Yesterday, Aug. 27, marked my 10th anniversary of working in Teaching and Learning with Technology, known as CETS when I started. At that time, the communications group consisted of me and Elise. The fellow denizens of the 225 Computer Building cubicle warren I got to know back then are still among those coworkers I hold in highest esteem.

In particular, Heather was a great writing mentor—so handy to have sitting there in the same room—guiding me in what Public Information would look for in a story for Intercom (the print publication that was the precursor to Penn State Live) and Elise gave lots of great guidance in my learning well-formed HTML, which has served me well (even in this day and age of content management and blog systems, I still need to hand-code in HTML frequently in order to do my job).

Also, it was so great at that time for just about all of TLT to be in one building. Back then, Training Services was just down the hall, so that in addition to calling the trainers my colleagues, I could get to know them on a day-to-day basis and call them my friends.

"Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days..."
—The Boss

I'm thankful to be able to attend perhaps one of the top two most expensive training opportunities TLT has provided for me in my 9-1/2 years with the unit, called Mastering SuperVision, provided by Penn State's own Human Resources Development Center (HRDC). The training took place at the Penn Stater, which, yes, is close, compared to opportunities people attend in California or what have you, but is at least twice as far from home as our office, so I lost sleep by waking numerous times in the early morning worrying about whether I would get up earlier than usual as required. (My usual commute takes 8 minutes, not 20-plus.)

OK, I'll be up-front. Most other "soft skills" trainings I've been to have made me skeptical as far as any real value or ability to tap into my higher thinking skills. For example, I recall attending a past seminar designed to make me stop discriminating on some human aspect by carefully delineating the pigeonholes we all belong in according to a particular criterion and unquestioningly making me sort everyone into those pigeonholes. To me, that was the heart of discrimination. But I digress.

The eight hours each day over Tuesday through Thursday of this past week were very valuable, thought-provoking, and intensive. Unlike the type of session alluded to above, I did not just have to swallow a presenter's notion of how I should categorize people into slots--although we used various instruments to find out our "native" or go-to styles when not trying very hard. What I liked was that it was said we were not locked into what our native or initial-reaction style was, but that we could stretch, learn, practice, and adopt (at best) or at least learn about (at worst) other styles. Now, I'll admit that was more true of the Myers-Briggs personality, managerial style, and conflict-handling style instruments than the generational profiles; in the case of the latter, it seemed just as unwavering and pigeon-holey as the previous training situation I was leery of. The funny thing for me is that it was declared to us that the greatest generational conflict now occurs between the baby boomers and generation X; however, even during this Mastering SuperVision training, I've seen my birth year of 1962 place me in both generations, depending on the cutoff year adopted. For each session we were to fill out a form about what we'd learned--I stated that despite the supposed conflict between these generations and my placements in them, I experience no inner conflict as a result!

Anyhoo, I haven't experienced any great shock as to my outcome on the various measurements so far. For example, I'd already tested as an ISFJ (introvert, sensing, feeling, judging) person previously and I've known all my life I'm a conflict avoider. However, in these few days, I've learned a lot about the *other* styles, what they like and need to feel rewarded in their work, how we can work together and anticipate what will motivate and please other styles. That is something very valuable I'd never learned or practiced before. Also, I learned because I'm almost an equal feeling and thinking (logical) person, that in the workplace I can understand both styles, so can help bridge gaps between those two different styles and thus be an asset to teams containing persons with both those styles.

A great thing about the sessions so far is that after covering concepts in the format of a lecture, we get up out of our seats and do activities and interact with other trainees. For example, after we've determined our styles, we physically get up and group as that style, then are given a case study where we decide how our style will handle it and how we can best accommodate the styles around the room. This both made me feel like I'm not alone so that I know other people understand where I'm coming from and made me reach to be more empathetic of others. On a practical note, I don't think I could tolerate sitting without moving for the whole session.

With one or two exceptions, the speakers for the various topics have been outstanding and very much held my attention. Some of the outstanding ones so far were Terrell Jones, Kim Townsend, Lenny Pollack, Dee Frisque, and Rick Capozzi.

After this week of three intensive days, our group will settle down to one morning a week till mid-May, which admittedly will be less stressful for me in terms of worrying about the work load being neglected and feeling in touch with my colleagues.

