2016 eLCC Conference - Carl's Summary

I will start with saying I was impressed with this conference.  It was very well run and organized nicely.  Not to mention that the food was great!  I tried to capture the highlights for me of the sessions I attended, and concluded with at least one takeaway from each session.  Please feel free to come by and see me to discuss more, or give me a call.  So, here you go:

Scaling Online Course Development: Redesign of a Process

Grace Whitaker Instructional Designer CCC Online

Massaged a process that was already developed. 

Course already exists before they get involved. 49,000 enrollments in 2015.   

Very new team! 60 - 90 courses per year. per I.D. Around 20 

Focus on:

• Accessible
• Navigation
• Fully Aligned

The process is the super power!

Design with the end in mind.  

Determine Who does what when where and why. I.D's were coming into the process late. They really didn't change the process, just how it was implemented.  

Big change bringing I.D. Into the beginning the process. Having a SME Contract and On-boarding (3hours), templates, formalized quality assurance of content, checklist's created to check for accessibility, course alignment, etc. Made sure they had a consistent message. Needed to get all of them on the same page. 

They are Quality Matters peer review certified.

 Takeaways for me:

•   They only work with courses that already exist.
•   The super power is the process
•   They are definitely a production shop. 
•   On-boarding process - we should consider this! 
•   Consistent message is critical. 

    

Agile Instructional Design AIDNet

Taylor Kendal Metropolitan University

Inter domain adaptation is a good and needed thing.

Little has changed with Instructional Design over the years. 

Move to agility and efficiency and away from B.S.

Adapt to Institutional Needs

Gather Objective Perspectives

Create Strategic Coalitions

Separate from what has always been done.

Networked Team Structure 

Empowered and self-organized

Strategic integration of technology

Takeaway for me:

   Really do need to look at possible changes and improvement opportunities.  

Engaging Online Discussions

Nicole Marcisz Regis University 

What indicates engagement in a discussion?  

     Put these into your rubric. 

Socratic Questioning

Ask for Clarification

Probe Assumptions

Probe Rationale

Explore to understand other viewpoints.

Probe the consequences 

Ask questions about the question.

Takeaway for me: 

  Have the rubric encourage engagement. Foundation for Critical Thinking.  

Humanizing Your Online Course 

Mike Coste and Amanda Hardman Red Rocks

Put SKIN on it - social, kinship, interactive, new (our group came up with this.) 

  

Strategies 

Text Can't Replace You.

 Voice adds 

 Personal Phone Calls

 Introductory and Check-In Videos

 Office Hours offered

 Remind.com - reach students where they are at. Texting.

 Twitter can imbed into WorldClass.

 Facebook - uses groups, but has limitations.

Takeaway for me: 

The faculty plays a major part in humanizing any course!  

SOS Saving Online Student Success

 Kate Miller CU Online

They heart students so took a new path. 5 Team members.

Students may feel like they are on a deserted island.  

They have:

• Online Student Success Course
• Improved Technology - Zoom
• Better Communication - leveraged social media and podcasts
• Focus on the online community - campus services available to online

 Has webinars for students after course starts to cover more aspects of the LMS (Canvas). Share inspiring true stories.

Going to have a Roaming Helpdesk, so students can try out online courses or support current issues. She actually bought a hot-dog cart.  

Showed a video where student shared their thoughts. I kept hearing how much communication was going on with the professor.  

Kate.miller@ucdenver.edu

Takeaway for me:

I really think we should consider building an online student success course. I will say again Zaption is a tool we should investigate more as a tool we promote.  

3 Essential Strategies for Student Success in Online Learning

Josh Riemer Atomic Learning

1 in 3 students drop out of college after the first year.

Create a Sense of Community

Build-Self Management Skills

Provide Support

LMS Training

Google Drive

Microsoft Office

Takeaway for me:

There really wasn't any major takeaways for me with this one. Wasn't clear what the 3 strategies were.  

Using Video Assignments to Engage Students

Alex Marinez University of Denver

Using phone to create the videos, always have phone in landscape.

People remember stories so make sure video has a good story.

Why create video assignments?

