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KSC Faculty at Institute on Global Learning This summer, a team of Keene State faculty members from all three academic schools will participate in "Shared Futures: General Education for a Global Century," an institute sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities to help faculty integrate global perspectives across the curriculum. The institute will be held in Ellicott City, Md., from July 31 to August 5, and will draw faculty from 32 colleges and universities. During the fall 2011 semester, the core Keene State team will draw in faculty and staff from across campus to implement the goals and strategies developed at the institute. By building a network of educators dedicated to this integrative work, Shared Futures facilitates curricular change and faculty development on campuses nationwide. Through an online social network, the initiative hopes to create new connections between educators and new opportunities for partnership and learning. Keene State faculty members attending the institute include professors Charles Weed (political science), Margaret Henning (health sciences), Patricia Pedroza (women's and gender studies), and Rich Blatchly (chemistry). For more information, contact Prof. Weed at cweed@keene.edu or visit the Shared Futures page.

from news and events

There are several widely-accepted rubrics (Quality Matters, the ION one in Illinois, etc.), but in my opinion, they focus on course design, not on teaching the course. When I was at Black Hawk College, we created a Best Practices for Exemplary Online Teaching set of standards based on the Chickering and Gamson's "7 Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education" meta-analysis. Individual best practices for online teaching were pulled from the literature and listed as possibilities under each of the 7 principles, and an 8th was added with some of the course design elements not already mentioned in the first 7. In other words, we created a local document that could assist faculty in doing self-assessment, peer evaluations of each other's courses, and potentially institutional review of online courses. However, our instrument was not used for institutional assessment because it was not approved as part of the faculty [union] contract. It is important for a document like this to be shared with the faculty ahead of time so that they know how their courses are going to be evaluated. I also think it is helpful to have several people evaluate various aspects of online courses, such as someone who is an expert in online education who can evaluate the learning experiences and course design elements of the course, someone from the faculty member's department who can evaluate the quality and accuracy of the course content, as well as the administrator whose job it is to evaluate teaching. If the institution uses a type of rubric or assessment document when evaluating face-to-face teaching, it needs to be vetted by online experts to determine if it emphasizes appropriate, comparable variables in the online environment. For example, if activities to promote student engagement is on that form...what does that look like online? Not all administrators or faculty who have not taught online would know what to look for as indicators of student engagement.

This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

This will be a great resource as we help faculty/students put more content online. "This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

New Media Institute - Personal Public Service Announcement Project In this podcast, Erin Edgerton, CDC, and Scott Shamp, New Media Institute, University of Georgia, discuss new media and the personal public service announcement project. Created: 5/15/2009 by National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM), Division of eHealth Marketing (DeHM). Date Released: 2/10/2010. Series Name: Health Marketing and Interactive Media.

To experience the world of high quality reporting from North Korea, meditations on the state of journalism, and a wide range of other stories, direct your browser to the Global Journalist website. Originally created for the International Press Institute in 1995, the publication moved to the Missouri School of Journalism in 1999. Today, journalism students work with staff members to produce content for the site and its accompanying radio show, which is broadcast on KBIA, central Missouri's NPR affiliate. With funding provided in part by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, the people at the Global Journalist provide users with current and archived radio shows on the homepage. After listening to a few recent stories, interested parties may wish to click on the Free Press Watch section. Here they can use the interactive map to learn about various transgressions committed against members of the press around the world. Also, users shouldn't miss the Blogs area, which contains links to high-quality news blogs from "Persian Letters" (billed as "a window into Iranian politics and society") to the Guardian's "Newsblog

Something similar is happening today in academia. Just like Augustine marveled, in the year 400, at the sight of Ambrose reading in silence, many members of academia marvel (or react with rejection) at the rapid changes in the production and dissemination of scholarly work and interaction between academics and those "outside" academic institutions. Thousands of scholars and higher education institutions are participating in social media (such as Twitter), as an important aspect of their research and teaching work.

155 art works by 125 artists in a gallery. 

Here are some resources for outcomes. I have written some guides, which are attached, along with an editable .docx you may use at your institution for training. I have attempted to break down outcomes design, building, and reporting through a 4-Step process and have provided a short video going through the steps

The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.

The Oral History in the Digital Age website connects interested persons and organizations to a range of resources related to crafting a meaningful and dynamic oral history project. Crafted by people at Michigan State University with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the site contains critical essays, How-To guides, and an elaborate wiki. The Getting Started area is a good place to begin, as it features helpful playlists about oral history projects. The Essays tab leads to another highly informative section of the site. The short pieces in this section are divided into three topics: Collecting, Curating, and Disseminating. The individual essays include "Enhancing Discovery: Connecting Users to Y our Oral History Collections Online" and "Oral History and Social Networks: From Promotion to Relationship Building." Finally, the Ask Doug option features expert responses to key questions on oral history projects from noted oral historian Doug Boyd

Article outlining policy recommendation for institutions using student data

The following study, "Using Digital Images in Teaching and Learning," was commissioned by Wesleyan University in collaboration with the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). The study focuses on the pedagogical implications of the widespread use of the digital format. 

