My favorite session last week at the eLearning Conference was titled, Ethics Game.  See free trial at the bottom of this posting.

 

EthicsGame, a leader in online ethics education provides practical and experiential ethics education for strong learner-engagement. Our web-based learning tools are used by over 10,000 students in over 300 universities throughout the world. They can be used in a class as an assignment, built throughout a syllabus, or integrated across the curriculum to expose students to ethical decision making within their core classes both undergraduate and graduate. Our simulations align into business, nursing, healthcare, education, public administration, sports management as well as general education classes. Attached are detailed product overviews and below is a sampling of our tools, including a trial access you may share with other faculty. If you would like to see some of the tools for nursing or education, just let me know.

• The Ethical Lens Inventory ™(ELI) is a typology to help learners understand what core values influence the choices they make when no rules tell them what to do. The ELI provides a an awareness about your specific ethical priorities, strengths and blind spots.  Free tools are provided to faculty to expand the ELI within the classroom including Group Exercises, Structured Controversies, and a written assignment entitled “Your Personal Values Statement”.
• Ethics Exercises for Academic Integrity™ challenge students to understand Academic Integrity and the Student Code of Conduct. The Compliance Sequence consists of two exercises regarding Academic Integrity and the Culture Sequence has four separate exercises combining the Ethical Lens Inventory results with the questions around societal norms and the Student Code of Conduct including student loans, teamwork issues, plagiarism and cheating and social media.
•  Ethics Exercises for Accounting™ is based on the new AICPA Code of Professional Conduct which became effective on December 15, 2014. This three- part series makes the Code's conceptual framework for critical thinking easy to grasp. In a straightforward approach, your students will learn how to tackle issues of: 1.  Integrity; 2. Independence and Objectivity;  3. Firm Activities including Duty of Care, Professionalism, and Contingent Fees.
• Ethics Exercises for Critical Thinking™ is the newest addition to the EthicsGame Product Portfolio combining the short, iterative feature of Ethics Exercises with the Baird Decision Model. As students role play through these iterative exercises they will identify different ethical lens responses and learn common business practices, practicing the principles of critical thinking and ethical decision making. Merger Madness deals with a start-up that is being courted by two separate companies and the decision is which company is the best match. The various business decisions are all included in the Ethics Exercises, so learners will have to evaluate ethical strengths and weaknesses across the various functions of the company. In addition, because both companies have business strengths and weaknesses, the ethical assets and liabilities will have to be balanced against the business strengths and liabilities.
• Hot Topics Simulations™ are a much deeper experience, taking about 2 hours as an out of class assignment. Hot Topics puts learners into 2 real-world ethical dilemmas, engaging them in the ethical reasoning and value commitments used to support choices from each of the four ethical perspectives. At the end of each dilemma, learners write a formal business memo about their decisions and consider the law and compliance aspects of their decisions.  Quantitative assessment data are calculated based on simulation questions and two written memos provide a qualitative explanation of the students decisions.

EthicsGame Trial for Business - available to everyone

1. 1.      Go to www.ethicsgame.com
2. 2.      Under Register for a New Course, enter the class code CVQRER
3. 3.      Enter your email and a 6 digit password.
4. 4.      Click on the Ethical Lens Inventory, Ethics Exercises-Merger Madness, or a Hot Topics Simulation.
5. 5.      You can log in and out using your email and password as you like and the tools will recall where you left off.

Article in BizEd Magazine. http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/100231/30

BizEd is published by AACSB International–the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business www.BizEdmagazine.com.

 

ELCC 2015 Conferencef: Short thoughts on Academic Integrity.

I recently attended the eLearning Consortium of Colorado’s conference in Breckenridge. I went for one day and due to the fact that it happened to be same day we got our wonderful spring storm, my attendance was limited, but I did manage to catch Heather Tobin ‘s presentation on Academic Honesty. Heather, an Instructional Designer at the University of Denver and an adjunct instructor for CCCOnline, provided several strategies for reducing the possibility of cheating.

1.   Examine your syllabus, where in your course might students be most tempted or most capable of succeeding at cheating.

§  Once identified find new ways of assessing these activities that will reduce or eliminate the cheating.

2.   Build a culture of academic integrity in your course.

§  One attendee shared that he has the students sign an oath pledging not to cheat. As a practice this gives a point of discussion if cheating does occur and helps remind students that you do care.

§  Heather mentioned that just discussing it as a group brings cheating out of the shadows and gives students a chance to hear how the others feel about it.

