Wednesday, October 31, 2012


Hi folks,

As most of us know, captioning videos can be one of the biggest challenges when adding media to our online course. Captions are required for any video content that we add to ensure that our courses are ADA compliant.

However, video content can be extremely valuable to student learning experiences, and the task of having to create captions shouldn't discourage us from creating multimedia for our courses.

YouTube has one of the best auto-captioning tools, which now includes the ability to edit the auto-captioning mistakes right in YouTube, making it one of the fastest and easiest captioning solutions. This new video on our Technology Resources Training and Professional Development page gives you a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the tool to caption your videos:

http://www.ccconline.org/Training_and_Professional_Development/Technology_Resources/Media_and_Web_Tools/Captioning

Hopefully this will prove to be a valuable resource for you when creating videos for your courses!

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator






Monday, October 29, 2012

Greetings CCCOnline Instructors,

As many of you may already know, over the 2012 holiday break, the Colorado Community College System will be updating its learning management system to Desire2Learn version 10. This new version of Desire2Learn has a number of improvements that will help make your online teaching and student learning experiences smoother and more efficient.

While there are many improvements to the tools in Desire2Learn version 10, the biggest change is cosmetic. Courses will have a new, cleaner look and feel to them. However, while they may look different, the basic functionality, along with all of the tools you're used to using, remains the same.

CCCOnline is committed to educating our online instructors about the changes in Desire2Learn version 10 to prepare them for teaching using this version in the Spring semester of 2013. To help fulfill this commitment, all current CCCOnline instructors will be required to attend one session of the “What's New in D2L Version 10” webinar prior to the start of their Spring 2013 classes. This one-hour webinar will help instructors get familiar with D2L version 10, and help them understand what changes might impact them in their teaching.

The "What's New in D2L Version 10" webinar will take place on the following dates:

  • December 14, 1:00 PM MST
  • January 8, 1:00 PM MST
  • January 9 , 11:00 AM MST
  • January 9, 5:00 PM MST
  • January 18, 1:00 PM MST
January 22: Session I Begins
  • February 19, 11:00 AM MST
  • February 20, 5:00 PM MST
  • February 22, 1:00 PM MST
February 25th Session II Begins

In addition, there will two, one-hour Q&A opportunities, in which instructors are invited to ask questions about version 10. (Please note that the Q&A sessions will not fulfill the requirement to attend a "What's New in D2L Version 10" webinar.) These Q&A sessions will take place on the following dates:
  • January 24th, 1:00 PM MST
  • February 28th, 1:00 PM MST

As with all Training and Professional Development Webinars, registration is required and takes place on the Training and Professional Development Database, which you can access here: http://at.ccconline.org/training/

For instructions on how to use the database, visit this page:
www.ccconline.org/Training_and_Professional_Development/Training_and_Professional_Development_Opportunities/Registration

Please direct any questions you have regarding D2L version 10 Training and Professional Development to me at Sean.Renner@cccs.edu, and any general questions about the D2L version 10 upgrade to Terry Reeves at Terry.Reeves@cccs.edu.

We look forward to sharing this new and exciting version of D2L with  you!

Sincerely,

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

CCCO Executive Director Update



CCCOnline Instructors

I am delighted to announce that Dr. Eric Lee has accepted the position of Executive Director for CCCOnline.   His official start date will be Monday, November 26rd.  Prior to that date, he will be attending the Educause annual conference and potentially attending one or two CCCS/CCCOnline meetings.

I want to thank both Eric and Kyla Hammond for their strong candidacy.  It was wonderful to have two top-notch candidates for this important position.   Kyla will continue in her role as program chair for CCCOnline.

I appreciate the dedication of the search committee in seeing the search through and the patience of the CCCOnline staff as we continued our search process.   I know you will make Eric welcome as he transitions into the Executive Director role.

Julie

Julie Ouska
CIO/VP, Information Technology
Colorado Community College System
(720) 858-2781

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Survey Request


Hello,

Below is a survey request that has been approved by Geri Anderson and Julie Ouska.  Note that your responses in the survey will be anonymous, but in participating, you can elect to enter a raffle drawing for a Kindle Fire.  I know you are all busy, but if you have about 15 minutes to do the survey, I know your feedback and efforts would be appreciated.

