This post serves as a reminder of the Educause 2009 Online conference that will be taking place in 120 Linton Hall Wednesday, Thursday and Friday courtesy of Libraries, Computing and Technology and the College of Arts and Letters. We hope to see you there for all or part of this experience, including a presentation by MSU’s own Dr. Byron Brown and Dr. Severin Grabski! Click “read more” to see the full schedule.
This week’s presenter at the “Explorations in Instructional Technology” brown bag seminar series is David Gift, Vice Provost for Libraries, Computing, and Technology. His topic is “Electronic Texts: Faculty, Student, and Institutional Issues.”
TIME: Friday, October 30, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m.
PLACE: 105 Natural Science Building.
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The MSU Libraries will be hosting the following Webinar:
“Music, Movies & Online Media: Fair Use Do’s & Don’ts for Higher Ed”
Monday, November 2, 2009 – 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
North Conference Room, W449 Main Library
Please email Diane Mayers (mayers a|t mail.lib.msu.edu) to register.
Exercise your copyright rights in the classroom
Hope to see you there. Refreshments will be served. Read more for a summary…
November 4, 5 and 6, Libraries Computing and Technology and the College of Art and Letters will be hosting a live EDUCAUSE 2009 Virtual Conference in 120 Linton Hall. We have registered for this one location and have selected the presentations that will be shown, primarily focusing on topics for those of you interested in educational technology.
This online viewing and collaborative experience will give us an opportunity to network locally with colleagues who share similar interests while receiving a live broadcast from presenters at the national Educause event in Denver. Local activities and discussion will be moderated by staff from Virtual University Design and Technology.
You may also want to consider participating in the Educause “Learning Commons” which kicks off with a pre-session event with Diana Oblinger on Tuesday October 27th, 1-2p.
Read more to see our local schedule, and hopefully mark your calendars to join us for some or all of the conference!
As announced by Byron Brown, the first in a series of presentations examining MSU’s LMS future.
Gerd Kortemeyer, Lyman Briggs College. Course management system demonstration/discussion: LON-CAPA.
TIME: THURSDAY, October 15, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m.
PLACE: The Koo Room of Marshall-Adams Hall (Please see directions below to get to the Koo Room).
NOTE THIS IS A THURSDAY SESSION IN THE KOO ROOM OF MARSHALL-ADAMS HALL.
This will be the first presentation that is part of MSU’s search for a course management system that we can run in parallel with ANGEL.
Directions to the Koo Room: The Koo Room in Marshall-Adams Hall (home of the Economics Department) is located across from the Olin Health Center on East Circle Drive. Park either behind Marshall-Adams Hall, or, better still, in the Grand River Avenue Ramp located next to Olin Health Center. Exit at the Olin end of the ramp and cross the street to Marshall-Adams Hall. It’s best to enter one of the rear building entrances because the Koo room is located in the rear (east side) of the building.
MSU Virtual University Design and Technology (vuDAT) invites you to attend the next session in our ongoing Breakfast Series: Conversations on Online Pedagogy and Best Practices.
DATE: Wednesday, October 14, 2009
PLACE: MSU Main Library, North Conference Room, 4th floor, west wing
TIME: 8:45am – 10:00am (8:30am for refreshments)
TOPIC: Using Technology to Facilitate Communication, Connections and Content in an Online Course
PRESENTERS:
Carrie Albin
MSU College of Education
John Bell
MSU College of Education
OVERVIEW:
First place AT&T Award recipient CEP 810 integrates a custom-made portfolio system, calendaring system and assignment structuring rubrics that allow students to easily see what is due and whether they are meeting project requirements. These systems and other technology tools such as CheckDAT, Camtasia and Adobe Presenter integrate with ANGEL to provide a seamless student experience.
Highlights include:
* Custom developed portfolio system
* Rubrics
* Calendaring for assignment progress tracking
* CheckDAT
* Tutorials created in Camtasia
* Adobe Presenter presentations
* Tech labs
Join us as instructor Carrie Albin and portfolio system creator John Bell discuss the development of this blue ribbon course and how you can integrate some of their techniques into your online or blended offering.
“Assessment in Online Courses – Part 2.” This sequel to last week’s session will include a discussion of faculty needs for better assessment infrastructure support.
TIME: Friday, October 9, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m.
PLACE: Room 105 Natural Science Building.
Last week’s session on sharing assessment experiences in online classes drew a crowd of 39 people. It included three brief presentations from faculty teaching online courses, whose ideas were then supplemented in a lively discussion. Even if you didn’t attend last week’s session, you’re very welcome to attend this week to listen to your colleagues’ ideas, and to contribute your own suggestions and experiences. This would be a good session for anyone involved in online teaching and learning.
“Including Quality in Your Online Courses: The ‘Quality Matters’ Program.”
TIME: Friday, September 25, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m.
PLACE: 105 Natural Science Building.
The Quality Matters program was created a few years ago at the University of Maryland with support from the U.S. Department of Education, and it got tremendous play at conferences on online learning right after it was developed. It has since become a private entity that does training and consulting on improving the quality of online courses and instruction. The core of Quality Matters is a detailed rubric that describes and scores the elements of online courses that contribute to making them high quality. Rebecca is a certified peer reviewer for Quality Matters.
This would be an exceptionally useful session for anyone thinking about creating online courses, or who oversees the administration and teaching of online courses.
MSU’s current and future CMS options – Town Hall
Time: Monday, September 28, 12:00 noon – 1:00 p.m.
Place: Koo Room, Marshall-Adams Hall
From Byron Brown:
We’ll present some brief background information to give you a sense of MSU’s present position with ANGEL/Blackboard, and offer some tentative planning guidelines on what MSU will consider over the next year. There will, of course, be lots of chance for discussion and exchange of ideas. Please consider this an ongoing process that will continue for several months. Several dates in the “Explorations in Instructional Technology” brown bag seminar series for Fall 2009 have been set aside for more discussion.
On 9/21/2009, The State News published an article about online learning, reaching out to not only students but also vuDAT’s Brendan Guenther, and instructors Dr. Stephen Thomas, Dr. Ethan Watrall and Dr. Yong Zhao. The article can be read here and offers a glimpse into students’ views of online learning, as well as what some instructors do to keep their students engaged. As an additional point, the article was written by a student, in a student’s voice and focuses on what this student found newsworthy and/or interesting. Save for a few inconsistencies in translation between interviewee and interviewer (student records on an external server, etc), it serves well as a viewpoint we may not encounter often. The article can be read at http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2009/09/plugging_in.
As mentioned in the above article, Dr. Watrall also wrote this blog post for the higher ed technology blog ProfHacker (http://www.profhacker.com) about the ANGEL outage. It raises some valid points, and gives a great professorial point of view on technology, and the need to be agile when it comes to technology. The blog post can be read at http://www.profhacker.com/2009/09/15/what-to-do-when-your-course-management-system-goes-down/.
The ANGEL administrators replaced the old database server with a new one, which has twice the capacity for load and use. This should improve ANGEL’s performance and reliability. The administrators continue to monitor the system. If you encounter issues, please notify Distance Learning Services at 5-2345 or 1-800-500-1554, so the problem can be diagnosed ASAP.
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