01 August 2010

Blog Break to Labor Day

It's time to take a late-summer break while campuses wind down... and then wind back up. Blog will be back after Labor Day. ~ Mary Bold

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

29 July 2010

Tech note: Apps for tiny devices

The actual apps are so varied that it's hard to take in the whole and plan use in higher ed. But there's no doubt that Apple's app library is being accessed by faculty (K-12, too) for either assignments or tools. The key word is library--Apple's apps are broadly organized and we'll soon see a convergence: everything we learned in building learning object repositories and everything we are now learning about cross-platform applications. Emphasis is on apps that fit on tiny devices.

For a broad view, visit Apple's web page on education apps. Top of page has links by subject; below that are links by function.


© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

28 July 2010

Mapping and other Presentation Methods

What's on the radar of Mapping Tools in Overview: Visual Literacy provides that in a radar screen with hyperlinks to products (mix of commercial and open source). The tools are described briefly in mouse-over tags. The radar presentation is clever, which is to be expected from Visual-Literacy.org, the folks who also remind us of the range of possibilities in presenting information. That is best represented by the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Don't expect to leave that webpage in a hurry.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

27 July 2010

From the UK: Delivering Student Workshops

Besides having won awards, LearnHigher's Resources for Tutors Delivering Student Workshops is just plain fun. It's a set of video resources for anyone planning to teach nearly anyone. Geared for tutors and teachers in higher ed, there's much that can be translated for community and K-12 education.

Topics include Report Writing, Note Taking, Time Management, Academic Writing. A resource on Assessment is a little different from the larger set. Coming soon: Doing Research and more.

Each resource presents guides, tips, activities, FAQs, and a couple of experts on video. A slide for online resources suggests that materials can be updated in the future, with or without renewing the video segments. The producers are from LearnHigher Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), which partners 16 UK universities.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

22 July 2010

Tech Note: CDW-G's Latest Survey

CDW-G has published its third annual report on campus technology, highlighting comparisons between faculty, student, and IT opinions as to what's needed to support higher ed learning. The long title is 21st-Century Campus Report: Campus 2.0 but the key findings are neatly presented. The one combination of results that caught my eye: e-readers are coming to campus.

2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

21 July 2010

External Evaluators - Link to Germuth blog

Amy Germuth's blog very recently served up a think piece on the benefits of using an external evaluator (see Germuth's entry of July 16, 2010). It would be fun to ask Dr. Germuth about the downsides of hiring someone external even though she is an evaluation consultant and thus very likely in that role much of the time. Her blog is insightful—I especially like the mention of identifying unintended outcomes.

Germuth's blog, Evalthoughts, goes back several years. The archives make for good leisure reading for an evaluator.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

20 July 2010

Indicator for Colleges: Healthy Employment in the State

Placing higher ed economics in the context of (general population) employment projections relies on confidence in the statistics. In light of the economic downturn, projections are challenging but its reasonable to connect a college's future to its state's employment figures. The Chronicle's recent story on Financial Relief for colleges based its context on numbers from Moody's Economy.com. The story's power comes from an interactive map that permits you to look at individual years to 2014. The most startling of the projections is how many states will enjoy healthy employment rates before 2012: just three (Texas, North Dakota, Alaska).

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

15 July 2010

Tech Note: Blackboard's new Collaborate tool

Spending no time comparing the product names Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate, this blog entry is about the recent announcement of Blackboard's purchase of Elluminate and Wimba, arguably the most affordable of the webconferencing platforms used in education. Note: I don't receive any compensation from the companies mentioned here.

Blackboard has purchased other companies before and will surely buy more, in future. To buy two of the same type, at the same time, draws special attention, especially from the companies' current clients. Forum discussion at LearnCentral is example. LearnCentral is the virtual community of Elluminute users. Some of those users are at institutions that subscribe to Elluminate; others come to the space as individual customers of vRooms, the free 3-person meeting spaces; still others are paying customers of vOffice, which offers meeting spaces for 10+ people at a couple of hundred bucks per year.

