RCampus: Online Rubrics

Online tools.
Free to individual faculty and students.
Rubrics, web sites, and ePortfolios.
Also, learning and content management systems.
Tutor connection, textbook exchange.
Classroom space with gradebook. Email alerts. Calendar. Student self-registration.

Well, you get the idea. RCampus is a free site and, even if you are not prepared to run real classes outside the vetted LMS on your campus, this suite of online tools provides good practice in online facilitation and could even serve as your personal portfolio host.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Tech Tip: Meeting Schedulers

Maybe the niftiest, most undervalued tool to emerge from Web 2.0 is the meeting scheduler.

Set aside any auto-pilot assumption that everyone uses Outlook to the extent that makes meeting notices easy. And, of course, keep in mind that the basic email approach only looks like two-way communication. There's still a hierarchy at work. There's a sender and there's a responder and a lot of the time, the sender is notifying, not inviting. When email is used more democratically to invite input about meeting times, it... well, it takes about 20 emails to establish anything.

Contrast the egalitarian meeting scheduler. We're all equal in our access and we all have access to the results. If all of us are willing to select multiple checkmarks, we'll gather the information about everyone who's slated for a meeting and produce a "best time" for the majority.

If you will recall the early days of surveymonkey, you'll probably recall your own or someone else's use of that software as a meeting scheduler. The power of sending a survey with meeting time options extended to sharing the view of results to all the participants. Feedback! Egalitarian!

We moved past the surveymonkey era with a lot of new scheduling tools. Some of them were specific—for activities like choosing a lunch spot with your friends. (Really, it was for that single purpose. And Google bought the smallish web site.)

And this month I experienced the best two online tools for meetings that I have run across. The tall graphic is the results page for a meeting for 8 people (names removed). Source: MeetingWizard.

The smaller graphic below is a segment of the results page for a meeting of 4 people. Source: doodle. Doodle calls their offering a poll.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

GI Yellow Ribbon Program - Map Links to Participating Institutions

With a list finalized this month, the GI Bill web site displays a map linking to Yellow Ribbon participating institutions.

Established as part of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, Yellow Ribbon supports GI's returning to school with a new type of support that makes virtually any type of school possible. Essentially, the VA helps fund expenses when that school's tuition/fees exceed the highest public in-state tuition rate. Institutions (public college, private college, any approved college) share the "exceed" cost with the VA up to a limit set by the institution. The institution can also set a limit on the number of students it will support in the agreement.

Institutions' voluntary limits are included on the web pages linked from the map at the above link. Clicks through several state lists will produce a pattern quickly: online universities are participating at a high level (unlimited number of students will be welcomed).

(The program's full name is Yellow Ribbon GI Education Enhancement Program.)

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Outcomes Assessment at Niagara University

Niagara University's Outcomes Assessment web site keeps text to reasonable length so that visitors are happy to explore the entire site.

The web site shares the schedule of work (2008 - 2014) to support departments' submission of 5-year reports on continuous data collection. The Departmental Asssessment Plans are submitted to the Senate Outcomes Assessment Committee. That Committee uses a Checklist of 12 questions to review each submission. While a compact list, it clearly indicates that instruments and results are expected for a full report.

Forms are also provided in Word documents. The site is user-friendly and, friendliest of all, publishes real reports and sample forms from selected departments.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Mapping Gen Ed at Georgia Perimeter College

How do you map Gen Ed for a campus? With 23 curriculum maps, if you are Georgia Perimeter College. Using a consistent template for their 2005 publication of goals, actions, documentation, and assessment procedures, the institution collected the mapping for whole departments as well as selected individual courses.

The "General Education Goals" are written as measurable student learning outcomes. The organization on a web page allows a fast scan (although the web page is actually quite lengthy). Access it at the Academic Assessment Resources for Quality Improvement web site sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning.

For the full picture of the College's effort, you may want to start with the link to General Education Outcomes before going to the Curriculum Maps for General Education area. These resources are only two among more than a dozen links worth clicking through.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Learning Environments for a Web 2.0 World

ELI 2010 Annual Meeting:
Learning Environments for a Web 2.0 World
January 19–21, 2010 Hilton Austin, Austin, Texas

ELI 2010 is open for proposals but not registration. Fees and forms will be available at the end of July. In the meantime, the proposal planning can begin, with submission deadline of September 10.

Proposal Guidelines
http://net.educause.edu/Program/1022369#guidelines

Presenter Guidelines and Presentation Formats
http://net.educause.edu/Program/1022384

ELI is the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, with home page at http://www.educause.edu/eli

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Tech Note: Making Lists and Checking Them Entirely Too Many Times

Nifty technology tools for making lists ... and nifty comparison chart published by one of the toolmakers:

http://www.toodledo.com/info/compare.php

Home-grown tools:

* entries on your email or cell phone calendar

* sticky note application on your computer desktop

* email to yourself (with list only on the subject line) left unread and therefore boldfaced in your Inbox

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Higher Ed is Hurting

"...expected that faculty members would not take furloughs on their teaching days."

