Hugi Excellence Award Winners
2009
In the category of Academic Technologies | Technology Across the Curriculum GEMS • Oregon State University
Oregon State University’s Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) creates online tutorials called GEMS (Generating Educational Mastery System) to provide faculty and students quick training and solutions to specific technology-related questions. GEMS provide “just-in-time” online training for faculty seeking information on specific functions in applications they work with on a daily basis. GEMS allow TAC staff time to engage faculty in broader questions and strategies to improve educational quality without bypassing the critical role of providing how-to instructions to meet immediate training needs.
In the category of Technology Infrastructure | Effective Support of Classroom Technology Systems via Control, Monitoring and Preventive Maintenance • University of Idaho
High daytime utilization of technology-enhanced classrooms, along with a high ratio of rooms to technicians, generally precludes Classroom Technology support personnel from making first-hand observations of every room throughout the day. However, a well-planned system utilizing control and monitoring elements enables a small group of technicians to receive up-to-the-minute status of all classrooms at a glance. Control and monitoring systems help make it possible for personnel to rapidly take action to assist users, spot trends, and develop preventive maintenance strategies to ensure that classroom technology systems are effectively supported and reliable.
In the category of Business Processes & Systems | Academic Planner • University of Montana
The Academic Planner improves student retention by making it easier for students to plan their academic careers. A student can use this single tool to search for courses, using intuitive and robust search capabilities, read the course description, add the course to the plan, view/print the resulting schedule, and save to a database for future use. Once the plan is completed the student can email the results to an advisor for electronic or in-person comments facilitating early advising when the student is not yet on campus. Alternative plans can be created to assess the feasibility of changing majors or rearranging classes. Storage of the plan in a secure database makes it accessible anytime from on or off campus.