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UNC
Distance Learning Virtual Forum
December 10, 2008
9:00am-4:00pm
Online: http://uncdlf.ning.com/
Join
us for the UNC Distance Learning Virtual Forum to be
held on December 10, 2008 online. The DL
Forum will feature presentations
and demonstrations by faculty and staff from several
UNC institutions as well as from General
Administration.
Registration
is now open. Below you will find links to a
preview of the conference tools and simple instructions
to register in Ning. On the Ning site you
will find short tutorials explaining each
platform. Here is a brief description of how each
tool will be used.
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Ning will
be the "lobby" or homepage for the DL Forum.
From this site you can access all of the
presentations, threaded discussion forums,
announcements, and help
site.
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Centra
will
be used for prerecorded presentations, and live text
question and answer
sessions.
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Second
Life will
be used for an afternoon presentation and
discussion.
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We encourage
you to sign up, review the site and check
out the agenda before the Forum to ensure that you
can access the appropriate applications. A help
desk will be available as described on the
site. Please share this announcement with
others who may be interested.
See you at
the
forum! |
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VWEC (Virtual
Worlds in Education Conference) Making
History
ECU
(hosted by Academic Outreach) held its first conference
in Second Life on November 10-11, 2008! The conference
was completely virtual with attendees and presenters
from all over the world. Some of the attendees and
presenters were located in: North
Carolina, France, Louisiana, Maryland, California,
Texas, Illinois, New York, Canada, Ohio, Tel Aviv,
Alabama, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey,
Kentucky, Georgia, Israel, Argentina & Sun
Microsystems to name a
few.
The
concept for the conference grew from the “
Second
Life
Academy
”
sponsored by Academic Outreach in June of 2008.
The academy provided professional development
activities for 16 faculty members who have integrated
the use of virtual worlds Second Life to advise, teach,
hold office hours and provide student support
activities. Members of the academy developed and
planned the conference, in collaboration and support
from Academic Outreach. This is one of the first
education-related, peer-reviewed conferences held in
Second Life and offered virtually.
There
were over 16 presenters and 4 posters sessions that were
blind peer-reviewed by ECU faculty as well as other
faculty from contributing universities. The conference
had over 175 registrants. The conference was held
on the ECU Second Life islands and was a huge success!
After the presentations, several open forums were
held with attendees (avatars) using voice and text to
discuss the educational relevance of the SL environment
for teaching and learning.
The event
was a huge success thanks to the participation of
attendees worldwide. We would like to thank Abbie Brown
and Elizabeth Hodge who served as the conference
Co-Chairs with Eric Kisling as the program reviewer.
John Pickard, Bob Green, George Holston and other
academy members who assisted with forum discussions.
Sharon Collins and Elmer Poe from Academic Outreach
provided support and an interactive environment in which
ECU colleagues and contributing university faculty could
collaborate on the value of virtual environments. Tracy
Giordano and Travis Hufford led the SL builder’s group
to prepare the
Second
Life
Islands
for the
conference.
If
you would like to learn more about the conference, you
can check out the program here:
http://hawk.aos.ecu.edu/secondlife/Pages/SLProgram.pdf |
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Think-In 2008 ~ A Great
Success
Think-In
2008 was a tremendous success! This year’s
Think-In featured more than 35 poster presentations on a
wide variety of teaching with technology topics
including virtual environments, video lectures,
case-based learning, and of course, some of the latest
software in use by our ECU faculty http://www.ecu.edu/academicoutreach/presenters.cfm.
If you were not able to attend Think-In 2008 you will
want to view the webcast and hear from some of our 2008
presenters http://www.ecu.edu/academicoutreach/think-in.cfm
(scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the
videographer icon).
Thanks to
all Think-In 2008 presenters! Thank you for
sharing your time and expertise with the ECU community
and the Eastern Region Community Colleges.
We
are already looking forward to Think-In
2009!
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Global Academic
Initiatives
In 2002,
facing the reality that we were becoming a global
community and the majority of the students could
not afford to go abroad to learn the skills needed
to function and become leaders in such a community, Dr.
