Other sessions at TXDLA 2009

Too many sessions scheduled at the same time required quite a bit of session-juggling. Regardless, there was some great information to be had. Tyler Junior College has put together an excellent instrument for evaluating online courses. Dubbed the "Distance Education Course Standards Course Certification Checklist", the instrument is for reviewing courses prior to being taught online. It covers a number of areas including documentation, professional development, a "Start Here" module, syllabus, and several others. Easy to understand and appears to cover all the bases. 

Also attended the hands-on workshop "DE on a Shoestring", by Dr. Brett Millan. Lots of resources in this one, with handouts for open courseware, Web 2.0 apps, and open source apps. The presenter did a great job of demonstrating how these tools could be used in a classroom situation. 

One of the most intriguing uses of YouTube was that of the interactive video. A series titled "The Murder" shows a 2 minute drama. The final scene asks the viewer to select what action the heroes should take next by clicking a link. The link takes the viewer to the results of their decision. Imaginative use of YouTube.

A session on cloud computing brought out a debate between faculty and IT on the degree that networks should be locked down. Some networks are locked so tightly that the latest cloud computing apps are unavailable. IT contends that this must be done to secure the institutional network, while faculty argue that this prevents students from learning and experiencing the latest cloud applications.  And the argument continues....

Copyright/fair use was covered by Stephany Compton and Jake McBee of Texas Womans U. Documentation is key, as faculty must verify that content used in courses has been properly requrested from the author/owner. A number of links were provided for more info. And pleasant surprise: all attendees received a flash drive with presentation preloaded! Great idea, and hopefully one that will catch on as flash drives come down in price.   

Other resources:

Google docs

Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

Glogster

Andragogy

Vlog It!

Flickr

Zoho

Big Huge Labs (Flickr add-ons)

Open Office

First day of TXDLA 2009

This is the first day of sessions at TXDLA 2009, and some great ones they were. First one attended dealt with the READI assessment tool. Lots of institutions beginning to use this to assess the readiness of students taking online courses. We've been using it since 2008 but found out about some customizing features such as creating custom text per group and displaying national averages. Need to check out the features of the latest edition.

Also attended a session on a qualitative research study dealing with faculty attitudes about teaching online. They suggested setting up peer training sessions so that faculty could assist each other with learning new technology skills. Gotta try that one. They also suggested relating the addition of technology skills with tenure portfolio. Give recognition for the amount of time required for learning new skills.

I then attended  a session on an Adobe product for easy vlogging. The presenter mentioned a Microsoft product called Windows Media Encoder which is a free screen capture utility. Never heard of this one but can't beat the price.

The last session of the day was the VCT Coordinator's Update provided by Ron Thomson. Ron always has some great things in the works and this session was no different. New apps being purchased for 2010 include CARAT, an online course review process. This is similar to Quality Matters but in an online format. Can't wait to see this in the fall when released. Also the possibility of Presidium and Turnitin, but these last two aren't guaranteed due to budget worries. VCT is also working with NETNet on a master course in Biology or A&P. This would be available to all VCT institutions and include learning objects developed using Softchalk.

Friday forums at DistEd in Madison 2008

A forum titled The World of Web 2.0 in Distance Education featured Paul Kim (Stanford), Marilyn Lombardi (Duke) and Mike Simonson (Nova Southeastern). Simonson discussed the myriad technologies that make up Web 2.0, particularly those dealing with social networking. He suggesting that it is the responsibility of those involved with institutional distance learning to investigate these new technologies to determine their applicability to the classroom and to teaching. This tied in with an article handout titled Will You Be My Friend (Simonson, 2008).

Kim demonstrated one of the earliest 3D gaming environments that brought back fond memories of Duke Nukem. He had developed a medical office environment for students to navigate, interact with patients, and respond to symptoms. It looked quite advanced for the mid-90s.

Sites that were mentioned during the presentation included:

• wiziq.com: a site to develop and teach online
• croquelandia: a 3d world similar to Second Life
• Two other sites have been lost forever to crappy handwriting.

