Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Spring Training

Ready for some fresh ideas for your courses? Check out Spring training opportunities available for registration now!

Course Mapping March 23-April 3
This session introduces the concept of course mapping, explores the relationship to CCCOnline Design Process, develops understanding of the components of a course map, and provides faculty an opportunity to begin mapping a course by completing a course project and peer reviewing maps of others.

New Designs for Assessment Webinar March 27th at 1pm with Alice Bedard-Voorhees and Karen Kaemmerling. This webinar will focus on designing assessments that evaluate course objectives, encourage student originality, and allow student to focus on topics that are most relevant to them, and more! No registration required for webinars.

Measuring What Matters March 30-April 10
This session provides you with the opportunity to examine your assessment processes. You will have a chance to learn about the various uses of tools for assessment and begin thinking about adapting some for your courses right away!

E-Portfolio Training April 20-24
This training session will introduce you to the resources available at the E-Colorado.org website, which includes the E-Portfolio program. Receive an E-Portfolio login, learn how to upload and enter data into forms and use templates to create E-Portfolios for a variety of purposes

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Just in Time!

Hey Everyone!

It's the first week of a new term and a few of you might be looking at teaching tasks that you haven't thought much about for a few weeks. If there are a couple of small things you can't remember exactly how do do the right resource might be waiting for you on the "Just in Time" resource page on the Faculty Wiki - http://www.faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=Just-in-Time!_Resources.

LisaMarie added a topic to that page earlier this week with an example of a "Video Hello". So if you have been thinking about adding a welcome video to your course here are directions and thoughts about that process - http://www.faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=LM%27s_Example_Video_Hello.

And here's a very early Save the Date! This year's faculty conference will be Friday, September 25th. So put a giant exclamation point over that day in your date book and plan to attend!

best,

Lisa

Friday, February 20, 2009

Spring Session 2 Rosters are now available

Spring session 2 class rosters are now available.

Please go here, https://at.ccconline.org/faculty/login.php

Login using your SID and Vista Password.

After logging in please click on "Online Roster"

You can find student e-mail addresses on the roster. Please remember that most colleges have moved to the system e-mail address for students, so we are dependent on students remembering to check their system e-mail account or forward that account to another external e-mail address.

Please contact myself or Frank Vazquez, frank.vazquez@cccs.edu, if you have any trouble accessing your roster.

Thanks!
John

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Siftables

Pavla Harris (Psychology) sent this link to a TED talk on a new technology - Siftables, Toy Blocks that Think. Fascinating Video! http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html

Oh and by the way, enrollment is up just over 30% for spring 2 this year. And that is before the tax stimulus piece for education kicks in. So if you know any good qualified teachers we need them, particularly in fields where it's difficult to find folks like geography.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

ProfHelp

Hi everyone! By now the new term is well underway; I hope things are going well for you!

This is just a reminder that in order to help us better track issues that require ProfHelp assistance, we ask that you use the ProfHelp form located at the Faculty Gateway (https://at.ccconline.org/faculty/login.php) to request help. If you submit help requests directly to ProfHelp through email, you will now receive a note back directing you to use the form. Our hope is that by tracking these requests, we can tailor training tools and track repetitive LMS issues, etc., that we may need to address.

Also remember that any design work you need assistance with should also be submitted through a ProfHelp ticket rather than contacting a designer directly (unless you are already in the development process on a particular course with a designer). Again, this is to help us provide better training and technical information to you.

Thanks for your help with this!

A little information on migration

First of all please remember that we do not have a contract for a new LMS at this time, so all plans are extremely tentative.

We will try to run a very small pilot this summer and a larger pilot in the fall. I am not taking volunteers for those pilot courses as yet, so don't even ask. :^)

Training for faculty will be available this summer. The RFP committee did an extensive reference check during the selection process which included several questions about faculty training. The general consensus was that D2L is very intuitive and that the built-in help is quite good. Most schools we contacted said their faculty needed less than two hours of training to feel comfortable in D2L. Karen plans to offer training in a variety of formats including just-in-time, facilitated online workshop, and face-to-face.

I will keep you updated as we are able to make decisions about the migration process. Let me just say though, that I expect it to be significantly easier than the last time around. The more we do these the better we get at managing the process!

Lisa Cheney-Steen

"Intent to Award" Posted for New LMS

The official announcement:

Online learning leaders from the 13 CCCS colleges comprising the Learning Technology Council (LTC) are pleased to report that the vendor recommendation for the system's next online Learning Management System (LMS) has been approved by senior college/system leadership. Based on the RFP committee recommendation, CCCS posted an “intent to award” and will begin contract negotiations with Desire2Learn, Inc. (Note from Lisa CS: This is not a contract. We are beginning the contract negotiation process next. Contract negotiations can take some time.)


Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Inc. (www.desire2learn.com) is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world. D2L will furnish online educators across CCCS with a robust Learning Management System which leaders expect will propel us into the next decade and beyond. Desire2Learn's LMS was determined during the vetting process to be: easy to use, intuitive, and effective at encouraging faculty adoption while increasing student satisfaction.

Additionally, Desire2Learn's LMS has proven itself to scale to large, complex multi-campus implementations. It also provides a full-feature enterprise architecture that allows efficient implementation of complex tasks while supporting advanced systems integration. It will support CCCS colleges with room to grow in online, hybrid and web-enhanced learning environments.

Migration plans have not yet been finalized, but the new product is expected to roll-out during the 2009-2010 academic year. If you have any questions please contact your program chair.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

You don’t want to miss the Back to Basics webinar!

Please join us for the Back to Basics webinar Friday February 13th at 10 am with Associate Academic Dean Donna Welschmeyer.

No RSVP necessary. Just join us online, via Elluminate. Access from one of the following:
· http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1232407678312
· From the date 2/13/09 at the FRCC Elluminate site: http://elm.elluminate.com/FRONTRANGE/

The Back to the Basics webinar will review expectations for all CCCOnline instructors about getting courses ready prior to the official start date, the Quality Assurance process related to this, as well as the use of the Faculty Gateway forms in the process. Even if you've been with CCCOnline as an instructor for some time already, this webinar is a great time to refresh your memory about expectations and interact with fellow instructors and the Associate Dean too! We look forward to seeing you there.

Also, we will record this webinar if you can't make it. To view recorded webinars, visit the faculty wiki at http://www.facultywiki.ccconline.org/index.php?title=TPD_Webinar_Archive .

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Surf's Up!

This from one of our faculty members:
Just a quick note to say that my surf band will be playing again, this Friday Feb. 6, 9 pm, at McDonough's Pub in Aurora (they're on East Iliff, right off of 225). We'll be playing along with the really fine rockabilly band, the Redline Rockets. No problem at all if you can't make it - I just wanted to give you the info. (Feel free to mention it to anyone else around the office, too!)

I now return you to your regularly scheduled Tuesday!

John Ragan
www.myspace.com/theroyalaces
Lisa Cheney-Steen

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

No Show Reporting

Hey Everyone,

I think we finally have this automated again! Just in time to move to a new LMS and start the project all over again also....

From John Schmahl:
I just wanted to let you know that faculty will not need to report no-shows for Spring. Frank has a report he can run that will show students who have not yet accessed any of the Vista tools. We found in testing that this gives us the same students as those who have not yet logged in. We will be pulling the report this morning and forwarding it to the colleges.

However, please remember that not all colleges drop no-show students.

Thanks!

John

best,

Lisa Cheney-Steen

(LMS update: We are still targeting this summer for pilot and fall for move/pilot. We expect to complete the selection process in about a week.)

Innovate Ezine

From LisaMarie:

Innovate (www.innovateonline.info)

The February/March issue opens with Marc Prensky revisiting--and revising--the digital native/digital immigrant dichotomy he added to our lexicon in 2001. Arguing that the native/immigrant paradigm will become less meaningful when everyone will have grown up in the era of digital technology, Prensky introduces the notion of digital wisdom. Digital wisdom, as Prensky defines it, comprises both wisdom in the prudent use of echnology and the wisdom we gain from sophisticated technologies that enhance human cognition.

(See http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=705&action=article)
I wonder if the "digital divide" may change in nature -- for example, I see the colleges working hard to implement a student email system, but I don't see any teenagers actually using email to communicate with each other.... email is a tool for older folks.

Also LisaMarie pointed out that the Horizon Report 2009 is out:
Horizon Report. (2009). The Horizon Report: 2009 Edition (PDF). A collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) an EDUCAUSE program.

Featured technological categories, or topics, in the 2009 report include:
  • Mobiles
  • Cloud Computing
  • Geo-Everything
  • The Personal Web
  • Semantic-Aware Applications
  • Smart Objects
A favorite quote is: "These recommendations are a starting place for continued dialog and reflection around the six topics in the Horizon Report, and are acknowledgments that while these technologies offer considerable promise and potential, much work remains to be done before many of them are really ready for mainstream use" (p. 31). The quote is a favorite to me because it reminds me of how new technologies become mainstream - through use.
best,

Lisa Cheney-Steen