Readers might be interested in an online session I’ll be hosting on October 13th (3 pm ET) entitled Conflict Resolution Educational Gaming: Behind the Scenes with Harmony Island and Cool School. As part of the national Conflict Resolution Day festivities (or week in this case), I’ll be joined by gaming industry veteran FJ Lennon and developmental psychologist Melanie Killen (University of Maryland School of Education), both part of the team that developed Cool School: Where Peace Rules, and Richard Goldsworthy, Director of R&D for Academic Edge, Inc., developers of Harmony Island: A Tropical Adventure in Conflict Resolution. These games feature high quality animation and research-based learning scenarios designed to teach young people conflict resolution skills and knowledge. We’ll talk with the developers about some of the challenges and opportunities in the CR gaming field. As a special bonus, attendees to the webinar will be entered into a drawing to win free copies of the games. You can reserve a spot at http://snipurl.com/gamechatreg Link to flyer for event.

I just noticed this interesting blog post and thread of comments exploring the idea that Microsoft should buy Blackboard and integrate itself in new ways into Higher Education. It was written by Joshua Kim, a learning Technologist at Dartmouth College. He makes an interesting case but many in the comments disagree with him.

There is a risk of reduced attendance because of H1N1.The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) is ready to help you respond, ideally by preparing in advance but alternatively on an “as needed” basis.

The more that your course is or could be on-line, the easier it will be for absent students. (In an early class, you should learn how many of your students would have access to a computer with internet access while ill.) We can easily show you how to use the internet to post and revise assignments and syllabi; create and share PowerPoint presentations with students; open discussion boards for “cyber discussions” among you and your students; and upload examinations.

Existing resources are set out below and can be located at www.otl.wayne.edu. Please check back periodically, since this resource list will expand as additional resources are created and made available to you.

• A resource titled, “The ABC’s of Online Teaching” can be found on the OTL website. This will be followed by a digital version of one of our most popular workshops titled “Moving Your Course on Line” which will be uploaded to our website within the first week, or so, of this semester.
• For those faculty and GTA’s not familiar with using Blackboard for instruction, tutorials on Blackboard Basics, Blackboard 9 and Advanced Blackboard1: Using the Communication Tools are available. They can be located under the Online Tutorials tab of our website. The tutorials will provide you with ways to do such things as uploading exams and arranging for “cyber discussions” with your students. Please check by soon for online tutorials of Advanced Blackboard 2: Assignments and e-Grading and Advanced Blackboard 3: Creating Online Assessments (Using Respondus).

Please take notice that nearly different Blackboard related workshops are being offered during the month of September, you are encouraged to register for one, or two, online today! Simply do so through the OTL website or by clicking the burgundy Trainings, Seminars and Workshops tab under the faculty tab on Pipeline.

• For the more technologically advanced instructors, an online tutorial for Wimba Live Classroom, which is a live virtual classroom that supports multi-way audio, video, application sharing, polling and content display is available.
• Last, in addition to our student-staffed drop in developmental lab located in room 147 of the P/K Library and the many workshops offered at the OTL, we also offer individual consultations on technology-related inquires and projects and on pedagogy, as well.
  Please feel free to sign up for one of these individual consultations today.
  (And, yes, you can also ask for help if you suddenly find that many of your students are sick, or if you are!)

For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact Kristi Verbeke, Assistant Director at 7-6448 or email af5315@wayne.edu or Shari Robinson-Lynk, Program Coordinator at 7-5605 or email bb4104@wayne.edu.

Faculty developing a new course or modifying an old one might want to have a look at the Phoebe project. The aim of the project  is to guide practitioners working in higher education in designing effective and pedagogically sound learning activities. The project, based at Oxford University, has developed a prototype online planning tool known as the Phoebe Pedagogic Planner that offers users both flexible and guided paths through the planning process and encourages them to explore new approaches and tools in their pedagogy. The design guidance is provided via a wiki-like tool that offers content and explanations that help structure the course development experience. 

The folks at Michigan State University’s Virtual University Design and Technology group (vuDAT) have developed a nice guided walk-through for online course developers. The collection of tools and tips is built around  the course design process, laid out like a subway map, with important stops highlighted along the way.

The United Kingdom has put a lot of focus on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for instructors, and recently they have been adding a lot of multimedia tools to the instructors toolkit. As one impressive example, they have developed an online tour introducing students to the different careers in the creative and media industries. You need the flash player installed to explore the Creative Village – “a virtual world of Creative and media niche industries that is a useful resource for introducing learners to a variety of creative practitioner roles.” Very nicely done…

Creative Village

This link will take you to the key findings which makes comparisons to previous years.

Survey of Undergraduates and IT

 
The new issue of eLearning Papers features articles on Open Educational Resources. The issue provides a good opportunity for faculty to catch up on some of the exciting developments happening in the field. The eLearning papers collection of back issues is also quite informative, and you can download complete issues as pdfs for reading later.

The following contributions to the current issue on OERs – and their extended abstract in 16 European languages – are available:

• Open Educational Resources for Management Education: Lessons from experience (by Cécile Rébillard, Jean-Philippe Rennard, Marc Humbert )
• Reflections on sustaining Open Educational Resources: an institutional case study (by Andy Lane)
• OER Models that Build a Culture of Collaboration: A Case Exemplified by Curriki by Barbara (Bobbi) Kurshan)
• Simplicity and design as key success factors of the OER repository LeMill (by Tarmo Toikkanen)
• Applying Software Development Paradigms to Open Educational Resources (by Seth Gurell)

Readers may be interested in a recent article Grainne Conole, Professor of e-learning The Open University published entitled New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies.

The piece focusses on the apparent disjuncture between the rhetoric of web 2.0 and current educational structures/systems and suggests some new approaches the Open Learn team has been trying to develop to address this mismatch and better map good pedagogy to potential use of tools. It is an interesting look at shifting models of learning and the tools that may support them.

Educause Learning Initiative highlighted a technique called Google Jockeying (http://moourl.com/qjj0m). A student is assigned the role of the class “googler”. The information is then presented simultaneously on a separate screen and would supplement the lecture presentation. It is suggested that this might be a way to positively harness the need for consulting additional information. The role could be assigned to a different person during each lecture. If separate screens are not available, the lecturer might pause and let the google jockey give a synopsis of information searches and let participants add any new searches that might help them in understanding or clarifying the presentation. Incorporating this role is a good way to quickly assess understanding and it is an opportunity to coach the students on using the internet and on evaluating internet resources.