How do UWindsor faculty members keep up with developments in their disciplines? The Leddy Library will conduct a survey next month asking faculty to offer their perspectives on this question.

The Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey has been administered at numerous universities in the U.S., Australia and the U.K. over the past decade. Through the coordinating efforts of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Windsor will join several universities in Canada to roll it out in this country for the first time.

It is an effort to better understand the teaching and research needs of faculty members in an environment that is increasingly reshaped by digital technology, says Joan Dalton, associate dean of the library.

“Responses will provide us with the data needed to create a roadmap for collections and services development over the next few years,” she says.

The survey will look at four major areas related to how faculty do their work:

• How faculty discover and access the scholarly materials they need for their research and teaching;
• Whether and how libraries and library collections are evolving to foster these methods of discovery and access;
• The ways in which research and teaching practices are changing as new technology offers new opportunities for doing scholarly work;
• How scholars communicate the findings of their research through the entire scope of media available today.

The survey will provide an understanding of these and related issues that will reflect the distinctive nature of the UWindsor campus community while also contributing to national benchmarks. Find more information on the Leddy website, or direct questions to Dalton at Joan.Dalton@uwindsor.ca.

Campus community radio station CJAM will host and broadcast a live Windsor mayoral debate at noon Friday, October 24.

Over the past weeks, the station’s news team has been actively collecting questions of UWindsor students through social media; those questions will form the basis for the debate.

“We will be asking candidates only those questions that students sent to the CJAM newsroom,” says news director Zoran Kljajic. “The basic idea is to bring our news and information program, The Windsor Chronicle, closer to our local audience while at the same time paving the road to the new mayor’s office.”

He says the goal is to establish the station as a credible alternative news source.

“Voters and candidates should look to CJAM first,” Kljajic says. “CJAM has always been an excellent source of alternative music programming. Slowly but surely, we are also becoming a respectable news station with alternative angles on stories, competent in coverage on the local level as well as on the world stage.”

The station broadcasts at 99.1 FM.

To the strains of Bhangra music lilting through the air, students enjoyed south Asian cuisine Wednesday in the Marketplace food court.

Dishes like curried chickpeas, samosa pastries and mango chutney spiced up the Homestyle station. The specialized menu marked the start of the Indian holiday Diwali, the festival of lights.

Student groups sold traditional sweets like burfi, laddu and gulab jamun; third-year environmental studies major Paviiththira Vimalananthan used coloured sand, candles and incense to make a display on the floor, welcoming patrons to the cafeteria.

“It’s a great atmosphere here today,” said executive chef Paolo Vasapolli. “I think people are really enjoying the tastes, sounds, sights and smells of Indian culture.”

Instructors hoping to create engaging, high-quality online classes can access tools that support equivalent learning opportunities to those found in face-to-face classes, says Nick Baker.

Director of the UWindsor Office of Open Learning, he is promoting a series of upcoming workshops to introduce instructors to some of the resources available to support their teaching in both online and on-campus settings.

“With the recent investments in online learning from the province and growing demand from students, many instructors are wondering what Windsor has available to support online learning, including ways to record lectures and communicate with students in live online classrooms,” Baker says.

He points to such lecture capturing tools as Echo360, which can record and stream live lectures from a traditional classroom, making them available both to on-campus and online learners.

“It provides more equitable access to learning,” he says. “Combined with tools for students to ask questions remotely, online learners now have the opportunity to feel they are a part of the institution. They can be included in the kind of learning that their on-campus colleagues get.”

Baker says that many instructors in online courses are also experimenting with, or have switched to, delivering live online classes through Blackboard Collaborate. This flexible tool, now available in all CLEW sites, gives instructors the ability to present and annotate slides, draw diagrams, annotate images, involve students in “breakout rooms” to discuss problems, and much more.

The Office of Open Learning is running two-hour workshops in room G141, Erie Hall, to help instructors explore the options available to them and their students:

• Echo360 and Screen Capturing, 10 a.m. on Friday, November 7; and
• An Introduction to Blackboard Collaborate, 10 a.m. on Friday, October 24, and 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5.

Register for the workshops at: http://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/openlearning/workshops/7/.

“We are also happy to provide customized workshops and sessions for departments or groups of instructors on campus who are considering expanding their online or blended course offerings, or who just want to find out what options are available to them,” Baker says.

For more information, contact Alicia Higgison at 519-253-3000, ext.2008, or e-mail higgison@uwindsor.ca.

The University of Windsor has lowered its flags to commemorate the tragic events that occurred in Quebec and Ottawa this week in which two members of the Canadian military were killed. UWindsor flags are at half-staff in conjunction with flags being lowered at government building and establishments, including the Peace Tower in Ottawa.