Lots more to say (I already spent a big chunk of time composing for our session reflection forms), but I'll just end with: as an introvert as well as a person with end-of-gen-x /start-of-baby-boomer eyes, the combination of a large number of bright fluorescent lights overhead, loud talking all day (the previous two items would energize an extrovert but deplete my batteries), either looking at a screen with a relatively small projection because the projector was on a table too close to the screen without lowered lights or a printout of the same slides so small it was almost impossible to read with my several-year-old-bifocals--I endured severe headaches during each day, even with popping many ibuprofen tablets.

Today back in the office, I realized that not only had I missed my routine and coworkers; I needed a break from the light and noise. After I recover from those factors, I'll try to stretch and start to relate better to my friends with personality and work styles other than my own!

Richard Cyr and Matt Meyer

In the past, many students didn't complete the course or got a poor grade. We first need to think of best practices in undergraduate education, then think of what tool will help that the best. In sciences, instructors are interested in addressing the learning work ethic--things get hard in science. Students need to learn how to get through the intellectual trenches.

BIOL 100 has 1,500 students a year; it is a requirement for 13 majors. There is a huge diversity of students in terms of background, motivation, and abilities. The course has 40+ TAs, 6 faculty members, a lab coordinator, and a course coordinator.

Assignments in the course include five 40-question multiple choice exams, in-class clicker points, labs with weekly quizzes, short reports, worksheets, and a cumulative final.

Class activities:

Prior to class: online tutorial--content including Flash, formative quizzing for understanding, instructor gets summary results for class via ANGEL--identifies difficult questions that will need to be reviewed in class. So much material online that there is no longer a required textbook. In class: instructor identifies difficult material, reviews, probes student understanding.

Developing WikiBooks in Wikispaces -- that for 110 should be visible to those interested. It is easy to add content and the system supports common file formats. Because the class is so large, students don't have editorial privileges. He piloted WikiBooks in BIOL 110 in fall 2009. He is proposing WikiBooks for four courses by 2013, all open-source. Will work with instructional designers to vary the terrain with VoiceThread, interactive quizzing, etc. There will be tracking features. Benefits: increases utility of material. Can skip the publishing cycle of traditional textbooks. Decreases textbook cost to students.

In class: reinforce problem areas and clarify misunderstandings. Prompt feedback (one of the principles). Students say clickers keep them on their toes.

After class: case studies that help students solve practical problems. Later, they use it to create multiple choice questions for the final exam.

Peer tutors--the human element can't be ignored. Upper-level students helping primarily freshman. They are trained to guide students to find the answer, not to give answers. They are using tutor training as a gateway to assistant TA, undergraduate TA, and for some a five-year BS/MEd.

Gains--less than a 10% drop rate. Low number of F's. Higher test performance and question effectiveness.

Future efforts to improve learning work ethic: Make better uses of clickers--use for more high-stakes questions. Find better ways to get student outcome data to tutors and TAs. Figure out ways of getting students to do online tutorial homework.

Innovations in the redesign of introductory biology labs--Matt Meyer, instructional designer in Teaching and Learning with Technology, is helping. They are being piloted this semester. Reasons: assessment from mid-state accreditation process indicated labs were not servicing students. Shortage of lab classroom space. Lack of scalable approaches to help students to learn how to think critically.

Backward design:

Identify course goals (non-majors): understand the scientific method.

10 modules. Scalable. Cost reduction in TA need.

Spring 2009 development. Identified blogs as location to house content. ANGEL course pointed to online content on the blog. Created interactive content including narrated animations.

Spring 2010: Carried content forward and added to it, such as content from YouTube, Kaltura, and VoiceThread, embedded into the blog. The development team did all project documentation in Google Docs--no e-mail attachments or versioning issues. Project team member Tyrone went to Australia. He and Matt called each other via Skype, which now has a screen-sharing feature. They used Google docs and spreadsheets for assessments as well as evaluation forms.

Its mission, meanderings, missteps and--finally--its almost marvelous manifestation

Bim Angst, Jason Wolfe

The game started last year. Jason found out Bim was an English teacher and asked if students made a lot of spelling mistakes. They conversed and collaborated over a year.