3.   Utilize Turnitin to assist students with checking rough drafts.

§  Regis University has an enterprise license of Turnitin and it is available online and it WorldClass for all instructors.

§  Encourage students to submit drafts for analysis to see where they might be plagiarizing.

§  Use Turnitin as teaching tool for students.

§  This will give students experience with the tool you may be using to evaluate them before they are graded with it.

                                                                  

I’m pretty certain that some if not all of these are known and used by many faculty, however a review of good ideas never hurts. Hope it is helpful.

eLCC Reflections

Guest authored by Dr. Terry Buxton, Assistant Professor, Regis University Loretto Heights School for Nursing

I had the great fortune of attending an amazing local conference this past week (I didn’t know existed). The Reach the Peak: Scale New Heights put on by the eLearning Consortium of Colorado was held up in Breckenridge, CO. Often at large conferences you hear from national speakers, brush past vendors, and briefly network. At the Reach the Peak conference, I met with local experts and vendors who were able to spend more time opening my eyes to some new technology “YOUSEEU” and possibilities. The keynote speaker, Dr. Robbie Melton was sensational. My only regret is that I attend a one day conference rather than the full conference. Lesson learned, I’ll be back next year for the full conference of colleagues and experts. 

Terry

ELCC 2015 Conference: Nicole's Take-aways and Gems of Info

ELCC 2015 Conference “Reach the peak, scale new heights”
Breckenridge, CO

Nicole’s take-aways and gems of info

Overall, it was a great conference, as expected. My favorite thing about the conference this year was the stellar keynote, Dr. Robbie Melton, an educational and workforce consultant for Tennessee. She was like a whirlwind of energy, hope and excitement for the future and potential of educational technology. I was amazed at the wide variety of technology gadgets and tools that she brought with her and shared with us. With each one she showed us she pushed all our thinking by saying “hmmm? How can we leverage this for learning?” or “Why aren’t we already using this for learning now?” Of all of the tools and gadgets I was intrigued by the little hologram set up with the smartphone. The paintbrush and fine tipped styluses were really cool since I am an artist and would find those very useful. All of the itools for personal health were amazing such as the blood sugar monitor, blood pressure and even the wearable shirt that monitors your heart rate while exercising. Much excitement was stirred but it just goes to show that there’s so much potential for drawing deep connections about how these tools are going to change our lives and change teaching and learning forever!

The other keynote, Diego Madero focused on the world of 3D printing. It was amazing to see all the different applications and the impact it is already having on life! They can print human tissue and make ears! You’ve probably already seen how several people have printed functioning arms and hands for much much less the cost then other prosthetic creations. Adults and children are getting a new lease on life with their 3D printed limbs. There are 3D edible creations and there are even large scale creations such as HOMES! Gadzooks look at what we can do and how this is impacting our world! Truly amazing.

Here's a nice video I found on YouTube that displays a wide variety of complex and simple 3D printed objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xaj9jx7648 and this video gives you a good overview of 3D printing technology and you can see how the printer works in action. https://youtu.be/IS4Xw8f9LCc

One of my other favorite things about going to conferences in general is to collect a nice list of ed tech tools and apps to investigate. Here’s a little list I’d like to share:

Tools and apps to explore:

• https://snapguide.com/ (a place for how-to guides)
• iMuscle2 (an app that transforms your workout and helps you target muscles)
• https://www.thinglink.com/ (create interactive images with hot spots)
• https://vialogues.com/ (create meaningful discussions around videos)
• Kobo (millions of ebooks)
• dermoscreen app (this actually gives a prescreen for skin cancer)
• Make up genius (this is cool app that you can use your own reflection and apply makeup in real-time- I realize this may only be interesting to the women out there....)
• Touch Xylophone app (make beautiful music or at least some noise)

Nicole Ellison    MS.Ed

Instructional Designer  |  Department of Instructional Design & Technology (IDT) 

3333 Regis Blvd., Denver, CO 80221 G-7

Main Hall 339

P 303.964.5291  |  F 303.964.0000  |  E nellison@regis.edu |  IDT.REGIS.EDU

eLCC 2015 Conference Notes and thoughts from Carl

I really appreciated the opportunity to attend this conference.  As with any conference there are hits and misses, but overall I think this was a very good conference. 

Things that jumped out:

·         The opportunity to attend this conference made me realize what a talented team we have in our department

·         Nicole's and Terry's presentation "Expand Your Learning by Taking a Journey of Reflection was very good.