It's the holders of free accounts speaking up first. They wonder how long it will take Bb to shut down their access to the Elluminate tools as Collaborate takes shape, this worry emerging amid corporate assurances of "no immediate changes." Suspicion about future access increases as LearnCentral reps in the forum respond to questions with the ominous words, "hopefully" and "I am hopeful." The promise of plenty of advance notice of future changes doesn't add to anyone's sense of security.

Blackboard's expansion of products has been steady over the past decade. Adding web-conference capability was an expected next step. And the success of Elluminate and Wimba in creating synchronous online classrooms makes Bb's interest in them understandable.

Expected and understandable pretty much sums up the situation. What comes next? I'd guess that dimdim and similar platforms will inherit some of the "free" users of Elluminate. And Adobe Connect Now's free 3-user space may be adopted by a lot more people.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

14 July 2010

ASCD Lexicon of Learning

The ASCD web site offers a Lexicon of Learning, subtitled Online Dictionary and described with "What Educators Mean When They Say..." Organized into "chapters" of starting letters, the Lexicon includes common K-12 terminology but also assessment lingo.

ASCD is the membership organization of educators that provides professional development though its 60 affiliates (worldwide) and its online courses. Membership is 170,000.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

13 July 2010

Rubric Grading: 2010 Awards

A top award for 2010 from the Sloan-C organization has high value for assessment, especially when compared to the 2010 CHEA award. Sloan-C recognized Metropolitan State University (MN) for Automatic gradesheets: A Holy Grail for simultaneously improving faculty and student satisfaction. Using familiar tools of Word and Excel, the institution has set about systematically converting grading to "automatic" rubrics to speed grading and reduce students' wait for feedback. Besides utilizing a rubric structure, the gradesheets provide for efficient entry of a professor's most common remarks. The gradesheets are customizable, besides.

With standardization of rubrics and scoring styles, this type of support by an institution is win-win-win for student learning, professor grading, and institutional effectiveness. When the rubric is part of an LMS, ease of use can include point-and-click (using a mouse click to select a cell in a rubric) and conversion of rubric scoring to the LMS gradebook. Embedded rubrics reduce the number of clicks (and file transfers) needed to review student papers. I like BrainHoney's LMS structure for grading. Very similar: eportfolio software such as TaskStream that provides automated rubrics as well as "on the fly" mark-up and/or track-changes to student works without having to download the file.

As previously described in this blog, CHEA's 2010 award went to Capella University for its demonstration of outcomes assessment. The Capella grading system utilizes embedded and automated rubrics that not only speed up grading but also populate the gradebook automatically and report on outcomes across multiple sections of a course and even across courses for program outcomes.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

08 July 2010

Tech Note for MAC

If you use a MAC, you already know Preview, Apple's default app for viewing PDF files. For handling PDFs in more sophisticated fashion, you can turn to Yep. That's right. Only MAC users would have software called Yep.

Actually, the newer version of the document manager is Yep 2. The company also produces Fresh and Deep and Leap. The software permits you to add tags, organize, and retrieve works easily. Yep handles only PDFs so full description of each app should be reviewed. These are not free apps and also not open source, but the tone and sense of community on the Ironic Software web site make you feel like you joined a club.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

07 July 2010

Dan Roam: Visual Thinking

Visual thinking is a Tufte-like (see yesterday's post for Tufte items) approach to communicating ideas. Dan Roam of Digital Roam presents his method for and on "the back of the napkin" both in a blog and a seminar. This particular link to the blog is from March 2010, which embeds a short video clip of Roam speaking on the 32,000-year history of humans and their visual thinking.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

06 July 2010

Revisiting Tufte

Edward Tufte's web site deserves a re-visit every now and then. I have highlighted two pages here but the entire site is always a rewarding tour. All Tufte books are worth putting on your bookshelf; the best way to collect them is at Tufte's one-day course in Presenting Data and Information. The books are bundled into the cost of the seminar. (I've been twice. Years afterward, I still carry sharp memories of certain parts of Tufte's presentation.)

Tufte gets a gallery. It's in Manhattan. See photos on this web page for ET Modern.

Tufte doesn't get a royalty for a special element in the new Excel—but the web page on sparklines makes for interesting reading.

