UC seminars online: from ecology to evolution to electronic teaching
Professor James R. Carey knows the value of seminars is invaluable.
When the UC Davis entomology professor chaired the University of California Systemwide Committee on Research Policy, he called for a strategic approach to record, broadcast and archive the hundreds of seminars that take place weekly on the 10 UC campuses.
He presented his plan to the Systemwide Academic Council, received enthusiastic approval, and then launched a pilot program at UCD to field-test it.
Now, three years later, his strategic approach has become a groundbreaking reality. The UCTV Seminars project (http://seminars.uctv.tv) is online, free and available to all.
Described as a higher-education milestone, it’s the first of its kind in the United States.
“This will not only help the UC system become a scholarly resource, but will fulfill our public service mission,” Carey said. “And the cost to capture these seminars is low — a one-time expenditure of about $200 for both the webcam and software.”
“One of the great intellectual achievements of the University of California is its ability to bring the best minds from within the university and across the world to our campuses to share ideas, spark innovation and build collaboration,” said Peter Siegel, UCD’s chief information officer and vice provost for information and educational technology.
“Each campus has multiple opportunities each day for faculty, students and colleagues to join in the great dialogue that ensues within their academic seminars, conferences and colloquia,” Siegel said. “What if these rich and exciting dialogues weren’t limited to the faculty on a single campus, but, in fact, were available to everyone?
“With the UCTV Seminars, we open a new chapter in providing this access not only to the citizens and policy makers of California, but to colleagues literally around the world.
“I am excited to see our innovative faculty at UC Davis participating in this launch and, even more, I look forward to the growing impact of the University of California in identifying and solving the many difficult challenges that face our world.”
Professor Robert Powell, chairman of the UCD Academic Senate, agrees.
“We need every tool at our disposal to keep the high quality of UC academic programs during our unprecedented budget crisis,” he said. “Jim has been especially creative in making knowledge at the forefront of scholarship available to researchers on all UC campuses for a minimal investment.”
Carey described seminars as “a treasure trove” and “one of the most forceful and efficient mechanisms for transmitting scholarly information.”
“It takes an enormous amount of time, energy and resources just to plan a seminar,” Carey said. “It is foolish not to invest a small amount of additional time to capture and post.”
Carey said some 300 to 500 seminars take place every week across the 900 departments or programs in the UC system. This translates to more than 10,000 seminars annually, he said, and includes not only weekly departmental seminars, but monthly or quarterly talks in distinguished scholar lecture series and annual university lectures by eminent faculty.
Among the UC-affiliated campuses posting seminars so far are San Francisco, Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles and the UC Center in Washington, D.C. Topics range from Lake Tahoe to evolution to electronic teaching.
“This is one of those resources that is so obvious, so useful, that we can only shake our head in wonder that we did not have it years ago,” said Alexander Harcourt, a UCD emeritus professor of anthropology and ecology. “Missed a seminar? Missed a diagram in a seminar? Missed thinking about what the speaker was saying because you were concentrating so hard on writing it down? With UCTV Seminars, you no longer need to miss anything.”
When Carey launched his pilot program on the UC Davis campus, the webcasting encompassed 49 seminars, including 16 in the Department of Entomology, eight in the Graduate Group in Ecology and Evolution, and 25 from a two-day conference hosted by the Humanities Digital Institute.
“The audiences were universally supportive of the webcasting operation with no evidence of distractions due to the presence of the Camtasia-webcam system,” Carey said.
For more information, visit http://seminars.uctv.tv, where seminars are divided into a range of subjects: arts and humanities, engineering, life sciences and health, physical sciences and math, and social and behavioral sciences.
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=49507
Posted by Kathy Keatley Garvey
on May 30 2011.
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