Wednesday, July 23, 2008
July 25 - Ready to Play Webinar?
Come join us July 25 for our Ready to Play? Learning with Games in Online Courses webinar. This session will be facilitated by FRCC's Chris Luchs and Kay Novak. The session's focus is to emphasize how you can incorporate games into your online courses for engaging AND effective learning experiences.
FRIDAY, July 25, 2008 from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Mountain)Access from this link (opens Elluminate): http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1212175519275
Friday, July 18, 2008
Save The Date
Come celebrate CCCOnline's 10th Birthday and look for our Call for Proposals and additional information on this fun and informative event coming soon!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
LMS Update

Hi Everyone-
Julie Witherow from PPCC sent out an excellent update on the future of our learning management system, which reminded me that you are all probably interested as well.
As many of you know our contract with Blackboard expires June 30, 2009. Due to the size of the contract we need to do a careful survey of the market and go through an RFP process before writing a new contract. The Learning Technology Council with representatives from each of the colleges as well as CCCS-IT and a member from the State Faculty Advising Council will sit on the RFP committee both for writing and review purposes. This is a fairly large group, but we all have worked together for several years now managing Blackboard Vista and I expect the process to go smoothly.
As a group we plan to write the RFP this month and next month, possibly releasing it to the potential vendors towards the end of August. In preparation for that process we have spent the past few months inviting LMS vendors to come present to the LTC. We've had representatives from all of the major LMS vendors, as well as companies who host the two major open source LMS's. Those are Angel, Desire2Learn, and eCollege on the commercial side and Sakai and Moodle on the open source side. A sub-committee has followed up with each potential vendor on the more technical issues. We are also piloting a few courses in Moodle this summer to help us test that LMS more thoroughly. We may very well go through this process and choose to stay with Vista. Many of us, myself included , really enjoy teaching in Vista. Its shortcomings have tended to be the stability of the product and the weakness in the administrative side. However, going through a thorough needs analysis and market survey of support software will help us plan the future of online, hybrid, and community college education in general in this area.
As a side note, I'd also like to mention that Blackboard 9, the combined Vista/Blackboard Enterprise product is due to be released in December of this year. That release will put us on a track to essentially change software in the next two years irrespective of our choices around the RFP, making it a good time to go through this analysis.
This will be a time-consuming , but exciting process and I will try to keep you current as we move through it.
best,
Lisa Cheney-Steen
Monday, July 14, 2008
MOre Resources
http://www.studentwiki.ccconline.org/index.php?title=WebCT_Vista_General_Questions#Library_and_Writing_Resources
Writer's Toolkits
Students:
http://ccconline.org/students/rw_student_toolkit.htm
Faculty:
http://ccconline.org/FacultySC/TeachingResources/WritingResearch.htm
Teach on!
Lisa
Friday, July 11, 2008
ADA Webinar Cancelled
We will be hosting one webinar a month for the remainder of the year. Our ADA webinar that was scheduled for July 18th is cancelled. However, we will be creating a Just in Time Training on this important information soon. Be looking for more on this topic later this fall.
Please join us for a very cool webinar- Ready to Play? Learning with Games in Online Courses - on July 25 th from 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Mountain)Access. This webinar will be facilitated by FRCC's Chris Luchs and Kay Novak. The session's focus is to emphasize how you incorporate games into your online courses for engaging AND effective learning experiences.
Join us on FRIDAY, July 25, 2008 from this link (opens Elluminate): http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1212175519275
Have a wonderful weekend!
Karen Kaemmerling
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Changing Leadership
I have good news and good news for you today. Karen Kaemmerling, our program chair for Social Sciences has agreed to take on the leadership of Training and Professional Development for us. Karen has been with CCCOnline both as faculty and as program chair for several years now and brings a wealth of experience and leadership with her to this position. You might also recognize Karen's name as one of the winners of BlackBoard's greenhouse awards for exemplary courses.
I am sure the next question for many of you is "What's up with Lisa Marie?" Lisa Marie is staying with CCCOnline, but she prefers to spend her time teaching, and designing and facilitating workshops rather than managing the program. She is also working on her doctorate and needs to find some time in her schedule to focus on that also. That means we will all continue to be the beneficiaries of LisaMarie's expertise and enthusiasm, while she gets to concentrate on the part of the job she likes best.
So welcome Karen into this exoanded leadership role, but don't say good-bye to LisaMarie!
Lisa Cheney-Steen
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Time for Training? Consider these July Sessions!
Information about the faculty conference (October 17, 2008) will be made available as it becomes available. For questions related to the conference now, please email training@ccconline.org
July Workshops:
You may want to review the Session Descriptions to see objectives and materials for sessions (Click this link, then click the name of the workshop on the page that opens to view the description).
