Relocation allows CAID to expand services

November 20, 2009

It’s hard to go anywhere on campus these days, indoors or out, without seeing heavy equipment and scaffolding; hard hats and caution tape; packing boxes and stacked office furniture. Saint Mary’s is in a phase of infrastructure renovation and renewal, and so is the Centre for Academic and Instructional Development (CAID).

In the late fall, the Centre, including our Centre for Academic Technologies (CAT), will move to a new location in the Global Learning Commons within the Atrium Building. After several years of being located on two floors in the McNally Main building, the Centre will come together on the first floor of the Atrium Building, close to the Library Information and Research Desk and the Just Us Café.

The CAID suite will contain offices for the Director and the Instructional Development Associate, and a reading room that will provide comfortable space for consultation, educational research, and for our growing teaching and learning resource collection. Located across the hallway from the CAID suite, the CAT lab will be expanded both in size and in the scope of services offered.

Adding to the iMac, laptop, and other technology peripherals currently available, our compliment of PCs in the lab will more than double. The addition of wireless connectivity, two large display monitors, multiple-computer control panels, and flexible seating will also improve our capacity for small group demonstrations.

To ensure that the CAT will no longer have to close its doors several weeks each semester to protect confidentiality during the scanning of the Instructor Course Evaluations, the CAT will also feature an enclosed OMR Academic Scanning Room.

In the New Year, our 24 seat Demonstration Classroom will open on the second floor of the Atrium Building providing a flexible space for faculty to engage in a broad range of educational development activities. This demo classroom will provide access to campus-wide standardized technology, to a new video conferencing system, and to dedicated space for instructional development programs and for the development and design of collaborative teaching and learning projects.

A significant new development in the CAT will be the addition of academic technology support for students. In collaboration with the Library and the Writing Centre, the CAT will offer students instructional support for report and presentation preparation, and for software application usage required within their academic programs.

While students’ just-in-time technology issues within the Learning Commons will be handled by an ITSS Help Desk assistant, the CAID will assess the need for, and develop appropriate means of supporting students in their use of educational technology, beginning in the 2010 winter semester. In the interim, and as much as possible, it will be business as usual this semester in the Centre for Academic and Instructional Development and in the CAT lab.

We welcome your ideas and suggestions on this and on future directions of the CAID/CAT as we prepare to move to the Global Learning Commons. Please feel free to contact Margaret-Anne Bennett, Director, at 420-5087, margaret-anne.bennett@smu.ca; Carol Roderick, Instructional Development Associate, at 496-8242, carol.roderick@smu.ca; or Mary Kendall Brooks, Program Assistant, at 420-5088, caid@smu.ca.

From Teaching and Learning
Volume 20, Number 1, Fall 2009