AACE E-Learn Conference

I also had the opportunity to attend the AACE Conference in Las Vegas last month. I was very proactive prior to arriving in Las Vegas—I picked some sessions to attend online with the Personal Scheduler. However, it wasn’t until I arrived that I saw the overwhelming number of sessions available. While this may sound like a good thing, it turned out to be more of a distraction than anything. There were a number of sessions that were 20 minutes or 30 minutes and people were entering and departing constantly through the presentations. However, in the midst of all of that, I found a number of informational tidbits that were helpful to me:
Thinking about how we ask questions

• Professors tend to use three types of questions: Horizontal, Non-Referential, and Referential. Our questions should be designed in a strategic way so that we have a goal of what we want the student to walk away with. Too many professors ask questions very haphazardly, and students do not obtain the anticipated results. Additionally, there was some discussion on how questions are processed (cognitively), and how to frame them in a way to get students to use higher-order thinking.

Developing hybrid courses

• There was a couple of discussions on the benefits of hybrid classes versus traditional classes and online classes. This is something I have done at a previous institution, and would love for Winston-Salem State to adopt. I have had some push back on it, but I think students would really enjoy this online/in-person format. The presenters said they suggest listing the class as traditional, but a significant portion of the class will take place online. While the session was really informative, I did not get some of my questions answered by the presenters. For example, how do you market a hybrid class to your department or dean, when there is such a big push for student contact hours?

Effective and efficient ways to use discussion boards and blogs.

• There were a number of presenters who spoke about using discussion boards and blogs in their classes. Much of the focus was on actual usage, but there were a few people who had good and fresh suggestions that made sense. One suggestion was to change the Required Posting format so that students have to post their responses prior to reading any other posts. This prevents students from *paraphrasing* another student’s response. Another suggestion was to do Fishbowl discussions online. Students are selected and assigned to a discussion, while other students don’t respond but read and reflect on the discussion that took place. Finally, the suggestions to post an article (news-related, pop culture, etc.) and have students respond to it on the discussion boards/blogs. While this is not innovative, the way in which the presenters set this up for their students was really cool. Perhaps the key to success is in the selection of material to post.

Using Wikis for Small Groups

• The final piece of information I found helpful was about using Wikis. I already use Wikis in my classes, but they had some of the most elaborate Wikis I have ever seen. They used a template to create small group workspaces. I don’t believe we currently have access to this template, but if we did-- I think it would greatly improve student usage.

I did learn that Winston-Salem State is a bit behind in some of the technological tools that were on display during the conference. However, I also learned that our quality of teaching and presenting is probably better than most of those I came in contact with during the week. Overall, it was a great experience to see and hear some of the latest and most innovative ways to disseminate knowledge to our students. I will say the biggest disappointment of the conference was the organization. Hopefully in the future, more thought will be given to specific tracks for participants, or a re-vamping of how the presentation sessions are designed.

E-Learn Conference in Las Vegas

I had an opportunity to attend the E-Learn Conference in Las Vegas, NV. I must say that with the long flight, time difference, long line at check-in and lack of food, I was extremely exhausted. After I had gotten over jet lag, I registered for the conference. I was excited to see the variety of interesting workshops in the registration manual. The global contribution to this conference was amazing. There were people from Japan, Australia, South Africa and a host of other countries who shared knowledge about there research in education.

The E-Learn conference was different from what I was used to. Instead of having thirty minute or hour long sessions, most sessions ended up being in twenty minute increments scattered across the conference area. Which I found difficult when trying to attend more than one session. Though frustrated, some of the sessions that I attended were enlightening and benefical. I especially liked the session on "Second Life," a virtual reality enviroment that uses "avatars"(virtual person) to relate or communicate with people. The facilitator began to show the audience how this program could be used to reach and connect with students. This website has virtual campuses such as: Michigan State University, Duke University as well as community colleges. I began to think, "Is Winston-Salem State University ready for this level of technology"? No, I think that we have a long way to go, but attending conferences such as this one, can start the thinking "outside the box."

The conference was filled with innovative ways of using technology and online tools to initiate response and promote learning.

13th Annual E-Learn 2008

I attended the 13th Annual E-Learn 2008 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education in Las Vegas. The reason I decided to attend the conference was my first online I teach this semester. Since this is the first time I teach any online course, I have had some difficulties in that class. Being a quant-oriented course wouldn't help me either.

While it was a great experience to see how others approach online courses, I was not able to find exact answers I was looking for. However, one thing is for sure in that online teaching may or will be the major part of higher education. For example, the State of Minnesota mendates 25% of courses to be provided online by 2015, and we know the UNC Tomorrow wants to increase online courses as much as 60% (if my memory is correct). As one of Keynote spear, Mark David Milliron, said, the "Next Generation" rely on cell phones & instant messages to communicate, build online communities, and spend much more time online, as much as 12.2 hours per week. As a faculty, I need to deal with future, or some current students who are so used to technology.

After attending several sessions, however, I realized Winston-Salem State University is way behind other institutions in terms of E-Learning. At the same time, I face a dilemma as a faculty whose job is research, teaching, and services. Even at a teaching-oriented university, research cannot be ignored since the productivity in research will dictate your marketability. In my experience, online teaching requires a huge commitment from faculty and can be really time-consuming at the expense of research. However, once a course is fully developed, I can see next time will be much easier, evidenced by the University of Pheonix.

As a closing remark, we live in a world where technology evolves in such a fast pace and the next generation will rely on new technology. In business, once a company, for example the Big 3, is behind innovation, it is very difficult to overcome the technology gap and to remain competitive. While I am not a big fan of online teaching, especially for my course, we must keep working on development so that we are not behind our peers.

JSK

AACE Conference in Vegas

I will share my notes taken in this session. I hope they make sense!

Title: Intersections:Face to Face and Online presented by Dr Susan Miller, an Art Prof at SUNY

• discussed the transition from face to face to online, especailly in an ART course!!!!
• generally there is much resistance in this discipline, she said.
• students upload their artwork for class discusssion
• class participates via virtual discussion in Bb
• would students develop the competencies needed with tools such as digital camera, scanners, microphones?
• would they understand lighting issues so their work would show well (electronically)?
• will they learn to use art media appropriately ("when I am not there to watch them")?

Susan showed about 10 pieces of these students' work---beautiful ! We saw the actual pieces and the same pieces photographed digitally and uploaded to Bb. She said that it is easy for the prof to know if the student did as requested, used marker vs pencil vs charcoal vs water color.....

Someone asked, "How do you know they are doing their own work?

A: "They submit a portfolio at the end with all of the same pieces they have uploaded. The portfolio is 25% of the grade!

Susan provides online handouts (posted to Bb). The handouts are on content and how-to's. Students are encouraged to print these out. They do online exercises from these. They turn these exercises in as components of the portfolio. They also do online critiques of art, narrated powerpoints, use Wimba voice tool, and use streamed video clips to demonstrate techniques.

Dr miller reported that the discussions online are much more honest and rich. Students don't hold back the same way they do in the classroom.

She says that the posted assignments, notes, and other info, allows for repetition. Many students learn better because they now have the opportunity to see the info again (and again).

They use a certain software that alerts them to plagiarized work.

Her paper is among the compendium of papers on the conference papers CD, which I have. If you want it pls let me know.

Joanne Chesley

Technologies to enhance higher education regardless economic crisis

I had the opportunity to attend to e-Learn 2008, the World Conference on e-Learning in Corporate, Government. Healthcare, & Higher Education, organized by AACE (Las Vegas, Nov 17-21, 2008). It was a great experience, let me share with you my notes on Mark David’s remarks on seven elements that educators should consider dealing with multiple generations of learners simultaneously.

Beyond the need to consider multidimensional blending (online/onsite, portal/campus, LMS/classroom, repositories/lecturing, e-office/office hours, web 2.0 tools/books, open dialogue/open space) as a departure point to provide an appropriate scenario for each participating generation, Dr. David highlighted the need to enhance higher education settings with the utilization of mobile technologies (e.g., cellphones) as means to bring learners together, with the integration of new type of games (e.g., WII) to support new kind of learning (e.g, kinesthetic / performance based learning), with the intensive use of social networking tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, RSS feeds) to foster learning communities, with the inclusion of engagement technologies (e.g., holograms) to bring together co-learners, with the integration of analytic and diagnostic technologies (e.g., modeling tools) to support evidence-based education, all of these with social intelligence, that is, with involvement of co-learners in strategic decisions.

The question to solve is if we should wait for the economic crisis to be gone to start dealing with these issues in higher education, or if we should be creative and aggressive dealing with them in spite of the crisis. Let's be proactive.

