Update on password for off-campus library database searches

In case you missed Nancy George's email, the Salem State library "is now using Windows/Network/VPN (*not* Navigator or email) user names and passwords to log into library databases from off-campus locations. This change is a result of GroupWise email being phased out this academic year. (Groupwise is the email system used by full-time faculty at Salem State, but not by students, as I understand it).  For more information, please see IT's page on Accounts and Passwords: http://www.salemstate.edu/4416.php."

Procedure for sharing WebCT/Blackboard content across sections

Many of our social work courses share the same syllabus.  As we move towards the increased use of WebCT/Blackboard as a document delivery mechanism - and more - some of our multiple section courses may want to share content.  The following are directions directly from the mouth (ok, her email) of Gail Rankin:

1. Get the shells on Blackboard/WebCT set up: Each faculty needs to follow the instructions below and request their course.


a-Log into Navigator. 
b-Click on "Faculty Home" and look for the box entitled "Academics."
c-Click on 'set myclasses for elearning'
d-Choose the term (i.e. Fall 2009, Spring 2010) and click on 'search.'
e-Then check the to the left of the title of the course and click on 'save.' The course will be available the next business day.  (Some delays have been experienced, but some have really been up the next business day).

2. The lead faculty member then needs to create a complete WebCT/Blackboard course site.  This is sometimes referred to as a "session" in Gail's parlance, not to be confused with a "section."  This will then become a "template" for the other sections of the course.


3. It will be VERY important that the faculty follow these instructions when they first enter their new course session (i.e. the WebCT/Blackboard session for their section).

a-When you first enter your course shell a display of four options appears:  create a blank course; copy the course content from a previous course; get content from a template assigned to this course or import material.
b-If the material is coming from a single source of course content as is indicated below, then faculty will need to choose the third option.

Good luck with your technological exploits on WebCT/Blackboard!

Updates to "Information for Practice" website - stemming the research-to-practice gap

Dr. Gary Holden, a professor at New York University's Silver School of Social Work has updated his website, entitled "Information for Practice" (IP).  This free website is a clearinghouse of sorts - and has been running for a number of years.  The stated goal of this website is "to help social service professionals throughout the world conveniently maintain an awareness of news regarding the profession and emerging scholarship." 

Why you want to look at IP:  In addition to a newsreel related to social work-related news, IP tracks the "grey literature," funding opportunities, calls for papers, meta-analyses and systematic reviews and more.  I have found this to be a good website to share with graduating students who will not have access to online databases once in the field.  A good way to stay connected to the research - and stems the tide of the research-to-practice gap.


Updates to the IP website:  Dr. Holden has recently re-designed and updated the site and I, for one, find it very refreshing and easy to manage. The following is a summary (from Dr. Holden) of the changes to the site:
- A new search engine is currently being beta tested which allows you greater control.

- The site has been reconfigured and expanded. There are now 10 categories of information: news; guidelines plus; meta-analyses & systematic reviews; funding; images in the news; video; books; grey literature; open access journals; and calls.

Caveats from Dr. Holden:  "As before, IP is free to you (although a few categories may not get you to
the final full text material (e.g., books)), it is updated 24 hrs per day, 7 days per week, (and almost) 365 days per year. IP: isn't optimal about anything; you wouldn't base a research synthesis on it; and it isn't exclusive enough that you don't see things that you are not interested in. Yet, it is a current slice of the social care/social welfare/social work field that I don't think you get anywhere else. My goal is to provide a
place where any social care/social welfare/social work student or professional can visit, anytime, and have a quick sense of what is happening in these related fields. Browsing/searching the archives allows one to
extend that view backward in time."

IP is sponsored by the New York University School of Social Work; the Division of Social Work and Behavioral Science, Mount Sinai School of Medicine; the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research, and the Society for Social Work and Research.

New procedure for requesting a Blackboard/WebCT session...

Thanks to Jeff and Sue G., we have just found out the following........"please note that Blackboard/WebCT requests are now processed through your Faculty Navigator account."

Note: New faculty - you will need a SSC email to get a Navigator account...which may delay getting Blackboard/WebCT sessions up and running before the very start of the fall semester, we will address this issue at the next meeting of the School of Social Work's Committee on Technology.