·         If "Social Media" is being used in a course, at the very least it needs to be in the syllabus.  We don't want students to be caught unaware of the requirement.

·         Two things to investigate more:

                                Clickers on the cloud
                                Intelligent Agent on D2L 

If you tweet, #eLearningCO has links to presentations and resources from the conference. 

The following are my notes for the sessions that I attended.  The session titles are in bold and all-caps. At the end of each of the session notes I tried to capture my thought(s) on the session. The notes may not stand alone, so please contact me with any questions or additional discussion you would like to have.

 

DIGITAL BADGES - UCD -Brent Wilson, Crystal Gasell, Aysenur Ozyer

 Careful not to give a badge just for attendance. 

Make sure you have APPROPRIATE assessment.

Some resistance, why are they needed?

Course Level, Program Level, Institutional Level Simplest way is to embed within a course.

Looking at working in badges with college credit.

Great to incorporate with Professional Development.

They have a profile page on the web that shows all badges earned.

Working on 70 different modules.  Example, basics of Turn-It-In.

Needed badges to work within Canvas (LMS) Badge Save works within Canvas Need to make sure you are not using a service that could go away.

Need to determine who is going to manage system? This is big.  Who will design badges?  Who will manage pedagogy involved.

 My thought - so many possibilities. Keeping badges internal might be a good starting point

  

MOBILE READY COURSE WITH UNIVERSAL DESIGN Kate Miller CU Online

11% of college students have a disability and 68% do not report.

When you design in Canvas it is accessible.

JAWS software to test courses.

My thought - this was very basic (listed as intermediate).  Very Canvas specific.  I didn't take many notes. 

ENHANCED LEARNING INTEGRATION AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY FOCUSED PRACTICUM COURSES  United States Air Force Academy   Steve Green

AACSB Accreditation

 Integrating, Culminating, Transitioning

"Education is not in crisis, it’s in motion"  Janet Napolitano President of Berkeley

 Integrating - Keystone Course

Culminating - Capstone Course

Transitioning - Practice or Clinical Course   Typically in the field

 Capsim Simulation - capsim.com

Something like this could be great for COBE.

Cost of Assurance Learning $53.99 sim, 14.99 individual exam A good simulation tells you how doing in whole program.

Culminating - New Ventures that apply innovative technology. more of a flipped classroom,  class time devoted to team interaction.  They do a project. 

Transitioning -  real Air Force Projects

 My thought - Capstone and/or practicum courses need real application and need to be engaging.  It should pull everything together. 

 

UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITIES OF ONLINE STUDENTS: Importance for Successful Teaching Classes begins with acquaintances.  Sometimes students poke to see what type of reaction happens.

 My thought - This one was a miss for me.

 

IMPROVING ONLINE COURSE QUALITY THROUGH STUDENT ENGAGEMENT:  Jackie Crouch, Sharon Stevens University of Colorado Springs.

Most require read or listen to learn materials, write to communicate.

Sharing information is changing.  Audio and video communication can enhance social presence and engagement.

1 in 5 students have difficulty with reading and writing. 

Changes:

Instructor feedback using audio

Discussion Forums using voice instead of text Peer Assessments enhanced with video

 

They use Blackboard and use the features within the LMS.

 

A wired internet connection can be a barrier for students.

Effort may not be worth it for one assignment.

Noise in background can be an issue.

Make sure there is support.  

My thought - We are doing a pretty good job with multi-media, but we need to continue to push multi-media and Universal Design.   

 

INSTRUCTIONAL ASSESSEMENT DELIVERY AND DATA COLLECTION SOLUTIONS TO ENGAGE, MONITOR, AND MEASURE MILLENNIAL STUDENTS Tammy Sherrard Northern Arizona Adjunct

Millennial students want it fast and have a different view of life. They see the world evolve around them.  They need instant gratification.  

Clickers creates engagement 

Can use software to make them ADA compliant. 

TurningPoint Cloud - integrates with LMS, works with cell phone, laptop, or clicker. 

SAMR Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition this is a constant journey.

I had fun in this one. One question, can you sneeze with your eyes open?  100% said no, and she said the correct answer is yes, you can train yourself to do it. I shared the question was can you, not is it possible?   She liked that.   

My thought - I know we are using clickers in some classes, and maybe we should consider Turning Point Cloud.  

 

EXPAND YOUR LEARNING BY TAKING A JOURNEY OF REFLECTION WITH BLOGS: Nicole Ellison, Terry Buxton

Will have an article published on this in May. 

