dailyPosts 04/29/2008

• WebTools4u2use » About This Wiki

  tags: web2.0, resources

  • The purpose is to provide information about some of the new web-based tools (Web 2.0) and how they can be used and are being used by school library media specialists and their students and teachers.

dailyPosts 04/26/2008

• CCPE Nebraska - Postsecondary Education Operating Budget Recommendations for 2005-2007

  tags: no_tag

dailyPosts 04/25/2008

• Dave’s Whiteboard » Blog Archive » When you need incompetence fast - Annotated

  how NOT to be a good leader/administrator

  tags: leader, competence

  • Creating Incompetence (individual level)

    Knowledge
    

    • Leave training to chance.
    
    
    • Put training in the hands of supervisors who are not trained instructors.
    
    
    • Make training unnecessarily difficult.
    
    
    • Make training irrelevant to the students’ purposes.

    Capacity
    

    • Schedule performance for times when people are not at their sharpest.
    
    
    • Select people for tasks they have intrinsic difficulties in performing.
    
    
    • Do not provide response aids (e.g., magnification of difficult visual stimuli).

    Motives
    

    • Design the job so it has no future.
    
    
    • Avoid arranging working conditions that employees would find pleasant.
    
    
    • Give pep talks rather than incentives to promote performance in punishing situations.

• Getting Results

  A professional development course for community college educators.

  tags: faculty, development

• photophlow: preview

  possible tool for elearning - share an image, everyone in room can see image, can comment on image - what about digital photography?

  tags: flickr, photphlow

• Learnlets » Like riding a bike… - Annotated

  elements of great learning experiences right tools, motivation, support, and environment - good story

  tags: learning

  • The lesson was that with the right tools, motivation, support, and environment, learning is magic. Are you making your learning experiences like that?

• F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - Annotated

  Eye-tracking software was used to determine on several web pages the pattern people view the pages. Consistently it is in a F-Shaped pattern. Do students do the same with web content?

  tags: usability, web, design

  • Implications of the F Pattern

    The F pattern's implications for Web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the Web instead of repurposing print content:
    
    
    
    • Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
      
    • The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
      
    • Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.
  • The biggest determinant for content usability is how users read online - and because people read differently, you have to write differently.

dailyPosts 04/17/2008

• Making Your Mark - the right start to college

  tags: college, retention, student, support

• Team WhiteBoarding with Twiddla - Painless Team Collaboration for the Web

  tags: interacive, whiteboard

• Pecha Kucha Hour - Pecha Kucha for Educators: TEMPLATES

  tags: pecha, kucha, san, juan, college

dailyPosts 04/16/2008

• The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

  tags: environment, sustainability, education

dailyPosts 04/15/2008

• Academic honesty and online courses | College Student Journal | Find Articles at BNET.com - Annotated

  tags: academic, honesty, online, courses

  • Until now, the supposition was that, because of decreased monitoring and interaction in online classes, cheating in this setting would be greater than in traditional classrooms. Our paper suggests that as online education expands, there is no reason to suspect that academic dishonesty will become more common.

• Thirty-two Trends Affecting Distance Education: An Informed Foundation for Strategic Plannning

  tags: trends, distance, education

• Staying the Course: A Study in Online Student Satisfaction and Retention - Annotated

  tags: online, student, satisfaction, retention

  • Frankola (2001) claimed that adult learners drop out of online courses due to the lack of time, lack of management oversight, lack of motivation, problems with technology, lack of student support, individual learning preferences, poorly designed courses, and substandard or inexperienced instructors. The Frontline Group (2001), an online learning provider, offers five reasons why adult learners drop out of online learning programs: poor design, failure to understand the new medium, lack of consideration for a variety of learning styles, lack of support systems and ignoring the self-selecting content need of learners.

• Quality in Distance Education. ERIC Digest.

  tags: quality, distance, education

• Making the transition: helping teachers to teach online

  This article explores the transition factors face to face instructors need to make to move to teaching online.

  tags: online, pedagogy

• A Brief History Of Distance Education Article - Study College University Articles

  tags: brief, history, of, distance, education

Using a Wiki

I can't remember where if read this or heard it during a presentation - but I found a scribble on a piece of paper that take my phone messages on and I wanted to document it so that I don't lose the idea.

Using a wiki to have students write and answer exam questions for exams. This would double as a way to get students involved with their own learning and also help them study for the exam. It also helps me or the instructor create exams that coincide with student learning.

I also heard of instructors who have students help them plan the syllabus for the class - a wiki would work for this as well. If I remember the instructor would send out a survey several weeks before class to get an idea of how many exams the students would like, what type of work they preferred group or individual, and other course structures that wouldn't effect the content of the course. If you had a wiki created students could edit the parts you allowed and students would have an idea of what the course would entail. This is something that would at least be worth trying.

Supporting Student Learning Online in Science and Engineering

Presented by: J.B. Wiskell, Bonita Bray, University of Alberta & Dr. Curtiss Hanson, Jason Vetter, University of Northern Iowa

The other day I attended this presentation and J.B. Wiskell from the University of Alberta had a interesting analogy for learning - that there are two types.

The first is described as a teflon learner where after the semester is over nothing really sticks. And the second type is described as a velcro learner where after the stuff learned does stick. And this was all tied back to using eportfolios as a way to make students more velcro type learners.

Introductions

Hello, my name is DiscoSam and I wanted to introduce myself and explain a little about why I started this blog. First I am an Instructional Designer - officially for almost two years by title - have been designing courses and working with faculty since 1999. I work at San Juan Community College in Farmington, New Mexico - but I am employed by SunGard Higher Education. I am currently working on my Master's through New Mexico State in Community College administration (this is my first semester). I have a bachelors in elementary education and an associates in graphic design.

Enough about me for know - I started this blog as a place to jot down my ideas, thoughts, and possibly my ramblings about community college administration, instructional design, online education, and online student support. I also wanted a place to document my learning/professional development.

Over the next couple months I will also be preparing my presentation that I will be doing at TTIX (Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange - http://www.ttix.org/). The presentation is entitled "The Separation of Course and Classroom". The main focus is to get SME's and faculty to stop building their courses inside a course management system and to build them so that they can be delivered in multiple classroom settings i.e. online, mobile, face-to-face, hybrid or any combination above. If you have seen any anything that will support this idea please pass it along - I am always looking for more information.

I think that is all I wanted to say for this first posting. More to come soon . . .