Distance Learning 2.0 - Emerging Technologies that Redefine the Online Classroom

Simple online services for students

2007-06-01T08:05:00.000-06:00

In an effort to respond to Don’s comment after our presentation, when I arrived back on campus I contacted our Student Services staff to get an update on what we are currently doing to support our online students. These services are, of course, available to any student, not just those participating in online courses.

As a medium size community college with modest resources we have attempted to provide simple straightforward support for students. There is nothing very flashy in this list. I am also posting the list as I received it from the individuals involved so that in some cases you can see their thoughts on how a particular effort is working. Other portions of this post simply list what is available on our website. Perhaps this will be of some assistance to Don and others.

On line services for MCC students

Advising: http://www.mchenry.edu/ATC/
On the Advising & Transfer website we offer the following links for the students to use:

MCC degree and certificate information
College visits from four year schools
Transfer Guides and Transfer Links to both four year and two year programs
Advising and Transfer Center events
Review of graduation requirements and procedures
Request to send transcript to another school
Attend a New Student Orientation session
Explore college, major and career resources
Information on Distance Ed

There are a lot of good tools on the Advising website for the students to use, but a majority of the students do not take advantage of them or use them. We did a seminar last Fall for MCC101 called (B)log in Learning how to use the Advising website, which was successful but we only reached a few students. We also briefly show the benefits of the tools in our New Student Orientations but the students have too much to learn in a brief session to remember to use them. If Advising had a link on the main page of the MCC website students would use it more frequently.

Athletics: http://www.mchenry.edu/Athletics/

Online athletic prospect inquiry form accessible from the athletics home page and easily submitted for follow-up by our staff
MCC Athletics Fast Facts page that lists all contact information, sports offered, staff/coaches names & titles etc.
Web site provides head coaches bios, scores, records, schedules and rosters for each year’s teams
The MCC ScotStars Sports Camp brochure is online and downloadable
Links to the NJCAA, NJCAA Region IV, Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference and NCAA Clearinghouse web sites
Press release news and information on multiple pages based on subject matter

Future plans:
FAQ that will go online this summer for prospective athletes and parents
Updated athletics brochure will be on the site shortly and be downloadable
List of MCC athletes that have transferred on to 4 yr schools
Athletes’ parent/family insurance form online, in 2007-2008, so that parents can fill it out and submit it electronically

Counseling: http://www.mchenry.edu/Counseling/Index.asp

Self help resources
Career resources
Virtual pamphlet collection
Link to American Psychological Association Help Center

Career Services: http://www.mchenry.edu/CareerServices/

Job Search Assistance
Job Journal
Recruiter information
Links to job search websites
Information on Job Fairs
Recruiters on campus
Workshop information

Developmental Learning Lab (will be implemented fall 2007):

Online assessment and self-paced skills building for English and math students from home or with tutor assistance in the “A” Lab.

Enrollment Services:
http://www.mchenry.edu/Admissions/Become.asp
http://www.mchenry.edu/Registration/
http://www.mchenry.edu/FinancialAid/Index.asp

Online admissions application (this will be better when students can pay their admissions application fee online as well – Todd is working on this)
Class registration (the last survey we had about IREG was very positive)
Class withdrawal (part of IREG)
Set up payment plan (no complaints – part of IREG)
View unofficial transcript (no complaints – part of IREG)
Transcript ordering (in February 2007 71.9% of students ordered transcripts online)

These services have worked out well for MCC, we have not received complaints on how they work. The biggest problem is that students forget their PIN numbers and want us to give them their PIN number over the phone and we will not for security reasons.

Currently being implemented:

Automated Degree Audit

Library: http://www.mchenry.edu/library/
Off-campus students whether taking formal distance learning classes or just studying at home, have access to learning resources. Access of this sort is provided through the on-line catalog, electronic databases, electronic books, electronic magazines (over one million full-text articles), the World Wide Web, a virtual tour, “e-mail a reference librarian service”, and the library’s home page. The home page contains guides helping students identify Internet sites that contain materials relevant to their studies. The library purchases online versions of book sets, if available, to provide more student access.

