Professional development sessions are offered for the enhancement of office productivity and general technology skills. Enrollment is open to Furman faculty and staff at no cost to participant departments. Students may be invited to participate on request.
In-person classes are typically held in the Professional Development Lab, lower level library, room 042. However, Spring 2021 classes will be offered remotely via Zoom unless otherwise noted. Class size is limited and varies depending upon the topic to insure a fully interactive experience for participants.
We are pleased to add The Inclusive Campus Series to the professional development offerings in cooperation with the Accessibility Workgroup and SOAR. The first two sessions of the series –Creating Accessible Word Documents and Video Captioning – are offered this term with more to follow soon.
Scheduled sessions are offered tentatively and require enrollment of 3 or more participants to be conducted. To enroll in a scheduled session, please view our Qualtrics sign up form.
On-demand sessions are scheduled upon request. These will be scheduled and advertised once a first request is received for specific topics. To request an on-demand session, please view our Qualtrics sign up form. Please note that the on-demand sessions are listed after the scheduled sessions in the sign up form.
Customized sessions are offered for departments upon request. If you have technology instruction needs not addressed by the sessions in this catalog, we will work to structure training that fits your particular need. Contact the Service Center to request a consultation.
Hump Day Training is a recurring professional development lab reservation. Typically, Wednesday afternoons are reserved so that faculty and staff have a space where they can participate in self- directed training using on-line tutorials from LinkedIn Learning (former Lynda.com), or for group training with or without a facilitator. We have suspended regular reservations during the pandemic but will make space available upon request.
March Moodle Mondays Does mid-semester Moodle confusion have you feeling dizzy? Need advice or a second pair of eyes on your latest Moodle idea? If so, drop into our virtual venue (via Zoom) for informal Moodle Q&A sessions held every Monday in March to receive help and advice from one of our Furman Moodle administrators.
- Sessions will be held at 11:00 AM every Monday in March.
- No registration required, simply join via Zoom Link
Workday Training Workday training can be accessed on the Workday Training Website by clicking here.
To enroll in a scheduled session or request an on-demand session visit our Qualtrics sign up form. We will send you a Zoom link with your confirmation.
Anatomy of a Teaching Station with Joe Hiltabidel
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 7th at 11 AM
Target audience: Anyone using a teaching station will benefit from this overview, but targeted to new faculty and faculty using newly upgraded teaching spaces.
Session objective: Learn proficiency with the classroom technology. Joe will give an overview of the teaching station components including cautions and tips on how best to avoid problems.
Duration: One hour
These sessions will be facilitated on campus with participants invited to choose in-person or remote course access.
Box Opened Up with Michael Vick
Date/Time: Monday, March 22nd at 10 AM
Target Audience: All campus users new to Box or who would like to become more adept at managing their cloud storage will benefit from this class.
Session Objective: Box is the cloud storage service Furman licenses for faculty, staff and student use. In this short session, Michael will demonstrate how to sync local files, drag and drop usage, sharing documents, and security best practices.
Duration: One Hour
Camtasia Essentials with Andrew Markovic
Date/Time: Wednesday, February 24th at 10:30 AM
Target Audience: Faculty and staff interested in honing skills in video creation technology for lecture capture and content development. Administrators and advisors with an audience who will benefit from video tutorials, will find Camtasia an accessible tool for creating high quality videos. A limited nuber of licenses an be made available to participants who do not have Camtasia.
Session Objective: Participants are introduced to this powerful screen recording and video editing software. Camtasia is used in many environments to enhance communication by creating visual demos that are easy to create and share. In this session, Participants will create and produce a basic video clip, using text, images and audio.
Duration: 90 minutes
Easy Photo Editing using Lightroom with JJ Fowler
Date/Time: Tuesday, March 16th at 2 PM
Target Audience: Participants who are new to photo editing using Photoshop and/or Lightroom and are interested in enhancing and “fixing” images as well as organizing and sharing images using Lightroom library tools
Session objective: 90-minute hands on tutorial exploring Lightroom editing tools and a survey of scenarios best suited for Photoshop. Students will learn both Lightroom or Photoshop tools to use for enhancing quality, spotlighting particular elements of an image, “heal” and remove blemishes, fix red- eye, crop/rotate and much more. Participants will see a demonstration of Lightroom library, cloud- based storage, search and management features.
Duration: 90 minutes
This session will be held in-person in Library 042 and has limited enrollment for social distancing.
Gathering Insight with Survey Tools: Qualtrics Research Suite at Furman with Adam Barton
Date/Time: Friday, March 12th at 10 AM
Target Audience: Faculty and staff who are planning a survey or who would simply like to know more about the mechanics of survey design, distribution and analysis.
