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February 2010 |
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New Sessions of Online Course Development Begin February 8
If you will be teaching online for the first time in the spring, summer or fall, you need to think about your course development training now. There are only two sessions scheduled for the rest of this year; the first begins February 8, and the second begins May 15.
Each session has two courses - Online Course Development and Online Course Implementation. Instructors who complete these courses are eligible for future course development stipends. Both courses are part of the Online Instructor Certificate program (see page 4).
To register, click here. The courses are free for all UM-Flint Faculty, just call us at (810) 762-3200 for the promotional code. |
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Dr. Tom Wrobel to Present in the Sloan-C Learning Conference
Congratulations to Dr. Tom Wrobel, who has been selected to present his proposal, "Advantages and disadvantages of blended models of internship supervision" at this year's Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference in April. Sloan-C is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed to quality online education and is nationally recognized as the premier leader in the field of online learning and teaching. |
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Coming Soon...Blackboard 9!
On July 5-6, the campus will convert to Blackboard 9, which is improved and substantially different from the current version in both appearance and functionality. Starting in April, OEL will offer hands-on workshops; go to www.umflint.edu/oel/training.htm to register.
Faculty can explore Blackboard 9 now by logging in here. You’ll find old versions of your courses there, and can actively modify them within the new environment. |
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Upcoming Workshops
The Assignment Feature & Managing Your Gradebook
Friday, February 5 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. 1103 WSW Deb White
Synchronous Class Meetings via Elluminate
Friday, February 12 1 p.m. - 2 p.m. Online (Login to Blackboard) Andrea Becker
Engaging Online Course Materials & Strategies
Wednesday, February 17 11:59 a.m. - 1 p.m. Michigan A UM-Flint Faculty
Creating and Managing Quizzes and Exams
Wednesday, February 17 4 p.m. - 5 p.m. 459 FH
To register, click here. |
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Funds Available
The Office of Extended Learning has a small amount of restricted endowment funds to support the development of online programs. OEL is soliciting requests from departments needing financial support for the development of online courses that will comprise or complete an online minor, major or certificate offered fully online. The amount of awards will depend on the number of requests and availability of funds.
· Requests should not exceed $10,000. · Funds may be used for faculty release time, incentives, and related software or hardware. · Eligible majors and minors include existing face-to-face offerings that are being · Department chairs must agree to offer the courses regularly (at least once a year for at least three years), predictably (for student planning purposes), and fully online. · Awards are in addition to course Contact debwhite@umflint.edu. |
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Horton Hears a Tweet Social media enable faculty to engage their students in active learning.
"Engaged students are more likely to take initiative, exert effort, and persevere during learning activities. In addition, when students are engaged in learning, there is increased potential that they will be interested, curious, optimistic, and enthusiastic - all positive attributes of a healthy, productive learning environment," say University of Colorado-Denver educators Joanna C. Dunlap and Patrick R. Lowenthal.
"Because of our years teaching within an LMS [e.g. Blackboard], we realized that we could not achieve a natural communication flow with students only using the tedious, multi-step process required. The typical LMS requires logging in, getting into the specific course's shell, entering the specific discussion forum, posting a question ... and then staying connected to the LMS while waiting for someone to respond - or giving up and moving on to other work, thoughts, and issues. We wanted a tool that would enable us to establish an ongoing sense of being present at the current moment and able to receive and respond to students immediately, forming a real-time online dialogue and forum for sharing."
They chose Twitter.
Twitter is a rapid-response Web 2.0 tool that allows people to receive immediate, instantaneous responses, limited to 140 characters. Dunlap and Lowenthal like it as an informal, just-in-time way for students to connect with each other and with them throughout the day.
"We invited students to participate in Twitter with us, explaining our goals (student-faculty connection and enhanced student engagement). We did not require their participation because we recognized that they might already be involved in social-networking Activities and not want to take on more, or because of their concerns about privacy and their online footprints."
