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Category: Writing/publishing

4-minute video shows ETDR website and resources

Posted on by Betsy Edwards

A four-minute video provides a fast tour of resources available on K-State’s ETDR website and in iTAC for students creating their electronic theses, dissertations, and reports (ETDRs). Created by Marty Courtois, an ETDR consultant in iTAC, the video highlights essential aspects of the ETDR website including:

  • Graduate School requirements, including fonts and formatting
  • Word document templates that meet the Graduate School requirements
  • ETDR submission checklist
  • “Using Word” online documentation with Word settings, navigation tips, styles, and more

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March issue of Axio Quarterly (K-State Online newsletter) now available

Posted on by IT editors

The first issue of 2010 is now available on the Axio Learning website. Inside this issue are articles about social collaboration with Axio, improving student retention, and using Axio to structure a virtual team workflow.

Axio Learning at the Office of Mediated Education produces this newsletter for K-State Online users and other Axio members.

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TechBytes Feb. 25: Many uses of WordPress

Posted on by Cathy Rodriguez

Marin Dowlin and Nate Dillon will present “Many Uses of WordPress” at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, in 301A Hale Library. WordPress is more than just blogging software. This session will focus on how it works, its features and caveats, and how it is used for some campus websites.

Major professors: Encourage grad students to start writing in the ETDR template

Posted on by Martin Courtois

More than 40 percent of graduate students come to iTAC for individual help in formatting their electronic theses, dissertations, and reports (ETDRs). Many of these students visit us when they’ve completed their writing, and say their major professor told them they most now put their completed paper into the ETDR template. If you want to help your students focus on their research and the content of their paper, steer them toward using the ETDR template from the very beginning.

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E-portfolios (part 1): Using electronic portfolios for learning

Posted on by Shalin Hai-Jew

Author’s note: This is the first article in a brief series on various technologies that may be used to render and output portfolios.

Back in the day, design portfolios involved plenty of different stocks of paper: translucent velum, glossy pages, and heavy card stock. For over a decade now, though, electronic portfolios have been the in-thing. They’ve been popularized because:

  • They travel light.
  • They offer more direct playability of contents like real-size imagery, videos, audio files, and simulations.
  • They showcase a fuller range of the designer’s capabilities.
  • They may directly connect (one click) to websites that may show more portfolio work.

What are e-portfolios? E-portfolios are structured works that showcase a learner’s background, a collection of his/her works (often including reflections on that work), a resume and curriculum vitae (CV), and his/her professional ambitions. For some fields, an e-portfolio works as a critical part of individuals’ job applications.

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Grad students: Start writing your thesis in the ETDR template

Posted on by Martin Courtois

If you’re starting to work on your thesis or dissertation this semester, you’ll save a lot of time and avoid frustration by using the ETDR Word template. Graduate students are required to submit their theses and dissertations electronically, and the template contains all the formatting required by the Graduate School.

In addition, the template contains several time-saving features, such as automatically creating the table of contents and caption numbers. The template makes use of the “styles” feature in Word. If “styles” is new to you, read about it on the ETDR website or make an appointment with an ETDR consultant at the IT Help Desk to review “styles” and use of the ETDR template.

An overview session may also be scheduled for groups of students in individual departments. Contact Marty Courtois (courtois@k-state.edu, 785-532-4428) for details.

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Acronym Finder, a web-based reference tool

Posted on by Shalin Hai-Jew

Some sites offer value not in sophisticated technologies but in how people come together to share knowledge. One of those sites offers fast references to acronyms. Acronym Finder may be accessed at www.acronymfinder.com.

Acronym Finder website

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Why K-REx is better than a webpage for storing faculty publications

Posted on by Martin Courtois

About 50 K-State faculty have deposited their published journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers in the K-State Research Exchange, but many more faculty have lists of their publications (and sometimes links to their articles) on a personal or departmental website. Isn’t that the same thing? Not even close!

K-REx is built on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), a set of standards for facilitating sharing of information (metadata) about articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other publications. OAI-PMH makes metadata available to search engines such as Google in a very structured way, which helps to produce higher rankings in search results.  Continue reading “Why K-REx is better than a webpage for storing faculty publications” →