Ed-Tech List Members,
The last Friday of each month, we are having a “Fun Friday” session where we show a hardware device, a software program, and a web site. If you are interested in technology, you will probably enjoy this informal session. Lunch is provided. The next session will be THIS FRIDAY, March 28th, at 11:30 AM, in Memorial, Room 203. Please sign up at http://iac.miami.edu.
Bill Vilberg
As I understand it, a change to the Internet network at the Gables campus will take place today, Thursday, at 2:00 PM. If everything goes as expected, no one should notice the change.
If, after 2:00 PM, you encounter a computer that cannot get to the Internet, you should contact your support person. They will have the information to help get the settings corrected.
Bill Vilberg
Ed-Tech Mailing List Members,
I am attending a conference on course redesign. Course redesign is being advocated and supported by The National Center for Academic Transformation (http://www.thencat.org). At this point lots of schools have gone through the redesign process. The data supports the use of the process in order to improve student learning and reduce costs. Large enrollment (for the institution) general education (core) undergraduate courses are the focus.
The most common reason to redesign a course is to reduce the percentage of drops, failures, or withdrawals (DFW). So the first step is to gather the statistics for the various general education courses at the institution. (Actually the first step is really to get IRB approval, but that should be no problem since no individual students will be identified.) If there are other goals, they would also be identified and measured. The statistics, along with course enrollment numbers, should indicate which course would most benefit from a redesign.
Then the various players become involved. This includes the department faculty members, administration, support people, other departments if the course is tied in to some other program, and anyone else that needs to buy-in to this effort.
After working with so many redesigns, NCAT has identified five regularly seen redesign models: supplemental, replacement, emporium, fully online, and buffet. These are described in “Improving Learning and Reducing Costs: New Models for Online Learning,” available at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0352.pdf as published in the Educause Review in 2003. To some extent the redesign process consists of choosing one of these models and applying it, given the uniqueness of each institution.
If you are interested in learning about this process, a recommended reading list is available at http://www.thencat.org/Rec_Reading.htm and the readings are not very long.
This morning I attended a two hour session for administrators, with the Provost of Georgia State University and the Interim Vice President for Instruction and Dean of University College, University of Arizona. They talked about the institutional issues and activities. They were both extremely positive about the improvements that they are seeing in learning through this process.
This afternoon I attended a session on Redesigning Math in the University with some very powerful statistics regarding improved DFW numbers at some schools such as Alabama and LSU. Then I attended “The Mathematics Success Project” session, where information was collected from public university systems, rather than individual schools. My bias towards mathematics is based solely on the fact that my graduate work was in mathematics education, and I have taught college statistics.
Tomorrow I will be attending a session on how to get started with course redesign and a session on developing a valid assessment plan.
Next steps?
1. Have UM join The National Center for Academic Transformation.
2. Collect DFW statistics for some of the large enrollment general education courses at UM.
3. Bring Carol Twigg, President of NCAT, or someone else with experience in course redesign, to UM to speak with Deans, Chairs, and faculty members.
4. Based on identified goals, choose a course to redesign.
5. Begin the discussion about the course’s learning issues, teaching issues, alternative models, and experience of other schools.
6. Submit an application for the Colleagues Committed to Redesign (C2R) program, sponsored by FIPSE and run by NCAT. Application must be submitted by January 15, 2009.
7. If accepted, participate in planning events during spring and summer 2009.
8. Implement the redesign pilot in Fall 2009.
9. Evaluate and repeat as needed.
What do you think? Is this something that UM should do? Would you be interested in participating? What could you do to facilitate the process?
Bill Vilberg
Ed-Tech list members,
I am in Orlando, at the Redesign Alliance Conference. While driving up today I listened to a number of podcasts. One of them mentioned drop.io. (The “i” is pronounced as a long “e”.) I think this is one of the neatest file sharing system I have seen. It could be really useful for creative writing or composition classes, where you want everyone to read each others papers. Have them upload them to a drop.io site, and everyone can have access to them.
Rather than write all the details here, let me refer you to my wrvTips blog entry at http://tinyurl.com/2cu78k. I even created a sample site that you can play with.
This also might be of interest to people who want to share files for other reasons. For example, pictures of a wedding or a new baby, a research paper that you are collaborating on, or documents for a committee to work on together. I am really impressed with this implementation. It might be worth your time to read my blog entry.
Bill Vilberg
Ed-tech list members,
Bruce Lecure is presenting an exciting workshop series on Teaching as Performance. The sessions will take place starting Tuesday, March 18, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM, and continuing every Tuesday afternoon through April 29, the last week of classes. This is a wonderful opportunity to work with Bruce on improving your performance skills as a teacher
Because this is a seminar style workshop series, there will be only nine participants. If you can make the scheduled times and would like to participate, please go to http://iac.miami.edu and fill out the application.
I apologize if the seats are all taken when you try to register. We hope to offer this again in future semesters, if there is interest.
Bill Vilberg
Instructional Advancemen