The NYTimes story on cuts in the UC system outlines the furloughs across all campuses, all categories of employees. The quote above is not intended to imply that only faculty members will be working without compensation. (A furlough without a true reduction in work load is actually a pay cut.)

On a campus, all services and offices are needed to produce the learning environment. So, while an office may have a furlough—a day closed to delivering services—that doesn't mean that the people taking that furlough will be relieved of the work. They'll just spread it across the rest of the week through missed lunches or extended work days. The same tasks must be accomplished in order to keep a campus running.

So, just as a campus will count on faculty to show up for class (and be prepared to teach it), it will also count on staff to get all their work done, too. Admittedly, if I were on a campus today, I would prefer to be told I was taking a furlough, not a pay cut.

For continued coverage of the effects of the economic downturn on higher ed, go to Ray Schroeder's blog: Recession Realities in Higher Education.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Social Media for College Recruiting

As educators at universities adopt social media technologies, so do the marketing departments at the same institutions. Well beyond the Facebook stage, and even sailing past Twitter's tweets, marketing has begun to develop whole campaigns based on social media. Campus Technology features a story on Texas A&M's strategy, which includes an innovative microsite with videos from students and alums. As the marketing director explains, the campaign is largely built around the now-familiar technologies accessed with YouTube and iTunes. In short, the same technologies that college student prospects use daily for the other parts of their lives.

The case study published by Campus Technology is a good read. It introduces several new terms that every campus will be learning in the next year as competition in college recruiting heats up.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Tech Note: Resource from Boston College

A resource at Boston College serves several readerships:

inTASC (Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative) presents research and readings on the topics embedded in the research center's title. One arm of the organization is the JTLA, or Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment. That's an online journal that is peer-reviewed. The partner for the journal is CSTEEP (Center for Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy), housed in the College's Lynch School of Education.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Meta-Analysis of Online Learning Studies from Dept of Ed

Conclusions of the well-established archive of research into online education residing at the No Significant Difference Phenomenon web site are confirmed in 2009 by a meta-analysis published by the U.S. Department of Education. This most recent report is the Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies [PDF] . The investigation was conducted by SRI International.

Drawing from more than 1,000 empirical studies, the researchers identified 51 effects for meta-analysis. The broad conclusion is that students in "online learning conditions" performed better than students in F2F settings. The investigation focused on web-based online learning and those studies with direct measures of student learning (not indirect measures such as surveys or studies of perception of learning).

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

HERI's web site and blog: Always worth checking

Checking HERI's web site (Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA) is always a good idea but at present has two compelling reasons to take the time:

1 - Link to the HERI blog (or go straight there with this link) for presentation slides from the June 2009 AIR conference. Topics from HERI were outcomes for intro science and math courses, underrepresented students, first-year experience, and Habirs of Mind study (more first-year experience).

2 - Look at the HERI web site's list of Upcoming Conferences (bottom-left of the web page). You'll still have to make your own visit to the sponsor's web site for more information about each conference, but the HERI list is handy for scanning more than half-dozen events scheduled for Fall 2009.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

APA-6: A New Edition of the Style Manual

It doesn't happen often, but when a style manual revises, there's a thud of tossed books heard round the world.

This week the revision comes for the APA Publication Manual. The 6th edition has been launched, along with a new companion piece, the Concise Rules of APA Style.

For a chapter-by-chapter outline of what's new in the 6th edition, go to http://www.apastyle.org/manual/whats-new.aspx

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.

Tech Note: Mobile Apps for Higher Ed

As higher education institutions go global... and mobile... it's interesting to see the companies behind the apps. MobilEdu is an arm of Terriblyclever Design which is an off-shoot from Stanford. The company was launched by students and now extends its products and services to other universities.

As the MobilEdu site indicates, clients include Duke, UC San Diego, Medical College of Georgia, Stanford, and Texas A&M.

The mobile apps range from campus maps to course lists to videos. Creation of apps has exploded with the iPhone and developers are, of course, working across smartphone boundaries. It will be interesting to see how the field grows in the next few years. Using Terriblyclever as example: the company has grown its client list very quickly as its first product (iStanford) launched in October 2008.

The branding of an app for a university or college is easy today, compared with how campuses struggled with web branding. With considerable marketing wisdom developed since the 1990s, administrators are more open to the use of mobile devices to support students and also to market the institution. The closest comparison to app development in higher ed may be the adoption of or contribution to iTunes University. Some institutions took to iTunes with energy and enthusiasm; others began multi-year legal analyses of the implications of contracting with the web site. Today, the debate would be very different. Or at least some different.

© 2008 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as legal or professional advice. Bold is the co-author of Reflections: Preparing for your Practicum or Internship, geared to college interns in the child, education, and family fields. She is a consultant and speaker on assessment, distance learning, and technology.