If groupwork is part of your course, you may want to share this resource with your students. It’s all about group process in the online environment. We’ve mainly pulled together resources from elsewhere but found some excellent pieces on managing conflict, which were developed at UBC.
The Online Groupwork Toolkit is posted on the LEAP site for easy access and we are sharing the content via RSS with the Orientation to Online Learning – which will be revised for May.
If you aren’t teaching an online course, and don’t plan to in the future, you probably don’t care. If you are, or plan to, this post is for you.
Vista is the new learning management system that UBC is moving to over the next year.
Some of you may be teaching on Vista already, more of you will be in May and many more in September as your courses are “migrated” to the new system”. Your course developer will contact you to let you know when your course is due to migrate.
There are resources to help you with some of the new (redesigned) features in Vista. It will look very different from the current version of WebCT.
The Office of Learning Technology is working with others on campus to ensure that training opportunities are available throughout the year. If you have a course moving over to Vista for May, you may want to take advantage of some of the great sessions offered during Reading Week (Feb.19th-23rd) as part of the E-Learning Institute.. This includes a Monday morning session comparing the features of Vista and version 4.1 and a mid week Vista Quick Start..
Can’t make those sessions?
Not to worry, OLT will be hosting “hands on” Q&A drop in sessions every Wednesday from 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. in the small conference room at the ITServices Telestudios, #0115, Lower Level, 2329 West Mall. No need to register, just show up with your questions.
I recently co-facilitated a focus group of about 10 learners – with Jeff Friedrich from the AMS. Our intention was to learn something about:
Here’s a brief summary of what we learned:
The comments from these students reinforce some of the findings in a 2003 US based research study (sample size of 208) on the topic of student motivation and perception in student evaluation of teaching.
So, what to do?
Richard Felder of North Carolina State University thinks that open ended questions may be the way to go if your goal is to both identify teaching “problems” and do something about them.
Others have cautionary advice about seeking out and using mid-course feedback from learners.
Either way, it would be useful to know about your experience with mid course student feedback. Do you collect it from your distance cohorts? If not, what are the barriers as you see them?
Please post to the comments section if you would like to share your thoughts on this.
There are a couple of events coming up that might interest you.
Weblogger’s Salon — UBC’s Bloggers Sound Off
Date: Thursday, February 15, 2007 – 1:30 – 3:30pm
Location: Telestudios Main Theatre, Lower Level, 2329 West Mall, Rm. #0110
http://www.telestudios.ubc.ca
The simplicity and flexibility of weblog systems has led to an explosion of popularity in all domains, including education. The dramatic growth in the ranks of UBC bloggers across the university is undeniable. But have the shiny tools fundamentally changed educational practice? Do weblogs and other social software tools truly provide a superior means of publishing information and communicating with a community? What happens when students are given meaningful control over their online environments? What are the drawbacks or dangers of this approach? What can technology units do to provide the support that bloggers really need?
As a special event leading up to the Northern Voice weblog conference, some of UBC’s most innovative and accomplished webloggers will lead a discussion of these and other critical issues. For those who can stay after the discussion, convenor Brian Lamb will run through a series of lightning demos of tools and tricks that are indispensable for the educational blogger.
Facilitators:
E. Wayne Ross: Professor, Department of Curriculum Studies – http://ewaynesworld.notlong.com
Jon Beasley-Murray: Assistant Professor, French, Hispanic & Italian Studies – http://posthegemony.org
Eugene Barsky: Physiotherapy Outreach Librarian, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/physio/
Register through TAG
Scholarship in the Digital Age: Author Rights, Copyright, and Emerging Changes in the Scholarly Communication System
Facilitator: Joy Kirchner and Hilde Colenbrander, UBC Library
Date: February 22, 2007
Time: 9:30am – Noon
Location: TAG Meeting Room, Basement of David Lam Bldg., 6326 Agricultural Road
This session will describe what authors are permitted to do with their scholarship in the digital arena, emerging developments in digital rights management, new developments in the sharing and storing of scholarly works and building momentum worldwide to change the current system of scholarly communication to a more open, less restrictive model.
The Presenters are interested in hearing beforehand any specific questions or specific areas of interest you might have about these issues so that they might integrate these into the workshop. Send questions or comments to Joy Kirchner
Register through TAG
