By Kelsi Borntreager

UK’s Information Technology will host a session to bring more innovative technologies in teaching in learning Wednesday.

The session, titled “Open and Captured Content: The Twenty-first Century Classroom Experience,” will provide insight about the new technology, called open content.

UK, along with other universities, is adopting this practice, which captures lectures for reuse and allows “students to replay lectures to enhance their understanding,” according to the IT news release on the event.

Three speakers have been invited to present at the event – Cable Green, director of eLearning and Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Chris Huff, who represents the leading course capture technology company Echo 360, and Tim MacEldowney, the Mid-South regional sales manager for Echo 360, according to the news release.

In an e-mail to the Kernel, Ashley Tabb, IT’s communications manager, said these speakers were invited to share features and opportunities new technologies could provide to the future of higher education.

Green will discuss how technology is used for open content in research and community colleges and how it benefits higher education initiations, faculty and students. UK College of Medicine faculty will explain how Echo 360 has been implemented in courses during the past year and discuss feedback from faculty and students on the success of the system, Tabb said.

“UKIT began holding educational events for staff last summer, but this is the first to include national experts,” Tabb said. “UKIT plans to coordinate additional forums and events in the future to communicate the latest technology trends in higher education.”

Arts and Sciences Dean Mark Kornbluh helped lead an initiative to bring 29 new online classes to UK for summer 2010, where different online technologies were used.

Kornbluh said new technologies in classrooms and teaching are important because they help faculty improve their abilities. Without the technologies, not much exists to help assist the teachers.

“The more we can do to expose the new developments, the better,” Kornbluh said.

Wednesday’s session will be at 1 p.m. in the W.T. Young Library auditorium.