The 11:45 forum featured Curt Bonk and George Siemens, two speakers I always enjoy listening to. The session dealt with academic writing and research using Web 2.0 technologies. Mention was made of faculty making videos of lectures and posting to Youtube for student viewing. Once again a number of resources were mentioned throughout the presentation including:

• Confessions of a Acu-Fan: blog of Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and advocate for gaming in education.
• slideshare.net: site for uploading and distributing slide show presentations
• elearnspace: Personal blog of George Siemens. EXCELLENT!
• plos one: Open source scientific journal for peer-reviewed scientific and medical research
• diigo: a social bookmarking site. Users can annotate Web pages and add sticky notes which can be shared with others
• publicationshare.com: freely available articles dealing with online learning. Primarily from Curt Bonk. Great resource.
• e-Learning World: home page of Curtis Bonk
• Theory and Practice of Online Learning (Anderson & Elloumi, 2008, 2nd ed.): freely downloadable version available free of charge. Print version available for purchase. First edition (2004) also available for download.
• Lulu.com: self-publishing. Create your book. Upload to Lulu. Select your cover art. Publish. Sell.
  

More session comments...

Sloan-C sponsored a forum titled Strategic directions for institutional support of blended and distance education. The session emphasized whether institutions are aligning DE and hybrid courses and programs with the institutional mission. Quality was also mentioned as a staple and something that programs should build and capitalize on. The positive branding of an institution can also assist in bringing in students. One panel member emphasized that you should not be ignorable. Make a splash and get others involved to support the causes of the program.

A questions that should be asked is administration is how we are recognizing the DE efforts by faculty. Course development, course implementation, and adoption of innovation all takes time and effort. Administration needs to recognize this.

Institutional DE strategy needs to focus of:

• Increasing student access
• Growing continuing education
• attracting students from outside the area
• improving DE teaching and pedagogy
• increasing the rate of degree completion
• get students through the program at faster rates
• enhancing the value of the institutional brand (this is especially helpful during times of natural disasters)
• increasing the diversity of the student body
• augmenting DE faculty recruitment and retention
  

A notable quote is to "Put the sidewalk where students walk anyway." In other words, communicate the way that students communicate, and provide resources and materials in ways that students use, not how administration uses.

Students were categorized as scholars, careerists, conflicted, and drifters.

When marketing DE, emphasize the savings in gas costs.

Lastly, adopt a service philosophy, with student as customer and consumer. There is too much competition that will take away our dissatisfied customers.


A number of free resources were mentioned throughout the conference. Most I have embedded in my other comments thus far. However, here are other resources not mentioned as yet:

• Free books
  
• The Wealth of Networks (Benkler, 2006). This book is freely available online or download, or available for purchase from Amazon. It was mentioned that the book is getting purchased even by those who have read all or parts of it online.
• The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Zittrain, 2008): Another book made freely available by the publisher, Yale Press, or for purchase through Amazon
  

• Peer rating systems for published works were mentioned. Instead of the current method of peer review that can take weeks or months, some alternative resources were suggested:
• knol.com : peer reviewed encyclopedia from Google
• technorati: a blog search tool
• google alerts: alerts subscribers of new blog postings, news and similar
• digg: user-submitted content that is rated for popularity
• twitter: a mini-blog. Used as a text-chat tool to inform others what is happening instantly. Each message you send is called a "tweet"

• Copyright source materials mentioned included:
• creative commons: allows authors to share materials legally.

• Other good stuff
• public knowledge project: open source scholarly research project
• scribd: site for self-publishing papers, books, research, whatever
• flatworld knowledge: open source (free) textbooks
• plos one: peer reviewed, open access scientific research
  

Session Comments from Madison DistEd

A number of excellent sessions at the Madison Distance Teaching and Learning conference held last week. Summaries follow:

Palloff and Pratt covered course, faculty and program evaluation strategies. They suggested embedding faculty evaluation into institutional faculty development efforts to ensure everyone knows what is being evaluated. They also suggested basing faculty evaluation on course design, facilitation skills, and how well teaching efforts are mapped to course outcomes. They also warn about student privacy issues when entering active courses to evaluate an instructor. Good point! A rubric was provided for asessment course and faculty performance effectiveness. The handout also included an example course evaluation form rating the course, the interaction, and open-ended questions about the course in general.