Rosina Chia, a cross-cultural psychologist and Dr. Elmer
Poe, a computer technology expert, worked together on a
project to think outside the box of traditional study
abroad and use state of the art technology to develop
innovative, cost effective ways to bring global
experiences to our students. They
decided on using primarily video conference technology,
paired with other audio and chat formats, to create a
course where students can sit in the same classroom in
real time and learn about and from each other.
A pilot Global
Understanding (GU) course (INTL 1000) was offered in
summer, 2003 with one Chinese partner. The format of
delivery was very successful and students loved the
course, but we felt the students might easily take the
one country experience and generalize it to all
foreigners, thus we decided to add student’s exposure to
more countries.
Students are partnered one-on- one and the
partners have to work on a joint paper at the end of the
5 week session. Students are learning the “living”
culture of the other country directly from their
peers. In
addition to this GU course, ECU’s global academic
initiatives has expanded to include lecture exchanges,
joint courses, and collaborative research, all using
video conference technology with global
partners.
After 4
years of overwhelming success with 21 partners in 16
countries, we started to plan a conference to invite all
partners to come to ECU where we could share with each
other the future direction of this Global Partnership in
Education (GPE). We hope to find solutions to our common
challenges, criteria for admitting more partners without
compromising the quality of this project, and foster a
sense of comradeship among all partners.
May 19-22
the first GPE Conference was held successfully, with
President Bowles giving the opening speech. Twenty three
delegates from 12 countries (Algeria,
China, India, Malaysia, Moldova, Peru, Russia, Venezuela
and USA were present in person, Pakistan, Mexico, and
Taiwan participated virtually; Czech Republic, The
Gambia, Morocco, Turkey and two other institutions from
Russia could not be present).
At ECU,
we offered a three day summer workshop where we
trained 2 faculty from each college to learn how to use
video conference in order to add an international
component to existing or new courses. The teaching
team will continue to work with these faculty so by
Spring, 2009, there will be at least two courses in
every college that are jointly taught with a foreign
partner and many lecture/module exchanges between our
professors and professors at foreign institutions.
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Technology
Advancement Center is on the
Move~
The good news
is that the Technology Advancement Center (TAC) has moved
to Suite
100A of the
Self Help Building in
Downtown Greenville. Alliance
Partners and other friends are invited to stop by and
visit us at our new location.
Relocation
of the TAC to the Self
Help
Building was
planned for some time, placing the Center closer to its
primary reporting unit, the Office of Academic
Outreach.
In its new location the TAC will continue to
serve as the place where technology addressing needs
critical to distance, mobile, and hybrid e-learning is
discovered, tested, and
applied.
One
of the primary goals of the Center is to
conduct research and test new
communication, computer and information technology
in pilot projects, and then apply these
technologies in innovative ways that enhance the quality
and excitement of learning. Many times these
projects have impact beyond the University and
Eastern North
Carolina
and are carried into distant lands and places.
Often these projects are directed toward the
improvement of organizational effectiveness or quality
of life of students, staff, and faculty. If you are
interested in collaborating on a pilot project advancing
new opportunities for teaching and learning with the TAC
please call us at 737-1265 or 1264.
First
in the Nation with AI-Based Online Virtual
Advisors
Research
Associates in the Technology Advancement Center and
collaborative partners in three Colleges and
Departments at ECU have developed six Online Virtual
Advisors.
An Online
Virtual Advisor is a product that assesses what
courses may have been completed by a prospective
student, weighs these against specific program
requirements, and then generates a prescription for
learning (Digital form indicating what will be accepted
and what is yet to be completed). Online Virtual
Advisors are used as “pre-advisors,” prior to scheduling
an appointment with an on-campus advisor. The
collaborating College or Department provides guiding
questions and content, while the TAC writes the program
and applies the AI software putting it all
together.
Online Virtual Advisors have helped advisors
become more efficient in their program advising
process.
