Richard Sebastian

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Category: Digital Literacy

New America Foundation Event in DC: Community College Online

February 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments
CC-BY http://www.jisc.ac.uk

CC-BY http://www.jisc.ac.uk

On February 17th, the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program will host an event that will focus on the use of information technology at community colleges. The event will occur in conjunction with the release of a new report by New America, Community College Online, which features case studies of how community colleges are harnessing technology to improve remediation, student services, and content delivery. Here is a description of the two-hour long event from the organization’s web site:

Community colleges are often the only or the last chance for a college education for many of America’s students. Some students enroll in a couple of classes or a short-term certificate to gain new skills, some enroll to obtain their associate degrees, and some enroll with the intention to transfer to a four-year institution. The open access of community college is one of America’s greatest postsecondary strengths, but also one of its greatest challenges. While almost anyone with minimum qualifications can enter a community college and pursue a postsecondary credential, few will actually complete.

Community college students need access to more high-quality, flexible support services, courses, and credentials to succeed. Students should be able to take at least two courses a semester—two in the fall, two in the spring, and two in the summer—so that they can complete their associate degrees in two to four years. Innovative use of information technology can help get them there.

The opening remarks and innovation presentations will be live streamed.  If you can’t make it in person, you can participate on Twitter using the hastag #CCOnline and following @NewAmericaEd. You can see an agenda and register for the event here: http://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/community-college-online/.

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that “invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.”

The Digital Revolution Will Be Livestreamed

January 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The Textbook Costs and Digital Learning Resources (TCDLR) Committee released this final report a few weeks ago at the last meeting of the Reengineering Task Force. I co-chaired the committee with the wonderful Dr. Mark Estepp, President of Southwest Virginia Community College. The committee was charged with the following tasks:

  1. examine VCCS administrative practices and policies that unnecessarily add to the cost of academic textbooks,
  2. explore how networked digital technology can best be leveraged to lower the overall cost of textbooks, including using open educational resources,
  3. investigate ways which currently licensed electronic resources can be used in electronic “course packs,” as a substitute for textbooks, or for the supplementary material often required for a course of study,
  4. identify opportunities for interested VCCS faculty to explore using openly licensed resources in their courses,
  5. examine the current relevance of printed textbooks in an age of interactive, web-based content, digital publishing, and
  6. recommend strategies and policies for creating an institutional culture that embraces and practices openness, transparency, collaboration, and sharing.

The report contains a number of recommendations for lowering the cost of course materials across the VCCS. I am really proud of what this group accomplished, much of it before the release of this report, including the 17 college VCCS Collaborative Bookstore contract with Follett to textbook reduction metrics in the annual evaluations of VCCS presidents. In fact, in many ways the final report is a bit anti-climactic.

Still, you should red it. You can read or download a copy of the report below:

#thoughtvectors

June 6, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Thoughtvectors_in_Concept_SpaceToday, VCU launched a brand-spanking new MOOC-ish thing, Thought Vectors in Concept Space. The official name is UNIV 200: Inquiry and the Craft of Argument. I am using this blog as my platform for my participation in the course which, if you are not a VCU students who is formally enrolled, is totally free. Totes.

So, if  “Take a MOOC” is on your bucket list–which would be kind of weird, but whatever–or you want a learning experience that more a cross between a roller-coaster ride and  than a college lecture, you should head to http://thoughtvectors.net/ and reveal your intent.

News: NMC offering free mini-courses for educators in STEM fields

March 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

NMC_Launches_Online_Training_Academy_for_Teachers___The_New_Media_Consortium

From the New Media Consortium:

The rebranded NMC Academy launched publicly today, a not-for-profit hub for education-related professional development. The mission of the project from its inception has been to provide busy teachers and other learning professionals with the opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills online, to explore new ways of delivering online learning, and to generally push the boundaries of cutting-edge professional learning opportunities. HP has selected the NMC to lead the next phases of the project because of the NMC’s track record for creating sustainable models that advance innovation in education.<full article>

The link to the NMC Academy site is academy.nmc.org

Disruptive technology discussion at the 2013 Chancellor’s Retreat

August 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday  I was given yet another opportunity to moderate another technology-related panel for VCCS’s Chancellor’s Annual Retreat. Last year, David Wiley, Jim Groom, Nicole Allen, and Mirta Martin joined a panel to discuss OER. That single event helped accelerate the VCCS’s OER efforts, with Tidewater Community College Academic Vice President Dr. Daniel DeMarte launching the Open@TCC textbook zero project after attending the panel, and the Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant launching soon after. Tidewater will offer a zero-textbook-cost Associates degree in Business Administration and twelve colleges will offer OER sections of their highest enrollment courses this fall, a mere one year later.

