This week, we launched a project that has been in development for the past five months.  The past few years have seen significant growth in the development of online learning in both K-12 and higher education settings. With an estimated four million college students taking at least one online course this year, and forty-four states (including Virginia) now having significant online programs in their K-12 systems, many university faculty are beginning to explore the use of online instruction in their programs and courses. In response to this growing trend and VCU faculty interest, I worked with my teammates at the CTE, Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl, to co-develop the Online Teaching and Learning Resource Guide.

This resource guide is designed to help faculty who are seeking to transition their courses from a traditional face-to-face class to one delivered either partially or fully online. It reflects the foundation established in our White Paper from last May entitled “Building from Content to Community: [Re]Thinking the Transition to Online Teaching and Learning.” Teaching and learning online is different from traditional forms of education, requiring new practices. This guide will help faculty members reconceptualize their instructional approaches for the online environment.

In “Getting Started“, we explore how the web is changing education, what research suggests about online teaching and learning, and how to determine one’s readiness to teach online, as well as students’ readiness to learn online.

“Course Design” provides resources for translating goals and learning objectives specific to one’s course into designs that work online. Specific attention is paid to customizing Blackboard to serve one’s learning needs.

In “Teaching Practices,” we explore how the role of faculty changes online, the dimension of social presence for both faculty and students, and principles of good practice to meet instructional needs.

“Managing Online Class” covers a variety of administrative areas, such as time management, online routines, icebreakers, academic integrity, accessibility, and support services such as libraries and help desks.

The “Teaching Online Toolbox” explores a wide variety of web-based tools to facilitate instruction, such as blogs, wikis, discussion boards, screencasts, podcasts, and social media. The intent of this section is to help one integrate the right technology that enhances instruction for one’s specific discipline.

In “Online Assessment,” we look at multiple ways in which student learning can be assessed, both formatively and summatively. Techniques such as concept mapping, active learning, journaling, and testing are covered, as well as specific support applications such as LON-CAPA, Respondus, and StudyMate.

The final section provides additional resources, such as journals and online teaching websites. Faculty can also request additional consultation via a convenient online form in this section.

In this resource guide, we have assembled research-based resources and background articles on each topic, as well as “how-to” processes and best practices covering a range of topics. We hope that the resource can provide VCU faculty with a solid starting point for thinking through the challenges and possibilities of online teaching and learning.  It is completely Creative Commons Sharealike, so other institutions should feel free to remix and use it as they see a need.

There is a feedback form in the final section.  Either in comments here or through the form, we would welcome feedback, comments, suggestions, and additions that you see as missing from this initial publication.  We have had fun putting this together, and we would welcome your thoughts and reflections on ways to improve it.

I have not posted for quite a while, with the primary reason being an upgrade of my old body.  My colleague Jeff Nugent termed my pending knee replacement as an upgrade to Knee 2.0, which seemed very appropriate.

So a little over two weeks ago, the good team at West End Orthopaedic retooled me with titanium parts.  I have been recovering a home for the past 14 days, and see new improvements each day.  It was definitely time for the upgrade!

It has also given me some time to think and ponder the retooling that education is undergoing!

If you did not catch it earlier this month, Lisa Lane had an important article published in FIRST MONDAY entitled “Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Impact Teaching.”  Her point – right on target I think – was that the default settings on most CMS have an implied pedagogy, and because most faculty do not work and play online, most faculty accept the defaults and therefore the given pedagogy – whether it fits their content, their discipline specific pedagogy, or their own style.

I was thinking about this because prior to going in for my upgrade, I had begun working with six fellow faculty in a year-long exploration of online teaching and learning.  Our faculty learning community explored my online class first, and then two weeks ago, explored another member’s approach – one that was radically different from mine.

I consider myself pretty adept at elearning, having taught online now for a dozen years.  Yet, this look at new approaches is tugging at my comfort zone, because I have fallen guilty of the view that “my” way of teaching online is “the” way of teaching online.  Not that I do not do a great job – I do – but I use a fairly structured and hands-on approach to build a learning community that then has the freedom to use open approaches to learning as they grow comfortable with them.  In other words, drawing from Lane’s comments, I make my students work and play online some before turning them loose.

My colleague has developed a brilliant certification process that allows one to start at any point, proceed at any speed, work toward certification if desired, or simply work towards self-development without the academic credentialing requirement (and at no cost).  In other words, a true open content process.