The game is an identification game. In all her courses on all levels, it's hard to teach proofreading. Students don't think standard English is important. Some of her students are first-year and haven't even decided if they'll stay in college. The game can work for identification in any field--any verbal content can be used. An advantage is that it's always online and can be self-accessed. Students have fun with it and get instant feedback, which they like. She doesn't have to grade it. She as an instructor can focus on their writing, not their mechanical skills. Jason Wolfe built in reporting features.

Game goals:Has to compete in an attention economy.Create addictive experience like entertainment gaming. Make it attractive (visuals, sounds, serial story). Encourage compulsive competition. Provide instant feedback at every stage. Tie information and activity to course skill or content. Students started to recognize user IDs of winners and wanted to know who that person was they wanted to beat! Can tie what is being identified in the game to your educational goals and what you're teaching.

Finding errors is harder than fixing them.

Bim writes a little story and Jason writes code. She puts common errors into the episodes. She found she had to shorten the episodes and lower the number of errors. She realized she had to start writing for the game screen. Jason had to accommodate problems real gamers don't have--people with little gaming or technology experience. He keeps on refining the code.

Reports that can be pulled: standings of a current class cohort, a student's progress over time, player performance comparison, merit badges or trophies, visual tracking of achievements for both student and instructor, individual student progress over time in varied categories, a student's scores for a particular area of mastery, a cohort's progress over time, instructor-defined categories, eventual development of an automated remediation mechanism, increased assessment granularity.

Built in Flash, stored on SQL database.

The instructor puts in the text and determines what he/she wants students to identify--could be facts.

They are still experimenting on optional speed, text density, etc. and invite other instructors to experiment, too. She does not fault them for attempting many times. She wants them to play as many times as it takes to get 100. It's a learning tool, not a testing tool. For testing, she gives students an ANGEL quiz.

Showed another example of identifying colors in Spanish.

Elizabeth Pyatt, instructional designer in TLT, is doing student surveys and focus groups and researching comparing their learning pre-Typo and post. Interested in the motivational aspects--making learning both meaningful and fun.

Students aren't playing much on their own--motivation still not totally there. She has them play during class or just before class.

Oh, my, it seems it's been awhile since I made an entry here. Lot of water under the bridge.

Just wanted to say I've been paying attention to Diversability week this week. I attended a talk Monday by David Cunningham, who demonstrated the good and the bad of using the screen reader JAWS on several Penn State sites including ANGEL, the ANGEL Help & Information Guide, and the Libraries. Copresenters included TLT's own Elizabeth and Christian as well.

Then, just this evening, I was alerted by a Tweet from the Society for Technical Communication technical editing special interest group (to which I belong) of a webinar Dec. 3 at noon entitled "Editing for Accessibility." I attended one of these before, and for the phone audio, just held the receiver to my ear for an hour. It occurred to me that not only to be more comfortable but also so that interested coworkers--perhaps even fellow technical documenters--could join me, I could book a conference room and be able to put the phone on speaker. If you are interested in attending, please comment. If I don't get a response, I'll do the regular receiver-to-the-ear thing in my cubicle.

P.S. I think my psychology works similarly for blogging and exercising. The longer I don't do it, the harder or the bigger deal it seems to be to start again. Well, after not going to the Y for the entire month of Sept., last Friday, I signed up for a workout review they offered free to established members, got some new, challenging exercises to do, and have begun showing up again. So...the parallel would be...uh, yes, that now that I've made a post after a hiatus, I'll start doing so regularly. Not sure, but it's a nice goal.

Hmm, looks like I fell out of the practice of making updates here for a few weeks, so am due for a post.

One of my (and Derick and Tara's) projects over this period has been a faculty back-to-school quick-start campaign that includes a Web story--just posted last night--and a direct mail packet including the annual technology classrooms brochure, a flier that has the ANGEL calendar on one side and a Turnitin fact sheet on the other, a Training Services flier, and a letter "from John" ghost written by yours truly. There was a flurry of activity on Friday and on Monday evening to get the fliers edited in the midst of my being out of the office for 2-1/2 days. All the pieces are now at the printer and should be in mailboxes around Aug. 12. As I posted on Facebook Mon. evening, a drawback to working at home, let's say if we were to have a flu quarantine, is that whenever I lay a project, e.g., the CLC brochure, on the dining room table, my 19-lb. cat lays down on it, sprawling his whole length. Cute, but not very efficient.