If you have not yet used sparklines in representing data in a report, make it your 2010 new technique. (You don't have to have the new Excel to create sparklines. Lots of free generators on the web, including several links from Tufte's web site.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

01 July 2010

Tech Note: Free LMS

Large scale deployment? I don't know. But EDU 2.0 is a fine, free LMS for educators. My favorite use: a practice LMS for graduate students learning to teach online.

Technically, EDU 2.0 is a freemium service, meaning that the base part is free and more advanced features (premium) can be added for a fee.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

30 June 2010

Short, Basic, but Usable: On Logic Models

It's basic but basic is good. The evaluation firm Usable Knowledge, which serves the nonprofit world, maintains its 2006 narrated slideshow called Logic Model Tutorial on its web site.

At just under 15 minutes, the tutorial makes the lesson easy to make the time for. The main web site is actually a blog, with entries as recent as Spring 2010.


© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

28 June 2010

AEA Blog: Daily in 2010

To my knowledge, no calendar publisher has created a desk pad for An Eval Tip a Day for 2010. But AEA did. Online.

AEA365A Tip-a-Day by and for Evaluators is a daily blog that's made it through the halfway point for 2010. As you might guess from the title, the blog is written by a large number of people. Contributions come from literally around the world although you'll pick up on some regular posts by AEA staff, as well.

Go to the Archive to scan the titles. That's how I found Canadian social researcher Linda Lee's essay on use of visual methods in evaluation. (See the June 17 entry on the blog site.) Of course, you can also simply keep up with AEA365. Every day.

The blog is published by the American Evaluation Association (AEA).


© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

24 June 2010

Tech Note: Support for College Readiness and Completion

Proposals forms are not available yet, but EDUCAUSE, the Gates Foundation, and a couple of other partners promise to support "islands of innovation" in the goal to utilize technology for college success—in terms of college readiness and college completion. That's the goal of the Next Gen Learning Challenges. Projects that demonstrate promise will then be "scaled," and presumably help to address the core challenge: producing more college graduates to meet the next decade's workforce needs.

As anyone connected to higher ed today will testify, the current budget cuts on campuses both public and private would suggest that larger student bodies are not likely. The planners behind Next Gen see technology as the answer, with four challenges for focus: open core courseware, web 2.0 engagement, blended learning, and learning analytics.

What caught my eye in the background materials: The League for Innovation in the Community Colleges is a partner. That bodes well for the project. Belle Wheelan, president of SACS, serves on the Advisory Panel. And a representative from Creative Commons, Joi Ito, also serves. There are plenty more participants, of course. But I liked seeing these especially.


© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

23 June 2010

Higher Ed Learning at Wallenberg Hall

Stanford University's research into higher ed teaching and learning is best known as Wallenberg Hall. At least, that's the physical house for Advanced Resource Classrooms. Having visited a few of those rooms, I will cheerfully admit that I purchased 6 chairs (an award-winning Steelcase design) for grad students in copying a Stanford classroom set-up.

The driving force behind the physical structure is the H-STAR Institute for interdisciplinary research and, more specifically, SCIL. That stands for Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning. For a quick overview of the projects, use the Research Programs link at the Wallenberg site.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

22 June 2010

AFT Higher Education: What Should Count?

Light on comments (by readers), but wide in scope, the website What Should Count? covers many topics on higher ed accountability. Short reports and essays include "news" from HE institutions and, of special interest, conferences. The publisher is "AFT Higher Education," of the American Federation of Teachers.

The portion of the site I found most valuable: Accountability Clearinghouse (link is on the horizontal green menu bar beneath the masthead). There, you'll find helpful analyses of issues and some comparisons of the 6 regional accrediting agencies. For example, how do the big 6 differ on expectations for contingent faculty? The trail is worth the read.

But the trail deserves a warning. The website uses roll-over-and-pop-up menus, the kind that are sometimes hard to control. I recommend keeping fingers at the ready to right-click and Open in New Window. Then, you can stay on a topic for full exploration without having to re-enter the menu sequence.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

17 June 2010

Tech Note: Entering and Exiting Clouds

Cloud computing isn't news anymore. And that's the cue to institutionalize it (meaning, in this case, embed it in the HE institution).

EDUCAUSE suggests that Shaping the Higher Education Cloud means dealing with what can be left to "consumer choice," what can be outsourced, and what can reside on the campus. That leads to a couple of new terms: premises-based and cloud-based, to refer to the services that range from applications (Word, Excel, and more exotic scientific programs) to repositories (libaries, databases, textbooks, research collaboration spaces).

The EDUCAUSE white paper reports on the thinking by 50 IT leaders in early 2010. Standardization, cost, flexibility—all are addressed. A section on Actions (beginning page 17) points out that some schools have already moved student email to commercial clouds. But that maybe some functions (enrollment or registration) deserve more caution.

There's likely something to be learned from the last decade's increasing reliance on LMS services. Although an LMS isn't what most people first think of when dreaming about the potential of clouds, it is actually already a good case for comparison. Institutions made premise versus outsourced decisions about LMSs and then realized how dependent they were on the source, wherever it was. The EDUCAUSE paper doesn't make the comparison to LMSs but does raise the need for exit plans. At least now, clouds offer elasticity (expand and contract as needed). That doesn't mean that in the future a commercial cloud will tolerate the risk of less business. So, reliance on any system becomes the issue.

The IT thinking behind the EDUCAUSE paper concludes with 13 recommendations (beginning page 24) that are not so technical that they exclude the lay reader. In fact, administrators and faculty should want to help with the shaping, starting now.

On the more anecdotal level, here's a brief report on how an iPad acts around Live Office's SkyDrive. Excel and OneNote files created in the Microsoft cloud (from a laptop) were stored in the "SkyDrive," which is the user's personal 25-gigabyte file cabinet. Accessing the office.live.com site from the iPad is easy, using the same username and password as on the computer. The account shows the files. The Excel file opens as a read-only display. About the only functionality is the iPad's copy/paste option. A set of cells in Excel copies nicely to a Notes page. Alas, the OneNote files do not open at all on the iPad. That's going to take some sleuthing.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

16 June 2010

AALHE: new organization, new web site

The new web site of the new assessment organization, AALHE, is beginning to populate. AALHE stands for Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education. With the focus clearly stated, the organization promises to lean heavily on its "largely virtual design" to reach its audience. That said, much of the web site content will be open to "members and non-members alike."

Membership (not yet executable online) is $120 per individual, or $105 per user if at least 3 from an institution enroll. Membership will provide a discount (amount not yet announced) at the AALHE first annual conference in June 2011.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

15 June 2010

Google Calendar: Keeping up with Ed Tech

Ed Tech Events, a google calendar, is organized by Clark Shah-Nelson to serve as a guide to the many conferences on educational technology. Shah-Nelson is the Coordinator of Online Education at SUNY-Delhi.

The calendar entries link to pop-up notes with factoids and (typically) URLs for more information. For some, you will need to click twice, through a More Info link and then to a web site.

The google calendar opens nicely on the iPhone and iPad, with full hyperlinking function from the conference entries.

Thanks to the short URL [http://ow.ly/YB90], the calendar can be quickly accessed by plain old typing.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

10 June 2010

Tech Note: Web Apps for Office

You just may need to add one more user name to your roster. It's to take a drive through Microsoft's sky. Productivity just inched up a notch.

If you have enjoyed the development over the years of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, you are likely to cheer loudly at the Microsoft offering that brings on Excel, OneNote, Word, and Powerpoint. The major cheer: you won't have to watch them develop. They're already running smoothly.

I'll spend the next few weeks reviewing the sub-parts (on Thursdays) as I explore them. My immediate purpose is to create items on a laptop and access them on iPad and iPhone.

Here are the beginning points, not all of them wonderful:

1 - Microsoft has placed lite versions of its Office applications on the web. They are literally "web apps," meaning that users do not have to have Office on their hard drives. Users can access the web apps via a browser. (I usually call this type of program RIA, rich Internet application.) Not wonderful: file-opening and saving must be through the SkyDrive and not directly with the hard drive.