Just as in retooling myself physically, I also need to retool my thought processes and open myself to new approaches in teaching and learning online.  My faculty learning community is occurring at the right time and place!

I am also starting Curtis Bonk’s book The World is Open.  In full disclosure, the publisher sent it to me at no charge, but it does look timely and helpful to retooling my thinking.  I’ll blog more about it as I go through it.

I would be interested in your thoughts regarding online teaching and learning.  I have been wedded to the concept of a community of learners as a prerequisite for successful online classes, yet we now are entering a world of social networking and informal communities that coalesce around topics of interest.  In the structured world of higher education, what is the right approach for elearning?

{Photo Credit: Larry Page}

It has been an interesting week for me in Facebook.  I have reconnected with several colleagues that I had lost touch with in the past few years.  Facebook to me is great for connecting with family and friends, but as with any social networking application, a host of questions arise concerning possible uses for instruction.  And so far, I have not used it for instruction.

In the past week, Jeff Nugent had a conversation with VCU faculty members Mike Abelson, Melissa Johnson and Stephanie Rizzi who shared their experiences with using Facebook and offered their perspectives on the pros and cons of “friending” students.  Their podcast is here. I listened to this podcast while at the gym, and I found myself arguing with them mentally.  (I have not yet reached the point where I begin talking to myself while wearing an iPod!)

My colleagues here were nervous about responding to “friend” requests from their students.  They seemed to agree that it would be inappropriate for them to friend any of their students.  That got me thinking about my use of Facebook and my own students.

For me, my context is different.  My podcasting colleagues here at VCU teach college freshmen – I teach graduate students who are also teachers.  As such, I already consider my current students as my colleagues.   So I would not be adverse to my students friending me, though I do not actively seek them out.  Part of my reasoning for not actively seeking them out is that Facebook for me is a social connection, not a professional connection.  My friends right now consists of three groups – family, colleagues, and former students.  And by former students, I mean students I had 15 years ago at the University of Nebraska.  My colleagues span VCU, Gwinnett Tech, and Herkimer County Community College.  I use other social avenues professionally, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and the blogs I follow in Google Reader.

I think that one reason people are nervous about Facebook is the negative press it has gotten lately.  The Chronicle had a recent article on How Not To Lose Face on Facebook.  It noted:

“For years college administrators have warned students to watch their step in online social realms, noting that sharing too much could hurt them later on if future employees saw their drunken party pictures or boorish writings. Now that professors and administrators are catching Facebook fever, they should heed their own advice.”

Good advice, but it underscores that many faculty (and students) do not understand the various settings they can control in Facebook to selectively release their posts to specific friends.  Nick O’Neill had a nice explanation in his post “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.”

But as I thought about Facebook and privacy, I wonder if we are asking the right questions.  The whole issue of one’s digital footprint is raising vexing questions.  Is anything truly “private” anymore?  Maybe I am a little paranoid, but I was blown away by Pattie Maes‘ TED Talk demonstration of wearable technology.

Pretty cool, huh?  Yet think about this from the ubiquitous web perspective.  If Pattie’s vision becomes the norm, everyone will be walking around wearing a device that constantly scans the environment and through facial recognition potentially pulls up information on every person you meet.  Being worried about your cheerleader picture in Facebook might be the least of your worries.  “Privacy” will take on new and interesting meanings.

I am still wrestling with whether it would be good or bad to walk in on the first day of class, meet a student, and instantly know that student’s GPA and Facebook profile.  As my good friend Kathryn Murphy-Judy noted to me today as we discussed this, would a sound-bite be meaningful if you did not know that underneath a bad GPA was the death of parents or the ending of a relationship.  It takes time to build a relationship with people, and would this ubiquitous web presence speed that up or derail it on occasion?  I do not know.  The only thing I do know is that the world is changing and ignoring that change is not an option.

I would be interested in your thoughts?  Do you use Facebook for instruction?  Do you friend your students?  Do you have conversations with your students and colleagues about their digital footprint?  Should we? – is that part of our role as faculty?

What ever else, we certainly live in interesting times!