- Course Mapping (July 7 - 18)
Register no later than July 3! - Managing Discussions (July 7 - 18)
Register no later than July 3! - Learning Styles (July 21 - August 11)
Register no later than August 17! - Getting Started with CCCOnline (July 30 - August 6)
Register no later than July 25! - Vista Basic Training (July 30 - August 11)
Register no later than July 25!
July Webinars!
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)- What it is and Why it Matters!
Friday, July 18 * 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Access from: http://elm.elluminate.com/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1212016522566 - Ready to Play? Learning with Games in Online Courses
Friday, July 25 * 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Access from: http://elm.elluminate.com/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1212175519275
Review the training policy if needed. In sum, at least one training is required of all CCCOnline faculty each calendar year. It can be one of our offerings or a Chair approved alternative training. You are encouraged to complete as much training and professional development as you can, however!
Thanks for your awesome commitment to excellence in teaching and learning with CCCOnline. It has truly been an honor serving you this year!
:-) Lisa Marie Johnson
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Webinar this Friday 11AM - Course Mapping!
What: Navigating and Creating a Course Map!
Come to see examples of course maps and courses they correspond to and explore the resources available to you as faculty in creating your own course map. Faculty who have taken the Course Mapping workshop will benefit from this review of the essentials. Faculty who are considering a course re-design or design of a new course and have no prior course mapping experience will find this session very helpful for beginning the process! Session will not be recorded and is not for annual credit.
Who: Lisa Marie Johnson of CCCOnline.
When: Friday, June 27, 2008 - starting promptly at 11:00 AM
Where: Online via Elluminate! Participants may enter 30 minutes before the session begins. Use the link below to access the session. http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1212017188170
Why: As always, Why not? :^) ... Though participation in this session DOES NOT count as annual professional development credit for CCCOnline faculty, it is a great way for you to get comfortable with the idea of course mapping and ask questions in a safe environment. This session will not be recorded.
Hope to see you there!
Lisa Marie
NOTE: If you are a new user of Elluminate, please go to http://www.elluminate.com/support/ ... and then through the steps for first time users. Once your computer is set-up, view the Participant Training Materials for Elluminate Version 8: http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/8.0/participant.jsp If you are attending the live session, please prepare your computer to attend the session at least 1/2 hour in advance! All sessions begin promptly at the designated time, but you may enter the session 30 minutes before to make sure your headsets/voice, speakers, and other features are working properly.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Looking for Multimedia for your Courses? Inspiration to Create your Own?
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
This is a great place for finding open-source demonstrations on a variety of topics. Use the list of topics link below to find demonstrations. The 'web preview' can be seen online without downloading the Mathematica Player. The player (free) is required to view full demonstrations so, if you use these with students, be sure to provide the player download link.
- Home Page: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/
- List of Topics: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/topics.html
- FAQs: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/FAQ.html
- Mathematica Player (Free): http://www.wolfram.com/products/player/
Online Videos
You've all heard of YouTube by now probably, but did you know that with Yahoo and Google Video searches you can get an aggregated list of results from multiple video sites at once?
- Yahoo Video: http://video.yahoo.com/
- Google Video: http://video.google.com/
Two words caution and consideration to make in using videos from the Web: (1) watch the video in its entirety so you know exactly what is presented. Having focus questions or some goal for watching a video is usually an more effective instructional technique. (2) Don't forget about accessibility! If your video is a 'central' piece of content that is "must" be viewed in the course, you will want to take the extra effort to create captioning, if it does not already exist, or a transcript. This can be a painstaking process, but if the video is worthwhile, so is the process. There are some tools available to assist with captioning, such as MAGpie. Contact your instructional designer for more information.
Content from Open Courses
The MIT and Yale Open Course projects are among the most famous of this category. Their courses are browsable online and often include video lectures and other media you could use to enhance your own course because, well, it's "open". There is also a nice repository list from Scott Anderson online.
- Open Yale Courses: http://oyc.yale.edu/
- MIT Open CourseWare: http://ocw.mit.edu/
- Anderson's List: http://www.opencourse.info/
You can also find great supporting audio materials from sites such as the Nationa Public Radio and tons of resoruces from places like the Annenberg Media Learning site.
That's a lot of information to consider and get you started, for sure!
But wait!
Don't forget about the materials from HippoCampus.
Go to our page: http://hippocampus.org/myHippo/?user=myccco
In the upper-right corner, you can search by keyword. You can also browse the subject index on the left-side of the page. To learn more about using these resources, take a look at the Archive for the June 10 Webinar by clicking here.
And, finally, note that we are now offering the Respondus and StudyMate workshop as a self-paced experience. We encourage you to train on both these programs together since they work together so well. You can create several types of engaging practice activities in StudyMate directly, or use Respondus to tweak existing test-banks for repurposed 'study' activities. StudyMate creates Flash-based activities that YOU design! Check out our session from the Faculty Wiki: http://faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=Respondus_and_StudyMate
Enjoy!