          Demonstration mastery of skill

 Communication skills evaluation

 Memorable learning experience

 Non-synchronous activity, better use of class time

 Learn new technology and modern communication skills

 Good group or individual project

iMovie to speed up a drawing. Very neat presentation.

For every minute of video should plan on one hour effort time.

Videos of 2 - 3 minutes are best.

Keeping Students Organized

 Project title and intent (Google doc)

 Team roles and responsibilities

 Deadlines 

 Script and storyboard

 Give examples to them

Takeaway for me:

You don't need expensive equipment. Personal opinion, video is a great tool, but need to use it to enhance the learning, not to just have it. With that said, I think we can include video more in our courses.  

Using mobile apps and digital resources to increase student engagement 

Jon Johnson Red Rocks Community College

 Engagement 

• community with instructor
• other students
• and content.

 Google Forms - great way to do a poll. Could replace clickers. 

Can imbed Twitter into D2L.  

Clipboard is an app that searches the web for articles on subjects that you say you are interested in.  

A lot of free games out on the web.  

#1 thing - Instructor presence in class.    

Take away for me: 

Technology can really enhance the #1 thing for increasing student engagement, but it can't take the place of the instructor. Imbedding Twitter into D2L is a pretty neat capability.   

P.S.

I like how Ling did her post on this conference! 

Another awesome eLCC conference

Combine top notch sessions, noteworthy keynotes, great networking, and an amazing conference venue and what do you get. The 2016 eLCC Annual Conference. The weather was perfect (at least until Friday afternoon) at Beaver Run Resort in Breckenridge, the unofficial home to eLCC's annual conference. For this year, my session focus was on the support of faculty in developing and delivering online course materials.

The University of Denver continues doing amazing things with their faculty development efforts. Molly Smith and Chelsie Ruge spoke on DU's efforts for developing baseline faculty expectations. Using buy-in from an associate dean and others, their task force developed a set of goals that were simple, measurable, and backed up with both rationale and resources. This has led to expectations for their faculty that include the completion of new faculty orientation, familiarization with the faculty handbook, a posting of the syllabus, and the posting of an introductory video, all before the start of classes.

Molly and Chelsie also spoke on creation of a faculty resource portal at DU that provides links to a wide assortment of information relevant to faculty life. Information resources included dates, policies, contacts, best practices, tech resources, trainings, events, and so forth. Their portal reminded me of a more user friendly 411 RHCHP page, available on their Academic Dean's INsite page INsite login required).

Keynotes were okay. Susan Zvacek advocated for a healthy degree of skepticism when reading articles (certainly an uncomfortable 45 minutes for Marc Prensky fans). Thursday's keynote, Anders Gronstedt, spoke highly of technologies that are effective but were financially out of reach to the vast majority of audience members. There's no doubt that high-end sims are effective training tools but to convince a budget-strapped budget committee of their worth is another matter.

Perhaps the highlight of the conference from a personal perspective was the awarding of the eLCC Technology Support Person of the Year award to Alex Benedict, ID&T's senior instructional technologist. Certainly a much deserved honor, and congrats to Alex for this recognition.

Another amazing eLCC annual conference. Hats off to Karen Kaemmerling and Paul Novak, eLCC co-chairs, and Kim Larson-Cooney, conference chair, for another awesome conference experience.

Ed@eLCC 2016: Faculty Resource Portal

Though I'm new at Regis, I have already come across a plethora of places where educator resources are housed and where related announcements are made. Among those places are InSite, RegisLearns, idt.regis.edu, iSupport, 'facilitator documents' found within each WorldClass course, a “Resources for Facilitators” webpage, and more. These resources are controlled by various campus organizations and my guess is that it is difficult for a Regis educator to quickly and consistently find what they may need.

With our existing educator resource structure in mind, I was glad of the opportunity to sit in on the University of Denver, University College's presentation (by Molly Smith and Allison O'Grady) of "Where do I go to find That? Adventures in the creation of a faculty resource portal." During this session, a seemingly straight forward solution was presented: a centralized resource repository.

