Technology-Enabled Teaching April 6, 2005
IN THIS ISSUE
VIEWPOINT
NEWS & PRODUCT UPDATES
CASE STUDY
TECH NOTES
READER RESPONSE
Sponsors
Viewpoint
By Frank Tansey, Co-Editor
NOT SHARING THE CMS IS A MISSED OPPORTUNITY TO BRIDGE
SOME OF THE GAPS BETWEEN INSTRUCTION AND ADMINISTRATION..
For over a year I have been asking colleagues at
universities around the country a simple question:
Are you sharing your course management system? After
a few puzzled looks, I clarify the question by adding
"with the non-instructional areas of the university."
For the most part, the responses indicate that the
answer is no. The exceptions are pretty limited. One
university offers its required sexual harassment
training as an on-line course, but there are no
additional on-line offerings for non-instructional
staff beyond this single offering. In other cases
I have been told the CMS license d'es not permit
non-instructional use. This, to me, is a strange
limitation. Rarely have I heard of a campus using
the course management system across the entire
university.
Not sharing the CMS is a missed opportunity to
bridge some of the gaps between instruction and
administrative areas. Let’s explore a few of the
benefits that might accrue from sharing the CMS.
There is little doubt that staff training yields
significant dividends in terms of staff effectiveness,
job satisfaction and better service to campus
constituencies—including faculty. Studies have shown
that there is up to an eight-fold return for every
moment spent on training.
Read more
News & Product Updates
WebCT Chief Technology Officer Chris Vento is a founding
member and co-chair of the new IMS Global Learning
Consortium Tools Interoperability Working Group that
intends to make course management systems and associated
learning tools interoperate without customization,
regardless of whether they are open source or commercial
products.
Read more
Berkleemusic.com, the online extension school of Berklee College
of Music, has added five new online guitar courses and five
new college-credit guitar certificate programs to their online curriculum.
All online courses are instructor-led and share the same curriculum
that is taught on the physical campus.
Read more
New Bluetooth SchoolPad 400 gives educators the ability to
present projected computer lessons on an interactive
whiteboard from up to 300 feet away from the computer.
The new SchoolPad provides teachers with greater
functionality and ease-of-use and is available April 1.
Read more
Case Study
By Rick Shearer, Assistant Director for Instructional
Design and Delivery, Penn State World Campus
VoIP CAPABILITIES ADDS DYNAMIC INTERACTION
CAPABILITY TO DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAM
In 1892, The
Pennsylvania State University became the
first American university to offer correspondence courses in agriculture.
This initiative was later used as a model for other academic institutions
to provide instruction-by-mail programs in a wide array of subjects. Now
one of the nation’s ten largest universities, Penn State is a recognized
pioneer in online education, continuing more than a century of innovation
and commitment to distance learning.
Ten years ago, it would have been hard to imagine
that we would have the ability to interact with people
across the country and around the world in a real-time
Web-based classroom. Today, our World Campus, which
uses the Internet and other new technologies to offer
instruction on an “anywhere, anytime” basis, provides
distance education programs for more than 23,000
students from all 50 states and 44 countries.
In 2002, the World Campus was challenged with finding a synchronous
tool to support our asynchronous, Web-based courses--that enabled students
to hold real-time small group discussions and also allowed faculty to
conduct interactive tutoring sessions and keep virtual office hours.
We also wanted a collaborative environment that would support both PC
and Macintosh platforms.
Read more
Tech Notes
Higher education analysts have a powerful new tool at
their disposal that might help them understand the
demographics of incoming classes of college students.
The National Education Data Partnership, a collaboration
of the Council of Chief State School Officers,
Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services, Achieve,
Inc., and the CELT Corp., launched SchoolMatters.com,
a web-based national education data service that
provides in-depth information and analysis about
public schools, districts and state education systems.
The Partnership is funded by a $45 million investment
by The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.
The organizations said the service is the largest
“searchable collection of education performance data
ever assembled,” including student achievement
information, financial data and demographic breakdowns,
as well as analytical tools from Standard & Poor’s.
Read more
Reader Response
From the Reader Response Forum
Technology-Enabled Teaching eLetter
Posted by: rseeley
What do you think of the new Technology-Enabled Teaching eLetter from Campus Technology?