Contributed by Prof Naser

Contributed by Prof Naser

“When will this be available commercially?”

According to Curtis Naser, the facilitator for Academic Assessment and  the Eidos/Mentor administrator, this has been a common question for the past four years, in reference to the University’s Eidos system.

The University announced last week that Eidos will now become a commercialized system to be called Mentor. It will be marketed to other universities, high schools and grammar schools around the country.

Naser, also an associate professor in the philosophy department, said he is now a partner in the newly formed Axiom Education company, which will market the new Mentor system. He has been working on commercializing Eidos for the past 18 months.

Mentor will not differ much from the current Eidos system. In fact, “Mentor is just a name change,” according to Naser.

“Over time, as our Axiom Education programmers and design specialists get involved, there will be further changes,” he said.

Naser described the Eidos/Mentor system as serving “the University in a variety of ways.”

“Students use the system primarily for interacting online with their faculty via the course management system.  But there is a whole lot more going on in Mentor:  the assessment of student learning machinery is almost completely hidden, though students can see the learning objectives in some cases,” Naser said.

“There is a document system that we designed for accreditation, and a faculty scholarship reporting system for faculty and academic administrators, and a  number of search engines and reports of institutional data for a variety of users,” he continued.

Mark Ligas, an associate professor and chair of the Marketing department, said, “From my experience here at Fairfield with EIDOS, the system has been extremely valuable, with regard to assisting in the school of business program assessment process.”

“Further, based on conversations with a number of faculty, the EIDOS system is an effective course management system.  Again, Dr. Naser has been able to create ‘enhancements [and] modifications’ to EIDOS, in order to assist different faculty members with their specific courses,” continued Ligas.

Currently, the system serves about 3,500 students and 382 courses this semester; there are 100,000 student files in the Eidos system since it was introduced in fall 2005.

Finance major Stephanie Stadig ‘10 said, “I think that Eidos is a great tool for both students and faculty.”

“Extending its use outside of the Fairfield campus will be a beneficial move for not only Fairfield and Professor Naser, but also for the schools which will begin to use it,” she continued.

Jessica Pierce ‘10. a marketing major, said, “Eidos is convenient and easy to use. It has everything you need for the class online, so you can access lesson plans, your syllabus, etc., from anywhere there is an Internet connection.”

“I think it would fair well if marketed to communities outside of the University,” continued Pierce.

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