Thanks everyone,
Terry


Dear Instructors and Academic Administrators,

You are invited to participate in a research study designed to solicit perceptions from faculty and academic leaders within the Colorado Community College System (CCCS).  This study is part of a dissertation project at the University of Denver entitled: Faculty Engagement with Learning Outcomes Assessment: A Study of Public Two-Year Colleges in Colorado, and is conducted by Jennifer L. Williams, PhD candidate.  Jennifer can be reached at jenwilli@du.edu or 720-937-0376.  This project is supervised by Dissertation Chair Dr. Cheryl Lovell, Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208, 303-871-2479, cdlovell@du.edu .

Participation in this study should take about 15-20 minutes of your time.  Participation will involve responding to seven demographic questions and 31 questions about faculty engagement with student learning outcomes assessment.  Additionally, 27 items from a separate research study are included that have different scales and may seem unrelated to the initial research questions presented.  However, these items are essential to estimating the survey instrument’s validity, thus your responses to these questions are very important as well. 

Your responses will be anonymous, which means that no one will be able to connect your identity to the information you provide.  You may, however, elect to enter a raffle drawing for a brand new 2012 Kindle Fire HD electronic tablet (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Fire-HD/dp/B0083PWAPW) by entering your email address or telephone number into a secured comment box at the end of the survey.  This response selection is not used for identification purposes and will only be used to contact the winner of the raffle.  You will be asked at the beginning of the survey if you consent to participate in this project.

Survey Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MVP95YJ 

This survey will be open from October 22 - November 18, 2012.

Thank you for your participation!


Thursday, October 18, 2012

CCCOnline Academic Updates - October, 2012

Hi everyone,

I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall weather and colors.  I wanted to give you a few updates from the Academic side of the house at CCCOnline:

  • We had record attendance at the Annual Conference this year -- our attendees were at about 270!  If you have feedback you'd like to give me regarding the conference, please feel free to let me know.
  • We have filled many staff positions at CCCO recently.  Please join me in welcoming Vanessa Bravo (Instructional Designer), Nazli Nomanbhoy (eLearning Specialist), John Ragan (QA Auditor), Justin Sherrill (Academic Technology Professional), Jonathan Sherrill (Academic Technology Administrator), Eden Haywood-Bird (ECE/EDU Program Chair) and Maggie Gaddis (BIOProgram Chair).  We are happy they have joined us!
  • We are in the process of interviewing for the Arts and Humanities and Physical Science Chair positions.  We are also hopeful that our Executive Director will be on board soon.  
I hope the semester is going well for all of you.  If you have questions or concerns that I can help address, please let me know.

Best regards,
Terry

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Upcoming Workshops and Webinars

Hi folks,

I hope you're all having a great start to your Fall classes. There are a number of Professional Development workshops and webinars coming up in the next few months that I wanted to let you know about.

There will be 3 Managing Discussion workshop sessions this fall, taking place on the following dates:

October 15th - October 26th
October 29th - November 9th
December 3rd - December 14th

Registration is currently open for all three of these sessions, so head on over to the registration site if you'd like to participate. Remember that registration closes 10 days before the start of the workshop.

Additionally, over the next several months we'll be hosting webinar versions of sessions from this year's Annual CCCOnline conference. The following webinars are currently scheduled, but check the registration site or the faculty calendar on the portal for more webinars, as they'll be added soon!

October 19th, 1:00 PM MST - Quality Assurance 101
Facilitated by Liz Dzabic, CCCOnline Quality Assurance Coordinator

October 26th, 1:00 PM MST - The Essential Multimedia Survival Kit
Facilitated by Sean Renner, CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

November 16th, 1:00 PM MST - A Flipped Classroom with Students as Curators
Facilitated by Sherry Jones, CCD/CCA Instructor

Again, head over to the registration site to register for these webinars, or to read more information about them. Registration for webinars closes 24 hours prior to the webinar.

As always, feel free to send any questions or concerns you might have to training@ccconline.org.

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator