WISE at ALISE 2007

January 2007

WISE Recognizes Outstanding Faculty

WISE is proud to announce the recipients of the 2006 Excellence in Online Teaching Award.  This year, eight instructors representing five WISE institutions have been recognized for their dedication to best practices. 

2006 Excellence in Online Teaching Award Recipients:

   Dr. Bruce Dearstyne – University of Maryland

  Mr. Robert Emborski - Syracuse University

   Dr. Jennifer Hendzlik – Syracuse University

   Dr. Barbara Kwasnik – Syracuse University

  Dr. Elizabeth Mahoney – University of Pittsburgh

   Dr. Steven Miller - University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

  Dr. Hope Olson – University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

   Dr. Cheryl Tarsala – University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

In addition to the awards, a summary of best practices contributed by the recipients was presented.

Faculty members who were selected for the award taught one or more WISE courses between summer 2005 and summer 2006, and received nominations from one or more WISE students at an institution other than the instructor’s home institution.

“The Excellence in Online Teaching Awards are unique because they the first awards where students from one program vote on a teaching award for faculty at a different university,” says Bruce Kingma, associate dean and professor at the School of Information Studies and founder of the WISE Consortium. “Cross-institutional initiatives like this show the growth of WISE as a consortium and provide a forum for the faculty winners to share success stories across all of the institutions in the consortium.”

The awards were presented by Kingma as part of the third annual WISE workshop at ALISE, Best Practices for Online Pedagogy: Preparing WISE Scholars. Award recipients contributed their own ideas for best practices on topics like organization, communication, and engagement. The workshop, which took place on January 15, also included a presentation on WISE quality metrics, strategies for technical tool use and online community building, and a breakout session.

WISE also offered the panel, A WISE Model of Collaboration: Improve Access, Increase Quality, Diversify Course Offerings. The panel, held January 17, included an overview and assessment of the WISE Consortium’s activities to date. In addition to Kingma, panel members included Linda C. Smith Professor and Associate Dean of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rae Anne Montague, also from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

WISE was developed to provide faculty training for online pedagogy, establishing standards and metrics for online library and information science (LIS) education; and provide a collaborative marketplace for online LIS courses.  Since its inaugural year as an online course-sharing model for masters programs in library and information science (LIS) WISE has welcomed 13 LIS programs from participating colleges and universities around the world, and, as of the summer of 2006 will have offered 117 online courses to 168 students.  WISE pedagogical training has included 116 faculty members and potential faculty members participating in WISE online sessions and face-to-face sessions at the ALISE and ALA conferences. 

Click on the link for more information about the 2007 ALISE conference