2 - Users can create (from scratch) a Word doc, an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation, and a OneNote entry. At present, they can also share works in Excel and OneNote--meaning, share them with other users for co-writing. Not wonderful: sharing is not yet available in Word and PowerPoint.

3 - These web apps are free. Not wonderful: you must learn more names. Microsoft Live is located at office.live, and requires a Windows Live ID. I'm sorry, but I'm getting old.

To underscore the major finding: the web apps work very smoothly. Development will center on addition of features, not on improvement of usability. And that will make me open a new browser window, rather than just follow my old path from gmail to Documents.

Disclosure statement: I have not received any compensation for mentioning this service. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

09 June 2010

ePortfolio via Wiki and Blog

EPAC* is a free site devoted to the study of ePortfolios. Located at pbwiki, EPAC includes discussions and announcements by and about leading practitioners of portfolio technology. The organization also posts to a blog, EPAC Community of Practice.

EPAC also maintains a listserv, twitter feed, LinkedIn group, chats, webcasts.

*EPAC = Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication, a community of practice since 2002.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

08 June 2010

ePortfolio Conference: AAEEBL in July

Formed in 2009, AAEEBL* has acted quickly to establish itself as the leading source of eportfolio knowledge and support. The global orgnization has 90 member institutions (the great majority in the U.S.) and an annual conference. Not bad for a history of one year.

The upcoming conference in Boston (July 19-22, 2010) is actually a joint conference with the well established Campus Technology annual event (nee Syllabus) now in its 17th year. Having both in close quarters, and sharing an exhibit hall, is one of the better examples of in-person event planning in this decade.

Cost of this conference, similar to most technology gatherings, is painful. Early bird discounting offers a bit of relief, ending June 18.

*AAEEBL = The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning: The professional association for the world ePortfolio community

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

18 May 2010

Semester Break

The blog is on break. Will return with summer school.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

13 May 2010

Tech Note: Overwork in Overdrive

Air cards made travel easier; portable and personal hotspots now make travel with office peers/equipment easier. The purpose of both is to access the Internet via personal wireless accounts. Typically purchased from a cell phone provider, an air card is either card or USB stick for use in a laptop computer. Some computers and other devices (like the iPad) come with an air card built in ready to turn on for a month or a two-year contract.

A portable hotspot works the same way but it's a small network for you and nearby friends. The nearby element is important; Sprint's version, the Overdrive, has a reach of 150 feet for up to 5 devices at a time.

I have used both types of access and prefer the Sprint Overdrive. My cost went from $40 to $60/month but convenience and speed soared. The Overdrive connects to the web at 3G and 4G speeds. Any web device can join the network with the password you provide; I have confirmed connection with several laptops, iPhones, and a wireless printer. These pieces, along with a converter for the car, support the mobile office better than ever before.

Service coverage should be checked for any product. With Sprint service, I have found 3G speed along Interstate highways, and 4G speed at a local dog park. Portability of work can lead to overwork, of course.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

12 May 2010

Not Free Summer Conferences: On Ground Offerings

It is increasingly difficult to find an up-to-date list of assessment conferences. This list for Summer is current (just in time for early bird registrations, in some cases) but surely not complete. I'm starting earlier on a fall list!

Association for Institutional Research (AIR)
Charting our Future in Higher Education
Chicago, IL, May 29 - June 2, 2010
http://forum.airweb.org/

Retention 2010
International Conference on Student Success
Educational Policy Institute
Chicago, Illinois, June 9-11, 2010
http://educationalpolicy.org/events/R10/default.htm

New England Educational Assessment Network (NEEAN)
Summer Institute on Assessment
Keene State College, NH, June 10 - 11, 2010
http://www.neean.org/

Taking the Next Step: Shared Ownership of Assessment & Retention in Higher Education
International Assessment & Retention Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana, June 10 - 13, 2009
http://www.assessconf.net/

UT Austin Assessment Institute 2010
Measure better. Measure smarter. Measure up.
Austin, TX, June 17 - 18, 2010
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/diia/ai/

The 23nd International Conference on The First-Year Experience
Maui, Hawaii, June 7-10, 2010
http://sc.edu/fye/ifye/

