Monday, March 30, 2009

A Fellow Instructor Needs Some Help

An Exploratory Study of Best Online Teaching Practices in Undergraduate Higher Education Degree Programs of For-profit Institutions


Greetings Faculty Member:

Rufina E. Butler is a doctoral student at Northcentral University majoring in Higher Education Leadership. She is conducting a web-based survey for her dissertation research investigating best online teaching practices of undergraduate faculty at for-profit institutions, and their perceptions of online undergraduate degree programs offered at for-profit institutions. To achieve this purpose, this research will explore faculty’s beliefs of what characteristics of best practices in teaching online exist, investigate the relationships of these characteristics with the best practices adapted by Keeton, Scheckley & Krecji-Griggs, 2002, and provide a framework to understand the characteristics of teaching undergraduate online programs at for-profit institutions. Much of the distance learning research has been devoted to comparative studies of distance and traditional classroom education, and is with the assumption that traditional education is the ideal mode of educational delivery and serves as the gold standard against which all other forms of alternative education should be measured.

The lack of documented evidence of best practice models in for-profit institutions offering programs 100 percent online has prompted this study. With the continued growth of online programs and for-profit institutions, there is a need to identify best practices in teaching online at for-profit institutions and what best practice characteristics contribute to effective teaching.


Rufina is seeking faculty who teach online distance learning and who have taught at for-profit institutions to complete a survey. Your participation will be extremely valuable in examining best practices. Participation in the survey is completely voluntary. The results of the survey can be submitted to any faculty wishing a copy. Possible benefits of this research include contributing a better understanding of online faculty members’ pedagogical philosophies about for-profit institutions online/distance learning programs and what elements of best practices currently exists.

The survey will require approximately 15 minutes to complete, and is completely anonymous. The survey will expire ___April 15, 2009 ______. Please make sure you have time to complete the survey as partial responses are not counted. The survey can be accessed at http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1184312 . Please contact the survey administrator, Rufina E. Butler at rbutler0323@msn.com or her Committee Chair/advisor, Dr. Linda Gaughan at lindagaughan@ncu.edu, if you have questions.

Thanks for your assistance!


Rufina E. Butler
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Education
Northcentral University
Email: rbutler0323@msn.com

Retrieved from "http://xpnyc.org/index.php?title=Survey_Requests"

Monday, March 23, 2009

March 27th Webinar on New Designs for Assessment

Hi Everyone,
I hope you enjoyed the beautiful spring weather this weekend! While we hibernate a bit longer this week, please consider joining us for a webinar on New Designs for Assessment with Alice Bedard-Voorhees from Colorado Mountain College and Karen Kaemmerling of CCCOnline. We will focus on designing assessments that evaluate course objectives, encourage student originality, and allow students to focus on topics that are most relevant to them, and more! The webinar will begin at 1:00 PM on Friday, March 27, 2009. The Session opens at 12:30 PM.

Access from one of the following links:
· http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1233878178637
· From the date 3/27/09 at the FRCC Elluminate site: http://elm.elluminate.com/FRONTRANGE/

No RSVP is required and if you can’t make it, we will record the session for you to listen to when convenient. Also, you might check out this slide presentation by Alice Bedard-Voorhees and Lisa Marie Johnson on Letting Them Show What They Know: Tech Tools for Assessment . It has some great ideas that you can start thinking about before the webinar.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Midterm grades

Hello Everyone-

This time of year you sometimes have students who need an official midterm grade. Usually it's the student athletes, but also students who are applying to other programs need an official midterm grade.

If a student asks you for an official midterm grade go ahead and send the grade to John Schmahl (John.Schmahl@cccs.edu) or Roxanne Manske (Roxanne.Manske@cccs.edu). Either of them can post it to Banner. That way the student can order an official transcript with the midterm grade included on it. You will probably need to let the student know that they should order the transcript also.


(Banner has a field for midterm grades which we don't normally use, but is exactly what these students need.)

Best,
Lisa Cheney-Steen

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Information from Payroll

Good Morning,

The Federal Tax tables in Banner have been updated to reflect the changes from the Federal Stimulus Package. This change will affect the amount of Federal Income tax withheld and may increase your net pay beginning with the March payroll.

If you would like to change your W-4, please contact Randy Macy at Randy.Macy@cccs.edu.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your pay advice, please fee free to contact the Payroll Office.

Thank you

Paul Grisdale
Director of Central Payroll
Colorado Community College System

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Payroll Dates

Hi Everyone-

Hope those of you on the front range haven't been blown completely away yet. It is windy where I am!

I have payroll information from Randy Macy:
Today is census day for spring session two. Contracts for bonus students and partial classes will be done the first part of next week. Bonus contacts will first appear on your March 27th paycheck.
And a little more information for those of you teaching this summer:
Because of payroll deadlines the first pay check for summer semester will not be until July 1st. Because spring session con contracts end on May 22nd that means no one will receive a paycheck in June unless we spread the bonus contracts out farther (through June 5th).

Unless I hear from a majority of faculty by Monday, March 9th, that you want your bonus contracts to end on June 5th, all bonus contracts will end on May 22nd. I’m sorry, but all contracts must end on the same date – we cannot end some on May 22nd and the rest on June 5th.
You can email Randy at Randy.Macy@cccs.edu if you have an opinion on the June paycheck.

By the way, credit hours were up 36% for spring two over last year. Wow!

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Monday, March 02, 2009

Hippocampus Blogs

The warm weather is calling us outside, but I suspect some nasty cold weather is around the corner. When it turns cold again, there is a wealth of information on the web about teaching online. Today I would like to highlight a project that I’m involved with: Hippocampus Teaching Blogs. I focus my posts on techniques for teaching History online. They also have content experts for

Teaching Biology
Teaching Math
Teaching Physics
Teaching History
Teaching Political Science

Happy Reading!
Karen Kaemmerling