Alvaro H Galvis,
Director CETL

2008 E-Learning World Conference, Las Vegas, NV

Experience at 2008 E-Learning World Conference, Las Vegas, NV
November 18-22, 2008 – Dr. Janice Witt Smith, SPHR,

Associate Professor of Management, Dept. of Management and Marketing

Thanks very much for the opportunity to participate in this conference. I had never been to Las Vegas or to an e-learning conference, so I was very excited about both. I left less excited about Las Vegas but certainly very excited about the possibilities in distance learning. I am in the process of creating six DL Human Resource Management courses under a grant and was looking forward to new, innovative ideas that would enhance learning. I was pleasantly surprised and grateful to find that much of what I needed had already been provided at WSSU, particularly through the GOAL course and my interactions with Drs. Galvis and Anderson.

The primary reinforcement that I received was that distance learning tools should enhance the course by supporting (and not replacing) pedagogy and good instructional design. The technology should not drive content, it should support it and enable the faculty member to reach the instructional objectives for the course. The GOAL course at WSSU certainly kept this as its tenet, and I was glad to hear it reinforced over and over again. Additionally, in a number of the workshops, I found faculty from other campuses both domestically and internationally talking about things that we have been doing for the past several years. Many of their universities are just getting into the DL arena. In addition, there were DL directors and the like whose universities were light years ahead of us as well.

Several important concepts and ideas emerged for me:

(1) A team teaching approach could be beneficial to our students in the face-to-face classroom. A group from State Farm Insurance talked about their use of team teaching in delivering webinars through State Farm. They demonstrated the technique and provided and opportunity for us to engage in role plays related to it. While not immediately applicable in my current environment, it reinforced what had been intuition for me when I tried this in 1998 with a faculty member from another business area. Having us either (a) tag team approach where both facilitators are subject-matter experts and decide which portions of the content they will cover; (b) student advocate approach – one facilitator takes the role of the student who does not understand as much, summarizes, pulling along from subject to subject as if asking FAQs from student perspective; and (c) “morning drive” – this is like one of the morning radio shows which have a conversational tone and viewers can call in. Both facilitators are experts and they need to be able to respond to viewer inquiries quickly. They may have different opinions which surface during the exchange. The presenters equated interactivity with engagement, and that the facilitators needed to ensure that they provide personal stories that enhance the content and help them to build credibility with their audience. Because this is a corporate environment, they did not deal with issues such as ownership of content, workload distribution, etc.

(2) A second major “aha” was concerning the movement for open access education and several major repositories of academic content that is available to the world. The focal content was around (i) liberating textbooks and not have them bound but web-available, where faculty can pick and choose the modules they want and print on demand. (ii) Inviting participation in content development from a wide audience. Examples were MITopencourseware, wikipedia, and Public Library of Science.

The analogy was used to think of the music industry in which they (1) create, (2) rip; (3) mix; and (4) burn. Create – anyone can become an author and add to the content; Rip – anyone can translate or customize a course. Mix – the ability to rapidly configure own webcourse or textbook – to assemble a textbook. This is available in Connexions (Rice University Project) in 2009. Burn – anyone can print their own textbook – the print on demand capability, control the quality for themselves, use software such as Lenses and de.li.cious to filer, etc.

There is a push to get NSF to open its archives so that more people have access to research information and there would be a reduction in the funding of a number of proposals looking at the same things. Some discussion about the use of linux 6.2 software which would help with publication, etc. Some of the key challenges with open access – (a) interplay between open education and open access – scholarly articles; (b)impact on promotion and tenure; (c) integration with intelligent e-learning systems; and (d) roadblocks – fragmentation of IP and technology. For more information on open education access, go to http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/.

Another workshop focused on: E-learning has the capacity to transform the university – on-line design and tools can create a mindset for evolvement. Introduction of discussion boards, chats, cell phones, blogs and wikis created a major shift at Abilene Christian University from teacher-controlled/learning managed environment to teacher-controlled open-ended environment. The university formed partnership with Embanet and had UVCMS who did a lot of their development. What came out of it was interactive e-portfolio. They shifted over to MOODLE from Blackboard because of the collaborative development. In the capstone class described, students had to demonstrate mastery over both course content and program outcomes. This focus required an extensive rubric system embedded in e-portfolios. http://test.uvcms.com/proddemos/user-demo

Melissa Engleman’s paper on increasing student engagement linked MBTI type and student learning style. In her study, 60% of the students had sensing learning styles in which they want direct communication; hands-on experience; moderate to high degree of structure; linear, sequential learning, and often need to know why. She suggested that students have difficulty with complex concepts; low tolerance for ambiguity; less independence in thought and judgment; and more dependent on ideas of those in authority. They are dependent on immediate gratification and exhibit more difficulty with basic academics such as reading and writing.

Other random thoughts and learnings – One presenter talked about use of HorizaWimba for synchronous learning environment. Another encouraged the increased use of avatars (animated characters) to guide the process. One presenter talked about the ADA compliance issues with which we should be concerned, particularly as it relates to hearing and visually impaired individuals. We cannot use only one technique thinking that we are reaching all of the students. We have to change the way we present material, having modules and well-defined syllabi, making everything transparent to the learner, and not assuming anything in terms of computer skills, knowledge of software, and the like.

Finally, I need to find more exciting, meaningful and engaging ways of using powerpoint. One workshop talked about ways to structure powerpoint, going beyond bulleted lists to linked powerpoints and provided research that suggested that this made a difference in learning outcome. The high tech component is an enabler, an enhancer, and has to be utilized by someone who knows the content. By itself, technology can do very little. All it can do is to present and enhance core information in the content. The presenter talked about neural learning facilitation, where today’s students require visual input – if they don’t see it, they cannot connect the dots. The presenter argued that virtuosity draws the student into visual learning situation. Tools suggested: foreground/background contrasts – dealing with perceptions; bright colors; use of text and sound; animations; digital scans; concept maps; and videoclips.

Implementation of improved powerpoint techniques requires one or more visual strategies to: illustrate, associate, demonstrate, concretize, identify, describe, initial discussion, link, connect, introduce, and integrate. The key is to decide how and where you create something to assist the learning.

e-Learning 2008

I attended the E-Learn 2008 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada from November 17-21. It was quite an enjoyable experience. In addition to presenting a paper on “Virtualization as a Means of Augmenting the Computing Laboratory Budget,” and mediating a session, I was able to sit in on a number of informative sessions.

The opening keynote address by Dr. Richard Baraniuk of Rice University was a very insightful presentation. Dr. Baraniuk discussed the changing nature of publishing with particular focus on text books. He noted the static nature of traditional text books, how expensive they are, and how difficult it is to recall mistakes, which are often found in them. Dr. Baraniuk advocated in favor of more dynamic and open access tools, such as Wikepedia and Creative Commons. He gave helpful examples of individuals who have pioneered the process of making their materials available around the world through the super text book process, and who have benefitted financially and by contributing to the body of information in their fields.

Other helpful sessions included one titled, “Faculty Acceptance of Graduates of Online Learning Programs for Faculty Positions in Higher Education: An Ethical Dilemma, by Dr. Larry Tinnerman of Indiana State University. This presentation addressed the other side of most of the other presentations which strongly advocated the benefits of E-Learning. Dr. Tinnerman on the other hand, pointed out that even though many institutions are pressing to put their courses online, many are reluctant to hire faculty with online degrees, and many businesses are just as reluctant.

There were other sessions I found very helpful, especially the keynote speakers, as well as sessions which dealt with Use of Web 2.0 tools, Virtual Classrooms, Second Life, and Assessment Strategies, but I have shared those which made a difference for me and which will guide some of my scholarly activities in the near future.

Educause Conference

I recently attended Educause 2008 in Orlando Florida. The theme this year was "Interaction, Ideas and Inspiration". I attended several Teaching and Learning sessions. One very good one was by Charles Sorcabl a mathematics professor at Mt. San Antonio College. His topic was A complete Online Class: Course Management, Live Web Conferencing, and Teacher -Made Streaming Movies. He gave several strategies and tools on how to create links in BlackBoard to improve student retention and how to make your class as personal as possible.

Another good session was on having students create their own mashups to personalize their lecture.

Effective Observers

One of the events at the POD conference discussed Faculty/Student evaluations of teaching. One of the discussions looked at ways of being an effective observer. Much can be learned from observation in the classroom (or through the campus for that matter). However, often observations are skewed by our vantage point or by the fact that individuals change behaviors when they know that they are being observed. Below is a list of characteristics of an effective observer which may increase the value of observations in the classroom.