1. When you log into Navigator, click on Faculty Home.

2. In the box for Academics look for "Set my classes for elearning", and click the link.

3. On the next screen, please use the pull down menu to select the Term and click on Search. Your course(s) will appear below.

4. Click on the check boxes next to the course titles you want put on Blackboard.

5. Click on Save. The course(s) will be available the next business day (Note: Jeff has been waiting a while for his....so the squeaky wheel rule may apply)

What the heck is Moodle?

Moodle is an open-source, online learning environment. According to Salem State's Info Teech folks: "Moodle is a course management system that provides faculty with teaching tools and students with access to course materials 24 hours a day. This system is part of a category of technology applications called Open Source. This means that administrators can make changes( additions) to the system as needed." (Click here for more)

To call it the new version of Blackboard/WebCT may be an over-simplification, but Salem State's Info Tech Department is encouraging faculty to check it out for use in courses over the coming year.

You can check out Wikipedia's description of moodle or you can go to the Salem State moodle site to check out the test courses available there (most are in progress).

Be sure to watch for trainings on how to best use this new technology in your teaching! We'll keep you posted as soon as we hear more.

Zgoda on the Twitter phenomenon

Check out our very own adjunct instructor Karen Zgoda's most recent Social Work 2.0 column in The New Social Worker Online entitled How Tweet It Is: Social Tweeters. Not only does this column address the twitter phenomenon, it also addresses the social work implications of tweeting...which we will likely see unfold. Regardless of whether you want to jump on the twitter bandwagon, it is good to know what's up in the world of our students!

An excerpt from Karen's column:

"Twitter is essentially a free micro-blogging service that allows you to post 140-character messages called tweets. If you are interested in setting up your own Twitter account, here’s a great video guide (click here). Folks who are “following” you can see your tweets. Likewise, once you log in to your Twitter account, you can view continuously updated tweets from those you are following...

Plagiarism in the Internet Age - Resources for Teaching

While we may not at first think that plagiarism impacts future social work practice, it may be helpful to consider this question: “If a student can allow herself to plagiarize an academic paper, will he/she be fabricating client records or submitting false billing in a few years?” (Collins & Amodeo, 2005: 530).

We are all likely familiar with the challenge of grading papers in the Internet age given students’ ability to “lift” entire paragraphs (or more) directly into a paper from a website. Click here to see a webcast entitled Plagiarism in the Digital Age: Voices from the Front Lines: What’s Happening on College Campuses Today. Given this reality, the Committee on Technology has decided to distribute this memorandum in order to support you in your teaching efforts and in the effort to prevent plagiarism among social work students.

Common types of Internet-related plagiarism:

According to definitions discussed on plagiarism.org, all of the following are considered to be plagiarism (and in our estimation comprise the types of plagiarism that we see most at the School of Social Work): “failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation, changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit, copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not.”

What we have seen vis-a-vis Internet-related plagiarism at the School of Social Work:

• Cutting and pasting of sentences or paragraphs from the Internet or HTML documents on the library’s database page. This is usually visible in gray text vs. “written in” text which defaults to black).

• Cutting and pasting directly from Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents

• Copying blog postings or papers posted to the Internet

• Purchasing a paper on the Internet (a quick Google search led directly to a website where students could purchase social work-specific papers, click here).

Online resources for instructors:

Turnitin.org

As far as we can tell, this is the premier site that can support both instructors and students with respect to plagiarism prevention and detection. However, there is a fee for this service and people have to join. This website can integrate with both WebCT/Blackboard and Moodle.com for papers turned in online via the “assignment drop box” for example. Click here for more information on integration.

Google.com

During the grading process, sometimes you can detect “chunks” of language that don’t seem to fit the student. You can enter text line by line in the google search bar - using quotation marks (e.g. "text") either by typing it in or by cutting and pasting from an electronic document. If you use the website Plagiarismchecker.com you can add in paragraphs at a time for searching.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure

Talk with your students about plagiarism - refer them to the definition in the BSW/MSW student handbook. Tell them that you will be checking for plagiarism - and that you will be taking this issue seriously.