Michael Anderson and Brad Shaevel presented on a template for designing case-based courses. The template can be easily modified for creating a number of different types of courses that use case-based materials. Best of all, the model will soon be available free of charge at sourceforge.org. UT Telecampus does it again!

Ardelle Pate and Sharon Smaldino presented results of a study on social presence in online discussion forums. The research question was whether different types of forums added to the perception of social presence. Results indicated that a forum specifically designed to provide an informal place to socialize was poorly received and did little to increase social presence. However, the discussion forums in general contributed to success in the course.

The remainder of my notes are on my XO laptop which I don't currently have access to. The remaining session summaries will be posted later.

Keynote Comments from Madison DistEd

The Distance Teaching and Learning annual conference at Madison Wisconsin provided yet another great experience, although getting there proved to be difficult. Tropical Storm Edouardo ripped through Houston the same day I was to fly to Madison. Continental cancelled all flights into and out of Houston for that day. However a quick call to Continental reservations and adjustments in hotel and car rental reservations took care of everything.

The first post is on the keynotes. I'll attempt to place my disorganized pile of notes into a a partially coherent semblance of order for the highlights:

Opening keynote speaker Curtis Bonk provided a great start to the day. He spoke of the ways for spreading the word by way of technology. He mentioned a number of resources including:

• scribd.com for publishing your own papers and materials
• ustream.tv for live streaming your own video and audio
• epals.com for collaborating with other classrooms across the world
• cnx.org and curriki.com for the sharing of educational materials
• teachertube.com is the youtube.com of the education set
• gng.org is the Global Nomads Groups that creates global educational programs
• englishpod.com, spanishpod.com, italianpod.com (and probably others) for language learning through podcasts
• librarything.com for sharing your personal library collection with others. You become a thingamabrarian! Amazing site.
• dotSUB.com allows subtitling of videos on the Web
• montereyinstitute.org/nroc/ is the National Repository of Online Courses available at no charge to both students and educators
  

He also referred to several print resources including Learning at the Back Door (Wedemyer, 1981), Minds on Fire (Brown and Adler, 2008), and The World is Flat (Friedman, 2005).

Friday morning keynote speaker Marilyn Moats Kennedy took a surprisingly funny take on generational learners and the methods used to supervise and influence them in the workplace. She spoke of management trends as they apply to the generational workers and supervisors. For example, one difference between Baby Boomers and Netsters is in perception: the boss says to a Baby Boomer "Would you mind.....?" The Baby Boomer takes this as an order and does the task. When the boss says the same thing to a Netster, they begin ticking off reasons why they would mind. She also brought back a quote from Star War's Yoda who told Luke Skywalker to "either do or do not. Never try." What a great line. I'd forgotten that one.

I was disappointed to miss the Thursday noon keynote by George Siemens but thoroughly enjoyed his Friday morning forum co-presented with Bonk which I'll summarize in a later post.

Bb World 08 Session Highlights

Here is a summary of sessions attended at the recent Blackboard World 2008 conference:

Evaluating Courses for Quality
Preconference workshop, July 15, 2008, 8:30 a.m.

Excellent workshop that reviewed the instrument used for the Blackboard Greenhouse Exemplary Course project. The workshop was broken down into a discussion of elements comprising an exemplary course, a review of the exemplary course review instrument, an assessment of an actual course, and discussion.

Some of the many methods used by the exemplary courses that were demonstrated included:

• Peer reviewed writing assignments
• Simple matching exercises using technology
• Chunking of content
• Use of assignment rubrics
• Easy access to support tools by students
• Links to library and tutorials
  

The Exemplary Course Submission Form was then introduced and discussed. The form is downloadable from:

http://www.blackboard.com/greenhouse

(click on Submission and Instruction form)

A workshop booklet was handed out at the beginning of the session that had screen shots of some past winners as well as the complete review form.

My Online Course is Ready. Now What?
July 16, 2008, 8:30 a.m.

An excellent workshop on how to teach effectively online. The workshop was based on an assessment instrument for assessing online facilitation. The presenters suggested that it could be used by chairs to evaluate online teaching or as a self-assessment instrument.