• Observation must be focused
• Distinguish descriptive from judgmental
• Get to class early; position self for best observation (back of room, for instance)
• Note environment, physical layout of class, atmosphere of class, mood of students
• Take notes on process, not content
• Quantify as much as possible
• Note facial expressions, body language of faculty and students
• Watch how class disperses – what do they do? (rush out, crowd around faculty to talk, talk in groups)
• Offer some positive reinforcement to faculty at end
• Make appointment to go over observations later in detail
• Be aware of own biases and limitations
• Know if field has distinct ways of teaching
• Know something about students (all majors, mixed, etc.)
  

(Information posted through the sharing of notes and discussions with other POD members. We all took notes and continue to share our experience at the conference via e-mail. Thanks to those willingly to continue to share the conference after the lectures have ceased.)

POD Website; (http://www.podnetwork.org/)

Marketing Suggestions from POD - That anyone in education could use!

I had the pleasure of attending my first POD (Professional and Organizational Development). It was a GREAT experience and I enjoyed meeting others who work with faculty to assist them with common problems and issues.

One common thread between all the attendees was how to market services offered. Even though not everyone reading this Blog will have a need to market CETL much of the discussion would benefit any individual marketing any educational programs for faculty or students.

Marketing Strategies Utilized by Other Centers:

• Faculty E-mails
• Department Chair Involvement – design a program for the Department Chairs. If the Chair backs the program will gain more support.
• Liaison/Advisory Committee
• Save the Date Sections – send an e-mail out to advice to save the date.
• Go to all Faculty Events – make sure that you are seen at campus wide and other faculty events. If Faculty know you they are more likely to seek your services. Visibility is everything.
• Logo – Have one - Good way to involve students.
• Slogan – Develop a slogan that can be utilized. One center using the slogan “For faculty – By faculty” - Good way to involve students.
• Attend and participate in Campus marketing events.
• Survey – Have individual interviews with faculty
• Information gathering is marketing
• Send personal invitations - Target groups: 1st year faculty and 1 year veterans
• Newsletters – Monthly advising of CETL events
• Sponsor Faculty Groups outside of Teaching and Learning. This helps develop communities which will help develop support for the center. i.e. Faculty Women, Faculty Moms , Faculty Dinner or Breakfast Club, Community Groups off campus. i.e. Faculty may live in an area and not know that they live close to each other. Target those groups.
• Offer 1 on 1 session for faculty that cannot attend regularly scheduled events.
• Use Outlook E-vits. When you use Outlook e-vits individuals have to decline the invitation!
• Pipeline – Develop a pipeline of information.
• Market to Alumni for funding for the Center
• Market to Administration - Invite Provost to come to an event to speak.
  If you invite Administration to come to an event have them come at the end of the event verses coming to the beginning. If they are there at the end they are more likely to talk with satisfied customers and learn about the value of the program.
• Databases – start a database of individuals who have attended, not attended, responded etc.
• Put an easel out in front of the door when hosting an event. That way others will see the event whether they attend or not.
• Pair Disciplines together for events and projects.
• Look at areas of high tutoring request as a possible target group for services.
• “Think Tanks” – Get students involved by discussing their learning concerns.
• Legacy Program – Ask faculty to develop their “last” lecture. What would they want to say if they knew it would be their last lecture? Helps them focus on what they might want to improve.

If you are marketing to students you can easily replace "faculty" with "student".

POD Website; (http://www.podnetwork.org/)

Learner-centered teaching and effective faculty professional development

At the 2008 Joint Conference POD/NCSPOD conference (Reno, Nevada, October 22-25, 2008) learner-centered teaching and effective FPD were central topics. Let me share with you how this relationship was explored from different perspectives .

Learner-centered teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Dennis C Jacobs shared in a plenary his ideas about "learning as a community endeavor". He illustrated how he has exploited collaborative learning and the use of clicker technology to simultaneously engage 200 students in making scientific predictions and defending their ideas; he shared research findings demonstrating that collaborative learning pedagogy led to greater student success and engagement among students at risk. He also shared his experience concerning learner-centered scholarship of teaching and learning, which has fine tuned tenure track requirements with effective teaching initiatives.

Learner-centered new faculty orientation. Networking is an outstanding resource, as you know; at the POD conference I was able to meet with different people interested in new faculty orientation. My conversations with Bonnie Mullinix from The TLT Group helped me realizing that the POD innovation award 2006 was given to Edward Nuhfer for his "Interactive Engagement Model for New Faculty Orientation" initiative which contrasts with content-centered new faculty orientation programs.

Learner-centered preparation of TA--teaching assistants. A Topical Interest Group on "Graduate Student Professional Development"--GSPD--at the POD conference brought my attention to the importance of helping TA assume their role having students' learning as the focus of their efforts. Based on feedback from TA and faculty members attending to open forums about their participation in their GSPD program, one higher education institution reported that efforts focused on helping TA acquire instructional skills were considered less effective to prepare prospective faculty members as learning facilitators than their active participation in reflective communities of practice among TA and mentors around student-centered learning problems. In the first case TA were required to attend to at least 70% of periodic teaching and learning sessions where they reflected on the topic of the day; in the second case TA were immersed in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of learning activities in collaboration with their mentors, as well as in the documentation of their learning process with a teaching portfolio. This institution considered that moving from a preservice content-centered to an inservice learner-centered GSPD model produced a significant change in TA preparation for teaching and that is worth doing, regardless it is demanding and difficult to sustain.

Learner-centered academic development. Tom Angelo shared his ideas about seven key concepts that he considers powerful "levers" to transform our thinking and practice to improve student learning. It is interesting his advocacy of "academic development" (AD), which includes both organizational development and FPD, since it recognizes the importance of aligning institutional strategies with FPD strategies; also it is interesting his focus on becoming scholarly learning communities both at the organizational level and at the classroom level. Reviewing his contributions I found two previous papers that will help exploring in more detail his thoughts: Angelo_1999, and Angelo_2000.

How do we know a Faculty Professional Development program is effective?

Lessons learned from a one-day workshop, by Alvaro H Galvis, director CETL at WSSU.

I had the opportunity to participate in a NCSPOD/POD 2008 pre-conference workshop on evaluation of professional development efforts, co-facilitated by Dr. Cindra Smith and Michelle DeVol, coauthors of the Evaluating Staff and Organizational Development (2003, retrieved October 24, 2008) handbook. I got the following three key ideas:

1. Not every professional development program requires the same level of evaluation. Using Kickpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation model (1994, retrieved October 24, 2008) Smith and DeVol suggested to collect always data on reactions to the program (level 1) and to move into deeper levels of evaluation (level 2 = learning, level 3 = transfer, level 4 = results) when the professional development effort merits that. For instance, a brownbag lunch is worth knowing who came and whether s/he liked what s/he heard, but a summer institute with fall and spring follow up merits knowing also what people learned, how are they applying it, and what is the impact on students’ learning.
2. Professional development program evaluation should start with its design (“start with the end in mind” they say), as long as a clear understanding of why it is convenient / necessary to offer the program will lead to a clear definition of outcomes and strategies to evaluate whether they have been achieved.
3. Evaluation reports serve several purposes, being the most usual to demonstrate or justify what was done. Smith and DeVol have found “portraits of engagement”, i.e., one-page executive summaries are the most important dissemination piece of evaluation reports, since in many cases that is what people read from a report and what motivates (or not) further reading.
   

Workshop facilitators suggested complementary resources for professional development program evaluators, such as the following:

• E-Lead. Evaluating professional development programs (retrieved October 24, 2008)
• Guskey, Thomas R. "Does it Make a Difference? Evaluating Professional Development." Educational Leadership v. 59 no6 (Mar. 2002) p. 45–51.
• Michigan State University, Faculty and Organizational Development Office (2005). Instructional development needs assessment. Executive summary and instrument. (retrieved October 24, 2008)
• Walvoord, Barbara (2004). Assessment Clear and Simple: A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments, and General Education. Jossey-Bass.

2008 IACIS Conference

I attended and presented at the 2008 International Association for Computer Information Systems (IACIS) in Savannah, GA Oct 1 - 4, 2008. The conference was very informative and I along with Dr. Sylvia Bembry got several good ideas on how to improve the Microcomputer Application class that she teaches. Several of the sessions dealt with improving the entry level business course. The common thread was adding audio and video and keeping students engaged.

Kenneth Kaiser, Vice President of Corporate Systems Development, Target Corporation was the first keynote speaker. He explained how employees at Target stay connected by using SharePoint, Wikis, and virtual spaces. These are the skills that we need to teach our students so that they can compete in the workplace.

Michael J. Lynch, Manager, IT Advanced Personal and Workgroup Solutions, 3M was the second keynote speaker. He emphasised how 3M works electronically across time zones by using social networking, podcasts, audio/video and smartphones. He explained how Do It Yourself (DIY) videos were used to train the sales and technical forces.

A copy of the program and proceedings can be found at http://www.iacis.org/pdf/2008_Program.pdf. The paper I copresented with Dr. Bembry is on page 65.

