As announced earlier this semester, DoIT and Visual Arts have partnered on a one-year license to Lynda.com, the popular online software training platform. However, short of simply recommending Lynda.com, how might faculty actually assign and evaluate any external training or competency they'd like their students to attain?

While Lynda.com doesn’t provide built-in assessments per se, it does allow users to print, email, link or otherwise share certificates of completion (aka “badges”) for any of its courses. Also, as a Blackboard content partner, faculty could track students’ progress in Lynda.com through the Blackboard grade center. Both of these options create interesting possibilities for assessment:

1. Faculty could assign Lynda.com modules on topics for which they don't have time to reinvent the "show and tell" format that Lynda does so well already.
2. Students could be required to earn and upload a related Lynda “badge” as part of a Bb assignment, or faculty could monitor student progress in Lynda through the Bb grade center.
3. Using Bb’s adaptive release function that displays content (including assignments) based on date, content review status, group membership or grade on a prior assignment, faculty could make Lynda badges – or a percentage of progress in its tutorials – a pre-requisite condition students must meet before accessing let alone completing additional formative or summative assessments.

For example, before students can even see, let alone submit, an attempt on the first assignment for credit, many UMBC faculty are now requiring students take and pass a quiz over the syllabus as their first online activity. If a passing “syllabus quiz” grade is recorded, the next assignment link is visible to students. If not, it remains hidden. Instructors can determine what constitutes a passing grade, how often students can attempt the quiz, and when it must be completed. Combined with Bb’s “early warning” alerts, students can be notified they haven’t taken or passed the quiz and its expiration.

Once faculty see how adaptive release works, they often develop simple, but effective activities to leverage it. For example, the following “use cases” were presented at a 2012 workshop on how adaptive release can help students take responsibility for learning:

Basically, if instructors implicitly value technological competency, or any skill for that matter, they could explicitly demonstrate why this is important in their assignment criteria for students. As such, faculty could judge effectiveness of technology competency in applying course concepts but rely on Lynda.com to help develop it in their students.

Similarly, faculty concerned about students' incoming math ability could identify and assign students to earn a badge or certificate of completion for a specific module in Khan Academy, the free online education site anyone could access with Facebook or Google accounts -- including UMBC students. Then rinse & repeat steps #2 & #3 above.

Finally, DoIT is working with the campus' Academic Integrity committee to pilot an academic integrity tutorial in Blackboard that leverages the Bb Achievements function, including a certificate of completion that faculty could require students to upload before they can turn in any assignment for credit.

Update: See Joe's UMBC Digital Story at https://youtu.be/Q2cGLtJfxjk

While many have contributed to UMBC's 50 years of excellence, tomorrow the campus will recognize 30 years of service by DoIT's own Joe Kirby, Assistant Vice President for Business Systems, during the annual Service Awards starting at 11:30 a.m. in the UC Ballroom.

One of 16 DoIT staff to be recognized, Joe is especially fitting during the campus' 50th anniversary, as his personal grit perfectly illustrates and has definitely contributed to UMBC’s greatness.

After growing up in Baltimore City and graduating from Archbishop Curley High School, Joe went to College Park from 1972-74. He dropped out to work nine years in supermarket retail, an industry that was being changed by technology. Deciding he wanted to pursue a career in IT, Joe got a job at the National Cash Register (NCR) corporation, advanced to a technical position in four months, but had to give it up when NCR realized he didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. NCR tried to retain him through a part-time position so he could go back to school, but Joe was motivated to earn his degree sooner and quit his job in August to go full time at UMBC in 1983.

“Almost immediately, I felt I’d made a mistake as most classes were filled. One person in particular, Vedette Hull of the Regsitrar’s Office, made a full court press to get me into three courses, which allowed me to get used to school again but not drown.”

Joe worked a midnight shift at a bank doing clerical work, but In 1984, he excelled in a COBOL II class with Gary Reddick, who offered him a job in Administrative Computing as a student programmer. He worked and attended classes until graduating with his BS in Information Systems Management in 1985.

After graduating, UMBC began to directly benefit from Joe’s professional grit and innovation, too. He was offered a programmer I position, and enjoyed the freedom to learn and do as much as his energy level allowed. But when Joe’s mentors, Jim Harvison and Reddick, left UMBC, they recruited him by offering him a 50 percent raise.

“As much as I hated to leave UMBC I was getting ready to get married and start a family. Fortunately, UMBC had a change in leadership and I was recruited to come back in late 1986 in a leadership role and I have been here ever since in various roles.”

• 1986: Inherited a dismal audit situation for Administrative Computing and began a string of successful OLA audits which continues today.
• 1991: Became one of the first higher ed technology departments to go ‘lights out operation,’ eliminating the need for computer operators
• 1995: STARS - a telephone response system for class registration and grades
• 1996: EASI - one of the first campuses to do student administration functions (registration, grades, etc.) via the web
• 1999: Y2K - Converted HP3000 administrative system to beY2K compliant without any external consulting support
• 2003: Enterprise implementation of PeopleSoft HR and Finance
• 2006: REX data warehouse implementation
• 2008: Document Imaging Implementation
• 2009: Enterprise implementation PeopleSoft Student Administration
• 2009: RT (Request Tracker) for campus wide ticket system (help and services)
• 2009: Implementation of first “cloud” Software as a Service (SaaS) solution at UMBC, which was for Parking Services
• 2015: Formalization of Cloud solutions totaling 40+ and growing
• 2016: DocuSign for electronic signature workflows

The Request Tracker (RT) implementation has been particularly noteworthy. According to VP of IT and CIO Jack Suess, Kirby spent countless hours configuring and evangelizing the use of RT, which went from an IT department ticketing system to one of the most innovative, campus-wide service management solutions in higher education. UMBC now resolves well over 100k tickets each year, which also directly influenced DoIT's strategy to develop an FAQ knowledge management system to help keep our ticket growth in check.

"To achieve these results, it took the patience and perseverance of Joe to work closely with dozens of end users to define their needs and figure out how to make RT support their work," says Suess. "Joe creatively worked with functional offices to develop web-based front ends or other add-ones. What Joe has done over the last five years is incredible, and the results he has achieved are unique in higher education."

Reflecting on his own tenure, Kirby has valued UMBC's supportive leadership, opportunities to innovate, collaborative environment, and mostly, the campus community.

"But I am most proud of the staff I've been allowed to recruit," says Kirby. "I feel strongly that we have the best staff of any university in the system. They are personable yet technical, hard working but fun, and most of all, they are committed to success at UMBC.”