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March 08, 2006
Bb World '06: Part 2
The BbWorld 06 was one of the best conferences that I have attended. I think that the major factor that made this so, was the keynote speaker, Malcolm Gladwell. I have never attended a conference where the keynote was so aligned with what the attendees are experiencing. It was clear that he took the time to research Blackboard and what youre their clients needs are. What amazed me the most was how his message regarding The Tipping Point and how technologies are adopted permeated through every session that I attended, whether they were technical or pedagogical, every single presentation related to what he had to say. Some presenters even changed their already prepared slides to address these new insights that they were newly aware of.
The sessions that I attended were excellent. I was quite impressed with the moderators of the panel discussion. They had a great ability to truly hear what the panel was saying and keep the momentum among the panel members. Those sessions were so enjoyable.
I have addressed the first days presentations in an earlier blog, following are some highlights of the later sessions that I attended.
On March 1, I attended the following notable sessions:
No Faculty Left Behind Training and Support for Instructors
CIO Panel: Challenges Ahead Technology in the Center
Dave Fraedrich and I presented at the conference on Managing a Consortium with the Blackboard Academic Suite. We had a great time with the presentation and had a full house.
No Faculty Left Behind Training and Support for Instructors
Sallie Reissman and Donald Durandetta of Wilmington College provided an excellent presentation on how they have implemented training and support for their faculty.
They have an impressive program that supports 10,000 students and 100 faculty. They have a well developed training plan for their faculty that is backed by their administration. They have a 4-phase training plan that enabled them to move from 0 to 60 hybrid courses in one year.
First they have a 3-week hybrid online training program. It starts with a face-to-face 2 hour orientation and ends with a social follow up where they can share their ideas and reconnect with their peers. They have offered 7 sections since 2004.
Division coordinators select the faculty bthat will participate in the hybrid online training program. First, they must submit a form. Upon completion of the course, certified instructors receive $200. Upon completion of development of a course, faculty receive a $1000 stipend.
Participating faculty must commit to prepare, design and teach their online course, they commit to a learning support agreement for hybrid online training
They also offer advanced training, which may include:
Private sessions
Small group workshops
Summer institute
A-HUG meetings (academic Hybrid Users Group)
Technology Liaisons
New WebEx sessions
The College has a training database called Compliance Suite Training Management Software which keeps faculty data, schedule, stats, name tags, etc.
The presenters provided two Tech Tips of the Day:
IE-Spell http://www.iespell.com a spell-checker add-on for internet explorer
Flamingtext.com to create banners online
They provide a Hybrid Template for all classes which is modeled after EMCC
One of the keys components to their program is that they have a Technical Liaison Role who deals with Course development and Instruction. The key issues are:
Readiness of faculty
Relatively new to online teaching
High percent adjunct
Limited/no Bb experience
Major change in teaching techniques
Teaching environment
Program pressures
New accelerated undergrad degree completion programs
Specific course sequence (cohort)
5-week hybrid course format
14 hybrid courses in 15 months
20 hours in class
Equivalent of 20 hours online
4 cohorts in 6 months
Technical Liaison Role
1 TL per division
Blackboard consultant to faculty
Consultants for course development
Approves design of new hybrid courses
Access to division online/hybrid courses
Selection of faculty is based on
Specific course experience
Desire to learn new skills
Flexible and adaptable
Time/willingness/energy for course conversion/development
Building the course
Standard course template
Provide assistance with loading content
Assistance with efficient use of
Assignment manager
Assessments
Gradebook
Discussion boards
A review of the course is conducted
Review with developer
Use checklist developed by Chico State
Make modifications as necessary
Approve course for use
Same look and feel important for students
Teaching the course
Frequent assistance during first course
Bb technical issues
Efficient use of time
Assignment handling
Grading techniques
Student feedback
Continuous Improvement
Monitor closely first offering
Debriefing with instructors
CIO Panel: Challenges Ahead Technology in the Center
The following CIOs discussed challenges coming up dealing with technology:
Todd Gibby, Executive VP, Operations, Blackboard
Fred Siff, VP and CIO, University of Cincinnati
Gilbert Gonzales, CIO, CSU, Monterey Bay
Joel M. Smith, Vice Provost for Computing Services and CIO, Carnegie Mellon U
Darrel Huish, associate Vice Chancellor and CIO, Maricopa Community Colleges
Question 1:
Classrooms are getting smarter, students are getting smarter how do you set up an organization of collaboration and client interest?