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Exemplary Course Competition
Do you have an online course design you’re exceptionally proud of? Are you interested in improving your course design, assessment, and interaction? Through Blackboard’s Exemplary Course Program (ECP), you can learn best practices in online teaching and receive feedback for a fresh perspective on your instruction.
In addition, by submitting your work for review, you can be eligible for a Blackboard Catalyst award for Exemplary Courses.
There are many ways in which you can participate in this program—from submitting your own work for review to simply using ECP materials to improve your course.
Find more info here. |
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Winter Enrollments
Enrollments for the winter semester are up 12% from last winter, with a total of 4,591 enrollments in online courses this semester. The number of online course offerings is also up, with 173 online classes being offered compared to 146 last winter.
This increase follows a pattern of online enrollment growth. Speculation suggests growth may be due to general university enrollment increase, more courses and sections being offered online, and possibly OEL’s changes in waitlist policy which have helped to relieve waitlist stagnation. |
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Elluminate Adds Richness More and more faculty are using Elluminate to facilitate synchronous communication, The application sharing feature allows Elluminate is perfect for online teaching and learning, but is also useful in face-to-face classes in which there are student group assignments. For more information, please contact Nick Gaspar (ngaspar@umflint.edu) or Andrea Becker (anbecker@umflint.edu) in the Office of Extended Learning. To sign up for a session, please click here.
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Their guidelines for instructional use
· Establish relevance for students. · Recommend people for students to follow. · Model effective Twitter use. · Encourage students’ active, ongoing participation. · Build Twitter-derived results into assessments.
"By providing students with a list of people (who we personally have benefited from following), we hope to help them get off to a good start with Twitter."
"Twitter engages students in a professional community of practice (CoP), connecting them to practitioners, experts, and colleagues. This helps enculturate them into the community, which becomes especially important for students in professional-preparation programs. Acting as practitioners and using the tools practitioners use to address authentic problems of the domain exposes students to the culture of expert practice. Through their participation in Twitter, students can engage in learning as a function of the activity, context, and culture of the CoP for their field."
"Students used Twitter to promote new blog entries. For example, one student tweeted that he had a new post on his blog about how vision trumps all other senses during instruction. His classmates and professors, as well as practicing professionals, read his blog post because of his Twitter promotion. Subsequently, he received several tweets from the professional community thanking him for sharing his ideas."
"As one of our students commented: 'I really LOVE twittering with everyone. It really made me feel like we knew each other more and were actually in class together."
Are YOU using Twitter for instruction? Tell us how! E-mail debwhite@umflint.edu.
Read the full text of "Horton Hears a Tweet" here. Excerpts here are used with permission under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. |
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Online Instructor Certificate Program Free for UM-Flint Faculty
Ready to start teaching online? UM-Flint faculty can become fully prepared online instructors through as few as seven Web-based courses. OEL’s Online Instructor Program is designed to help current faculty transition their skills to the online setting.
Five central courses making up the core curriculum and an additional three elective courses focus on high-tech tools that add new layers of robustness to online classrooms.
Core Curriculum:
· Faculty Intro to Online Teaching · Blackboard Basics for Faculty · Online Course Development Pedagogy · Online Course Development · Copyright Issues in Online Teaching · Course Quality Assessment
Electives (choose at least one):
· Introduction to Graphic Design · Web Development for Beginners · Introduction to Captivate
To register, click here.
Call us at (810) 762-3200 for the promotional code. |
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New Study: Online Education up 17% to 4.6 Million Annual Survey Shows Recession, Influenza
(Wellesley, MA) - The 2009 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that enrollment rose by nearly 17 percent from a year earlier. The survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities nationwide finds approximately 4.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in fall 2008, the most recent term for which figures are available.
"Online enrollments in U.S. higher education show no signs of slowing," said study co-author Jeff Seaman, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College. "More than one out of four college and university students now take at least one course online."
The seventh annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group, the College Board and the Sloan Consortium, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. The complete survey report, "Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009" is available here. The report includes a detailed analysis of the factors driving the growth in online education. |
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241 French Hall Building (810) 762-3200 Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. –5 p.m. |
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The Office of Extended Learning
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