Innovation of the Year Award Nomination

EET has been nominated for the League for Innovations - Innovation of the Year Award! Amazing!!

"The Innovation of the Year Award is designed to recognize League college staff members who have designed and implemented a significant innovation. Each year the League recognizes “Innovations of the Year.” Only one award will be presented to each of the League Alliance member district or college. Each innovation will receive an appropriate certificate."

To see previous recipients, visit the League website:
http://www.league.org/league/competitions/innovations/default.asp

Congrats to all of you on this nomination. It says lots about what a team can do when every team member contributes in some way!

Karen

Flex Time / Summer Schedules

As many of you know, all of you (except faculty) can work flex time through the summer. We'll be talking about this briefly on Friday, but here's a brief summary of how it works:


- It runs from May through August

- We have to make sure we have coverage in all areas.

- The most widely used system means starting at 8 every day and skipping a break. Then you would get every second Friday (or Monday) off.

- We've been asked to not combine days.

- Each area within EET will need to come up with a schedule of everyone who is participating. Then I need to sign and submit it to HR / payroll.

If you have questions, bring them with you on Friday.

Next CTLI Centre Meeting

The spring Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 6. It will be a half day (morning) meeting, most likely on campus, followed by lunch. Details will follow . . .

DL Strategy - Implications for EET

What does the DL Strategy really mean for EET? Overall, we're going to be busy doing a lot of exciting things!

• It escalates many of the things we currently do, in other words it means “more” . . . more course development (DL and classroom); more support for instructors teaching on campus as well as through DL; more PD for blended course redesigns and delivery and effective use of educational technologies; more integrated program / curriculum reviews; more demand for video conferencing, more focus on PLA . . . .

• And this happens in the current world of doing more with pretty much the same level of staffing. This means we will have to be creative and perhaps shuffle some responsibilities around to be more efficient. As we’ve experienced, it’s often a good process to rethink processes and practices with the end goal of being more efficient, as well as better utilizing strengths of everyone in the department. We'll also have to watch workload very carefully and work on priorizing our work both individually on a daily basis and at the department level.
  

• Opportunities for applied research projects

• Opportunities to attend and / or present at provincial, national, and international conferences

• Opportunities to be innovative and to learn!

Watch for more information to be emailed your way soon . . . . Karen

Light bulb moves again . . . . this time to Tim

Heather passed the light bulb on this week to Tim Dawson. The reason - for being brave enough to move into TE3218 with the media specialists! Welcome to this space, Tim. You are now in the penthouse area of the tech building!

Tim, you have one week to pass it on again . . .

Upcoming Threat Assessment Training

Are you interested in attending this Threat Assessment workshop on May 3-4? If so, please let me know as soon as possible. We can send a couple people from EET . . .

Background

High profile college and university shootings in Canada and the United States, as well as terrorist attacks and other high profile violent traumas, have understandably increased anxiety among many students, staff, faculty, parents and others. Without formal procedures in schools and communities to assess high risk and threat making behavior, the likelihood of over-reacting or under-reacting is increased.

In 2000, Lethbridge College and the Canadian Threat Assessment Training Board collaborated in the development of a “Threat Assessment Training (TAT)” program initiative to train multidisciplinary Threat/Risk Assessment Teams. This protocol was developed by J. Kevin Cameron and Deborah Sawyer as part of the Threat Assessment Training program.

The general purpose of a TAT protocol in college and university jurisdictions is to assist in creating and maintaining an environment where students, staff, faculty and others feel safe. The primary purpose of the multidisciplinary TAT protocol is to identify indicators that suggest a person of concern may be moving on a pathway towards violence against him/herself or others and intervene to decrease that risk, prevent injury, and support the individual in receiving the help he or she needs to address the issues contributing to the high-risk behavior.

Details of Training

The two day seminar details are as follows:
Date: May 3rd and 4th 2010
Time: 9:00 AM to Noon and 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Location: IB1101 & IB1102
Lunch will be provided both days.

the lightbulb has moved on . . . from Adam to Heather

Adam has passed the lightbulb on to Heather. Here's why . . .

Cooking stir-fry, making apple crisp, planning taco/waffle parties and greatly contributing to pretty much every party we have!

Way to go Heather!

One new guideline for the lightbulb. You must pass it on to someone within one week.

Has anyone come up with a name for this award? We'll revisit this at the next EET meeting. Something to think about in the meantime.

More feedback on the Hubbard site

Hi Everyone

We submitted the final documentation for the Hubbard site at the end of February. Yanick, the fund administrator from Inukshuk, sent this comment, which I'm passing on to all of you. Many of you worked hard on this site. Excellent work!

"I would also like to congratulate you and your colleagues for the excellence of your work. I have accessed the resource and was quite impressed with what the project team has achieved"

EET Staff Updates

As many of you know, we've had several staffing changes in the last couple weeks. These changes are a result of projects being completed and a need for specific skills for new projects.

1. The Hubbard Digitization project is complete. Matt Smith was assigned specifically to this project, and because it is finished his last day was last Friday, February 26. Matt, along with Pam and Chris, did a wonderful job pulling this project together through the fall.

2. Roma Davidson was also finished last Friday. Roma had been working as an instructional designer, mostly assisting the other ID's by reviewing courses during development and when completed. This was critical work because of the number of courses we sent to eCampus for review in January and February. Roma played a key role in getting these courses ready for the reviews.

3. Stacey Goldstein has joined EET as an Instructional Designer. Stacey has been working since late fall on several projects, including the English for Nursing program; First Nations, Metis, Inuit (FNMI) course development; Badlands Customer Service; along with several on-campus course development projects. Stacey will be working in TE3215 part-time throughout the week.

4. Pamela Perry-Globa is currently taking a short break after completing the Police Recruit Training program at the end of February. Pam's role in this project was a combination of ID and course writer, and she completed an amazing amount of work in 6 months - 7 complete courses! Shirley was a big help with this project too.

It's always good to complete projects, especially when they meet time and quality expectations; however, it can mean changes in staffing needs - sometimes more staff and sometimes less, so it can be good and bad. These situations make our marketing initiatives very important. The more we can communicate the type and quality of work we do, the better it is!!

EET Open House - Wow and Thank you!

To start, thank you - to all of you who helped with the EET Open House on Friday. We had a pretty good turn-out, which I think is quite typical for the open houses on campus. It was very encouraging to see some new faces come to see what we do. In addition to this, though, I think there are many other positives to the day:

• You demonstrated very clearly your pride in your work. I saw this in the week leading up to the open house and while we had visitors. This sends a strong message!

• Everyone contributed in some way . . . designing, delivering, producing, setting up, cutting, cleaning, organizing, filming, taking pictures, baking . . . We accomplished a lot in a short period of time.

• This open house was and will continue to be good marketing for EET that will pay off in many ways. People from across campus were talking about the apples last week and were very appreciative of the visits when you delivered them. This created quite a buzz! It's great to get our name out there!

• We finished a couple projects that have been in the works for a while. The video is amazing - and was a lot of fun to make. Jane Friesen, Dean of HJHS, has asked if she can show it at their next Centre meeting. The visual that Adam finished on Friday morning will be a good way to explain what we do. We'll also make this into bigger posters. We've been on the digital screens and in Connections,updated the website, and we have a good collection of EET staff photos. Lots of good things!

• We also did a thorough clean of our work spaces. It always helps to have deadlines, and the open house helped all of us get some of these jobs done.

• And the apple crisp that Heather made was amazing!!

So thank you! The time, energy, and thought you put into making the open house a success is very much appreciated. Our name is out there!

Karen