Darrel Huish
issues of organization transformation, accountability, institutional alignment want to draw attention that organization is on a maturity curve embracing process orientation or not there is a spectrum important to assess where you are at. We are relatively immature on the maturity curve. Ex. We hire people M-F 40 hours a day as intensive environments have emerged our culture is not necessarily equipped to respond 24x7. Tell the truth as to where the gaps are and where you are headed
Gilbert Gonzales
implemented consistent and uniform network architecture across campuses. So could discuss how use most valuable asset people handle complex issues as 1 vs 23. Service centers working collaboratively to hire them, place them and support the campuses. Looking at things on campus that they can focus on that are linked to academic programs, location, etc.
Gilbert mentioned focus on people and service how do you focus on accountability?
Fred Siff
Have to run as a business. As soon as asked show us your value you know you are in trouble. Everything is developed for clients. Use a business approach. Accountable upfront make it clear why and what they are doing.
Joel M. Smith
Not apparent to the leaders of universities how much the environment is changing and how it is affecting IT. Surprise is globalization with campuses abroad Qatar, Australia, etc. Worry about perception that can be solved at CompUSA.
Darrel Huish
indicated that google has everything specialized to the task and there is an under appreciation to the complexity of IT issues. More people are qualified to share IT governance because have a number of experiences with IT.
Joel M. Smith
tension built up between student expectations, client service with a complex campus environment and technology environment how do you manage those countervailing issues. Eventually the term or semester is dead institutional changes are taking place. Get people to be explicit regarding their expectations. Create taxonomy of the services they provide and then seek others expectations communications and explaining the complex issues.
Fred Siff
communication they have a communications person in the office now. Parts are easier to manage
Gilbert Gonzales
We know how to do many things what we struggle with is when it involves multiple departments this project management. Need to set expectations, align them to the need of customers.
Darrel Huish
who decides on the priorities, how is it made and communicated and evaluated? A broader group decides. Important to have rules of engagement for the situation. Must decide and communicate if the decision making is consultative or consensus.
Fred Siff
procedure and governance structure. Need to develop these with the advisement of the community. Use advisory committees.
Joel M. Smith
We all need to be having this discussion. His institution is reactive not thinking about running organization like others in terms of project management, strategic planning, evaluating, etc. Cannot be reactive to survive.
Gilbert Gonzales
Clear parameters are needed, bond of trust within advisory committees. Building from the ground up the staff, faculty who are on the front line. A large part of it is about trust to make an informed recommendation and understand the implications of our actions. Everything we do is deliberate and informed by evidence.
Darrel Huish
For us it is important for governance not to take the place of executive sponsorship. It can only take you so far. Wherever these issues appear, there are challenges.
Fred Siff
the most important relationship is with the CFO. IT costs money. A good relationship makes everything a lot better. Must continually show them. Balancing the budget is the biggest problem he faces. Sign of maturity of the IT organization if you can bring in income through services to the community.
Gilbert Gonzales
Must build many threads of funding. Provide service throughout cities and schools in the region. Trying to change dependency relationship. This causes a maturing. Survive together. Look at change in organization and how relationships outside the campus change. When change in mission of the university and senior leadership things often break down. Portfolio funding
Joel M. Smith
back to communications the hard reality is as higher ed changes programmatically more demand for features that are IT based and this means must have people making programmatic decisions and how IT affects it to make decisions together this leads to hard decisions in regard to funding. Change academic processes that leverage the IT resources. Get everyone to understand the implications and inner relationships.
Darrel Huish
think about the trailing edge. If believe budget is flat fearlessly go after technologies that must be retired to free up dollars.
