This week, CCCOnline staff share
their favorite takeaways from the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (held this month
in Denver). Enjoy their contributions below – and we welcome you to join the
conversation in the CCCOnline Community!
Of the talks I attended, the presentation by
Steven Sachs of Northern Virginia Community College (Engaging Online
Learners for Success: Beyond the LMS) was particularly informative for
me (the presentation slides can be found here).
Of
particular note in his presentation was the use of a tutoring service, student
authentication process, student coaches, embedded librarian, and a virtual
student union for NVCC’s online program in helping students stay, succeed and
feel connected in the virtual environment. By the data provided, their efforts
have met with good results.
I
also benefitted by visiting vendors in the exhibit hall and received an
education of lots and lots of tools. In particular, Respondus is beta-testing
a student authentication tool that may hold some promise for us. Also,
kudos to Karen Kaemmerling and JoAnn Burkhart for doing a great job presenting
at the D2L Booth.
-Terry
Reeves
Here are some of my favorite quotes or new sources:
“We are using too few of the capacities of technology.”
“Our students are our partners in scholarship.”
“Generative scholarship=apprenticeship model.”
Digital scholarship must still work in established forms of
academics.
Geocode History helps provide a space for synthesis with content.
Mad
Science book (Theo Gray)
Periodictable.com
WolframAlpha.com
Education formats should support the pattern of our students’
lives.
The workplace can become the place of learning, and education
and workplace training can interact transparently.
Education is about discovery.
We need to bundle education and archive our learning.
-Karen
Kaemmerling
Clayton
M. Christensen: The Innovative
University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out
-Monica Falk
I was struck by the
confluence of business and educators. If I have to take away anything it is how
is Education as an Institution going to integrate the waves of innovation that
business is heaping upon us.
The parallel is that
school buses integrate fairly involved technology that the students riding them
will never "see" and hopefully not ever have to experience, say in a
collision. It can be as simple as
the safety glass of the windows, never noticed like the materials and designs
used to build the safety cage, the hours of unappreciated testing of
the locking mechanisms of the doors, or the hours of scrutiny the seating
had to have passed during combustion tests for noxious and toxic gases.
All these systems go unnoticed
but are the first to be examined in the case of accidents or catastrophes. The
corresponding parallels for those taking educational courses can be found.
Are the locks on all the
network's "doors" as rigorously tested? What happens if a
student receives emotional or physical harm due to a data leak of their private
information akin to a busted window due to a rock on the road? If the
bus' tires blow out unexpectedly, how quickly can the students recover and get
to school? If the Information System of the schools is down for a short time at
the wrong time of year like grade reporting that’s quite a severe problem: nobody
goes anywhere. Is Data compartmentalized enough to keep "fires"
leaping between classes or department to department if the record is publicly
released; students and instructors often can't retract what they post online
nor know who is reading them.
These situations of
technology integrating into education are in real need to be solved. Business
is selling solutions to Education as an Institution but often Education as an
Institution is slow to take them up or is blindly trusting of the company to
deliver.
-Joseph Foss
I
enjoyed the presentations and picked up intriguing nuggets of information, such
as
-Tristan Denley and Austin Peay State University are using a Netflix-like
“suggestion engine” to supplement advising; students meet with
greater success in courses that were recommended to them. A brand-new interface
also suggests a series of majors to undecided students to help them out with
decision-making.
-The
“edX: A Breakthrough in Online Learning” (Harvard, MIT) and “MOOCs: The Coming
Revolution” (Coursera, U of Maryland) presentations were well-attended and
seemed to generate excitement. The projects have been rewarding for faculty and show promise to enrich the classroom and provide opportunities to understand how students learn.
-The
final keynote, “Discovery in a Digital World” by Edward Ayers of U of Richmond,
was powerful and inspiring. He discussed generative scholarship and the
importance of Humanities embracing technology to enhance learning. He also demonstrated
“Visualizing Emancipation” at the Digital Scholarship Lab, U of Richmond (http://dsl.richmond.edu/).
-Liz
Dzabic