SACS 2010 Institute on Quality Enhancement and Accreditation
Tampa, FL, July 25-28, 2010
http://www.sacscoc.org/institute.asp

The International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA)
36th Annual IAEA Conference: Assessment for the Future Generations
Bangkok, Thailand, August 22-27, 2010
http://www.iaea2010.com/index.php

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

11 May 2010

Free Summer Conferences: The Virtual Kind

Free conferences for higher ed typically are sponsored by commercial interests. That doesn't make them bad. What works for both the commercial interest and the attendee is that most are virtual today. Low investment on both sides but, again, that doesn't make them bad.

Campus Technology coordinates Webcasts and Webinars with larger vendors and the month of May still has some opportunities. The plus for these sponsored events is that they almost always feature academics and managers from universities and colleges (along with the vendors). Sign up is free. Attendance is free. And if you don't already receive Campus Technology magazine (choice of print or electronic), take the time to sign up for that, too.

One of the Campus Technology offerings is for moodlerooms. That company's webinar sign-up page is also worth visiting. Several summer dates are announced and the focus in 2010 is the new moodle platform, joule. The moodleroom community page lists them.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

06 May 2010

Tech Note: Bucknell's Outstanding Tour & Map

Every campus map should aspire to the high level of engagement produced by Bucknell University's Virtual Tour. An interactive map highlights campus locations according to your selected term: inquisitive, creative, conscientious, sleepy. (And more than 50 other descriptors.)

You have to be willing to click a bit to understand how the site works. Don't hesitate to click your mouse on the plus sign (+), the markers on the map, the "Back To The Map" link, and virtually every image that crosses the screen.

Support for beginning: on the main page, click "Begin Your Tour." On the next screen, click on the plus sign in the middle of the page. And just keep clicking.

Besides modeling outstanding web site design, Bucknell manages to communicate a simple message: we like our school and here's why.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

05 May 2010

Budget Cuts Reported in a Blog

The Chronicle's blog Campus Cuts presents short news blurbs about budget-related changes in higher ed institutions. Most are in the U.S.

All of these budget reports are in newspapers and web sites, along with other news of the economic downturn. The real story is that cuts have become so routine that a blog is dedicated to them.

To access Campus Cuts from the Chronicle's home page, scroll down to the list of blogs on the left side of the screen. Campus Cuts is in the list.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

04 May 2010

UNR: Big Picture Chart of Assessment Plans & Reports

U of Nevada-Reno displays an impressive "big picture" chart of assessment plans and reports. Each program's reports are identified as submitted (S) or published (P) for the years 2004 - 2009.

Look for the underscored Ps for hyperlinks to the summary reports of measures of SLOs. For a fuller picture, also click on the name of the program. You'll find the assessment plan with SLOs.

Programs from all colleges are listed. At the bottom of the chart, Student Affairs Programs appear (with assessment activity equal to the colleges). A very new section lists 11 courses in the Core Curriculum of the institution. Among those, 2 reports have been published in 2009.

The web page is the work of the UNR's Office of University Assessment.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

29 April 2010

Tech Note: InstantConference

My recent good find for free phone conferencing: InstantConference. The free version supports call-in by up to 150 participants who are responsible for their own cost of long-distance service or cell minutes. Moderator privileges can be extended to more than one person. Session recording is free. A "permanent" phone number is assigned upon enrollment.

Paid versions of the system include toll-free calling, so that joining the conference doesn't cost the caller anything.

The free version produced (for me) clear voices for conferences of 3 and 5 people. I especially liked the optional Moderator panel that I logged onto online (while using my phone to participate in the call). Even for free, the system provides good muting controls, which are important for large groups.

To enhance a meeting, I also use a virtual space online (vOffice, which I pay for) so that files or desktop can be displayed for the group. While I like the VoIP that comes with vOffice (and other web conference platforms), group use continues to pose problems such as feedback and static. A lot of VoIP problems can be solved by every user plugging in a headset; but compliance is difficult. Pairing a web display with phone conferencing is a good alternative.