Believe it or not, the Symposium marketing team already had its kickoff meeting this week. Time is flying by quickly.

It seems like I may have mentioned in passing that I love summer. One reason is that I finally have time for professional development activities. Those I have taken part in in the last month are a lunchtime workshop "Tips on Buying a Digital Camera" by my friend and colleague Alan, a half-day, hands-on workshop "Developing Literacies for Student Digital Media Activities" by faculty fellow Ellysa Cahoy along with the Digital Commons staff, and the two-day Learning Design Summer Camp. I found all very valuable.

The impetus for buying a digital camera, even though I'm flat broke and will be paying for it in installments on my credit card account, is to record my September trip of a lifetime to Italy with my sister and cousin. I've never owned one before. I have a "film" camera, but had not used it much in the '00s (the ohs, as I call them). I guess the first half of the decade was so abominable for me that there were whole years of my life that I wanted absolutely no record or remembrance of. But I'm better now! I also wanted to be able to post photos to various social Web sites I'm a member of, but with a film camera, I feel like each shot has to be a Shot with a capital S, and it would be a waste to pay for developing a spur-of-the-moment throwaway shot. So, I took the plunge a couple weeks ago during my Arts Fest week mini-vacation. Some of my first experiments, including a record of the Developing Literacies workshop, can be found on my brand new Flickr photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryjanzen/.

I learned a lot at the Literacies workshop, even though my team didn't finish its project. We were to pick a historical event from a suggested list, look up information, and search for photos, having been introduced to some quality sources, such as an Associated Press collection. We were then to assemble the stories and an accompanying script telling the story from a particular point of view, as if you were someone living the event, into a storyboard using paper and pencil. Finally, we were shown how to use the Web-based application Kaltura to upload and order the photos, insert transitions between them, record a voice-over of the script, and optionally add background music (non-proprietary!) to make a short movie telling the story of the event. This was all brand new territory for me, and quite fascinating. Our event was the fall of the Berlin Wall and we were telling the story from the point of view of the wall. One reason I think we did not finish is that we were really given few guidelines such as, "since we have x amount of time left, you should finish up the phase you're on and move to the next phase." Thus, we used way too much of our allotted time just collecting more and more photo possibilities, and never even began to record the voice-over. That's all part of the learning experience, though, and were I a faculty member asking students to do such a project, I would both have an appreciation for how time-consuming it would be to make a quality finished project, and know to provide those kinds of milestone guidelines.

The summer camp this week was fantastic. Others of my colleagues have already done it justice in their posts, but I'll just say there was a lot of positive energy in the room and wonderful interactions with people took place, including at the Tuesday night dinner at Mad Mex. My head was so filled with all the mental input both on tools I'm familiar with and new tools, as far as their potential, that my head has been reeling a bit. I'm still processing. There are a lot of topics I am now enthused to learn more about (my high school English teacher would be appalled that I used "enthuse" as a verb; one should only say I am enthusiastic). One attempt I made was to incorporate the map element in a blog following coworker Chris's directions, but so far it has been a fail. (English teacher probably wouldn't like that usage, either.)

Finally, I want to bestow kudos on coworker Brad for once again saving me when I broke one of my blogs. Wed. evening, I wrote a new entry, saved, and caused my entire blog to become a blank white screen. I could not figure out what went wrong. Within one second of my describing this to Brad the next day, he said the problem was probably that I had exceeded my PASS limit. That was it! He also told me I could request additional space, which I had been unaware of. Thanks!

I love summer. Did I mention I love summer? Summer means I can work on a variety of projects that get me thinking about new ideas and talking to new people. During the semesters, there are of course more monolithic, long-term projects that absorb my energy and thought processes. (Of course, there's also the lovely part where I'm not freezing, like nine months out of the year, and the world is green and lush.)