Fred Siff
one of those technologies is telephones. Provide branded and supported phones and service example of changing complexity, connecting devices. Move into a new technology and retire trailing technologies. Want to see level of return on investment how should people be thinking about this?
Joel M. Smith
establish ties of IT services and what they support through core missions of institution do we support the core mission. Becomes a discussion of mission rather than IT.
Fred Siff
We provide market services know getting a better deal at the institution. Self sustaining and costs less than did it on own dont need to worry about ROI
Gilbert Gonzales
service we provide to help people some will sunset others will be introduced takes marketing. There are existing costs to have reliability and meet expectations. Seize the opportunity.
Darrel Huish
talk about value. Show linkage that what you are doing contributes value to the organization. Show that services meet what the organization is trying to accomplish more important than ROI.
Identity management balancing forces of social computing vs privacy and potential litigation
Gilbert Gonzales
use of information to understand behaviors and patterns will be of more concern in the future realizing that this info is a value added piece. How do we work with organizations to identify expectations.
Joel M. Smith
often overlooked trend. Difficult thing to explain. Its about answering the question when asked who are you, prove it and what are you entitled to. Enables personalization, security and management of multiple systems that is key to quality and effective systems. Will change how we do business and will have to change ideas of data ownership and how we represent people in our systems.
Last closing remarks
Darrel Huish
challenge is to talk to technical people and ask them to think about the bottom line and institutional goals
Fred Siff
assessment of effectiveness of instruction, management, IT
Joel M. Smith
believes the most important project is teaching and learning cant lose site of it all apply to the growth in CMS. We are at a stage or tipping point moving from adoption to enrichment and enhancement.
Gilbert Gonzales
CIOs have to focus on the future. Have a good example of organizations outside of education in regards to social computing, etc think about the world as a practitioner what is important is how we use the data we are collecting to change how we are delivering systems and support communication is key deliver more consistent message.
On March 2, I attended three sessions:
Panel: The Evolution of a Blackboard User Group
Mobilizing Education How Technology is Transforming Learning
Panel: Best Practices in Pedagogy
Panel: The Evolution of a Blackboard User Group (BUG)
This presentation provided 4 stories of how a BUG was created. What I found most interesting was how each of the educational institutions created their own BUG. Some were created to bring similar institutions using Blackboard together, others were looking for a regional users group and others were looking at an organizational users group.
One users group was created form a medical perspective and was specifically started because of the need to determine how to train this community of educators who have special needs due to teaching and practicing medicine.
In the UK, they created a BUG by early adopters. They have held 6 annual conferences and regularly communicate via websites, mailing lists and special interest groups.
A recurring challenge that all of the BUGs have faced is how to keep the momentum going and keep the group productive.
I found it interesting that some of the groups were adamant that only technical people could be members of the users group while others included faculty and students.
Mobilizing Education How Technology is Transforming Learning
Christopher S. Thomas, the Chief Strategist of Intel, discussed how Blackboard and Intel are teaming up to accelerate learning while improving performance and reliability.
He discussed the evolution to mobile learning, how we have moved from fixed to mobile devices. The infrastructure will be moving from wired to unwired so that devices can move from wireless network to wireless network seamlessly. This may have significant effects on learning spaces and may eliminate the need for conventional computer labs.
He also shared that there will be a New Normal Intel has a mobilized software initiative that will restructure software so that it is not as draining on batteries, will have offline capability, have application connectivity to multiple provider options, and support multiple platforms. He expressed that this New Normal empowers student learning, embraces effective teaching and extends school services. He noted that one way this can be done is through the new Blackboard Backpack.
Panel: Best Practices in Pedagogy
This panel discussed a number of best practices in online pedagogy. Here are some of the more notable ideas that were shared:
http://www.Etechcollege.org contains quality standards to check off that helps identify that rigor is there for students there is a 50 item checklist with rubrics.
Leo Schouest from UC Riverside shared that there are a number of cognitive implication of learning management systems and interfaces. A student makes a lot of decisions within the first 5 ms of exposure to a page.
Posted by lyoung at March 8, 2006 03:28 PM in category
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