Disclosure statement: I have no relationship with any product or company mentioned here and I have not received any compensation or free product for mentioning them. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

28 April 2010

ePortfolio: Batson's Update

It's always interesting to read Batson on portfolio. The most recent treatment is ePortfolios, Finally! and it appears in Trent Batson's regular spot in Campus Technology magazine. In this article, the background and uses of eportfolios are updated. Among the stats: there's eportfolio activity at almost half of the U.S. higher ed institutions. Among the critique: learning outcomes and LMSs (learning management systems).

Two extra features accompany the Batson article. First, as usual, commenters add details from their own campuses and we always learn from that. Second, Batson offers a new support that he promises to maintain and keep current: a web site called EPORTFOLIO SOURCE.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

27 April 2010

Inside Higher Ed: Blogs

Inside Higher Ed publishes multiple blogs from perspectives of dean, librarian, provost, and a lot more. A search engine is embedded with the option to filter results by blog title. Look for the Keyword Search box and pull-down menus near the top of the page.

A bonus of the search tool is that results include "Matching Jobs," which are listed to the right of the main results.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

22 April 2010

Tech Note: New Home for ProfHacker

ProfHacker has joined The Chronicle of Higher Education in the form of a blog. Previously, ProfHacker was a web site (much like the older and more established lifehacker) that produced news and tips for education-bound technology.

In the web site's short history (less than a year, I think), dedicated writers and readers set some records for this specialized area of blogging. The principals promise the content and tone will remain the same under the new sponsorship of the Chronicle. All that changes is the setting. Even the URL stays the same... but it instantly redirects to the Chronicle's blog page.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

21 April 2010

ACCJC News beyond WASC boundaries

The ACCJC News is a quarterly publication of WASC's Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. Obviously, the focus is on institutions in the western states but the Spring 2010 issue has national appeal, as well. The lead article is on higher ed's national agenda with interpretation of the goals for community colleges by 2020.

A shorter article addresses "World Wide Changes," global influences on U.S. accreditation.

The web site (the above link) links to the newsletter archive of PDF files.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

20 April 2010

Catching Scriven This Week

Rogers and Davidson's Genuine Evaluation blog "about real, genuine, authentic, practical evaluation" is featuring Michael Scriven this week. He will contribute to the web site and the resident bloggers will respond to and extend his message.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

15 April 2010

Tech Note: Alt-Tabbing Alternatives

"Alt-tab" is the keyboard shortcut that permits shifting from one window to another. Accessing multiple windows permits use of multiple programs at the same time, trimming time that would otherwise be spent opening and closing applications and files. Adding screen real estate (in the form of a 2nd or 3rd computer monitor) is the expensive alternative to Alt-tabbing but doesn't necessarily make you more productive, according to a blog review of the research. But the conventional wisdom is that an extra monitor is the single most effective way to improve computer work conditions (not claiming a percentage gain in productivity). A common example of that improvement is the dedication of one screen to your email inbox.

Email is the famous interrupter and so ignoring it (closing the program entirely) is one answer for controlling its impact on work time. But as email is increasingly used as an alert system, both officially and unofficially, the dedication of a monitor is the more pragmatic choice. With a 2nd monitor in place, you can keep an eye on incoming messages but also position the monitor off to the side.

On campuses today, the appropriate video card is typically in place today for an extra monitor.
An alternative configuration is one monitor and one projector.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

14 April 2010

Grades as Assessment Data

Grades remain a debatable item as higher ed assessments of institutional effectiveness. The trend is toward not using grades due to concerns of inconsistency, grade inflation, and lack of alignment with learning outcomes. When an institution or faculty group decides to include grades in assessment data, the usual form is an "embedded assessment" referring to an assignment or single student product that is clearly representative of a learning outcome.

At the University of Virginia a graphic guides in "Using a Rubric to Produce Both Grades and Assessment Data." Authorship is attributed to Jonathan Schnyer, Lois Meyers, and Anne-Marie Durocher of the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies.
A blow-up of the original rubric demonstrates how an instructor's scoring generates areas of strength and weakness for the student group.