Students may share what they think they think  you want to hear.  By using a blogging tool (blogger.com) it causes them to open up more.

They can select who they share with.

This can be used for a whole program, not just a course. 

Terry set up her own blog so students could use as an example. 

Make sure you have support for students with technology and that you make sure you make them aware of the rubric. 

My thought - Great presentation. I was surprised how many are using reflection and grade it. They shared a really good rubric.  

INTELLIGENT AGENTS IN D2L

FRONT RANGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE - Brandon Pouliot 

Provides quick and automated notification when defined activity occurs in a course.  Examples: Reminders when there is a lack of activity or welcome message, or encouragement, gamification of course Messages don't have to be just text and can be customized.

Release conditions are important.

Used as a motivational tool.

10.4.10 can do in mass.  

My thought - not sure how much we are using this, but is something we should consider using more.  We need to be clear how we would want to use, and be clear on the goal of using. Maybe use with badges.  We didn't want to spend the money on StarFish, but this is free. 

 

Robbie Melton - Key Note Speaker - Great Presentation What color is a yield sign? Majority  said yellow, it hasn't been yellow in 45 years!

Kobo - free books

App for sign language

Didn't take a lot of notes too involved in presentation and it was at lunch.

 

USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO HELP LEARNERS SCALE NEW HEIGHTS AND REACH NEW PEAKS   University of Denver Kathy Keairns 

7 Principles Good Practice: Social Media as a Lever

                Encourage contact between students and faculty

                Develop Reciprocity and Cooperation among students

                Encourage Active Learning

                Provides Prompt Feedback

                Emphasizes Time on Task 

                Communication High Expectations

                Respect diverse talents and ways of learning

 iPedagogy Wheel - match Blooms with social media

Twitter, can create #tag for the course 

My thought - should we have a policy around how we want to use social media, and address is it okay to say student has to create an account if they don't have one?  Consider FERPA issues.  Needs to be in Syllabus if used.

 

AVOIDING MULTIMEDIA TRAPS IN THE CLASSROOM: HOW TO INCREASE LEARNING OUTCOMES BASED ON CURRENT BEST PRACTICES. Amy Buckingham, Jon Johnson, Red Rocks Community College

 Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Mutimedia Learning

                Words and Pictures we process differently. Visual or Auditory  learners. 

                Finite capacity for both.  Short term memory 7 chunks of information. 

                Learning is active -how do we fit it in.

 

You don't need a picture of a dog since when we say "dog" we create our own picture of a dog.

Students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone (Mayer, 2001) Avoid using decorative images - keep it simple.

Illustrations and text should be located in close proximity.

Do not use mixed modal formats to display information Present corresponding words and pictures simultaneously rather than successively.

Keep it simple - avoid using multiple representations of the same concept. 

Students learn better with irrelevant information removed. 

My thought - I think this presentation was more for the classroom, ignores ADA, and I question how it aligns with Universal Design?  

 

GETTING THE BEST OF TEAM PROJECTS ... ONLINE Lou Cartier Aims Online

2014

Team formation and development

Project activity benchmarks

Communication

Accountability

 
2015
Intentional

Reflective

Engaged

Collaborative

Integrated 

Lack of participation and other team members have to pick it up.  They need to reflect more what teams are like and how teams operate in the real world.  

One student said nontraditional students do it at work they don't need to do it in their learning. 

Consider giving the team the chance to fire a team member.  Suggestion/Thinking - Member can do all of the project, and best he/she gets is a "C"

Phases of group project

                Set-up

                Starting Out   

                Closing the deal

                Grading and assessment

Student feedback

                Mandatory orientation

                Confidence building tasks - develop small tasks

                Removal of non-performers

                Shared responsibility for grading/assessment

Linkedin.com/group/How-do-you-handle-students

        
My thought - With team projects we need to make sure that the purpose of the project is clear, expectations of the team, team roles, and team member capabilities, also how it is graded.  Let each team member know that each member should let the facilitator or team lead know immediately if there is an issue with a team member.  I think we should have an team evaluation of the team.  Let the team give a percentage of the overall grade.

 

DO DISCUSSIONS MATTER IN ONLINE COURSES?  Matthew Rysavy Colorado Community College

 

Probably they do!

HIs research showed the earlier a student post a response the better the grade they get in the class.

Class GPA is higher the higher the instructor comments.

My thought - We need to make sure there is a purpose for the discussion.  Discussions need to align to outcomes.  Good to provide facilitators guidance on how to facilitate discussions.