The Technology and Philosophy of Teaching Online

I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2008 UNC-TLT Conference in Raleigh (March 12-14, 2008). Dr. Dwedor Ford and I gave a presentation on "The Technology and Philosophy of Teaching Online". The presentation was unique in several areas. First, Dr. Ford and I had online experience in different fields (English and physics/physical science). Second, we used our TurningPoint "clickers" to get immediate feedback from our audience.

Our audience had a wide range of experiences. Approximately 40% had no previous online teaching experience, 20% taught once, 20% taught 2-5 courses, and 20% had "considerable" experience (more than 5 courses presented online). Seventy percent were interested in learning about methods they could use for online teaching. However, the inexperienced audience members were also equally interested in how to get started with an online course and how they could assess their students' work. Finally, 73% represented areas other than English or the physical sciences.

Our presentation began with a brief discussion of technology use in online teaching. It then proceeded onto the philosophy of online teaching. We discussed traits that students need to succeed in an online course, and how the instructor can best prepare students to succeed. We included comparisons of various topics as they are encountered in a traditional (face-to-face) vs. online course [sensory cues, synchronous vs. asynchronous learning, instructor accessibility, and other topics]. Finally, we discussed some of our experiences in course planning, content creation, testing, and student problems with accessing the coursework.

In conclusion, we had a small but diverse audience attend our presentation. Several of the "experienced" attendees added valuable insights from their own experiences. Almost everyone indicated that they had learned something that would help them as they plan for their next online course.

Embracing the Challenge of the Year

The Developmental Education Conference held at Disney's Coronado Springs in March 2008 was rich in scope and design. The conference's host, Houghton-Mifflin, included a variety of sessions to meet the needs of all attendees. I attended several sessions; however, one session, "Embracing the Challenge of the First Year" stands out above all because of my interest in helping to advance University College. Dr. Mary Stuart Hunter, the session's presenter, focused one of the most important questions students ask when they begin college these days: "Why is the transition to college so difficult?" With this question in mind, Dr. Hunter shared theory, research, and promising practices as relates to the first-year college experience. She described a range of programs offered by college and universities and the role faculty can play in making students' first-year experience rewarding and memorable.

Dr. Hunter stressed the importance of

• defining first-year student success,
• planning early for assessment,
• developing and communicating learning outcomes,
• sending consistent messages to students and faculty,
• communicating high expectations of students, and
• using assessment results to improve teaching and learning.

As a result of attending this and other sessions, I came away with new insights on how WSSU can enhance its developmental education program.

Beyond Wrestling: Using Sumo Bots in the CS Classroom

I attended the UNC Teaching and Learning Conference in Raleigh, NC on March 12-14, 2008. A colleague and I presented "Beyond Wrestling: Using Sumo Bots in the Computer Science Classroom". Our emphasis was on showing new and evolving trends in using technology to engage our "net generation" students.

What I learned as I attended other sessions was that the ever changing technology is dictating changes we as instructors need to incorporate in our classrooms. We need to evaluate new tools and software on a constant basis to make sure we are keeping up with this technological changing world for our students. We saw instant assessment tools, social networking sites, blogs and other things being incorporated into the classroom. The most prominant thing for me was the realization that we could become the dinasaur teacher quickly if we are not willing to change and adapt.

Teaching and Engaging Unprepared Students: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education

Teaching and Engaging Unprepared Students: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

First I would like to thank the CETL department for allowing me to attend my first Teaching Professor Educator Conference. The exposure was astonishing and allowed me to have a broad perspective on teaching and various techniques to utilize in all courses taught within my discipline. Each workshop was unique in its own way, diversified and tailored made to fit any courses taught at Winston-Salem State University.Yes, I attended workshops that interest me the most, including workshops on topics that would enhance my teaching techniques and strategies; most importantly, I was eager to attend those workshops that promoted growth within my department and the university.

The following workshop titled: Teaching and Engaging Unprepared Students:” Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education; was one of several, that enhanced my teaching techniques and inspired me to introduce innovative ways to engage student participation, decrease absenteeism and assist with student retention rates here at Winston-Salem State University.Kathleen Gabriel, a presenter from California State University, Chico discussed how colleges have diverse students, with and increase first-generation population students who may be at risk- students with learning disabilities and those who arrive unprepared for the academic rigors of college. Indeed, this is the case at most universities, however; Gabriel instructs professors in this workshop, to be prepared to reach all the students in their courses. When dealing with unprepared student, professors must use Lerner-centered educational methods as well as universal design strategies. If these areas such as methods for engaging and teaching peripheral students are addressed, research demonstrates that they have a greater chance of success according to Gabriel.Since the student population here at Winston-Salem State University is growing tremendously, the acquired knowledge of an educator should be the same. I deem it necessary to attend workshops and conferences of this sort, in order to do the following: gain knowledge on the various educational methods and strategies, engage in discussions with individuals with the same or opposing views, discover more strategies on how to use critical thinking skills, the value of small teams in the classroom, gather insights on how to promote technology usage throughout the courses in which I teach in Political Science and discover new ways in which collaborative learning can assist with student retention rates.

Noticeably, this was the conference for me, bottom line. The objectives were clear; the research presented from various professors demonstrated reliability and validity and an opportunity for you (the professor) to explore your teaching techniques, add or subtract what’s not substantial in the classroom and advance with the 21st century generation of students and academics. Again, thank you CETL, for an unforgettable life changing teaching exposure opportunity and I certainly look forward in participating in more conferences to come. As mentioned, this was a chance of a life time, one that I deem necessary in order to advance to the next level of 21st Century education with students, faculty and staff. The Teaching Professor Conference 2008, a conference of inspiration, motivation and determination for all; one in which I look forward in attending again and conferences in the near future through CETL at Winston-Salem State University.

Yolonda N. Childs MPA Department of Political Science Public Administration Winston-Salem State University

Web 2.0 Technologies and Social Computing

I had the opportunity to attend and to present at the University of North Carolina Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Conference (Raleigh, NC, March 12-14). There were presenters and attendees from across the country and from various disciplines. There was college faculty and staff, K-12 teachers, representatives from industry. It was a great opportunity to network with other users and to come away with information about new ideas and concepts.
Several sessions focused on web 2.0 technologies and social computing. One of the most interesting sessions dealt with how social computing technologies can improve the learning experience of students. The most interesting track at the conference was the TLT Pedagogy Track which addresses exemplary and effective practices in delivering courses and programs, instructional design, development of learning materials and resources in technology-rich teaching and learning. I was also captivated by several of the presentation and workshops particularly geared toward engaging the “net generation.” A phenomenon that also fascinated me was the wide use of open source technology in the educational arena.

I presented with a colleague on enhancing learning in the computer science classroom with robotics. We enjoyed the opportunity of sharing our ideas and thoughts on the use of technology to help student learning. This session was well attended. Some members in the audience were interested in pursuing research on using robots as teaching tools.

Thank you CETL for your support!