One of those summer projects is taking part on the Stuart Selber Faculty Fellow team, thinking about a framework for describing types of online instruction sets, ultimately for the purposes of teaching technical writing. Prospective tech writers need to think about the implications of different types of instruction sets, for example, are the writers the ultimate expert, handing down the law to users, or on the other end of the spectrum, are they co-experts with users, who may not have the whole picture but still have important tips and words of troubleshooting advice that are useful and valid, and contribute to an evolving instruction set? They also need to think about who their audience(s) are and which points on the spectrum will best serve them. You see, even I as a minutely detail-oriented perfectionist (I acquired my handle of Grammar Goddess on the ANGEL documentation team because of my propensity to "smite" those with poor wording) (in case you wonder, yes, I have tried to work on my "issues" in that department) can see that the old model, for instance that of my early '90s pre-Web experience with computer software and documentation, often let me down as a user. That was when you just got the installation media and a printed book, that might or might not address all your quirky questions, problems, or ideas for nonconventional use of the software, and if not, well pre-Internet, what were you going to do, travel the country asking random strangers whether they knew how to, say, fix the blog style sheet that you broke this week? So, this week, I read the first 28 pp. of Selber's scholarly article he plans to submit to a journal in the field, in which he is blocking out such a framework.

In a few weeks, our second annual Learning Design Summer Camp will take place. One of the pre-event activities was that anyone could design a sticker for people to place on their name tags, laptops, uh, foreheads, etc. If they did so by June 19, they would be included in the order from the sticker company. Well, I only thought of this after the deadline, but, in Photoshop, I altered the image for the "instructional designerd" sticker (see http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/wiki/LDSC09_Sticker_Page) to say "instructions nerd." I think that applies both to the aforesaid team and to my regular-schoolyear monolithic project to provide instruction sets for Penn State's course management system, ANGEL.

Funny that I just happened to mention that one example, but this week, I broke the style sheet of one of my three blogs. I fully claim user-error responsibility. I think before we upgraded to Movable Type 4.2, I created a custom "About This Site" widget for the blog. Well, in hindsight I could kick the living daylights out of myself, but I decided I would add another sentence to that widget. I did so (in the evening, when tired and probably distracted), saved, republished the site, and voila, it reverted both to the default color scheme (not much of a biggy, other than that I'm not fond of blood-red) and default widget sets, so that the widgets were not in the order I specified and the custom widget was absent altogether. I tried to figure it out myself through trying many different measures. I consulted the ITS knowledge base and blogger.psu.edu community hub site. I didn't want to ask for help. In life, I'd always much rather prefer just about anything other than asking for help; but, today, I asked one of our department's resident experts, who could not figure out how to fix it. I need to wait till the other resident expert returns from being out of the office (and ask for help *again*, ouch). This explains why my Facebook status for today was set to "Mary Janzen has confounded the experts."

In this time period, I also created some "fixed" instruction sets for the Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) system, which is an electronic system developed by AIS programmers to be housed within ANGEL to replace the paper system for students to rate their instructors near the end of the term. It is still in pilot, but the pilot will grow bigger in fall, so documentation needed to be in place by then. It was approved this week by the representative from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence upstairs, so I converted it to PDF, and got it to the Schreyer webmaster to place on a redesigned SRTE site she is creating.

After attending a few meetings with representatives of all the sub-units of TLT and getting feedback from managers, I am gradually writing the next "main feature" to appear on the TLT home page, which is the essential information, with helpful links, to approximately seven services/facilities of TLT that faculty should be aware of for "back-to-school" purposes. This will complement a direct-mail packet containing several print pieces.

Another summer project to make me think again was to edit the white paper produced by the hot team investigating VoiceThread. I did the first edit of the incomplete paper last week, then the final edit today, with additional information provided by faculty member Dan, who used it in his CAMS course. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum, or something like that. Last Sat. I visited my dear friend and former neighbor who lives one or two S&A developments over from me now. An "Iowa fan" car was parked in her driveway, which was weird, since she's Canadian. Turns out her spouse was out of town leaving her carless and neighbors who were on vacation in Iowa lent her their car. A couple days ago, I was chatting with coworker Matt on the VoiceThread hot team about his vacation to Iowa and about living in small towns vs. cities. During this conversation, the faculty member on the hot team arrived off the elevator and I said, "Oh, hi, Dan." I'd met him several times at parties with CAMS/history profs, because the friend I visited on the weekend is married to a CAMS prof. Now, why do I mention the car? It was Matt, whose office is across from mine, who lent the car to my friend while he vacationed to Iowa, because he lives right across the street from my friend. Talk about small towns.

