5th Annual Learning Technology Fair Call for Presenters

The call for presenters is now open for the 5th Annual Learning Technology Fair, being held March 12th from 10-2 pm in the Mountain View Room. The Fair provides an open forum for demonstrating the many wonderful things being done with learning technologies in Regis classrooms. Previous Learning Technology Fairs have featured demonstrations on a wide assortment of classroom technologies such as lecture capture, wireless projection, student response systems, plagiarism detection, online tutoring, mobile apps, multimedia, digital library resources, file sharing, 3-D presentation tools, gaming, screencasting, virtual whiteboards, audio enhanced presentations, MOOCs, and more.

As a presenter, you will demonstrate and answer questions to Fair attendees about how learning technologies are being used in Regis classrooms. Presenters will also create a simple PowerPoint slide to be printed and displayed in the Poster Gallery of Learning Technologies. You’ll also have the opportunity to be interviewed during the Fair for publishing to the Video Gallery of Learning Technologies.

Each presenter is provided table space, electrical power and a wireless connection. Presenters are expected to provide their own laptop/netbook/mobile device, although a limited number of loaner laptops are available from ITS. Additional and/or specialized equipment is the responsibility of each presenter.

Interested? Then complete the online LT Fair Presenter Application Form at
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ltfair2015 . Or contact an LT Fair planning team member today! We look forward to seeing you there.

The 5th Annual LT Fair Planning Team

Technology: John Twigg: jtwigg@regis.edu, x4036

Poster Gallery: Ken Sagendorf: ksagendorf@regis.edu, x6469

Video Gallery: Nicole Ellison: nellison@regis.edu, x5291

Vendor Liaison: Jill Giacomini: jgiacomini@regis.edu, x5487

General assistance

• Erin McCaffrey: emccaffr@regis.edu, x5212
• Nicole Ellison: nellison@regis.edu, x5291
• Jill Giacomini: jgiacomini@regis.edu, x5487
• Andrea Fitzsimmons: afitzsim@regis.edu, x5260
• Lauren Skuba: lskuba@regis.edu, x3651
• Violetta Miles: vmiles@regis.edu, x5311
• Ling Thompson: lthompso@regis.edu, x4215
• Doug Emmerich: demmeric@regis.edu, x4948

Fair Coordinator: Jeff Getchell: jgetchell001@regis.edu, x5429

2015-16 Teaching and Learning with Technology Micro-grant CFP

The call for proposals for the 2015 Teaching and Learning with TechnologyMicro-grant (TLTM) program is now open. The TLTM is a competitive program funding small scale faculty initiatives promoting the use of learning technologies for the enhancement of teaching and learning. The program allocates up to $1,000 for individual awards and up to $1,500 for group awards.  Grant awardees are notified in early March. All awarded funds must be spent by April 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Last year, the TLTM funded several innovative ideas including research into student reactions to audio-enhanced presentations, the use of VoiceThread for feedback, the use of gaming concepts for teaching end-of-life sensitivity, development of an app for course content access, and similar. Award winners presented their findings at the Learning Technology Fair and other venues including Fall 2014 RHCHP Faculty Development Day, the eLearning Consortium of Colorado, and regional and national conferences throughout the year.

Have an idea for a project? Then get an overview of the TLTM and then fill out the very simple TLTM application form. Proposal deadline is February 13th.

Regis University welcomes eLCC

Over thirty members and guests attended the January 23, 2015 eLCC monthly meeting, held at the Regis University Regis Room. Coffee and tea got the morning started in the right direction. 

The meeting began with a professional development session presented by Ling Thompson and Jane Johnson, instructional designers with the department of Instructional Design & Technology at Regis. Ling and Jane presented a behind-the-scenes look at the Passport to Course Development, an online resource for faculty engaged in curriculum design and course development. 

Ling started the session by taking attendees on a walkthrough of the course. Ling also explained the use of a passport theme, where module participants would receive a passport "stamp" (credential) for successful completion of each course section. The Passport course makes significant use of multimedia objects to emphasize each concept.

After Ling's course walkthrough, Jane went into more detail on the design concepts of the workshop. The Passport course was created to assist faculty in becoming more fluent in the use of proper course design concepts. Ling and Jane began the Passport design phase with an audience analysis and ensuring stakeholder involvement. Obtaining faculty buy-in to the course was essential, as was the collaborative approach during course development. The Passport course is currently being revitalized and will be one of the initial offerings in the faculty training badging project, scheduled to begin fall 2015.

The Passport course was awarded the 2011 WCET OutstandingWork Award (WOW) by the WICHE Cooperative in Educational Technologies (WCET). 