Building Scholarship of T&L Communities

JAMES ETIM
Posted September 30, 2008

I attended The Teaching Professor Conference held on May 16-18 In Kissimmee, Florida. There were very many interesting sessions which I attended, including “Building Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Communities: Methods of Engagement, Assessment and Reward “ and “To See the World in a Grain of Sand: An Approach to Educating our Students and Ourselves about Globalism and Diversity”. These presentations were lively, informative and engaging. In this section, I will discuss two papers that I found very interesting: the three person presentation by Dr. Ngoc-Bich Tran, Dr. James Baker and Patricia Petty titled “How to Succeed in First-Time Online Teaching: Top Ten Tips” and the presentation by Joan Flaherty “To See the World in a Grain of Sand…”.
In the past, I have done web-assisted instruction using Taskstream. However, given that I am trying to develop an online course, I was open to absorbing the information offered by the three educators who had moved from being novices a year or so earlier to being very adept in providing workable online courses for their students. Below, I present some of the things I took away from their presentation.
They began with the ten tips which are-
· Be open minded and enthusiastic when committing to teach an online course
· Be organized by planning and developing the course early
· Motivate your students
· Use available online resources
· Provide enhancement materials
· Provide clear and consistent instructions and feedback
· Keep open lines of communication
· Be patient and considerate of students
· Offer student support
· Enjoy it
In looking closer at these ten tips, bullets 2, 4, 7 are very useful as I begin thinking about my online course. Bullet 2 says- “ Be organized by planning and developing the course early”. This simply means that the course to be taught should be planned and developed at least one semester before it is taught, that the structure of each learning unit of the course must be designed and followed consistently and that students should be presented a calendar to follow as soon as the course begins. In terms of Bullet 4 that states that developers should use available resources online, this is a good advice since it will be easier to hyperlink or refer students to those online resources. The burden of copying materials, scanning them and or seeking copyright permission will also be lessened with this approach. Finally bullet 7 involves the following- set online hours, answer e-mails within 24 hours and be tone friendly in your e-mails since these are public documents. During the Question and Answer session, they pointed out that faculty must work closely with the Instructional Specialist in the college/ university to ensure a smooth process. These are useful as I begin thinking about using Blackboard to expand what I am currently doing.
The second presentation on globalization was equally interesting. To begin with, part of UNC Tomorrow states that “UNC should educate its students to be personally and professionally successful in the 21st century and, to do so, should enhance the global competitiveness of its institutions and their graduates” One way to implement this goal is that “UNC promote increased partnerships between its own campuses and international universities and enhance the global awareness of its faculty and students”. To enhance such awareness, I attended the presentation by Flaherty on globalism and diversity. The presenter began by defining globalism and diversity and pointed out that the world is now interconnected because of technology, economics ( free trade, oil, currency) and demographics( easy movement of people). Given this situation, there was the need for schools and universities to encourage “cultural intelligence”- the ability to adapt to a new and unfamiliar culture – so that graduates can possess the skills to be able to interact with others in the global community. The presenter also suggested that there was the need to internationalize the curriculum through encouraging students to travel internationally, bringing in international scholars and joint programs with universities in other countries. According to Flaherty, there were some obstacles to achieving the goal of internationalizing the curriculum- faculty resistance, finance, time, and administrator buy-in etc. However, she recommended the following for each faculty as he/she worked towards globalism and diversity in the curriculum-
a. Honor and listen to different perspectives
b. Include multicultural literature and texts (as applicable)
c. Honor other peoples background by having them talk about what happens in other cultures
d. Allow for journaling
I would say that there were many interesting presentations and the Teaching Professor Conference afforded me the opportunity to interact with others involved in the kinds of scholarly activities I am interested in. I would highly recommend that faculty from any discipline in the University attend one of these conferences. I guarantee they would learn something from the many presentations which will help in improving their teaching

Critical Thinking, Student Prep and Retention

I found several of the sessions at the Teaching and Learning Conference in San Juan very informative and useful. Critical thinking was connected to Bloom's taxonomy in a session that also provided tools for its assessment. The formative evaluation techniques that were presented could be easily implemented in any course that proposes to improve critical thinking. Another session that I found particularly valuable was entitled "Preparing students to be global citizens". This was directly in line with the NC Tomorrow Initiative that we have been working with for the past several months. I discovered that the term "global citizen" really has no operational definition, but rather consists of elements that are subscales on the Global Citizenship Scale, an instrument developed by the presenters to assist in their research. The elements consist of environmentalism, social justice, and civic participation. I plan to incorporate this into an environmental issues course next year.

The sessions were not limited to the teaching-learning process; they also included sessions related to other aspects of the academy, including hiring and retention of diverse faculty. Since I have been active on search committees, I was particularly interested in that topic. Some of what I learned reinforced my own experiences, such as the importance of new faculty having a sense of belonging, feeling valued and supported, and being treated fairly. I also learned much about campus climate issues that affect retention of diverse faculty. These included the institution's goals for diversification, the provision of balance across the campus community, and the contributions new hires were expected to make to the department and campus.

All in all, this was a very worthwhile experience, and I look forward to implementing what I have learned in my academic endeavours at WSSU.

SAM Conference

I attended and presented a workshop at the 2008 SAM Conference in Washington, DC. The conference is for professionals in business and is really an international conference. Dr. Sylvia Bembry and I presented a workshop on Technology for Business Professors that was well received. We illustrated how she has added videos and voice to her microcomputer application class to improve instruction. I also attend an interesting session on the evolution of family owner businesses in India and another session on how to infuse ethics into business courses.

Developmental Studies

This conference which was sponsored by H & H Publishing Company, Inc. focused on helping students to get ready for college level classes by taking remedial work at the college or university. We discussed strategies to improve reading, writing, math and study skills. The workshops I attended dealt with study skills. Students have to have a study plan and faculty have to help remind them of their plan if they are to be successful. The hardest thing for any student is time management and students need to have a firm handle on their class and study times. Several methods such as a daily record they keep and analyze to find out where their time goes, meeting with tutors and teachers for help at the first sign of trouble understanding in class were discussed.

One-Minute Papers

One of the most valuable skills I learned was the One-Minute Paper. Students are asked at the end of any given class to respond to two questions: What did you learn today? and What do you still question?Responses to the first question allow the instructor to guage student comprehension of the lesson. In other words, students should reflect the teaching goals for that particular class.In addition, responses to the second question prompt students to ask a question that they were perhaps apprehensive to ask in class. The instructor may then respond in the following class (raing it as an anonymous query), via email or in person.

The Clute Institute for Academic Research Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Clute Institute for Academic Research
2008 Teaching and Learning Conference
San Juan, Puerto Rico
March 17-20, 2008

The Clute Institute for Academic Research Conferences take place in the United States and in exotic foreign locations. Puerto Rico was the destination for this teaching and learning conference this year. In general, this conference was very loosely organized with no opening or closing plenary sessions. The panels were combined with the IABR Business Conference and I found this organization quite confusing because participants interested in teaching and learning were forced to listen to business presentations. There were generally five to six panelist for each session and presentations were always rushed and had to be truncated. This structuring was very distracting and counter productive. Presentations such as “Rubrics: The Key to Fairness in Performance Based Assessments” by Carol Shepherd from National University was very basic adding nothing new to the literature and repeating what is generally considered to be standard fare in education. “Critical Thinking Made Blooming Easy: Using Blooms Taxonomy to Encourage Critical Thinking” by Amy Macpherson and Jennifer Mansfield was also very basic and common knowledge to all formally educated teachers. Critical thinking is inherent in Bloom’s Taxonomy. These presenters, however, did focus on the higher levels of the taxonomy: analysis, synthesis and evaluation and applied it to literature in the classroom demonstrating how the children’s story “The Empty Pot” by Demi Ping could be used to develop higher levels of thinking. This portion of the presentation was interesting. Other sessions that I attended—“Post-Secondary Education’s Role in Creating Global citizens by Jade G. Winn,” “Peer Assessment: Students Helping Students Learn by Melissa Marty, Jolen M. Henning and John T. Willse were very weak, and in my opinion, unscholarly. In general, I would not recommend this conference for participants who are seriously interested in teaching and learning. The destinations, however, are marvelous.

Mix it up: Creative Combinations for Learning in North Carolina

The theme of the 2008 University of North Carolina Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference was “Mix It Up!: Creative combinations for Learning in North Carolina.” This conference is an annual event that focuses on technology use on the 16 constituent institutions in the UNC system. Featuring more than 120 presentations covering a multitude of topics: online quality, open source applications, learning objects and repositories and course redesign, The TLT Conference provided a forum for varied educational interests.

This year, I was both an attendee and a presenter at the conference. The title of my presentation was “The National Foreign Language Standards and the Fusion of the iPod in the Foreign Language Classroom.” My goal was to demonstrate how the iPod could be used in the foreign language classroom to address the learning styles and intelligences of the millennial generation and meet foreign language standards and competencies. I defined the millennial student and professor, illustrated the educational uses of the iPod, highlighted the “best practices” in the field of foreign languages and connected the uses of the iPod to the five “C’s” (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities) of foreign language education. The unsolicited feedback that I received at the end of the session from the audience was very favorable.

As an attendee, I found the following sessions to be worthwhile:

“Engaging Students with Social Software Applications: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and More!” was presented by Zahra Safavia, Director of Product Management at Learning Objects. The speaker discussed the powerful innovative uses of blogs, wikis and podcasts within the teaching and learning environments. She noted how wikis are are being used collaboratively to “build research projects, annotate works of literature and create course knowledge bases. Blogs are being used to collaboratively author novels, facilitate online discussion groups and practice reflective journaling. Podcasts are being used to deliver supplemental course information and lectures.” Ms. Safavia defined the new social tools, outlined their historical development (wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian) and listed their individual characteristics. A very informative introduction to the new 2.0 web tools. I strongly recommend this presentation.

“A Collaborative eLearning Environment: Using Wimba to Build connections, Enhance Learning, and Improve Student Outcomes” was presented by Seana Downing, Regional Sales Manager of Wimba. Ms. Downing noted that the mission of Wimba is to help people teach people. She outlined the history of the company and explained how Wimba’s Collaboration Suite of products empowers educators to enhance learning interactions across subjects and disciplines to build connections and community. Explaining how people teach and learn differently, the speaker noted how Wimba improves outcomes, increases student retention and enhances access and learning. As an effective learning program, Wimba also “creates an online learning community, engages students through action, provides prompt feedback, facilitates student to student communication and addresses diverse learning styles.” The Wimba Voice and Classroom tools create an effective and stimulating educational environment. Winston-Salem State University currently uses Wimba and I can personally attest to the value of this wonderful educational tool. An educator interested in improving and enhancing teaching and learning should attend this session.