You can let them know about various online resources available to them - some of them free - some of them for a fee (such as http://writecheck.turnitin.com/static/home.html $4.95 per paper, 1 resubmission allowed).

The Committee on Technology at the School of Social Work at Salem State College does not recommend any of these tools - but we want to make you aware that they exist!

On May 27, 2003, the School of Social Work's faculty approved the following Statement on Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism:

"Salem State College assumes that all students come to the College with serious educational intent and expects them to be mature, responsible individuals who will exhibit high standards of honesty and personal conduct in their academic life. All forms of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, are considered to be serious offenses against the College community."
The faculty provided this definition of academic dishonesty: "Submitting another person’s work as one’s own. This includes, for example, copying another person’s work during examinations; purchasing papers; copying papers, reports, journal articles or portions thereof; copying material from a website; copying laboratory or computer results; and presenting material from another course or paper without proper acknowledgment, citations and references."

The formal statement on penalties for academic dishonesty at the School of Social Work: Penalties for plagiarism and academic dishonesty can include an automatic grade of F for the course as well as being reported to the Vice President, Academic Affairs, and can lead to suspension or expulsion from the College. See the current Salem State College Undergraduate and Graduate Catalogues for complete descriptions of College policies on academic dishonesty and the appeals procedures.

Setting up your faculty web profile

Salem State College provides space for a web profile service (vs. webpage) for all adjunct and full-time faculty members. The format is standardized across Schools and Departments.

You will need to login to the Web Tools website (click here) and go through the "lost password" instructions in order to start. Your password for this service differs from you overall Navigator password.

After going through this procedure, you will be prompted to change your password to something you can remember - such as your Navigator password.

Once in the Web Tools website, you will need to click on "web profile editor." This will take you to your own web profile (note: this is separate from requesting a web page of your own, which can be done here).

The College's system inputs your office and telephone data as well as the courses you are slated to teach in the current semester. You will be able to add in text on your professional biography, professional interests, responsibilities, selected publications, selected presentations and personal interests. You can also upload a photo and a copy of your curriculum vitae.

The process is usually fast and user-friendly.

Enjoy!

Instructions for making PDF copies from our Xerox machine (thanks to Chris Hudson!)

First, if the material is in a book or other bound volume, then make a photo copy of the material of interest. Make sure its in the right order, etc.

1. On the photocopier console, look for an email icon. If you don't see it, find and press "All Services." Press "Email."
2. You will see a tiny keyboard icon; press it.
3. You should now see a large keyboard. Enter the same Username that you use to access your Salem State email. It will typically be your first initial and last name. Case doesn't matter. Press Enter.
4. Still with the keyboard showing, enter the user password for accessing your SSC email. Case doesn't matter. Press Enter.
5. It will take a few moments to find your account.
6. Now, with the loose photocopy in the feeder, you can simply press the button to copy this material. But you may change various settings in the Basic and Advanced tabs, but the default creates a .pdf, and emails it to your SSC email account.
7. After the copy feeds through, nothing will seem to happen. No hard copy is created. It doesn't seem to tell you if it was successful or not, but you should in a very short time find an email in your Salem State Email account with the file attached.

A few important points:

• We have to be quite careful about infringing on copyright laws, and in only certain instances can posting of copyrighted materials be justified without permission, and this is under "fair use" provisions of the law.
• Please research that carefully. Apparently it depends on the purpose, amount, type of materials, if its an urgent one time situation, and various other factors; I have never seen a definitive guide to what is or is not fair use and don't believe that one exists. If in doubt, consult the copyright holder or a lawyer.
• The file may come up rotated at right angles, and if so, advise your students to find the .pdf command to rotate it should they want to read it online. Under Adobe Acrobat 8, its under the View menu, or Contol-shift-plus.

Introduction to technology at Salem State College School of Social Work

Help with your stand-alone printer:

Contact Tim Buckley (x6221, HB 119) or the IT Department (x2036).

Help with your networked printer:

Contact Mike (x2679) to make an appointment for a technician to meet with you.

Help with your laptop:

The IT Department requires that you come to Central Campus if you have problems with your laptop that Tim Buckley cannot address on-site.