Recruitment: http://www.mchenry.edu/FutureStudents/index.asp

“Ask MCC” Discussion board
Information request form on the web site
Recruiting email
Web site resources through the Recruiting pages
Resources for high school students and parents, returning adults, and summer student.

Special Needs: http://www.mchenry.edu/SpecialNeeds/

List of services available
Guidelines on services provided http://www.mchenry.edu/downloads/pdf/specialneedsguidelines.pdf
One-on-one tutoring, extended testing times, test readers, and alternative text formats are provided to Special Needs students enrolled in online classes. Students may make these requests for support at anytime during the academic year.

SAGE Learning Center: http://www.mchenry.edu/SageLearningCenter/index.asp
Online instructors provide tutoring to their own students through live chat.
Tutoring for individuals in online classes and for the entire class through faculty requests. The Sage Learning Center is currently doing a feasibility study to bring online tutoring to MCC (particularly since the Illinois state supported IVCTutor is terminating on 1 July 2007.)

Student Life: http://www.mchenry.edu/StudentLife/
How to start a student organization, list of student organization, and calendar of events on campus

Testing Center: http://www.mchenry.edu/TestingCenter/index.asp
The Testing Center provides proctored testing to MCC online classes in the Testing Center by faculty request. In addition; the Testing Center supports other colleges and universities throughout the nation by proctoring their distance education students. Other colleges send pencil and paper tests to the Testing Center to be proctored for a fee of $10 per hour or online tests for a flat $20 fee.

Thank you for attending our presentation!

2007-05-22T13:26:00.000-06:00

We hope you enjoyed our presentation at NISOD! You can view a copy of our presentation here. Please join in the conversation by posting comments to our blog posts below!

Supporting emerging models of learning

2007-05-20T13:33:00.000-06:00

What we know about how people learn has changed. We know that learning is not an invidual, linear, passive experience. It's messy and complex, and requires authentic and engaging experiences. It's difficult to create conditions to support this kind of learning in a face-to-face environment; how can we possibly do it online?

We need to think about developing an infrastructure to support these kinds of learning experiences. Luckily, the Web 2.0 revolution has provided us with a variety of free tools that can be used to engage our students in authentic and rich learning.

Many of our students use these types of tools in their lives on a daily basis (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc). How can we leverage their experiences and skills to support learning? Additionally, our students will need to develop a new kind of literacy to succeed in the workplace. This is an example, albeit an extreme one, of the workplace our students may find themselves in now and increasingly in the future:

Skype

2007-05-20T13:00:00.000-06:00

Skype tends to be the "bread and butter" tool that we use as doctoral students at Pepperdine University to stay in touch. It's a simple, free application to use and allows users to chat via text or voice. In our program at Pepperdine, it basically has replaced the telephone. We are able to speak to one another for free (no long distance charges or cell phone minutes used), and it allows for multiple individuals to participate in a voice chat simultaneously. Skype can be downloaded for free and runs both on Windows and Mac.

http://www.skype.com

Yackpack

2007-05-20T12:30:00.000-06:00

Yackpack is a free online voice communication tool that facilitates collaboration, enhances communication, and transforms learning for your students. With Yackpack you can tailor your voice messages to a particular 'pack' of learners. It is a wonderful way to distribute podcasts to a particular group as well as providing feedback on projects.

Yackpack can be used for grading, language instruction or simply to distribute project instructions to a group of students.

Create your own pack at http://www.yackpack.com

YouTube

2007-05-19T23:13:00.000-06:00

YouTube is a free online video sharing resource. Its popularity often stems from viral marketing of silly or outrageous videos, but it can actually be used as a powerful tool for education.

Many of our students are part of what is called the "Look at Me" generation - as evidenced by their participation on MySpace and Facebook, they enjoy sharing information about themselves. Why not leverage this interest and ask students to share with the world what they have learned via a video portfolio? As a doctoral student at Pepperdine University, I was asked to create a video to document myself learning something new, and to narrate the video explaining the learning process based on emerging models of how people learn. I had a wonderful time creating the video, and found it to be a much more powerful experience than simply writing a paper. You can view the video presentation here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gJhk-W58GXA

YouTube can also be used to post instructional videos to allow students to review at their own pace concepts that they find particularly difficult. I'm starting to post videos of some difficult grammatical concepts in Spanish to support both my face-to-face and my online students: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DKly8qxZwKw