At DU, University College, using their LMS (Canvas), their Instructional Support Specialists built a 'course' for educators to act as a central resource repository and communications distribution platform. Educators were enrolled in the faculty resource portal 'course' and, through great will and collaboration, multiple organizations on campus came together to populate the portal's content and to send out announcements to all educators as needed.

Early feedback at DU seems positive; educators appreciate the one-stop-shop and are reportedly finding what they need quicker and easier than ever. Of course, the resource itself wasn't enough; a targeted set of advertising campaigns on campus was necessary to get the word out to departments so that educators would even know that this great portal had been made.

In the coming year, I hope to get caught up with existing and related conversations here at Regis so that I can do my part to help Regis educators get the information they need, when they need it.

Nicole's eLCC Conference summary

Nicole’s reflections and notes from eLCC conference, April 13-15, 2016

This year was another great conference! The first keynote was by Susan Zvacek from DU. “Spurious Claims and Zombie Factoids: What’s the big deal?” This topic was fun and interesting and reminds us that we need to stay on our toes and have a healthy amount of skepticism. Modeling skepticism and questioning with our students = caring. We should at least explore statements that even well respected professionals may claim and check the supporting research. Sometimes things sort of make sense and we want to believe statements but is there valid research to support such theories? Check out www.debunker.club “This website is dedicated to the proposition that all information is not created equal.” Another resource that Susan suggested that sounded interesting is a book called “A skeptics guide to the mind: What neuroscience can and cannot tell us about ourselves.”

Elevating Teaching Excellence- DU

Molly and Chelsie from DU explained how they elevated teaching excellence by establishing baseline faculty expectations. They created an interactive website for faculty to explore, learn and go in depth for each expectation. The expectations were carefully marketed and included underlying purpose and the research that supports the expectations. I really liked how the website was simple and easy to use and that it contained all the key elements to support it. It seems like a tool that faculty could access and visit often as needed to aid them in improvement and development of teaching excellence.

I sat in an interesting presentation that drew correlations between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to online courses. Dr. Lev Maslov from Aims CC discussed the psychological aspects of learning with Maslow’s needs. (Actualization, Esteem, Love/belonging, Safety, Physiological). 

I attended a hands on workshop and learned about App Smashing. What is app smashing? I wondered that myself? Was I recklessly stomping on my ipad? Or not using apps properly? I found out that “App Smashing is the process of using multiple apps to create projects or complete tasks. App Smashing can provide your students with creative and inspired ways to showcase their learning and allow you to assess their understanding and skills.” http://k12technology.weebly.com/app-smashing.html

Shaun Beaty from CSU shared his App Smashing Presentation:  http://bit.ly/1SaeMg2 and you can take the app smashing challenge right now by looking at this google doc http://bit.ly/1qI3XLm.

Another hands on workshop that I attended was on the app Explain Everything. I have heard of the app and even tried it a while back when it first came out but I still appreciated this session so that I can have time to dive into the tool and practice using it. I was reminded about how awesome and easy this tool can be to create a variety of quick on the fly teaching segments. There is a 30-day free trial or the premium and edu versions for reasonable prices. The app is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Store, and Chrome Web Store. The nice thing about Explain everything is that it can also be used by students to demonstrate learning or walk through their thinking process.

Two random things I learned at the conference is that with the current version of Office PowerPoint, a person can integrate polleverywhere.com polls directly onto a slide and it would show real time results. What a great alternative to clickers. Of course the free account for polleverywhere has a limit of only 40 responses it is good for smaller classes or presentations. The other thing I learned that was still related to polling is that Google Forms can be used for polls/surveys and not only is this a free option it has no limitations! And the really cool feature is that you can use during classtime and display real time results! Now this is a really great alternative to purchasing clickers or clicker technology. Here’s an article that discusses http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/free-clickers-for-all-using-google-forms-to-survey-your-students/

Follow eLCC on Twitter @elccolorado

Nicole 

2016 eLCC conference - Ling's takeaways

This conference has inspired me to try something new. So here it is. My conference summary in Thinglink format. 

If you're interested in this tool, here's a great resource for you. 5+ Ways to Use ThingLink for Teaching and Learning.