The past two weeks featured a lot of professional development activities, which were a nice break from the grind and I learned a lot of value. However, on those days this past week when I was back to the regular 8-5 routine, it felt very good to have long enough chunks of time to be productive again and complete several "deliverables," to stay on deadline schedule. Although we all need change--in routine, and in other ways--to keep us sharp and healthy and keep those reflexes honed to react to changing situations, I have always been someone most comfortable with...maybe not "routine" per se, but certainly a structure to my days. My Mom told me years ago that as a toddler in those golden days, being the youngest kid, when it was just her and me at home during the day, that I always seemed happier when she suggested a plan or structure for each day.

Professional development included about 13 hours altogether of "Crucial Conversations" training. This was a good reminder of how to communicate effectively, without either avoiding or lashing out. We examined our own "style under stress." I think I scored a perfect "silence" score, as opposed to the other end of the spectrum, "violence" (not necessarily literal/physical violence). I've done too much of my share of walking away and avoiding, rather than "dealing" as well. One of my classmates mentioned how their style gibed with their Myers-Briggs personality type, and I think that's true in my case, too (ISFJ). Also, having been raised in a strong pacifist tradition where all violence is viewed as immoral, even in self-defense, I've no doubt unconsciously sought to suppress any natural "violent" tendencies.

Monday of this week, I attended the annual Web Conference put on by our own ITS. The keynote speaker was good and I would say I found all but one of the sessions valuable (a combination of it being technically over my head and my having low blood sugar). One was by Web Conf. veteran Mark Greenfield, speaking on what 3rd graders can teach us about Web accessibility, in this case, his own daughter, who helped develop the presentation, on how her class took on the task of revamping the site of a legally blind Iditarod competitor, formerly so designed as to be inaccessible to the competitor herself! My takeaway from that is: we are all "temporarily abled." That is, even if I, at the advanced age of 47 (a milestone reached a week ago) still have the mobility to move a mouse, the eyes to read a Web page (although not as easily as before without zooming, and even with my bifocals, I already find it incredibly difficult to read paperbacks with small print and completely impossible to read the print on small pill or seasoning bottles), and the ears to hear audio recordings, that will not necessarily be the case when I'm 30 or 40 years older. It seems we so often disassociate our own selves from "those people," somehow "other," who need us to make the Web accessible. This hit home for me when I last talked to my Mom on the phone, who was explaining how my Dad, who turns 82 next week, now has cataracts and finds it very difficult to read, and even to see who is speaking at a podium if he is in the audience.

On Tuesday, I attended a Web Conf. four-hour session on creating effective tutorials (screencasts) using several tools, Captivate, Jing, and Camtasia. I'd taken a shorter workshop on Captivate several years ago and created some practice tutorials which needed some polishing. However, I really feel it is important for me to learn more techniques and tips so I can make the "real deal" to share as a complement to written documentation. The session was very well done and I got a lot of great input. The version of Captivate they discussed was v.4, which has a lot more features than v.2, which I currently have on my work computer. A couple months ago when my computer was rebuilt, the tech support person made it sound like it would be a huge deal and that I would have to get a formal OK from management if I wanted the most recent version. So, I don't know if it will go over like a lead cloud, as they say, if I make such a request.

OK, having mentioned supplications for tech items, I have to come out and say it, even if it makes me look bad or ungrateful. A couple weeks ago, without advance notice, a number of employees including me learned we would be getting a wider monitor to replace one of our existing monitors, and that the existing one would be relegated to sitting uselessly on the floor in the corner. I tried to express my gratitude, although most of what ran through my mind was: why, oh why, didn't they tell me they had such and such a dollar amount and ask me what I really needed/wanted? For example, I would have readily foregone the new monitor if only I could get the use of a machine with Office 2003 installed so that I didn't have to complete the entire ANGEL Knowlegebase project on my home computer. As it stands, I do, and I can never, ever upgrade the software on my home computer as a consequence. You see, if I add an article to Knowlegebase with Office 2007, then convert it to HTML as the last step, it won't display to users in Internet Explorer. I guess I'm saying, it would be great to be able to do my work at work, and during the work day, rather than evenings and weekends. I mean, what are the odds that I'll be reimbursed for the wear on my home computer or get help buying a new one when it kicks the bucket?

