Last week your IT Department was able to attend the Growing Online Learning Conference online from ILCCO. These sessions have been recorded and are available for you to view at your leisure. Keep reading for descriptions of each session and links. Two sessions I found interesting were "Creating an Accessible Online Course" and "Enrich Online Student Learning Experience by using Screencast-O-Matic". Both provided relevant and up-to-date information with great ideas for implementing them in your online course.
-Greg Noack
“Online teaching will never be as good as real
teaching," and other lies your elders told you.
Michelle Stephens Coordinator of Richland Theatre Program
Richland Community College
Author of Prepare for Impact and Teaching in Zero
Gravity
Stephens, author of Prepare for Impact and Teaching in Zero
Gravity, is both a lover of technology and a skeptic. During her keynote
session, she explains how the outcomes of online education have nothing to do
with the classroom impact. Working deftly, like a hibachi chef, she will
separate out all of the key components of online education and of teaching and
explain that not only is real comparable online education within our grasp, it
is at our door. Then she will toss them with some vegetables and throw them on
your plate. (These are often referred to as "takeaways.") She will
also explain how having impact in the classroom is a lot more low-tech than you
think. Using multiple perspectives, Stephens weaves pedagogy and storytelling
like ... Well, like a person who weaves a lot of things together. Particularly
important things.
Throw Out the Cookie Cutters!
Linda Lee, Associate Director of Educational Technology and
Innovation
Jill Johnson, Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral
Science
Carl Sandburg College
Throw out the cookie cutter and allow students to shape
their own learning space in online classes. Personalized learning paths and
U-Pace will be discussed.
https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.279A93A22F1802C21BD741D6B2CA34&sid=2012692
Building Content Knowledge and Community in an Online Course
Using Storybooks
Elizabeth Kershisnik, Professor of Chemistry
Oakton Community College
Having groups create a child's storybook about a chemistry
concept can help solidify content knowledge and build group cohesion. This
presentation will cover 1) how the group project is designed, 2) ways to assign
groups, 3) rubrics and assessment, and 4) successes and pitfalls of this type
of learning module.
Creating an Accessible Online Course
Janet Peters Project Coordinator for Education and Assistive
Technology
University of Illinois at Chicago
What does the word accessible mean to you? You may first
think of the word available. Something that is accessible is available, or
perhaps within reach for you to use. However, just because something is
available doesn't necessarily mean it is accessible. For instance, if you are
hard of hearing or have poor vision, a course may be "available" but
hard or impossible for you to use because it was not designed with
accessibility in mind. This session will discuss the reasons to create your
course in an accessible way and will offer practical and easy tips on how to do
that, including checklists and resources to streamline the process.
Improving Online Student Retention
Kona Jones Director of Online Learning
Richland Community College
Retention and success are important issues, yet in most
cases there is little to nothing done to directly monitor and provide early
intervention strategies to online students at risk. Because of this, Richland
Community College partnered with AspireEDU to help improve their online
retention. Aspire pulls various pieces of student information from Richland's
LMS and is able to then provide a "risk index" of how likely it is
that each student will drop out or fail their online course(s). Using this risk
score, Richland was able to quickly pick out the online students most at risk
and start an early alert intervention with the students. This session will include
tips on how to identify at risk students, Richland's early alert strategy, and
results of the initial online retention pilot.
Enrich Online Student Learning Experience by using Screencast-O-Matic
Online students benefit from personalized contact and
encouragement. Incorporating video and audio feedback for written assignments
adds another dimension to online pedagogy.
Getting Audio and Video into Your
Online Course
Nancy Heuer-Evans English Instructor
Brandy Thatcher Instructional Media Developer Illinois
Central College
Brett Coup Associate Dean for Instructional Technology
College of DuPage
Join us for a discussion of tips, tricks and ideas for
working with audio and video in your online course. We'll discuss common
challenges for getting audio and video into your courses: efficient storage of large
media files, competing video formats, browser issues. You will also hear a
faculty member's perspective on using audio and video in her online courses.
We'll demonstrate a few solutions, such as using Google Drive for hosting video