Lisa Marie
[Tip: you might want to view this post directly off the Faculty Blog: http://ccconlinefacultynews.blogspot.com/]
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Blackboard Greenhouse Award Winner!!

I am extremely happy to let you all know that this year a CCCOnline course has won a Blackboard Greenhouse award!
Karen Kaemmerling's HIS 202 digital content course wowed the reviewers with both its design and use of technology to assist students in the learning process. Karen is going to the Blackboard conference this summer to present the course there, but you can see the presentation here:
http://media.ccconline.cccs.edu/ccco/HIS202/Tour/HIS202_Greenhouse_custom.htm
Mary Cash is the designer on record for this course and Aaron built the presentation with Karen. The course uses NROC and in-house content to replace the textbook. (See yesterday's webinar archive for more information on NROC). There are many great ideas embodied in this course that could be implemented in more of our courses (and many of course that already have been implemented.)
The greenhouse program is administered by scholars, reviewers are chosen from colleges around the world, and an extensive rubric is used in the review precess. Blackboard describes the program below:
The Blackboard Greenhouse Exemplary Course Project (ECP) recognizes courses that model best practices in learning, course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment and evaluation, meaningful technology use, and learner support.It truly is an honor to have a course recognized by this program! There is more information on the Greenhouse project (it builds on the WebCT Exemplary Course award program) available here: http://communities.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_130_1
Anyone interested in submitting a course next year should read over the material and then let your program chair and designer know that you are interested.
best,
Lisa
Monday, June 09, 2008
Join us Tuesday, June 10 for the Integrating Multimedia Webinar!
What: Integrating Multimedia from NROC/HippoCampus
In this session we will showcase materials available from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) and HippoCampus. Participants will learn to navigate and select resources from these repositories, understand the licensing benefits for CCCOnline courses, and view examples how the materials are currently being used by CCCOnline courses. Additionally, you will have a chance to engage in a Web exploration activity of the repository materials!
Who: Terri Rowenhorst of NROC with course examples presented by Karen Kaemmerling and Lisa Marie Johnson of CCCOnline.
When: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 ... Starting at 10:00 AM and ending no later than 12:00 PM (Mountain Time)
Where: Online via Elluminate! Participants may enter 30 minutes before the session begins. Use the link below to access the session. http://elm.elluminate.com:80/FRONTRANGE/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1204149336569
NOTE: If you are a new user of Elluminate, please go to http://www.elluminate.com/support/ ... and then through the steps for first time users. Once your computer is set-up, view the Participant Training Materials for Elluminate Version 8: http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/8.0/participant.jsp If you are attending the live session, please prepare your computer to attend the session at least 1/2 hour in advance! All sessions begin promptly at the designated time, but you may enter the session 30 minutes before to make sure your headsets/voice, speakers, and other features are working properly.
Why: As always, Why not? :^) ... Participation in this session counts as annual professional development credit for CCCOnline faculty. Registration is not required, but you can let us know you're interested in attending by registering anyway from https://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?402726
Unable to attend? You can still learn by reviewing the recording from our Webinar Archive!
We hope to see you there!
Lisa Marie
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Drop reminder sent to students
Thanks!
John
This note is a reminder that you have until Wednesday, June 11, 2008, to drop your CCCOnline delivered Summer course(s) with a full tuition refund.
If you do not plan to drop your course(s) or have already dropped them please disregard this reminder.
This email applies ONLY to CCCOnline courses – those courses with a section number starting C1 or C3 (example, ENG 121C12).
Do not assume you have been dropped from a class for not attending or logging in; at many colleges you must drop a class before the above date or you will be responsible for full payment. Contact the Cashier’s Office at your
**Contacting your instructor(s) will NOT result in your being dropped or withdrawn from your course(s)**
To DROP your course(s):
- go to http://ccconline.org/start/college_table.htm or your home college web site
- click on the Self-Service Banner (MyCommunityED) link for your home college
- select Login and enter your Student ID and 6-digit student PIN
- click Enter
- select the Student Menu and then the Registration Menu
- select Add or Drop Courses and follow the steps to get to your Current Schedule of
courses
- on your Current Schedule, use the Drop Down box under Action and select Drop
Web
- Click Submit Changes at the bottom of the page
- check your Current Schedule to make sure the course(s) has been dropped
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us or your home college.
For any technical questions or problems with your course, please visit http://ccconline.org/support/ or call our 24X7 Technical Support center at 1-888-800-9198.
CCCOnline
Student Services
1.800.801.5040
http://ccconline.org/support/
Friday, June 06, 2008
Digital Textbooks -- Pearson Agreement
I'm including some links below that explain the new CCCOnline agreement with Pearson Education for digital textbooks. The first link is on the faculty wiki, which explains the digital materials charges for students, and our relationship with Pearson. The second link is on the student wiki, and it explains how digital textbooks work in a CCCOnline course. Please let me know if you think we need to provide further information.