This year the discussion was less focused as last year’s OER topic,  but is just as timely. The panel, following the Mind the Gap theme of the Retreat, was titled Clicking, Swiping, and Commenting Away the Academy’s Traditions Gap. Ed-tech blogger, author,  and journalist Audrey Watters, Web 2.0 Labs Director Steve Hargadon, and Gardner Campbell, VCU’s new vice Provost of Learning, Innovation, engaged in a lively, wide-ranging discussion on the many and often contradictory aspects of disruptive technology, as well as the mission of post-secondary education.

Tuesday’s afternoon panel was informally live-streamed and recorded. You can view the recorded session here. Unfortunately, due to the on-the-fly streaming set-up (we used Google Hangouts on Air with a Logitech Conference Cam and Yeti table mic) the audio was a bit spotty, and dropped out for a bit.  We also weren’t able to effectively stream the panelists slide decks and video clips. However, something’s  better than nothing, right? Right?

The panel will be repeated as best it can today at 2:3oPM EST. It will be livestreamed as well, hopefully with better results , at: http://edtech.vccs.edu/chancellors-retreat-live-stream-disruptive-tech/

Retreat Panelists
watters Journalist, blogger, and author Audrey Watters
Hack Education
hargadon WEb 2.0 Labs Director, Steve Hargadon.
Web 2.0 Labs
gardner VCU’s Vice Provost of Learning, Innovation, and Student Success, Gardner Campbell
Gardner’s Blog, Gardner Writes: http://www.gardnercampbell.net/

 

Get a free domain from Reclaim while they remain

July 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Reclaim the WebIf you don’t know about the University of Mary Washington’s A Domain of One’s Own project, get thee to this Wired article from July of 2012,  this Tech Therapy podcast on the Chronicle site, or go straight to the source at UMW’s  http://umwdomains.com/ to find out more.

UMW’s IT crew–Tim Owens, Jim Groom, and the rest–are true technology innovators: starting this Fall, all faculty AND students at UMW are being offered their own personal web space, for free, allowing them “reclaim the web” and “take control of [their]digital identities.” It’s such a simple concept really, so simple it’s genius, and easily untangles the Gordian knot of the  LMS “walled garden” that has made the software, not the student, the center of learning.

Now, as recipients of a Shuttleworth Foundation “flash” grant, Tim Owens and Jim Groom are offering this free hosting to any faculty or educational technology staff who want to experiment with having a domain of their own. Jim and Tim will even help you get it set up and working.If you’re interested, go to Reclaim Hosting (reclaimhosting.com) to sign up. You’ll need to have an idea of how many accounts you need and  pay about $12 each for domain names.

*Correction: an earlier version of this post identified UMW as the recipient of the Shuttleworth grant and  the sponsor of the Reclaim Hosting project; in fact, Tim Owens and Jim Groom are the grantees supporting this project.

VCU Online Learning Summit 2013

February 5, 2013 /

VCU Online Learning Summit

If you are in the Richmond area on May 14th, or want to justify a spring trip to our fair capitol city, you may want to consider attending the Online Learning Summit at Virginia Commonwealth University. Seasoned keynoter Gardner Campbell will be headlining. There is no opening band or cover charge. That’s right: it’s free.

If you haven’t seen or heard Gardener speak before, you can get a taste of what you are in for by viewing his spectacular keynote speech at the OpenEd conference in Vancouver, BC last year. I wrote about it here. The link to the recording is here.

More info from the VCU Summit website:

The VCU Online Learning Summit is organized by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Virginia Commonwealth University. This regional conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications of all topics related to teaching and learning online. We invite proposals of substantive, interactive sessions that will raise provocative questions, engage participants in discussion, and foster conversations.

If you want to submit a proposal, you have until Monday, March 1st, 2013. Visit the Online Learning Summit web site for more details: http://wp.vcu.edu/onlinesummit2013/

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