“Promoting Collaborative Learning Environment in the Classroom using Mobile Tablet-PCs and Classroom Management Tools” was facilitated by Kuldeep Rawat from Elizabeth City State University. His focus was on using the Tablet PC and Classroom management Software to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. His new pedagogical approach “directly involves students in the learning process, increases their direct collaboration with one another in class, develops their note-taking abilities and promotes instantaneous sharing of data in real-time.” Active learning and technology integration are the direct outcomes of this new method. A very interesting and practical presentation. I strongly recommend this session.

The UNC-TLT conference is local but is growing yearly. For North Carolina educators it is a convenient conference to attend.

Structuring courses to maximize deep learning

The Teaching Professor Conference
May 16-18, 2008
Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center
Kissimmee, Florida

The Teaching Professor Conference is a special opportunity for all those who care deeply about teaching and learning to network, to discuss and to attend sessions, workshops and exhibitions. It focuses on The Pedagogies of Engagement, Technology, Teaching Large Classes, Undergraduate Research, Faculty, Learning and the Scholarship of Teaching. If you are ready to be successful in academe and to educate, to engage and to inspire, this gathering is surely for you!

The following pre-workshops, sessions and panels were noteworthy at the Teaching Professor Conference:

“Structuring Courses to Maximize Deep Learning” facilitated by Dr. Barbara J. Mills from the University of Nevada (www.millis@unr.edu) was a special pre-conference workshop that I attended . She emphasized that faculty must “learn some key learning principles and some practical applications in the area of “How People Learn” and in “Deep Learning” in order to design better courses that foster inquiry and analysis , critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, teamwork and problem solving.” Dr. Mills also illustrated how Deep Learning Research and “best practices” converge in the classroom and utilized specific classroom techniques based in cooperative learning and writing across the curriculum. Participants were encouraged to gain insights through modeled practices in the classroom and to reflect on their own approaches to teaching and learning. Her primary goal was to make it easier for instructors to think about teaching through cooperative learning and course design. Citing L. Dee Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning in Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, this presenter underscored how research has shown that we learn best by teaching others and that Deep Learning connects with deep foundational knowledge. A solid workshop; however, the title could be modified to reflect a very strong emphasis on cooperative learning.

Dr. Barbara E. Walvoord (www.walvoord@nd.edu) delivered a plenary on “Saving Time in the Grading Process.” Realizing that college professors just have too much work to do and too many papers to grade, she advocated reducing major assignments to one or two and brainstorming about other ways of achieving your instructional objectives. The key for Dr. Walvoord is to demonstrate mastery.
She emphasized that instructors should utilize rubrics, clarify criteria, guidelines and course standards to students, ensure commensurate student effort, offer more guidance, find out what the student knows and manage grammar and punctuation issues. Additionally, the speaker stated that instructors must change their paradigms and utilize time and space more effectively in the classroom and not edit student work since research indicates that it has little impact on students. Teachers should also count informal assignments, claim student time, tape lectures outside of class and only do major work in class. Finally, Dr. Walvoord affirmed that “the most powerful source indicating student learning is “student work.” The aforementioned plenary session was informative, especially for new and overworked instructors.

“Documenting Effective Teaching in a Scholarly Manner: Why and How” was presented by Janice W. Denton (Janice.denton@uc.edu) and Lesta Cooper-Freytag (cooperlj@ucrwcu.rwc.uc.edu) from the University of Cincinnati. These presenters concentrated on the importance of documenting college and university teaching as if it were traditional discipline-specific research and shared their model for this endeavor which is based on the work that originated at the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE). They noted that their model was divided into three parts: (1) strategy; (2) model; (3) product which include the following components:
• faculty peers
• three (3) prompts of faculty self-reflection
• faculty scholarly teaching committee
• written student learning outcomes
• syllabus as a learning tool
• Action Research in the classroom
• teaching artifacts
• formative feedback from peers

The presenters summarized their presentation by emphasizing that the model was very successful at their institution and that the most important aspects were the three prompts for faculty reflection, teaching artifacts and formative feedback from a peer. Great session! I strongly recommend it for individuals interested in creating portfolios.

Margo Bowman (man@wayne.edu) from Wayne State University and Debra L. Frame (debra.frame@uc.edu) from the University of Cincinnati presented a discussion on “Going Beyond Expertise in Content: Encouraging Instructors to Become Expert Educators.” This session was profound in the simplicity of its premise “Expertise in a content area does not necessarily transfer to expertise as an educator.” The presenters explained information storage, illustrated how novices (students) differ from experts (teachers) and gave examples of effective learning experiences. They noted how differences between the novices and experts can greatly impact learning and that students should be taught in a manner that encourages the neural networks of knowledge. Hence, information about the brain and how it functions when it comes to memory ( the mind can only retain seven items at a time) is essential for effective teaching and learning. The audience was engage in several exercises that demonstrated how the brain functions. The facilitators ended their presentation with several teaching implications: (1) Teachers should provide multiple experiences that encourage the recognition of meaning and patterns; (2)Teachers should organize basic elements into a larger structure; (3) Teachers should focus on a global context and patterns; (4) Teachers should make connections for their students; (5) Teachers should chunk their information; (6) Teachers should engage in peer review. I highly recommend this session. It was outstanding.
The Teaching Professor Conference was a great experience. Instructors can continue to stay abreast of all the latest developments in teaching by subscribing to the Teaching Professor Newsletter.

International Society for Technology in Education Conference

International Society for Technology in Education Conference (ISTE)
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center
June 29, July 2, 2008
San Antonio, Texas


Fantastic! Fabulous! Spectacular! are the adjectives that come to mind when I think about the 29th Annual Educational Computing Conference (NECC) held in San Antonio, June 29 through July 2, 2008 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. Presented by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) with the theme of “Convene, Connect, Transform” this affair was attended by over 12, 600 educators with 924 conference sessions, 115 workshops, 500 vendors and attendees from 57 nations. A total of 17, 600 educators and exhibit personnel were present. This conference is the premier membership association for any educator interested in improving teaching and learning through the effective use of technology. It is the home base of the National Education Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET) and the National Educational Computing Conference. It represents more than 100,000 professionals globally. It is extremely well-organized and presents a comprehensive platform of activities on virtually every aspect of educational technology from PK-12, teacher education and college. It is a“must do” conference. From the riveting Opening Keynote of James Surowiecki who discussed his book The Wisdom of Crowds and how groups make better decisions than individuals or experts to the Closing Keynote of Idit Harel-Caperton whose address “The Transformational Power of Social Media Technology in Learning: Inspiring Stories from the Classroom and Beyond!” explored how social networks, wikis and blogs are changing the information, social, political and educational landscapes, ISTE provided truly engaging sessions (many required laptops) that were complemented by a completely wireless environment and a Blogger’s Cafe.

I visited poster sessions, spectacular exhibits and attended illuminating lectures and panels. Conference highlights include the following:

Innovative Project-Based Learning: Strategies from Kindergarten to College was presented by Christy Keeler, Ph.D (www.christy@keelers.com) and Heather B. Rampton, M.Ed (www.hbrampton@interact.ccsd.net from the University of Nevada Las
Vegas. This session introduced project-based learning strategies that incorporated audio, video, slideshows, blogs, digital photography, page layout software and the Internet across grade levels and curricula. She discussed the elements of project-based learning noting that they are artifact driven, content focused, technology infused, collaborative, multi-disciplinary, long term and student centered. Dr. Keeler emphasized that students in the 21st century require the skills developed by this learning method. This session was very engaging and educators left with numerous practical strategies that they could immediately employ in their classrooms. I highly recommend this session.

Best Practices using Camtasia was a stimulating brief presentation given by Mr. Ryan Eash from Camtasia. He demonstrated how this screen recording software could be utilized in the classroom and shared with a wide audience. He gave four examples of how Camtasia could be used to support best practices: (1) Recording classroom lectures for review sessions and posting to a website; (2) Creating Flash Animation Tutorials that can be viewed on an iPod; (3) Generating student-produced items with students teaching students [www.mathtrain.com]; (4) Interactive Paper Grading. This last method has great practical value and educational ramifications for instructors who want to use technology in their assessments. Mr. Eash recommended that for more educational best practices attendees could visit the Camtasia website (www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp ). A very good presentation.