As far as projects I actually completed deliverables on these two weeks, I've written a summary of the four TLT Faculty Fellow projects and am just waiting for one more of the faculty to approve her portion of it. I have also completed a draft of two pieces of documentation for the online Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTE) project. The SRTE process, formerly done on paper, will now be done electronically via a tool created by AIS programmers within ANGEL. It has been piloted and there is still another phase of interface changes to be programmed by Oct. or Nov., but enough departments will be piloting it in the fall that documentation was called for, which will be housed on a new SRTE site being created by Schreyer Institute webmaster Esther. Although I'd received the following assignment at least a week before, I guiltily only worked on this yesterday: editing or writing the description field and the introductory text for each white paper recently moved from the ETS site to the TLT site (http://tlt.its.psu.edu/hot-team), and adding or replacing the image for each. This was important because almost every one said "this was recently done," even those from 2006! As far as the images, because I was actually on the hot team for collaborative writing tools, I definitely had to change the image, which was about wikis, since the team was not at all investigating wikis, but rather Zoho Writer, Google Docs, and NoteMesh. So, I thought the most appropriate image would be a capture of the actual Google doc our hot team used to write the white paper. I finished just at quitting time, so could begin my weekend with a clear conscience.

Both weeks were short weeks, as I took a couple days off just before Memorial Day weekend. It was immensely helpful to my mental health to spend time outdoors working in my yard, as the weather was very pleasant! (I actually recently read of a study where garden soil may contain some type of substance that keeps up your serotonin levels.)

Immediately following the May 16 ANGEL upgrade, I spent that first short week tying up loose ends on the project. First of all, I scanned through my own assigned documents and discovered some I completed so early on that the interface had changed since the time I initially completed them, so I had to take some new screen captures and reupload them. The several documentation team members who could not submit certain Knowledgebase articles for editing until the new version went live (some tools had been deactivated on our test server) stepped right up and promptly turned them in, for which I am grateful. There are just three more in that category that require certain types of files to conduct testing with, which the assigned instructional designer does not have access to. Oh, how satisfying it would be to be able to check off that "ANGEL 7.3 documentation" milestone in Basecamp. Oh, how I can taste it. Oh, how I wish I didn't have to keep listing the project on my weekly report. OK, who out there can help team member Natalie out? She needs a Blackboard import, WebCT import, and Respondus import. Won't you help our cause today?

The first part of the week just past, I worked on what I frankly have to admit is my least favorite project of all time, but which keeps popping back up, like wild garlic in my lawn. That is, documentation for the Course Submission and Consultation System. This is a formerly paper system used by the Faculty Senate, for which in 2005 programmers in AIS created a tool within ANGEL to replace. It is for faculty members to submit proposals to add a new Penn State course, change a course, or drop a course. One reason I hate it is that the interface is seemingly never complete. Can you say "feature creep"? I was lured into the project under semi-false pretenses in fall 2005 in the sense that I was led to believe editing the documentation for the tool was a one-time deal. Well, the programmer in AIS is basically never done programming because the client keeps on requesting that the CSCS system have additions, changes, and dropped features; therefore approximately three times a year since that time, I have to sit down with the programmer, Chris, in the basement of Shields Building, to try to understand the new features, then revise the documentation. Then also, this documentation is not contained in the ANGEL Knowledgebase; it is housed in ANGEL space, and must be offered in both PDF and HTML form. Thus, I must still follow the primitive practice of hand-coding the HTML pages each time the documentation is revised. Oh, yes, the other reason I hate the project is that it has exactly zero to do with our unit's mission of enhancing teaching and learning through the use of technology in courses. Anyhow, thankfully I finished this round of revisions by the end of the week, so will not have to face the project on Monday.

I was already so happy and excited that I have a series of five articles to write on TLT's four summer 2009 faculty fellows. The first is a summary of the four projects at the outset, about half done and to be completed very soon. Then I will write a separate article on each faculty member/project as the work unfolds over the course of the summer. Did I mention I'm excited? I will be talking to and writing about actual people! I mean, I will actually be writing something that's not step-by-step instructions about using an application my superiors regularly disparage as passé. (Did I mention my morale approached rock bottom as the end of spring approached, after months of my working on little besides that?)