Faculty Wiki: http://faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=CCCOnline_and_Pearson_Education_Digital_Content_Agreement
Student Wiki: http://students.ccconline.org/index.php?title=My_course_uses_a_digital_textbook_-_I_have_questions_about_that
Thanks,
Rhonda
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Just in Time! Free Tutorials for Effective Teaching Online!
It's always refreshing to find quality just-in-time materials for online faculty. The Wiley & Sons Publishing through their "Wiley Faculty Network" have a series of tutorials on timely topics for all of us as online faculty.
The five tutorials are very short and free with registration. Each tutorial is in Acrobat Breeze format (requires Flash plugin) and presented by Tina Stavredes, PhD. To help enourage you to use these tutorials, a general account has been established. See below for the general login account information and links to directly sign-in/access each tutorial.
General Login Info:
- User name: training@ccconline.org
- Password: teachme
Tutorials to Choose from:
- Adult Learning Theory and the Online Learner
URL: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a44433639/e58499008/ - Interaction in an Online Environment
URL: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a44433639/e38386840/ - Managing the Online Environment
URL: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a44433639/e31964704/ - Pedagogical Strategies for Online Learning
URL: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a44433639/e28658640/ - Plagiarism
URL: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a44433639/e97179272/
Tip: After loging in and accessing any one of the tuorials above, you can simply copy and paste the link for a different tutorial into your browser's address bar and press the Enter key on your keyboard. That refreshes the page to the new tutorial ... no need to login again!
Thank you Phyllis Dobson for bringing this online opportunity to our attention ... they supplement our Training and Professional Development sessions very well. Register for CCCOnline Training and Professional Development and access descriptions for available sessions from: https://www.rsvpbook.com/event.php?402726
Enjoy!
Lisa Marie
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Wikipedia as an Assignment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness
I got there from the blog:
http://posthegemony.blogspot.com/2008/03/wikipedia.html
The same professor also has some examples of student blogs available as links from his blog:
http://posthegemony.blogspot.com/2008/01/span312.html
These are all literature courses, but I don't see why they couldn't be almost anything. Ideas with which to begin the new semester....
(Oh and I started this whole reading experience via a post on edupunk. Edupunk is apparently the hot new term in the educational blogosphere. The post that started me off should be here - http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44780 - but I can't get to it today.)
And that new semester begins tomorrow.... are we all ready?!
Lisa Cheney-Steen, Dean
Friday, May 30, 2008
Summer rosters now available
Summer rosters are now available at:
https://at.ccconline.org/roster
Login using your SID and Vista Password.
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.
We hope this won’t present a major obstacle, however, since this is the first full semester using the system e-mail, we should all keep our fingers crossed :-)
Thanks!
John
Friday, May 23, 2008
Grade Data
John Schmahl put together some statistics on student grades for us:
Student Retention and Success Summary, 200830 - Spring 2008
I'm not sure how legible that graphic is, but essentially we give more A's than we do B's, more B's than C's, more C's than D's, and then there are a whole raft of F's. I suspect that a significant percentage of those F's are students who simply stop attending classes, but I don't actually have any proof of that yet. Those failing students are the students I'd like to catch and help to complete the class successfully. Student services plans on beginning to track student access to classes eventually so they can send students reminder emails, but any other ideas are welcome.
Lisa
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Teaching this Summer? Read this Resource Reminder!
A great resource to have bookmarked is the Faculty Handbook. From the handbook you can access information related to many things important to you as faculty, including the Quality Assurance/Faculty Gold document and process.
There is also a wealth of resources from the Faculty Wiki. Click the links below to open a video demonstration (about 4 minutes long) on how to access resources from our Faculty Wiki and/or just read the transcript, in document format.
Open the Flash (swf) movie, from:
http://media.ccconline.cccs.edu/ccco/FacWiki/WikiResourceReminder_May2008_demo/WikiResourceReminder_May2008_demo.htm
Access the audio transcript (includes links), from this DOCUMENT download link: http://media.ccconline.cccs.edu/ccco/FacWiki/WikiResourceReminder_May2008_demo/WikiResourceReminder_DemoTranscript_May2008.rtf
LM
Notes: All links in this post open a new window. This demo was created quickly ;)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Webinar Archive Reminder!
Go to the Webinar Recording and Resources for today's session!
Or, go to:
http://faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=TPD_Webinars to access the archive and resources for all past sessions... and see a list of upcoming webinars too!
Hope to "see" everyone June 10 for our next Webinar, "Integrating Multimedia from NROC/HippoCampus". Facilitated by Terri Rowenhorst of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, this session will focus on showcasing materials available from the National Repository of Online Courses and HippoCampus.
Questions? Don't hesitate to ask!
Lisa Marie