It was suggested to break up online courses where duties of the facilitator change as term progresses. For example:

Interval 1: Before class starts
Interval 2: First week of class
Interval 3: During the semester
Interval 4: The last week of the course

The activities presented in the instrument should be completed during each interval.
Also emphasized was the importance of building community as well as the Principles of Good Practice.

The instrument turned into a checklist rather than a rubric and was subsequently edited for the use of positive language. The instrument is voluntary only rather than mandated for use by faculty.

The instrument is available at http://www.humboldt.edu/~aof

They also suggested the Rubric for Online Instruction and Chico State

Creating a Culture for Successful Migration
July 16, 2008, 12:15 p.m.

This session dealt with the experiences of migrating to a new course management system. One of the first tips offered was to create a faculty user group for questions and support. The presenters identified key faculty that would teach pilot courses using the new system. These were typically the early adopters and faculty new to the institution that were not familiar with the current CMS.

They suggested migrating courses individually rather than a server migration. For all course migrations, there needs to be a team approach that includes both an instructional technologist as well as a Blackboard support expert.

Faculty support can be provided by an instructional technologist as well as an online faculty user groups.

Student support should include the use of student orientations. This can be done f-2-f, by mailout, on the Web, or other creative ways.

It's important to clearly state the lowest common denominator for the technology needed to take courses using the new CMS.

Again, a section by section migration should be used to ensure quirks are handled quickly and efficiently. Add any odd quirks to a Quick Start guide and/or FAQ that faculty and migration persons can access at any time.

The presenters allowed 24 hours for the actual course migration, although each course took approximately 25 minutes to migrate. Faculty and the IDer should then run through each course to verify all areas migrated properly.

Very important that faculty receive appropriate training in the use of all CMS tools. This is absolutely critical for instructor success using the new system.

The users group provided great peer support. The groups met regularly and also had an online discussion component.

Expect several glitches during the first semester of any CMS migration.

Online Pedagogy: Faculty Development Enhanced with Instructional Resources
July 16, 2008, 5 p.m.

This session dealt with introducing faculty to the unique pedagogy of the online classroom. The presenters use experienced faculty to mentor those new to the online environment. Faculty that are teaching and/or creating online courses must meet with an instructional designer f-2-f or by phone conference to begin the development process. This is where they are given a checklist for online courses.

The presenters use of storyboarding to develop courses. They also presented a list of available technologies such as Impatica, Camtasia, video, Webcams, Elluminate, and Select Survey for course surveys.

The Web address for the online workshop was a welcome addition.

Implications for Standards Alignment
July 16, 2008, 9:30

This session was presented in a "Meet the Press" format, with four presenters going back and forth on the issue of online standards. The alignment was between Baldridge and SACS align assessment standards.

The presenters noted that all ask for student information, mid-point assessments, end of program assessments, program review, alumni satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.

They mentioned that programs should be carefully monitored and that surveys of internal and external environments should be done for detecting early signs of opportunities and threats that may influence direction and/or strategic plans.

They mentioned to collect data on students, and to use rubrics, an excellent tool for quantifying course results.

They also mentioned that data is good as long as it is aligned with goals and objectives.

Beyond the Bells and Whistles: Exemplary Courses and Best Practices
July 16, 2008, 11:15-12:05

This session featured winners of the Exemplary Course award for the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program. Presenters included designers/instructors of several recent winners that included:
A high school course from Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii. With this course, the instructor engaged the students in a number of ways. First, she sent electronic birthday cards throughout the term. She also included a weekly trivia question. Students emailing a correct response received extra points. There is an end of unit survey based on course goals. Students respond on whether they feel they met the unit goals. The instructor also asked how the unit could be improved.

The second course was a plagiarism course for students. The facilitator included a number of positive messages to keep the tone of the course upbeat. The course was also interactive as well as having a colorful atmosphere. Activities were mentioned but not sure to what capacity. Collaboration was minimized to ensure each student created their own understanding of plagiarism. Regular self-assessment were interspersed throughout the course. Each students also submits a paper to TurnItIn with only the student seeing the final report. Students could use the information as a gauge on how well they interpret the use of citations. The course uses games such as matching, and Flash animations.