Visual Literacy: Equipping Students for a Visual World was a “Spotlight” presentation hosted by ISTE’s flagship publication, Learning & Leading with Technology and hosted by Dr. Lynell Burmark of the Thomburg Center (lynell@educatebetter.org) . The presenter demonstrated how instructors could utilize the visual media for learning and earning. She noted that it was extremely important to select an image that conveys your message; it must tell the story. Stating that individuals want to believe what they see and that a picture is worth a thousand words, the speaker illustrated that images go to long term memory and that there are a million fibers connecting the eye to the brain. She also affirmed that individuals process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. To Dr. Burmark, “It is simply a matter of keyboard versus camera. With images, recall and retention rise 42%; the ability to transfer and apply increases 89%.” The speaker finally noted that the use of videos automatically meet this goal and this is why platforms like You Tube, Flickr, etc. are so effective. “The image always precedes the thought.” A truly provocative presentation.

Audio is Great! Video is Cool! iPods Can Do More was the theme of Learning in Hand’s Tony Vincent (www.learninginhand.@mac.com) . This presenter underscored the utility of the iPod as a motivating learning tool in the classroom. He demonstrated a plethora of uses that this MP3 player could be used for in the educational arena: voice recording, video capabililty, musical lyrics and songs, personal calendar, photo album, flash card generation, student tutorials, PowerPoints, portable hard drive, lesson planning, interactive storytelling, quizzing, podcasting, etc.) Mr. Vincent also supports a website (www.learninginhand.com) where educators may download his free ebook Podcasting for Teachers and Students. This site also contains a blog, articles, ebooks, discussion forums, lesson plans, and web links. An excellent presentation.

The aforementioned highlights are just a small portion of the many excellent panels sessions at the ISTE conference. Again, this conference is essential for any educator and all individuals interested in technology in the classroom.

ISTE Conference

The 2008 ISTE NECC conference in San Antonio Texas was a very rewarding experience. More than 19,000 teachers from the USA and 50 other countries came together to share and experience the latest in technology for education. In addition to presentations, student showcases and research posters I attended several vendor and book dealer presentations.

I explored the new NETS for Teachers with a focus on how teachers are designing digital age learning and assessment tools. Several of the posters I attended were from HP Grants in Action and they included such titles as Throw Away the Keyboard- Enhancing Learning with Tablets, Modeling Our World, Math in the Real World: A Virtual Math Community. Math in the real world was abiout Teachers at James River Elementary who used technology to guide students in a journey through the entire 5th grade math curriculum. Students built a virtual math community, highlighting the manner in which the skills they learn will be applied in the professional world. http://tinyurl.com/64vyge
Students experienced real life examples in mathematics outside the classroom and had an unique opportunity to connect with professionals and service providers in our local area. Projects and experiences were shared with the community at an evening "Math in the Real World" Exhibition, as a capstone event for the International Bacclaureate Primary Years Programme (IBPYP).

One of the more interesting concurrent sessions I attended was Wonderful World of Wikis

This presentation discussed the effective uses of wikis in educational settings. Beginning with fundamental editing and basic principles of using wikis, VP of Wikispaces Adam Frey talked about basic wiki editing principles.

Another interesting session was Blogging Communities in the Classroom: Creating Engaging Learning Experiences. One of the focal areas of the presentation was its emphasis on literacy development and the positive impact of online communities of writers on student literacy skills.

Creating the Learning Environment of Tomorrow

Drexel University Nursing Education Institute: Creating the learning environment of tomorrow

The College of Nursing and Health Professions of Drexel University sponsored its annual nurse educator’s conference in Atlantic City, NJ on June 27-29, 2008 at the Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center. I was privileged to have attended the conference on 28th and 29th. Although I have attended nurse educators conferences before, this was the first time that I have gone through CETL to do so and hope that I will be given the opportunity to attend more in the future.

Each day the conference sessions began by 0645 and was over at 2pm which allowed plenty of time for leisure activity. The Sheraton Convention Center provided nice rooms and had several other accommodations such as a day spa, 2 restaurants, exercise room, free wireless on a designated floor and more. The best part was that it was conveniently located to shopping, food, and fun all within walking distance so there was no need to catch a taxi anywhere.

Now for Lessoned Learned

There were so many sessions to choose from that the worst part of the conference was deciding which session to enter. Every hour there were 5 to 6 concurrent sessions to choose from, fortunately a CD was provided that included all PowerPoint’s from all presenters for future reference.

The first session I attended at 0630 on Saturday morning was titled Using electronic resources to foster geriatrics in prelicensure nursing programs. The presenters of this session discussed how to incorporate technology currently being used in healthcare settings in the classroom. One example used was a software program that many hospitals use to determine the risk level of falls for patients, the same technology could be applied in the classroom when teaching assessment skills.

The plenary session that followed was on profiling violence. The speaker Paul Clements provided tips to consider when disciplining students, signs to be aware of such as subtle statements made by students such as “you do what you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do”. He also advised that office furniture should always be arranged so that the student is not between the professor and door in the event a quick exit is needed and if so plan student meetings in an alternative setting when there is a need to give bad information to the student. This was something I had never considered but will take it into consideration this fall when planning student meetings.

I attended three other sessions this day the topics were enhancing critical thinking skills of the baccalaureate nursing student; evaluation of students in the clinical setting; and the use of film as a teaching strategy. The session on use of film was very innovative. The speaker discussed how she would take clips from movies and apply it to the topic of discussion. For example, when she is teaching depression she would find movies that had characters with depression, after the students would watch a clip of it the professor would then start a discussion by asking a question like… “What classic signs of depression did the character display?” The goal is to help the students relate to something in order to retain the material longer.

Day 2 of the conference I attended three sessions prior to the closing plenary. Although each of the three sessions I chose to attend had different speakers and different viewpoints, all three were related to teaching strategies that promote learning when teaching the millennial generation. All presenters discussed the importance of using a variety of teaching strategies in the classroom with very little lecture. Youtube clips seem to the fastest growing strategy followed by virtual excursions and simulation.

This conference was very useful especially for me, a novice educator. I learned several strategies that I will gradually incorporate into my lesson plans. I look forward to attending this same conference next year and possibly being a presenter myself even if only a poster presenter.

Thanks again CETL for providing me with this opportunity.

Leslee Shepard
Division of Nursing

The Teaching Professor Conference - Kissimmee, FL

Having attended my first Teaching Professor Conference in May really made me think...

Why didn't I know about this conference before now?

This conference was extremely interesting and helpful in so many ways. First, let me start by saying that the hotel - The Gaylord Palms - was extraordinary! The rooms were spacious, the decor was breathtaking and the service was first-class. The only problem I encountered was that it was a resort hotel. Being a resort hotel, it was in a fairly remote section of Kissimmee. If you wanted to save the $26.00 for the buffet dinner by grabbing something quick, you couldn't unless you wanted to catch a cab to the nearest grocery store.

Getting past the high prices for the food and shopping, we move to the conference.

The conference itself was very well organized. The conference staff was couteous, kind, obedient, cheerful...almost like Boy Scouts.
I attended a session on Friday titled "Saving Time in the Grading Process." I thought, "Hmmm...this should be interesting." It was facilitated by Dr. Barbara Walvoord - the same Dr. Walvoord that will be here at Ol 'SU in August. She talked about how to handle assignments students turn in and how to quickly return those assignments so the students receive timely feedback. She really confirmed many of the practices that I use in my classes.

On Saturday, I attended a few sessions. One was titled "Youtube and Facebook in the Classroom." Once again I thought, "Hmmm...this should be interesting." It was facilitated by Kathy Yamachita. More than anything, she explained terms to us that many of the participants were not that familiar with such as: Web 2.0, Metatagging, Viral Video, etc. Her presentation was very well organized, but did not seem to speak to using youtube or facebook across other disciplines. She gave us tips on how she uses youtube in her Art courses, but just using that example made it difficult to see how my colleagues could use the same technology in English, Landscaping, Engineering, Chemistry, etc.

The next session was titled "Integrating Technology to Engage the Student." If you can't see it by now, I am all about the use of technology for effective teaching. Upon reading the title of this session, I thought...well, you know what I thought. The facilitators were Kristina Drumheller and Gregg Lawler from West Texas A&M University. The bulk of this session focused on the use of a software called "Camtasia." This recording software allows instructors to teach in more of a virtual setting. Instructors can demonstrate how to apply certain concepts by recording the actions on the computer (along with voice) and even highlighting or creating tips for the students as they are watching. The information was good, but the session title was a little misleading.

The final session I attended that day was "Increasing Student Participation." This was yet another session that dealt with the use of technology in the classroom. The session was facilitated by Dr. Ken Alford of the National Defense University. The bulk of this presentation focused on another piece of software called "QuizShow." This is a Jeopardy-style application that allows instructors to hold review sessions, do concept quizzing, and invoke class participation by making a game of it. The class got a chance to participate and it was very entertaining. This was by far the most beneficial to me as I visualized how I could used this in my classes.

