Spring 2007. UWG also ranked 4th in overall percentage of faculty and students with active WebCT Vista accounts. The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are the only two remaining USG schools not yet using WebCT Vista.

* “Active Users” and “Active Course Sections” is defined by those with more than 100 actions occurring to-date; Enrollment figures from Fall 2006 Semester Enrollment Report, Nov 10, 2006; Faculty figures are from the “Corps of Instruction Report” most recently available in the USG Information Digest 2005-2006 (http://www.usg.edu/usg_stats/info_digest/2005/faculty0506.pdf)

Instructor Demos Free Tool for Easy Large File Transfer

More than 40 faculty gathered to chase away the January blues, at our monthly Apollo Luncheon, and learn a little about a cool tool called Pando. Dr. Elizabeth Bennett, of the MIT department, discovered the free tool while looking for a solution for her online video production class; she and the students were frustrated with the time it took to send their large video files through WebCT Vista or e-mail. Dr. Bennett explained ow Pando makes the sharing of files as large as 1BG more than ten times faster. She also demonstrated the ease of the tool, but did warn that the students will need to install Pando on their own computers for the transfer to work. Afterward the informative session, participants won door prizes and told jokes to wrap of up the event. Click here to download the presentation.