New School Year - Proposed Projects

As we start a new school year, we would like to solicit project suggestions, practical, doable, and otherwise, that students, alumae/i, faculty, and staff would like to see ITSA tackle in this and subsequent years. For each suggestion we need a few pieces of information, to include: a brief description, which standing committee would be responsible for it's implementation, its potential priority among other ITSA projects, whether it would be a one time or ongoing project, and any volunteers for completing the suggestion (as well as hours each volunteer would be willing to commit to this project). If you would like to volunteer for a standing committee or for a specific project, please let us know which committee/project and how much time you would be willing to commit to this committee or project. (Yes, you may volunteer for multiple committees or projects, but please do not volunteer for more than a total average of 2 hours per week for all committees and projects.) If you have specific suggestions or requests for projects, please feel free to make them known.

Some projects that have already proposed include (all would be ongoing):

* Planning and conducting student orientation (High - Steering) - handle the planning and conducting the annual fall orientation, in conjunction with faculty and staff
* Setting up and managing a mentoring program (High - Steering) - handle the initial setting up and subsequent management of a mentoring program
* Promoting publishing opportunities for students (High - Academics) - identify and make known to current students, various publishing opportunities
* Facilitating scholarship in the field (Medium - Academics) - identify and make known to current students, various non-publishing and non-conference related scholarship opportunities
* Promoting professional conferences (High - Academics) - identify and make known to current students conference related scholarship opportunities
* Leading fundraising efforts (Medium - Professional Relations) - identify and implement various fundraising methods
* Reaching out to alumae/i (High - Professional Relations) - identify and implement various methods of strengthening relationship between current students, the department and alumae/i
* Managing employment and graduate assistantship announcements (Medium - Professional Relations) - initiate a method of disseminating employment activities, to include graduate assistanships, to students and alumae/i
* Managing networking activities (Medium - Professional Relations) - identify, organize, and desiminate opportunities for networking for students and alumae/i within the instructional technology field
* Planning and managing weekly, monthly, and special occasion ITSA social events (High - Social) - solicit, plan, organize, and manage a variety of reoccurring and special occasion events ( e.g. NOD 'n NOFs, USU vs. BYU games, tennis matches, hiking trips)
* Assisting in departmental social events (High - Social) - assist in the planning and management of departmental social events (e.g. the fall and spring socials)
* Reaching out to international students (High - Social) - ensure that international students have additional support in acclimating to American culture
* Planning and managing student service and outreach activities (High - Service) - identify and organize opportunities for students to perform community service and outreach ( e.g. literacy mentoring, habit for humanity)
* Creating and managing an online, peer-reviewed journal (Medium - Technology) - identify the needs of our students, as related to a new, online peer-reviewed journal; implement and manage a journal based on the needs analysis results
* Creating and managing an ITSA wiki (Medium - Technology) - identify the needs of our students, as related to a new wiki; implement and manage a wiki based on the needs analysis results
* Managing the ITSAcast blog (High - Technology) - manage membership and postings on the ITSAcast blog
* Planning and managing podcasts of department and ITSA related podcasts (High - Technology) - organize, conduct, and publish podcasts of department and ITSA events ( e.g. guest lectures, lunchbox lectures, OpenEd presentations)
* Planning and managing the conversion of opensource texts to podcasts (Medium - Technology) - organize, conduct, and publish podcasts of opensource texts, book chapters and journal articles, of interest to the instructional technology field ( e.g. Wealth of Networks)
* Planning and managing an ITSA website (Low - Technology) - identify the needs of our students, as related to a new ITSA website; implement and manage a website based on the needs analysis results
* Planning and managing an ITSA newsletter (Low - Technology) - identify the needs of our students, as related to a new ITSA newsletter; implement and manage a newsletter based on the needs analysis results
* Organizing weekly lunchtime events (High - JOINT: Academics, Professional Relations, and Social) - organize weekly lunchtime events; can be purly social in nature, or have a variety of academic and professional activities ( e.g. just a lunchtime gathering, guest lectures, alumae/i visits, recruitment meetings)