Finally, you don't have to create your own videos to make use of YouTube. There is already a tremendous wealth of video content posted on YouTube that can be used for class discussion. Walt, for example, often uses clips from the movie Twelve O'Clock High in a leadership course that he teaches. He was pleased to find this clip online to share with his students: http://youtube.com/watch?v=mcwWCKU6ZT0

Blogs

2007-05-19T20:19:00.000-06:00

Blogs are short for weblogs. Blogs offer free online push-button publishing. Blogs allow you to capture and save your thoughts online for review later in a central location that is impossible to misplace. Blogs are being used as communication devices in universities, businesses, newspapers, and almost any organization that has a need to publish information quickly.

From an educational perspective, blogs are a great way to collaborate on publishing projects. There can be several authors of a blog and users can work from anywhere in the world that has web access. Some of the potential uses for blogs are journaling, digital portfolios, and mobile blogging.

Blogs are free and only take a few minutes to setup and you are on your way to enjoying the benefits mentioned above.

Blog authoring sites:

http://www.blogger.com

http://www.wordpress.com

Sample Blogs:

The Dupé Report (personal journal)
http://www.kaidupe.org

Pepperdine Project
http://easypeasyemotionaldesign.blogspot.com

Consultancy Project
http://uptecconsultancy.blogspot.com

Research Topics
http://duperesearch.blogspot.com

Wikis

2007-05-19T11:25:00.000-06:00

Wikis are collaborative websites that allow groups to edit and publish pages quickly and easily. The most famous example of a wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with thousands of authors sharing their collective expertise. Wikis can be used for classes to share their collective learning experiences, or can be used to document the knowledge of a community of practice. At McHenry County College, the faculty developed a wiki to capture the knowledge that they shared about ANGEL, their learning management system: http://mccangel.pbwiki.com

Wikis can be created for free at http://www.pbwiki.com

Google Docs

2007-05-19T10:22:00.000-06:00

Google Docs allow individuals to collaborate on a document, either sychronously or asynchronously. You can create a Google doc for free (you simply need to create a free Google account), and then you can invite others to collaborate with you on the document. The individuals whom you invite can open and view the document, and can make changes and additions. Editing can either occur asynchronously, or, if you need to work together to plan a document, a pairing of Google Docs and Skype works exceptionally well. Finally, you can choose to keep your Google Doc private and viewable only to those whom you invite, or you can publish the document on the Internet.

Get started creating your own Google Docs at http://docs.google.com

Second Life

2007-05-18T20:02:00.000-06:00

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world. It is entirely built and owned by its players known as residents. Since its inception in 2003, it has exploded in popularity and currently boasts upwards of six million residents (http://www.secondlife.com,2006/). Among its residents are educators who are exploring the possibilities of digital literacies. The critical dimension of literacy is the basis for ensuring individuals are not merely able to participate in some existing literacy and make meanings within in, but also that, in various ways, they are able to transform and actively produce it (Gee, 1996). This presentation explores the possibilities of a digital/virtual learning environment. Advantages and disadvantages of utilizing this delivery mechanism as well as the techniques needed for effective delivery will be discussed.

Here are a few educational resources:

Second Life Future Salon
http://slfuturesalon.blogs.com/
“Second Life Future Salon, which meets once a month in the Metaverse to discuss innovation in digital worlds and culture, information technology, simulation, video games, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, 3D creation tools, computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D prototyping, the geospatial Web, augmented reality, and all forms of digital environments plus the technology, social, and business dialogues that can be impacted by them.”

Also held f2f in LA and other US cities, run by Acceleration Studies Foundation: http://accelerating.org/

List of universities and private islands
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life:_Universities_and_Private_Islands

Explaining Second Life
POD Casts
Overview of what Second Life is and isn't. Because this was targeting a larger audience I did not focus on education directly; If curious you can listen/share at http://www.managingthegray.com/2006/06/11/second-life-primer/

New Media Consortium

New Media Consortium is great example of educational uses, as well as good resource
http://www.nmc.org/sl/2006/06/12/seriously-engaging-movie/
To get access to the NMC Island, go to http://www.nmc.org/sl/join