I was returning to Winston-Salem on Sunday, so I did not attend any sessions Sunday morning. Overall, the conference is something that I would recommend that many professors/instructors attend. It may seem as though the conference is for teachers who have not yet defined their teaching philosophy/strategies or that it is for teachers who seek guidance in their careers, but it is not that. If anything, it acts as reinforcement for beliefs and strategies you already employ. Particpants of this conference have the opportunity to get away from the stress of work, learn some new tricks, and be able to overly utilize the phrase "Hmmm...this should be interesting."

DMCureton
English & Foreign Languages

Online Teaching

This was my first TLC conference. On the up side, many intersting topics. On the down side, too many concurrent sessions -which meant I couldn't attend everything I was interest in.

The sessions I did attend included Teaching and Engaging Underprepared Sttudents, Supporting Online Learners, Top 10 Tips For First-Time Online Teacing, Classroom For Clickers, Using Card-Sort Activities, and Simple Movements To Revitalize Teaching And Learning.

The sessions about online teaching will be helpful when I develop my first online course this fall. The session on clickers has motivated me to incorporate the use of our clickers into at least 2 of my classes. I have requested templates from the Card-Sort presenter and believe there may be an application in some of my classes. The Revitalizing session presented several simple exercises that actually improve focus and attention.

As a first TLC experience, it was enjoyable and informative. I hope to fit more of these into my schedule.

Managing difficult dialogues and confrontational moments in classrooms

Last month, I had an opportunity to attend The Teaching Professors conference at Kissimmee, FL, USA (May 16-18, 2008). Conference (http://www.teachingprofessor.com/) was organized in the beautiful settings of Gaylord Palm Resort (http://www.gaylordhotels.com/ ). The conference was very well organized and provided opportunities to choose sessions of your choice from various concurrent sessions. A few presentations such as Preventing and Managing Challenging Class Room Situations, Saving time in the Grading Process, and No More sage on the Stage: Strategies for Active Learning in Blended Face-to Face and On Line Courses were very informative.
I took a liking for the presentation “WARNING-This Material is Intended for Mature Audiences: Managing Difficult Dialogues in the Large Lecture Classroom” by W. Mick Charney, PhD from Kansas State University. Dr. Charney dealt with issues of religious, cultural and social sentiments of students on controversial subjects or topics in his classroom. His discussion on “Why do challenging materials create difficult moments in the classroom” was thought provoking. The nature of strong stimuli, disrupted code deciphering skills, unrefined analytical tools and non-monolithic student populations were put forward as reasons for creating difficult moments. He provided a few tips as strategies to effectively manage such confrontational moments. For our reader’s benefit I am representing a few of those tips. They were;
1. Anticipate the types of negative reactions
2. Embed touchstone concepts or recurrent themes
3. Issue warnings and disclaimers
4. Open up clear lines of communication with administrators
5. Use clear and precise language
Overall conference was very enjoyable and provided opportunities to learn a new or reinforce our own concepts in effective teaching.

Dinesh K. Singh, DVM, PhD
Department of Life Sciences, WSSU (6/2/08)

Validation

The workshop on 3 Step Lesson Plan was validation for me. The presenter shared a method of lesson delivery using 20 minute segments of highly student engaged activities. The focus on student involvement and accountability provided easy applicable ways to immediately incorporate this system. The instructor uses this method to conduct classes lasting one hour. My method is a seven step lesson which covers my four hour classes; I too create lessons that allow students to be accountable and engaged in twenty minute segments. The students emerge as truly active and responsible for their learning which achieves the learning outcomes for the courses.
Another workshop that I attended called Misperceptions of Teaching and Learning was very insightful. This presentation looked at a survey that matched faculty perceptions of what faculty perceived as teaching and student learning with students' perceptions of what good teaching is and what constitutes learning. The reason for the survey is to better align the perceptions of the faculty and students. A discussion about the results of the survey between faculty and students needs to occur to clear up misconceptions, usualluy undertaken at the beginning of the course.
I would highly recommend this conference to all who teach in higher education.

Teaching Professor Conference, Kissimmee, Florida

I recently had the pleasure of attending The Teaching Professor conference in Kissimme, FL. The conference is designed to improve the teaching skills of professors in all disciplines, in both face-to-face and online teaching.

The conference opened with a welcome address from Barbara Walvoord on Saving time in the Grading Process. Dr. Walvoord's address reminded participants that as professors we should not spend more time grading work than student's have put into creating it! She also spoke about how to not get caught in a trap of "micro-grading", that is spending so much time correcting every grammatical error, etc., that when students turn in rewrites they have just fixed the errors, but not addressed any major writing issues. Her address started the conference out on a very positive note, and I am looking forward to her visit to WSSU on August 11 -12, 2008, for the Action Research Institute.

I attended a workshop by Keith Whittington from Rochester Institute of Technology called Simple Active Learning Activities Designed to Increase Student Learning and Satisfaction. Dr. Whittington shared with a very large group several activities designed to increase classroom interaction and to get accurate feedback from students. One activity he shared was to have students write down anonymously one thing they learned or one thing they liked the most or least about class or readings. He emphasized making it one thing, and providing absolute limits to help students focus their answers. You can collect them at the end of class, and structure your next lecture around the areas that are still unclear to students. A lot of the information he shared was based on research done by Angelo and Cross (1993). He also did a very interesting card activity in which he gave out cards from a deck randomly, grouped people by fours, and had us work on an assignment. We worked on the assignment by having one person start the answer, and we just kept passing it and adding on to it. It was a very non-threatening way to brainstorm, and it requires that everyone participate. When it was time to share, he chose cards from another deck to randomly select people to answer the questions. The audience really enjoyed this method, and I could see how this could be very effective with a large group.

I attended several workshops on how to create communities in online classes. One session, done by Lynda Nauright called No More Sage on the Stage: Strategies for Active Learning in Blended Face-to-Face and Online Courses, emphasized that faculty (and administrators) need to recognize that as our student population changes, so does the role of faculty members. She spends a lot of time trying to make sure her online classes work collaboratively, and when she places them in groups she tells them that their peers can decided to remove them from the group if they don't participate. If this happens, they are automatically removed from the course. This has only happened one time, but you can imagine what a discussion it started in our session!

Another session done by a very lively Economics professor, Dr. Ngoc Bich Tran, gave us How to Succeed in First-Time Online Teaching: Top Ten Tips. They are:
10. Enjoy it
9. Offer student support
8. Be patient and considerate to students
7. Keep open lines of communication
6. Provide clear and consistent instructions and feedback
5. Provide enhancement materials
4. Use available online content resources
3. Motivate your students
2. Be organized by planning and developing the course early
1. Be open-minded and enthusiastic when committing to teach online course

Her co-presenters also emphasized using the support of your institution's instructional designers and any offices with expertise in distance learning.

Finally, I learned a lot about my co-workers as part of this conference. WSSU had a strong presence, and having the opportunity to spend time with other faculty will allowed for increased chances for collaborations and increased collegiality.

I am grateful to CETL for providing this opportunity, and encourage all to utilize CETL as a resource to enhance your professional development.

TEACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY

The most invigorating session for me was "Using Technology: Thou shalt and Thou shalt Not," led by Dave Yearwood, a professor of Technology in the Business School at University of North Dakota (http://business.und.edu/dept/technology/faculty.cfm). His basic message was that technology should enhance, not dictate, our classes.

Some key points from the discussion:

1) Question: When was the last time you saw a politician using PowerPoint? If you want to connect with your audience, maybe Powerpoint is not the best way.

2) Having students write their ideas down rather than just viewing bullet points on a screen is more helpful in retention and learning process.

3) Is technology helping or hindering learning? Do you really need to use technology?

4) Studies show that "online burnout" occurs at an alarmingly high rate in college courses. (70% of respondents in a survey reported burnout). So, minimize the amount of technology introduced into a course. (Recognize, too, that students have their own technological distractions/issues going on during class.)

5) Some audience members may expect/need a PowerPoint slide to make it a presentation complete. Consider ways to use PP to provoke emotion, draw attention, and start a conversation. Maybe show a picture or graph at the beginning of class, but shut off the projector and don't let the PP be the whole class.

6) There is not (or should not be) such a thing as "PowerPoint Presentation" any more than is a "Chalkboard Presentation" or "Overhead Transparency Presentation" or "Flip Chart Presentation." Technology should not become the center of attention.

Yearwood kept coming back to PowerPoint because it is the most pervasive hi-tech tool used in classrooms today, and just about every textbook comes bundled with PowerPoint slides. He suggested that instructors learn some effective and efficient ways to create and integrate PP and other technol. into their courses, but should be willing to forego tech tools that don't add value to the class.

Coming from a professor of technology, that's sound advice.