When what to my wondering...well, let's just say I had trouble settling down and focusing on my depressing CSCS project after this momentous event. Cole visited my cube (very momentous! I can't recall whether this has ever occurred before) and asked if I could come with him because he had an offer to make me. I followed him to the ETS Cone of Silence (what in the past I've called standing next to the recycling bins in the central corridor when I wanted to talk with someone without the entire department listening--although there is a security camera by the elevators, so don't rule out lip-reading). He asked whether I'd be willing to be a *member* of a faculty fellow team, that of Stuart Selber, who is investigating community-created help documentation. I tried to retain my composure at this proposition. I said yes, of course, and tried to convey how much this meant to me, how honored I was. I haven't been asked to serve on such a team since...OK, I've never actually been asked to serve on any team at all that involves sharing ideas back and forth with a faculty member. Up until about 2003, though, I still served in the role in which it was explained to me at my hiring interview I would serve, to be the writer for faculty projects (e.g., the American Indian Housing Project, http://www.personal.psu.edu/mja11/FTIRiley.htm). Since then, however, that sort of duty no longer seemed to come my way. Anyway, between this exciting, energizing opportunity, plus my having spent my entire Sunday afternoon weeding, digging in, and mulching my flower beds with all those great mental nutrients, I feel like a new person, a person who is actually not dreading returning to work on Monday. (Well, as long as I have some quality time in the yard after work.)

Whew. I think it's safe to say I've escaped from anxiety city on at least one count. That is, hopefully my anxiety-related symptoms like a permanently clenched jaw, loss of sleep (Thurs. night, I only slept about 2 hours), bad dreams featuring me as a bad person that has either forgotten to do something or is late for something, etc. will somewhat abate as of 3:30 this afternoon, Sat., May 16.

The best I could do as far as finishing the ANGEL 7.3 documentation on time was to have 97% edited and approved by the deadline (527/544). I already knew I'd be a failure on the 100% ahead of time, as the system administrators purposefully turned off the import/export tools on our preview server, so there were 16 articles the team could not take screen captures for until the real thing went live. The real thing went live this morning, hours ahead of schedule. I was in the backyard feeling the soft grass under my bare feet, discovering how much my plants are growing, and enjoying a few minutes of soul-restoring nature (having been told I would probably not be asked to do my thing until around 6:30 p.m. today), when I heard the phone ring and rushed inside. It was project manager Terry letting me know the upgrade was complete--and worked! (Unlike last year.) So, it was time for my flurry of activity to go into the Knowledgebase content management system, and individually switch each of the 500+ articles over to the new version. I started at 10:30 and other than getting the mail in and pouring a glass of milk to hold me over until supper, I worked feverishly and nonstop till all articles were updated, 3:30 p.m. It felt so good when it stopped. (My home computer desk/chair/keyboard setup is not as ergonomic as that at work.)

It's just as well that the upgrade always happens on a weekend, of course, as we discovered two years ago that if an article is uploaded from a machine running Office 2007, it won't display in Internet Explorer. I have to use my own personal home computer, which still has Office 2003. It's a desktop, so I can't exactly handily transport it to work and plug into my laptop dock and connect to the Internet. So, if, say, the upgrade happened on a weekday, I'd have to sit in the office all day fretting because I couldn't do any work on the project, because obviously I couldn't just say I was going to stay home that day.

In other miscellaneous work news for this week, after ANGEL documentation team member Yu-Tai from the College of Communications (who I've not yet met) created a new features in 7.3 animated tutorial to accompany the new features in 7.3 issue of ANGELshorts, I evaluated it, made suggestions, then looked over and approved the revised version. He did a great job. This was a team member who originally was not assigned any help articles but said he would step in and help anyone who needed it. Recently, I discovered the URL for his blog, on which he described knowing a lot about creating tutorials, so I passed on that info to documentation team leader Jeff.

Finally, I wrote a whole paragraph (!)--oh, how I desperately wish my job consisted of 80% writing and 20% editing instead of the other way 'round--to appear on the Symposium videos page to put the keynote speaker videos in context. Like, wow, Mary, you wrote a whole paragraph. Who knew you had it in you? (Actually some of it was plagiarized from the day-of attendee guide.)