While faculty members often resist the term weakness in data reports, the display of relative performance is crucial to a full analysis. At some levels, such as upper division courses within a major, rubric results that pinpoint weaknesses are far more valuable than project grades, which may be high across an entire class of students.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

13 April 2010

Chronicle's Forum Offerings

LISTSERVs are educational but can fill the Inbox quickly. If you like the academic exchange without the emailing, a good resource is the set of Forums at The Chronicle of Higher Education web site.

Academic life is covered in sections like Cafe and Careers, and a quick scan of the number of posts orients you to the major topics. Among the minor areas is a Cafe forum called Tech Talk for Befuddled Academics. I recommend it.

For a sense of the who in the forums, scroll to the bottom of the index page for some current and past statistics. (You can read forum discussions as a guest. If you log in, you'll become one of the statistics.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

08 April 2010

Tech Note: SKYPE

SKYPE for desktop videoconferencing is the most common free supplier for web-based communication. The free offerings are audio calls (computer to computer, including conference calls for multiple users), video calls, and IM (instant messaging).

Those offerings are not new but the reliability and quality of the free services deserve mention as improved in 2009. Having downloaded the SKYPE software every year for the past 3 years (on replacement laptops), I've concluded that the current version is the most user-friendly and also the most reliable regardless of computer OS and equipment.

Add-ons (for a fee) are calls to landlines/cells, voicemail, SMS/text, and call forwarding. I have successfully used the pay-as-you-go account for calling landlines from the computer. Keeping $10 on account protects against not having a phone handy and call recipients cannot tell the source of the call.

For use on campus, ability to download SKYPE may be a barrier although some schools now see SKYPE as the affordable "long distance" service and therefore make it easier to obtain. Audio quality is almost always improved by addition of a headset. SKYPE sells one for under $25; many users have good experience with even cheaper ones.

Disclosure statement: I have no relationship with SXC and I have not received any compensation or free product for mentioning this service. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

07 April 2010

SACS offer of Templates

A recent exchange on the SACS listserv reminds of the set of templates that SACS offers to its member institutions. The Templates for the Compliance Certification number 14, focusing on selected Core Requirements and Comprehensive Standards. The templates range from the very simple to the challenging. Most readers seek examples, of course, and the SACS site provides one of those: an Excel spreadsheet on Reporting Unrestricted Net Assets.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

06 April 2010

Curriculum Mapping Tool at UNF

Curriculum Outcomes Map is a template offered to Departments at U of North Florida. It carries with it an advisory to faculty: be selective and leave some blanks. That means there is not expectation that all courses should address all outcomes. The UNF template does look for distinctions for which courses introduce a learning outcome, which reinforce it, and which demonstrate mastery.

The mapping tool is part of UNF's web site on Assessment, which features a newsletter style approach to support, called Assessment Matters. A recent entry is on rubrics. The newsletter entry explains the basics and also links readers to the VALUE rubrics of AAC&U (previously described in this blog) and the interactive type at Rubistar (designed for K-12 but frequently included in higher ed hyperlinks to rubric resources).

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

16 March 2010

Breaking for Spring Break

I'm taking off some time in honor of spring breaks everywhere. Back in April.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

11 March 2010

Tech Note: Royalty-free Photographs

Each category of photographs on SCX (stock.xchng or Stock Exchange) begins with for-sale items but then is followed by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of royalty-free photographs. The entries are shared by photographers, most offering the "Standard restrictions" clause, which permits wide use of the images.

Typical allowances are use in digital form (web, multimedia, film, video, cell phone), use in print (promotional material, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, cover art for CD and DVD sleeves, business cards, letterhead), and even use in decorations (including public places).

The site provides a search box and a user-friendly interface for previewing and downloading images. Among the royalty-free image sources on the web, this may be the most professional and helpful. Recently purchased by Getty Images, SXC is reporting that it will continue to operate as it has in the past: as a community of photographers and users with emphasis on royalty-free images. The current stats: 350,000 images by 30,000 photographers.

Disclosure statement: I have no relationship with SXC and I have not received any compensation or free product for mentioning this service. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)


© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. Email contact: bold[AT]marybold.com. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.