NIU Department of
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Where the study of matter...matters!
Coordinator for Teacher Certification
Associate Professor
Office: Faraday West 426
Phone: (815) 753-6875
gbaker@niu.edu
Research Associate, New York State Department of Health, 1986-1988
Research Associate, Rice University, 1983-1986
Ph.D., Purdue University, 1983
B.S., Niagara University, 1976
Development of MS Office System-based content sharing and collaboration models to aggregate and promote dissemination and analysis of biochemical drug data.
As Discipline Coordinator for Chemistry Teacher Certification, one of my primary responsibilities is to provide advising and standards-aligned training to students seeking a Type 09 certificate to teach grades 6 through 12 science / chemistry in the state of Illinois. Students I work with include undergraduates, students-at-large, or graduate students. One of the latest degree options in the Chemistry Department is the Masters Plus program, which provides the graduate student seeking an M.S. Degree in Chemistry an option to concurrently pursue a Type 09 teaching certificate while meeting M.S. Requirements for graduation. To facilitate completion of the Masters Plus program in two academic years, the traditional chemistry thesis defense is replaced with a presentation of a comprehensive performance portfolio that showcases the ability of the teacher candidate to promote positive change in middle school or high school student achievement.
My current responsibilities go beyond advising, training, and assessment of pre-service chemistry teachers. They also include deploying and directing new technology initiatives aimed at providing Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions for Teacher Education programs throughout the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. New state and national criteria to train pre-service teachers have led to dramatic changes in curricular instruction, tighter integration in areas of knowledge, practice, and reflection, and increased accountability reporting. Increasingly, there has been a need to transition to an electronic platform where programmatic data and resources are centralized and secure, easily searched or browsed, and all relevant data can be aggregated with flexible reporting options. The ECM solution implemented through grant funds by the College to drive these changes was MS Office SharePoint, a server side portal component of the MS Office System that is now Microsoft's core engine for driving web-based content management and collaboration within all MS Office products.
Home page view of the Teacher Education Portal for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at NIU.
As Coordinator of the first Introductory Clinical for all pre-service teachers in the College, I train students to use SharePoint primarily through its tight integration with MS Word. As students progress in their discipline-specific teacher education programs, they continue to use SharePoint to manage their course outcomes, share experiences, search or browse for resources, and document their performance. Programs use the platform to track assessments and other data needed for state and national reaccreditation, or to perform committee work or to share resources without the cumbersome use of e-mail attachments.
Paper management has proved problematic for many programs. I also direct a College initiative to transition Teacher Education programs from a paper / file cabinet system to an electronic one that uses MS Office SharePoint. In addition to programmatic benefits, the solution has led to significant benefits for students, In one scenario, pre-service teachers use SharePoint to stay connected throughout their four semester training program, through content sharing, blogs, and collaboration workspaces accessed directly through the Shared Workspace Task Pane in any MS Office 2003 (or later) application. Quantitative value assessments of this approach, beginning with the Introductory Clinicals Program, have revealed many clear benefits to both students and programs, primarily by enabling improved communication and issue awareness through use of everyday tools, such as MS Word. In the chemistry program, teacher candidates use SharePoint to track and receive feedback on all of their course outcomes, including test scores; they complete formative surveys to identify weakness areas; they use document and discussion workspaces to collaborate on standards-aligned field projects; they use web logs to share best practices; and they build performance portfolios using a consortium-developed Renaissance Plan to demonstrate their ability to do standards-aligned teaching. All of these features are fully accessible on a 24/7 system through any Office application or web browser.
SharePoint-based performance portfolios at the M.S. graduate level are formally presented before a committee on which I serve as chair. As a result, I work closely with the graduate student to ensure successful completion of the teacher education program. For more information on chemistry teacher certification, or to set up an advising appointment, contact me at gbaker@niu.edu.