Help with your desktop:

Call the IT Department (x2036) and make an appointment for them to meet you on the Upper South Campus if Tim Buckley cannot address the problem on site.

Help with your Groupwise email:

• Look at the Groupwise Quick Reference Guide located at: http://www.salemstate.edu/usersupport/docs/groupwise_quick_reference_guide.pdf
• To use the vacation rule: http://www.salemstate.edu/usersupport/demos/word/vacation_rule/vacation_rule.htm
• To archive emails:
• http://www.salemstate.edu/usersupport/demos/archive/GW_Archive.htm
• If all else fails, contact Tim Buckley (x6221, HB 119) or the IT Department (x2036)

Help with WebCT/BlackBoard/Mywebcourses:

• To create a course site: Make your request before the end of the previous semester at: http://www.salemstate.edu/mywebcourses/webct_account_request.php
• To save your course for future semesters as a template: Make a request at: http://www.salemstate.edu/mywebcourses/template_request.php
• For lead faculty to use your course session as a template for your adjuncts: Send an email to Gail, Tim and Webct@salemstate.edu granting permission to the adjuncts by name and section. Have each adjunct request your template via email to the same people.
• Contact Gail Rankin (x7037) for information on training or problems

Locating the “S” drive:

When your computer is networked (via the blue cord in your office, or via VPN), look in “Network places” to find the “S” drive. The “S” drive includes a list of all students with contact information, as well as…

Reserving videos/DVDs, player or remote control for closed captions:

First, report problem to Gloria (x6629) for documentation. Second, contact Paul James in Media Services (x6721).

Reserving media equipment such as screen, microphone, speaker:

Contact Dick Walsh (x7348) to make reservations for these materials.

How to use a “clever” classroom:

These are rooms AB 105, 202. Set up a meeting with your Technology Committee chair (AY ’07-08, Elspeth Slayter) to learn how to use this type of classroom.

How to use a “smart” classroom:

AB 200 is the School’s “smart” classroom. Contact the IT Department to schedule individual training on use of the room. The IT Department can be contacted in the following ways:

• Business Hours: Mon-Fri 8:00am-5:00pm;
• Laptop Walk-in Hours: Mon-Fri Noon-4:00pm; Telephone: 978-542-2036;
• Email: it-helpdesk@salemstate.edu

If you need a blue cord to connect to the network:

Obtain a cord from Cheryl Springer (x6041).

Reporting technical problems with either a “clever” or “smart” classroom or the media cart:

Contact Gloria (x629) to report a technical problem with cables in “clever” classrooms, other glitches in “smart” classrooms or problems with the media cart. Please tell her which item is malfunctioning, where it is located and what the specific problem is so she can make the appropriate report.

How to use a “Smart Board”:

You will need to download software onto your laptop in order to use this technology.
Contact IT Department (x2036) for instruction.

How to reserve computer speakers, the cart or a freestanding LCD projector:

Contact Dore Ford (x6650) to reserve a projector. Use the key lock box to access the projectors in AB-100-E.

If you cannot connect to the VPN:

Contact Tim Buckley (x6221, HB 119) or the IT Department (x2036).

How to access your Web Profile Editor:

Go to this website: https://www.salemstate.edu/login/ and follow instructions for “lost password.” Also see the second post on this blog from June 2009.

How to access Navigator for grading:

Click on the blue “Navigator” button on the College’s home page, follow instructions. For a tutorial on how to grade in Navigator, go to this website:
http://www.salemstate.edu/registrar/docs/faculty_online_grading.pps.

To scan a document:

Contact Derek Barr (x6155) to make an appointment, review the third blog posting on this blog or see Gloria Gove for instructions on how to make a PDF document on our xerox machine.

To place something on the School of Social Work calendar:

Contact your support staff person (MSW-Dore Ford; BSW-Gloria)

How to access other help from the IT Department:

The IT Department can be contacted in the following ways:

• Business Hours: Mon-Fri 8:00am-5:00pm;
• Laptop Walk-in Hours: Mon-Fri Noon-4:00pm; Telephone: 978-542-2036;
• Email: it-helpdesk@salemstate.edu