The Psychology of Women. This instructor wanted to make the course relevant to the lives of the students. I believe she said that all lessons are in text, audio, and video formats. To promote community, each student develops their own home page. Each section of the course includes learning outcomes. Each week has its own organizer page. The instructor uses live chat rooms, including a chat room students can use to chat with an online librarian. This was a marvelous idea and one that I want to explore at my own institution. All assignments use grading rubrics, and course surveys are used for feedback. Latest figures show that the instructor has fewer than 15% of students dropping the course. She also makes liberal use of Fair Use in media. A number of resources are used such as magazines and movies, but less than 10% of materials comes out of any one source to stay in compliance with fair use. The instructor goes through the library to verify amounts and appropriate usage.

Online Course Development-Faculty Certification
July 17, 2008, 10:30 a.m.

One of the most useful sessions came from Tulsa CC that ealt with a certification process for online instructors and developers. The school has created two certifications, one for online course developers and the other for online faculty. Only full-time faculty can develop courses, although exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis. This school requires that everyone must be certified to teach or develop courses. There is a fast track for veteran faculty. The courses typically take five weeks to complete and are completion rather than faciliated.

• Weeks 1-3 deals with curriculum alignment
• Weeks 4-5 is on building course structure
  

They emphasized to have folders for support services included on the home pages of all courses.

A link to the modules was also provided. I love it when presenters give access to the actual materials they are discussing.

Change Management
July 17, 2008, 11:30 a.m.

Session dealt with a migration from CE 4 to CE 6, a situation very close to what we will be doing soon. The only significant difference is that the presenter's school is hosted by Bb. The presenters discussed how to determine which courses to migrate. They mentioned that media-rich courses may not migrate smoothly. Key constraints include sufficient numbers of qualified personnel, and a delay in getting training materials from Bb. Training was offered in both f-2-f and online formats. They created practice courses for all Bb faculty for practice. They emphasized to not migrate all courses at once but to focus only on actively taught courses. They suggested providing faculty workshops demonstrating how to migrate. This created a smoother transition for their school. They also emphasized having a rapid response to emails and support requests. I thought of forwarded the office phone to my personal cell during initial few days of migration. Even if I couldn't answer the question, at least a human voice would be answering the phone. The presenters also sent out a survey on the tools used in current online courses to determine the most popular. A summary of recommendations included:

• Using a personal approach
• Use early adopters to create visible success stories
• Use student assistants to make transfers.
• Showcase successes. Spotlight early adopters.
• Mandatory attendance at CE 6 workshops prior to course migration
  

A link was included to training materials used in the migration. Some training materials were created in-house to cover gaps in materials provided by Bb.

From a Simple to an Enterprise LMS (poster session)
July 15, 2008, 5 p.m.

One of the most useful sessions was actually a poster session from UT Pan American. Several presenters were available to discuss their transition from CE 4.1 to CE 6.X, a move that my school will be doing soon. This school migrated to one of the earliest versions of Bb 6.0 and ran into a number of glitches. Some of these glitches were severe enough to delay the rollout. However, as the glitches were fixed the rollout became smoother. Training materials were developed inhouse by staff working with the department. Faculty early adopters were used to test the waters and actually teach sections using the new system while the remainder of faculty continued on 4.1. Best of all is the offer of assistance as we prepare for our own migration. The presenters offered to have meetings with my institution to answer questions and provide assistance over the rough spots.

Trade show
July 15-17, 2008

A number of technologies were discussed and demoed at the trade show. I'll highlight some of these below:

Panopto: lecture capture system that is billed as being free of charge. Lectures are captured using Web cam, video camera, or other methods, and the results are then posted on local streaming servers.
Kadoo: A Bb Building Block that integrates a number of Web 2.0 social sharing technologies directly into the Bb environment. The service is free and provides users with 10GB of storage.
Echo 360: lecture capture solution. Impressive demo.
Wimba: a vast array of products that includes lecture capture, instant messaging, audio, and more.
Softchalk: this one is really catching on based on comments from conference colleagues. Softchalk allows users to create simple Web pages that can include interactivity. Free demo available on their site.