Interesting group. Courses cost $450 and are cutting edge social media and technology topics

"Despite Halt in Federal Enforcement, States Move Ahead With Regulations for Online Programs" The federal government may not be able to enforce a rule requiring colleges to be licensed in every state where they are operating, but that hasn't stopped states from forging ahead with new regulations for the myriad institutions that enroll students within their borders but may have no physical campus there.

a one-size-fits-all approach to the provision of portfolios across a range of subject disciplines may not deliver the outcomes an institution desires. http://www.eportfolios.ac.uk/ePET?pid=32 During the course of the project it became clear that the aim of providing a 'one size fits all' e-portfolio was a trifle ambitious Using e-portfolios in legal education http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/research/projects/eportfolios.html

The mission of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy is to promote open scholarly discourse around critical and creative uses of digital technology in teaching, learning, and research. Educational institutions have often embraced instrumentalist conceptions and market-driven implementations of technology that overdetermine its uses in academic environments. Such approaches underestimate the need for critical engagement with the integration of technological tools into pedagogical practice. The JITP will endeavor to counter these trends by recentering questions of pedagogy in our discussions of technology in higher education. The journal will also work to change what counts as scholarship - and how it is presented, disseminated, and reviewed - by allowing contributors to develop their ideas, publish their work, and engage their readers using multiple formats. We are committed first and foremost to teaching and learning, and intend that the journal itself - both in process and in product - provide opportunities to reveal, reflect on, and revise academic publication and classroom practice.

Studying humankind can give us great insight into the complexities of society and culture. However, any research involving human subjects comes with a thorny set of ethical considerations. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Ethics Center has curated this collection of online resources related to ethical dilemmas and situations in anthropology. The materials are divided into four areas: Case Studies, About, Additional Teaching Resources, and Codes of Ethics. The Case Studies area is quite well-developed, containing 20 rigorously vetted case studies from SUNY-Buffalo, the Society for Economic Botany, and the Smithsonian Institution. For those just entering the field, the Codes of Ethics area might be quite useful. It offers up professional codes from organizations like the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Museums, and the American Folklore Society

"Retrieving legacy files As the old dropbox knew no separation of files by assignment (one of its major limitations), it was not possible to move these files into assignments during the upgrade, and there is no storage area facility available into which they could have been moved, so they are not directly accessible within the application after an upgrade or in courses restored from earlier versions. The old dropbox code used Perl, which has been completely removed from the web application in release 9, so the dropbox cannot be accessed anymore to retrieve the legacy files. A rudimentary Java-based interface is being provided to enable each user individually to download any legacy files they may wish to retrieve. These files can then be submitted in newly created assignments as desired or stored in one's Virtual Hard Drive inside the Blackboard Content System, if that is licensed by the institution and enabled by the system administrator. Unfortunately this interface is not exposed via any link in the application. System administrators or helpdesk staff can however make available such a link to their users, either assisting them with file retrieval on an individual basis or by publishing the download link to their users, e.g. in a system announcement. Community Engagement license holders may also wish to add an HTML portal module with this link, thus simplifying the download process, or add it as external link to the tool panel (in the portal menu column). The location of this interface (relative to your server root) is: /webapps/blackboard/execute/ddb It is important to note that this is not a file system location. You actually have to access the URL via a web browser! Sample HTML for a portal module named something like "Digital Dropbox Download": Download your digital dropbox files here When a user accesses this link, he will either see a message that no files were found for him, or a list of courses in w

From an LMS provider's standpoint, the more open and flexible the LMS, the more it can be integrated with other programs for robust analysis of student activity and interaction.  According to Lou Pugliese, president of online learning solutions provider  Moodlerooms, that kind of integration is needed. Technologies exist to measure student data and interactions on a large scale, Pugliese says: The focus now is how to effectively collect data and conduct reporting on-demand within the LMS. "Over the past ten years, the LMS has managed to record the most basic of student interactions and activity, but we've barely scratched the surface in enabling universities to analyze data on an institutional level," says Pugliese. "However, new developments in analytical technologies will provide educators with the ability to measure interactions within the ever-popular collaborative tools present in today's LMS environments. Moving beyond simple traffic reporting to more comprehensive online behaviour analysis will be critical to make more effective intervention decisions."  

Education both online and hybridized has benefited greatly from the contributions of the course management system Blackboard (and, more recently, Angel). No matter the subject, teachers have found ways to use the program to make their classes run so much smoother. But maneuvering the interface can seem a little intimidating at first, and that's where advice from several different educational institutions comes in handy! Beyond the basics, they illustrate some of the best streamlining tips and tricks that Blackboard has to offer. However, please keep in mind that such an ever-changing technology may render many of these tidbits obsolete - or only viable in certain versions. Should any of the ideas presented here prove incompatible, contact the school in question's tech support/computer services center for more personalized instruction.