Session Objective: Qualtrics — an industry leading survey tool is licensed for use at Furman. Practice using this online research suite and gain an understanding of the types of questions, survey strategies and reporting that will offer meaningful, appropriate inferences from your survey data. Duration: 90 minutes
The Inclusive Campus Series: Creating Accessible Word Documents with Judy Bagley & Adam Barton
Dates/Times (choose one): Tuesday, March 30th at 11 AM or Wednesday, April 28th at 2 PM.
Target Audience: Any faculty or staff member who creates Word documents for general distribution.
Session Objective: This 1-hour training will introduce participants to the basics of document accessibility in Microsoft Word.
By the end of the training, the participant will be able to:
- Add headers that allow for navigation
- Position and add alternative text to images
- Create accessible tables
- Properly insert hyperlinks and lists
- Run the built-in accessibility checker
- Create a pdf that will maintain the accessibility features
Duration: One hour
The Inclusive Campus Series: Video Captioning with Caroline Davis
Date/Time: Multiple options, see below.
- Wednesday, March 10th at 1 PM
- Friday, March 19th at 1 PM
- Monday, March 29th at 10 AM – Thursday, April 8th at 9:30 AM
Target Audience: Any faculty or staff member who creates video content for general distribution.
Session Objective: Practice using YouTube to add and save captions to existing video content and learn about low-cost options for third party captioning. A discussion of the pros and cons of alternative and automatic methods sometimes used for captioning will also help participants better understand captioning best practices.
Duration: One hour
InDesign with Michael Vick
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 21st at 10 AM
Target Audience: Participants should have a license for Adobe InDesign in order to participate in this session. This course benefits those interested in learning efficient ways to produce print and digital publication type documents. Publisher and Word have their uses but InDesign is the application of choice for many professionals who create flyers, booklets, and manuals.
Session Objective: Learn the basics of Adobe InDesign in this hands-on session. By the end of this class, you will understand how to create & design posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, manuals etc. Students will even learn how to create an EPUB with InDesign
Duration: One hour
Maximizing Outlook for Windows with Mike Gifford
Date/Time: Wednesday, March 10th at 10 AM
Target Audience: Participants must know the basics of Outlook 2016 but want to know more than just frequently used Mail and Calendar features.
Session Objective: Participants will be introduced to features such as Quick Steps, delayed send, unsend, delivery receipt, direct reply, capturing screen shot, voting, sending and accepting meeting invitations and using the Outlook calendar.
Duration: One hour
Storytelling by the numbers – Give your Data a Visual Voice with Susan Dunnavant Part 1- Not so Basic Charts and Graphics
In this first session of a 3-part hands-on series, participants will learn how to create and when to use a variety of Excel standard charts and advanced features to create graphics with impact. Attend all three sessions that include Not so Basic Charts (this session), Intermediate/Advanced Visuals and “Not Excel” Visualizations or choose only the one(s) of particular interest to you.
Date/Time: Tuesday, March 23rd at 1 PM
Target Audience: Faculty and staff who are comfortable with the basics of Excel and interested in increasing interest in and readability of their data graphics may profit from this session.
Session Objective: Using Excel and PowerPoint, we will select, create and edit/format charts and graphics
to best illustrate various sample datasets. Representative charts include bar, column, pie, histogram, donut, line and area. We will also practice with customizing number formats, charts axes, legends and colors. Learn how to remove the distractions and focus attention on the story your data is telling.
Pre-registration is required as participants will be sent materials required for this session. Duration: 90 minutes
WordPress Editing Basics – Using the Furman Template with Jean Childress
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 14 at 10:00 AM
Targeted Audience: Furman web sites are hosted on WordPress – a popular and intuitive platform for web editing. This class introduces web administrators to the Furman template which is used on all Furman sites. Web admins must have a WordPress account to participate in the class. If you are a web admin and need credentials, contact Brandi Roberts in University Communications.
Session Objective: Participants can watch as text editing, creating new pages, adding modules, adding images, links and video are demonstrated. Also, participants are invited to work along with Jean by editing your own sites. Have your documents, images and links handy if you want a “hands-on” session.
Duration: 60 minutes
Zoom – Improve Your Web Conferencing Experience with Adam Barton
Date/Time: Wednesday, March 3rd at 10 AM
Targeted Audience: Those interested in extending collaboration options for students and colleagues. A proficiency with Zoom is especially useful when meetings and instruction are often delivered remotely.
Session Objective: This hands-on class will demonstrate Zoom in web conferencing and lecture capture scenarios. Learn to smoothly navigate between the presenter, audience, and all the options for each.
Duration: 60 minutes