I am sure that I will not be the only one blogging today about President Obama’s Inauguration speech.  Bud Deihl and I walked over to the student commons and watched it with several hundred students and staff.   Our new President crafted a wonderful speech with both hope and purpose in mind, founded on the idea that we are all in this ship of state together.  Looking out over the cheering students, I could not help but reflect not only on the journey, but also on the idea articulated by another young President that indeed, the torch had passed…and that we will be okay as a nation.

I probably will also not be the only one using Wordle today, but I like the way certain words jump out at you from his speech.

As a retired Navy Commander, his call to service for this country really resonated with me.  I was reminded as I listened to Vice President Biden take his oath of office that that particular oath was the same one I swore to as a Navy Ensign.  It is an oath of allegiance to an idea, not a person…something I have always held dear.

As several Twitterers noted, the White House website rolled over to the new administration’s site on time at noon.  It proclaims that change has come to this country.  I was happy to hear the word “digital” in Obama’s speech, and it appears likely that the digital age will be part of that change…and that these changes will impact education.  I see that as positive.

I have not blogged for the past three weeks for a combination of reasons.  Some of it is old habits.  When I was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, January was historically known as “The Dark Ages.”  Old habits die hard.  I was also sick for a week, followed by the hectic nature of a semester start.  The Dark Ages began to thaw this weekend when several of my students remarked in our online class that they were excited and enlightened by the first week’s activities!  I was simply introducing Delicious and Web 2.0 to these school teachers, but I spend so much time immersed in Web 2.0 that I can forget how exciting and refreshing it is to discover it!

So today’s speech seemed to lift those dark feelings off me.  It may still be January, but I am looking forward to this semester and the coming days with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.  I know I have a part to play in education…and I will look for opportunities to serve in other ways as well.

Three words captured the start of our country and three new words capture the direction forward,

We, The People!

Yes We Can!

The speech today merged these two concepts into one unified direction for our country and all of us.  I’m stoked! 

{Photo Credit: Jim Young / Reuters}

There are certainly good examples from the early adopters.  Stephen Downes posted a powerpoint on Slideshare this weekend from his Prince Edwards Island 2008 presentation entitled “Integrating the Internet Into the Classroom.”

Yet, at almost the same time, Dean Shareski pointed in Twitter to an article on the Britannica Blog entitled “Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom,” by David Cole.  First, David apparently only sees laptops as a stenographer tool – good only for taking notes.  His complaint is that his students are distracted and not engaged in his class unless he bans laptops!  One wonders whether the problem is the laptop or the delivery?  One only needs look at how Michael Wesch has engaged his class (full of laptops) by co-opting the students into the learning process.

Luckily, Beth Holmes got me excited again with her post “Creating a Disturbance!” She was blogging about three educators who were actually doing what many only talk about:  Stephanie Sandifer in The Knowing – Doing Gap; Alec Couros’ K12 Online Conference presentation “Open, Connected, Social: Reflections of an Open Graduate Course Experience”; and David Truss’ 10/21/08 Pair-a-dimes post POD- or Personally Owned Devices.

As she noted:

“Boy, did I hear the old music and see the new steps! There they are – three educators who are familiar with the tools – making the transition from “knowing to doing” and urging us all to START DOING NOW.”

I hear that tune myself, Beth!  (But then again…it may just be Pandora…)

I think others are hearing that tune and are uncertain how to start dancing.  Jeff Nugent tweeted from the POD annual conference that he had met a fellow faculty developer who was starting blogging for the first time.  She (I am assuming “she” since the blog is Development Diva) felt that she had to remain anonymous due to her profession of working with other faculty.  In “Blogging: Confidentiality vs. Accountability“, she stated:

“My first thought, in my first post, was to protect the identities of any of my clients about whom I might write and thus to attempt to conceal my own since my work is tied to place and from place to people. That feels like a no-brainer…But yet I felt an unease that I struggled to put into words. What about the scholarly record? There are good reasons that scholarly work needs to be both public and attributed (e.g., dialog is essential to develop further knowledge, tracking the source of ideas is key in building new understandings). If someone wanted to quote my work here, either the content or the process of doing a blog, then to whom do they attribute it? P(l)odder? that feels dishonest.”

Maybe I should worry more (as I do the same job she does), but I believe that I can safely reflect on my profession without naming the names of my clients, and have done so for ten months now.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that cloud computing will “shake up campus technology.”  My own students (most many years older than early 20’s) are busily updating and editing our class wiki this weekend and doing just fine in the Web 2.0 stream.  The K12 Online Conference continues to pump out fantastic presentations.  So I remain optimistic!