Details on these products are shown
below:
*System: GOAL (Graduate
Online Advisory Liaison)
URL: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-bus/busgoal.cfm
*System: SOAR (Student
Online Advising Review)
URL: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-bus/bussoar.cfm
*System: MAP (My Advisory
Plan)
URL:
http://rocket.tac.ecu.edu:8080/dhep_project/he&p_project/ehp_form/ehp_form.htm
*System: BSIT AAS Completion
Program (Virtual Online Advisor)
*System: MSIT (Master of
Science in Industrial Technology); six concentrations
and three
certificates
For further
information on how you can partner with the TAC to
develop your own Online Virtual Advisors contact: Dr. Barry
DuVall, Director, duvallj@ecu.edu or Matt
Powell, Assistant Director, powellma@ecu.edu. See: www.tac.ecu.edu.
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December 2008
In
This Issue
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1. UNC Distance Learning
Forum
2. Virtual
Worlds in
Education
3. Think-In
2008
4. Global
Academic
Initiatives
5. Technology
Advancement
Center
6. Out &
About Sessions 2009
7. Moodle
& Centra
8. Academic
Integrity
9. DE
Orientation Website
10. Contingency
Plan-DE Courses
11. D-ECU
News
12. Blog/Wiki
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Out & About
2009
Greetings ECU Faculty. Academic
Outreach will host Out and About Training
sessions in January/February 2009. Please look
for additional announcements or continue to
check our website.
What
is Out and About? AO staff
will schedule appointments and visit your office
for one-on-one personalized training along with
offering group training. We have
found this is the best way to learn new
tools.
Academic Outreach will send out an email
on how you can reserve a time slot with one of
our experts. The
following platforms will be available for
training: Blackboard, Camtasia, Centra, Moodle
and Second Life. For more information please go
to http://www.ecu.edu/academic
outreach/outabout.cfm
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Moodle @ ECU
Academic Outreach is continuing its
support and use of Moodle, the Open Source
Content Management System. Moodle assists
educators in creating effective online learning
communities with its open interface and
options. You can create a very interactive
learning environment that will stimulate your
student’s learning and imagination. If you
would like to place your course in Moodle,
please contact Sharon Collins (collinss@ecu.edu)
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Centra
Saba Centra is an online learning
environment that delivers the classroom
environment to your students combining a highly
interactive virtual classroom learning,
e-meeting, and web seminar platform.
Centra is being used throughout almost every
college at ECU to create a more social
environment for
students.
The Centra team will be providing
training through our Out and
About sessions and also through
departmental training sessions. Please
look for additional announcements or continue to
check our website. You may
also contact Sharon Collins collinss@ecu.edu and John Southworthsouthworthj@ecu.edu for additional
information.
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Academic
Integrity for DE
Courses
Distance Education courses, whether they
are fully online or blended, pose new challenges
in the area of Academic
Integrity. Presenting students with guidelines or discussions concerning
integrity early in each course will go a long
way in securing decisions which will help
develop ethical behavior and improve Academic
Integrity. An Academic Integrity web site
for Distance Education is now
available
at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/
academicoutreach/Integrity/.
This website contains information
and strategies that will
help foster Academic Integrity within online and
blended courses.
Please direct questions or
comments to Ginny
Sconiers at sconiersg@ecu.edu
or
Sherion Jackson at jacksonsh@ecu.edu.
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Distance Education Orientation
Website - For
Students
The DE Orientation will
take you step-by-step through the process of how
to get started taking classes online. As
you work through the orientation, you will
discover answers to questions you may have such
as: What is distance
education? Who is my advisor, and how
do I contact him/her? How do I access course
material? How do I get an email account and DE
student card?
http://author.ecu.edu/cs-acad/DE
Orientation/index.cfm
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Contingency Plan
- DE Courses
As
with any technology, Blackboard and other
Internet based course delivery systems have the
potential for technical problems. To prepare for potential
problems and/or downtime, we strongly advise all
instructors using Blackboard or other Internet
based course delivery systems to have a
contingency plan when the technology is not
available. A contingency plan involves
anticipating and planning for an alternate
delivery of course material and communication
when a service interruption occurs. Your
contingency plan should appear on your course
syllabus or
other course documents
so that students know
their responsibilities and
what to expect in a downtime situation. You can
find
suggestions to help
develop your contingency plan at:
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/learningplatforms/contingency.cfm Please direct questions to
Ginny Sconiers at sconiersg@ecu.edu.
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