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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.