Wondering what my colleagues think?  Is the glass half empty or half full?  How do we get that big early and late majority population to transition from “knowing to doing” and START DOING NOW!  Is the music playing for you?

{Photo Credit: Jespis}

Links mentioned during the above podcast:

Jon Becker’s blog – Educational Insanity

Terry Carter’s blog – Coming About

This blog – Learning in a Flat World

Henry Jenkins – Why Academics Should Blog

Michelle Martin – Social Media Spiral

Open Notebook Science Project

{My thanks to Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl for recording and mixing this podcast).

One of my colleagues from Gwinnett Technical College, Jackie Bush, called me last Thursday morning to simply thank me.  She is retiring and moving on to a consulting business, and before she left Gwinnett Tech, she wanted to call people who positively impacted her career and just say thanks!  What a neat thing to do and I will tell you it lifted me for the entire day!

Jackie taught cosmetology for many years at Gwinnett Tech – about as “hands-on” a program as one can have.  Yet six years ago, she was one of the first faculty at Gwinnett to see the power of online learning as an enhancement to her discipline.  She had the first web enhanced cosmetology program in Georgia, the first online course (a licensure prep course), and I noticed she now has a new blog to go with her new consulting role.  I appreciated her call to thank me, but she likewise helped me by being one of the early adopters of online learning.

I know Jackie will continue to do good things!  Best of luck to a class act!

{Photo Credit:  SalonApprentice, Gisela Giardino}

My wife and I are down in Augusta GA to celebrate my parent’s 60th anniversary.  Here is a picture from August, 1948, when my parents wed in Atlanta GA.  I came along 2 years later, followed by my two brothers.  They were typical of the Greatest Generation – hard working, dedicated, and committed to making their sons’ lives better than theirs.  Thanks to them, I was the first in my family to attend college and go on to a successful naval career and doctoral studies.

Last night, my brother and his wife hosted a dinner at which a dozen friends from Atlanta and South Carolina came to Augusta to attend.  As much as a 60th anniversary says about a couple, the strengths of the friendships they made say even more.

The local Augusta paper printed a nice anniversary announcement this week.  I could not resist running it through Wordle, which crafted the following image.

Following up on my post earlier this week on The Meaning of Free, I joined my colleagues Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl for some coffee and conversation – triggered by the announcement that Jott was out of beta and would now cost for service.  This is a service that we have grown to depend on, and now it is switching to a pay as you go service.  I will probably pay for the basic level of service but will continue looking around to see if other options are available.

In any event, we had a lively conversation, which we captured as a podcast.  Give a listen here.

{Photo Credit:Leo Reynolds}

Great question, Scott! I would be interested in knowing more about the workshop Scott was attending. How did they define “literacy”? It seems the word is popping up all over the place. Michele Martin and Tony Krarrer have a new blog out that I follow called Work Literacy which asks good questions about the skills today’s workers need. Googling “literacy” gives you over 43 million hits, and the first is Wikipedia’s definition, which states:

The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. In modern contexts, the word refers to reading and writing at a level adequate for communication, or at a level that lets one understand and communicate ideas in a literate society, so as to take part in that society. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has drafted the following definition: “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society.”

Scott’s comment suggests – at least to me – a tie-in between “literacy” and what many call “digital literacy”. Are they one and the same now? Joan Vinall-Cox posted recently on “visual literacy.” How does that fit in? These questions are of interest to me as I am gearing up to lead a new Faculty Learning Community on Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century. The word Literacy is being used on multiple levels to mean different things, and that can cause confusion. I liked what Laura Blankenship said last week:

“I get the feeling that we’re trying to pidgeonhole, to say that learning is this or that, that literacy is this or that, instead of looking at what’s out there for people to engage with and figure out how to leverage that for learning.”

The reason I like what Laura said is that it keeps “learning” central. I really do not yet know the answer to what makes us literate today, and look forward to researching it with my team. Yet, I feel that literacy has evolved beyond the ability to read, write, listen and speak, and that at some level, Scott’s question as to why more did not bring laptops to the literacy workshop resonates with me. I would be interested in what you in the edublogosphere think about this – as it can help frame our start-up towards researching this topic.

{Photo Credit: thevoicewithin}