Cool Tools Presentation

At the recent eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLcc) Conference, our own Beth Kitts and Brenda Perea presented a popular session on “cool tools” (that is, an expert list of the latest and greatest tools you might like to use as you teach online).  Here’s the link to their Prezi:
http://tinyurl.com/2013cooltools

Feel free to share your own favorite “cool tools” in the CCCOnline Community!

Inspired by a Conference Lately?

Have you been inspired lately by a good conference?

The eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLcc) recently held their annual conference, and below are a few “food for thought” tidbits from some sessions.  In the CCCOnline Community, feel free to contribute anything you’ve learned recently from a good conference, f2f or online.

--Dunbar’s number = 150 (the number of people with whom a person can reasonably interact); relevant in social networking and perhaps eLearning/MOOCs

--Peer reviewers/mentors can help struggling online instructors

--Online student teams can work: need to have ground rules established right away

--Embedded librarians make a difference: students feel more connected to a course and comfortable with librarians

--Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) can be useful for faculty or students (a PLE can compile social-media networks, organizations, articles, courses, etc., around a specific learning goal)

--Multi-generational teaching: helpful to ask adults for their life experience (they need to feel their prior experience is valuable); youngest (Millennial) students respond well to structured assignments with tight deadlines

What We Learned at eLcc 2012

Recently, CCCOnline staff attended the eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLcc) Conference. It was invigorating and inspirational, and in addition to collaborating with our peers from local and national institutions, we also were reminded about or learned about exciting cool tools such as:

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/ - A multimedia web-book about art and art history

http://freevideolectures.com/Subject/History - Video lectures from universities

http://bigthink.com/ - Big Think

http://www.jfklibrary.org/ - JFK Library

http://www.storycenter.org/ - Center for Digital Storytelling

http://projeqt.com/ - Storytelling software

http://www.toondoo.com/ - Cartoon building tool

https://bubbl.us/ - brainstorming and mind-mapping

http://thekidshouldseethis.com/

http://popplet.com/

http://www.livebinders.com – virtual binders

http://tinyvox.com/ - voice recorder

http://www.snappvis.org/ (SNAPP – Social Networks Adopting Pedagogical Practice)
http://science360.gov/

A few favorite take-away phrases:

Formative assessment isn’t just practice; it’s re-meaning

Class should end with a finale rather than a final

Phases of learning--Trigger Event, Exploration, Integration, Resolution

Change what you “know” about teaching and learning

One of the keynote speakers, Kevin King, talked about virtual teams and individuals’ personalities, giving us food for thought as we approach teaching within the online environment (e.g., with group projects and discussions). One memorable piece of advice he gave applies to those of us with straightforward and direct communication styles: when composing emails, remember to “add flowers” so the reader doesn’t misunderstand your tone.

--Karen Kaemmerling and Liz Dzabic

Oceans of Digital Content

Today, we’re sharing some information from the 2012 eLcc (eLearning Consortium of Colorado) conference last week!

Donna Hall, CCCOnline Instructional Design Team Coordinator, and Karen Kaemmerling, CCCOnline Social Science Associate Dean, presented “Charting Our Way through Oceans of Digital Content” at the eLCC conference.

In this presentation, Donna and Karen highlighted the lessons learned as CCCOnline has moved 39% of the courses to a digital content, e-book or open content, model. Along the way, CCCOnline staff has fought for ADA compliant materials that are easy to access and include interactive or value-added pieces. Slowly, students, instructors, and the online learning community have become more accepting of digital content courses, especially with single sign-on access to the materials. However, an institution should be prepared to meet technical support problems for students and provide training to instructors on how the digital materials are accessed and how they work.

We have student survey data starting in 2008 for digital content courses. The surveys indicates that 75% of those students taking the survey do most of their reading online and 70% of them do not purchase the hard copy of the text. Some preliminary data on retention and pass rates of students in CCCOnline digital courses versus non-digital courses do not show any significant difference in overall student performance.

While there may still be some disadvantages to the e-book model, such as needing internet connection to access the content and not having a book to “hold,” most of our digital content courses also have a black and white hard copy option. Using digital materials usually helps save students money, provides additional learning tools such as videos, and ensures students have access to the course text at the beginning of the course. Additionally, using e-books allows the academic team to determine when is the best time to update to a new edition of a text rather than redeveloping a course every year for a new edition.

Here’s an article for further reading:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2236/ebook-reading-print-books-tablets-ereaders
(from the Pew Research Center: “The Rise of E-Readers” – 4/4/12)

Feel free to let us know in the CCCOnline Community: what are your thoughts about e-books and e-readers?

eLcc Report 2: Augment Reality Assignments

My favorite presentation at the eLcc conference was presented by Chris Luchs and Kae Novak about using augmented reality assignments in courses and as cross curriculum assignments. Check out their Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/zqe2luhdrfc8/augment-your-reality/ to learn more.

Scenario based learning, Authentic Assessments, and Augmented Reality Assignments in many ways are the same concept with different names. Students and instructors become players in a carefully constructed role playing “game.” A “client” contracts the students for a project. The instructor, and possibly course designer, engage the students as professionals in an appropriate field, but have some pre-made clues and guidance tools in place to provide at opportune moments to help students be most successful. Like a Murder Mystery party, the hosts (instructor) will release information as the party progresses to guide the guests to the clues and the solution. Instructors have a variety of tools to provide obvious and subtle hints to their students such as twitter, websites, and discussion.

Sound like a daunting task for an instructor to create and conduct by themselves? My suggestion is experiment with an augmented reality assignment on a small scale. For example, in collaboration with an English Instructor, history students become writers for a historical journal like the Journal of American History. The English class becomes the editors of the Journal and using the articles written by the historians selects the best for publication or provides editing comments for consideration and future approval on the rejected articles. To make the scenario most believable, students in the history class should believe they have submitted their writing to a real historical journal (in fact, they could submit directly to a journal of their choice) and the English students should believe they are truly evaluating professionally written articles for publication. You may even want to have a “visitor” to the class from the Historical Journal that explains why they are excited about the opportunity to work with the class. If not a real visitor, maybe a "letter" to the class from the Journal describing the scope of what they are trying to do by working with them.

If you are ready to create an augmented reality assignments for your students, contact your chair. The summer is a great time to plan, and I look forward to you sharing your examples in the Cultivating Excellence discussion in the CCCOnline Community.

eLcc Report I: Power Up with the Research & Writing Toolkit

During our eLcc presentation “Power Up with the Research & Writing Toolkit," we shared ideas on information literacy instruction and on how others might tackle a project similar to the RWT at their own colleges.  Thanks to our gracious attendees for the ideas!  And now, in the spirit of sharing with you all, here’s a list of items and questions that emerged:

Within the RWT or a similar resource:
-would like to see video or another learning object covering the spirit of research: the curiosity that drives the research process.

-perhaps include resources linked to specific disciplines: e.g., a special list of Research & Writing resources for Business, Science, etc.

-Students might find helpful a guide on how to gather resources; what does one need to know to start the research process?

-Students do not necessarily start off on the right track in their research; perhaps some resources could help them to get on and stay on the right track.

-Library-generated student help guides, or “LibGuides,” are helpful in that they break out library resources by academic area.  We might consult with faculty to gather a discussion-specific type of “LibGuide.”

Another open question regarding students and the research process:
-Facebook or other social media can be helpful tools to gather information for a research project; in other words, social media has potential to help students help each other.  Do we believe discussion boards within a class can serve the same function?  

Feel free to share ideas and further conversation in the Cultivating Excellence topic in the Community.