Distance Ed Presentations

Today we held 2 meetings of faculty who have worked on their distance ed classes over the summer. Great stuff all around. I see advances in comfort with technology. I see experimenting. I see people actually incorporating the suggestions that Teresa and I made.

There is interest in the following tech sessions:
-Jeopardy in Elive
-audacity
-application sharing tips and tricks
-images and sound in powerpoint
-learning objects

People derive great value from the sharing. I wonder how to foster ongoing sessions. I could ask individuals to present on a topic... so it isn't me always presenting. I could have meetings around a given theme... maybe seeded with some presenters.

Sheila had a great shell she build for Early Childhood Special Ed that is for advising them. Students enrolled in her program are automatically enrolled in her shell. I asked about creating a generic account that she could give to prospective students to log in and check out the shell.

Cleo shared an example of students developing a shared understanding of division of decimals together in Elive. In this instance, students were able to collaborate together and learn better than they could of in a face-to-face class. This was an epiphany for her.

Sunny created Powerpoint templates to use in her class that take advantage of the whiteboard to increase interactivity. She took all this away from the Interactivity in Elluminate session at our May workshop.

Susan developed a great newsletter to succinctly advertiser her course. It included her learning objectives, class dates, etc. It's much more alluring that the NCATE boilerplate syllabus. I think it was Deb that created a learning unit for her syllabus- it was 10 pages long, and easy to navigate to the topic of interest.

Several instructors reported that students would like a more standard Blackboard shell across their courses. They have to learn the idiosyncrasies of each instructor's organization. This is an issue worth bringing to the Leadership Team.

I see that we are focusing well on design and delivery. This is the easy point of entry. We still need work, I think on the enduring understandings and learning objectives. For that matter, we still need work on on design and delivery, but it's come a long way.