“WCET WOW award has been presented to higher education institutions and organizations for exceptionally creative, technology-based solutions to a significant problem or need.”  (WCET press release.)

After the professional development session, Paul, Karen and Kim provided updates on the upcoming eLCC conference, being held April 15-17 at Beaver Run Resort in Breckenridge. More detail will be available in the meeting minutes, to be posted on the eLCC website.

Box lunches were then served, providing an ideal time for attendees to catch up with colleagues. The meeting concluded with institutional updates.

A reminder that eLCC members are welcome to attend the Regis University 5^th Annual Learning Technology Fair, being held March 12th from 10-2 in the Claver Hall Mountain View Room. The Fair is a showcase for faculty and staff in the use of learning technologies to promote student learning.  Stop by for a bite to eat, wander through the associated poster session, and stop by the table displays and see how Regis faculty are incorporating learning technologies into their ground-based and online courses. And be sure to stop by the Instructional Design & Technology booth to say hi.

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Something for everyone

Rita Axford presenting on her Fulbright experience

RHCHP Faculty Development Day was held last month in the Mountain View Room. The
day featured something for everyone including research, learning technologies, a panel discussion on social media, and even a fascinating look at a Middle Eastern educational culture as seen through the eyes of a Fulbright scholar.

What was personally most enjoyable were the presentations by last year's Teaching and Learning with Technology Micro-grant award winners. TLTM is a competitive grant program funding small scale projects for examining the effects of technology on teaching and learning. I was amazed at what our incredibly talented faculty can do with as little as $1,000. Projects ranged from an examination of student reaction to audio-enhanced presentations, to the use of game theory for instructing Nursing students on the handling of end-of-life patient and family issues, to the development of an smart device app.

Kudos to RHCHP for sponsoring this most worthwhile event and for sharing with the Regis community.

Social media – The scary, the awesome, and the scary awesome

I attended the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium held on October 24^th at Metro State University in Denver and wanted to share a little bit about a social media session that I attended called “Social Media – The scary, the awesome, and the scary awesome.”

Why did I choose to attend the social media session? I have to admit that I am not particularly devoted to social media and often wonder when the buzz of twitter will die down. I think to myself, what possible use or service could all of these different social media sites provide that makes them so relevant in today’s society? Someone must get it because, Facebook has something like a quarter of the world’s population enrolled on its site. That’s no small feat. So, I chose to attend the session on social media out of curiosity and to see how social media might be able to enhance the learning environment.

The presenter started by quizzing the audience to see if they could recognize the various social media site logos. I realized that there are many more social media sites than I had initially thought and some sites I had never identified as social media. The sites include: Flickr, Instagram, Blogger, WordPress, Good Reads, Pinterest (a personal favorite), Tumblr, Wikipedia, You Tube, Vimeo, Stack Exchange, Reddit, Octocat, and GitHub.

Some sites are great for photo sharing, others are good for discussion, while even others encourage group engagement. This is the key to social media in the learning environment I discovered, no one site is right for all circumstances. The presenter emphasized creativity in the incorporation of social media. Good reads for example is a site where anyone can go to post their review of a book and to comment on other’s reviews. This could be added onto a reading assignment or incorporated into a class discussion.

While the presenter didn't have time to go into the benefits of each site, we only had twenty-five minutes, he did leave us with curiosity. He pressed us to explore more social media sites and to think more abstractly about how they could be used in our day to day lives and in courses.  

Learning About Infographics at TLTS 2014

Another outstanding partnership between the eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLCC) and Metro

State University resulted in this year's Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium. The event was well organized and well attended. And there was ample parking across the street from the event center. Awesome!

Normandy Roden and Travis Chillemi of the U. Colorado System provided one of the symposium highlights with their session titled "1,000 Words are Worth a Picture: Infographics to Enhance Teaching and Learning". Visual learners depend on  charts, graphs, and images for providing meaning to large amounts of information. Infographics can also be included in this toolbox of information conveyers. Giving a visual learner a well laid out infographic makes them a happy camper.

Infographics types and examples

The session began with an overview of infograph types including guides, step-by-step, decision trees, simple and complex timelines, and simple and complex data visualizations. An example of an historically significant infographic was the publication in 1862 of a complex timeline of Napolean's march on Moscow, pictured at the top of this post.

A more modern infographic example is the word cloud, sometimes known as tag clouds or wordles. Word clouds use block of texts that are represented by a word chart. The greater the frequency of the word in the text block, the larger the word appears in the graphic.



Creating infographics

Infographics can be created using a number of programs including MS Word, Wordle, Adobe Illustrator, and similar. PiktoChart  was specifically mentioned as an easy to use program. The free version is available but limited in the number of available templates and graphics. The Pro version, at $40/year, was a highly recommended option.