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Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? Added by the EDUCAUSE Librarian Author(s):Ann H. Taylor and Carol McQuiggan View a PDF of this article © 2008 Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (July-September 2008) Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online By Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan The number of courses offered online grows every year, resulting in an increasing number of higher education faculty entering a virtual classroom for the first time.1 It has been well documented that faculty need training and assistance to make the transition from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to teaching online.2 Faculty professional development related to teaching online varies widely, from suggested readings to mandated training programs. Various combinations of technological and pedagogical skills are needed for faculty to become successful online educators, and lists of recommended competencies abound. Although many institutions have offered online courses for more than a decade and train their faculty to teach online, the research literature reveals that little is known about how best to prepare faculty to teach in an online environment. Designers of faculty development programs typically rely on commonly held assumptions about what faculty need to know-a constant guessing game regarding what topics to cover and what training formats to use. The resulting seminars, workshops, training materials, and other resources are typically hit-or-miss in terms of faculty participation and acceptance. To provide faculty with the proper training and resources for online teaching requires more information to determine

In the late 90's there was a lot of energy around "virtual communities." They were touted as the ultimate web deployment, the key to online commerce and later online education. Early adopters swarmed sites and racked up web hits in the millions. But then there was a deafening silence. Commerce and media sites began closing down their discussion boards. Even busy boards like CNN's were shuttered. Was the online community movement dead? No, it was just transforming itself, settling down and maturing into a space where it had real value and applicability. The bottom line is that online community or online interaction is not the goal. It's one means for helping groups achieve their goals. It is not necessarily about "online community" but what conditions and process are needed to enable communities to use the online environment.

Online Communities and Their Impact on Business. Part One: How online community works This is Part One of the report. To return to the Introduction, click here. Summary Working with online communities has long been touted as a great way for a company to save money in its marketing, support, sales, and even product development. But for most companies, the diversity of communities online, and the challenge of learning how to work with them, is daunting. Most companies don't understand how online communities work, how they make a difference, and how to engage with them. Among the companies that have tried to work with communities online, many have found that they conversation is dominated by extreme enthusiasts rather than average users, and have concluded that online community is a distraction from their real customers. That turns out to be a very dangerous mistake. Rubicon Consulting's web practice team recently conducted a broad survey of US web users to understand better how people in the US use the web, with a special focus on web community and its effect on consumers. Key findings of that survey, and its implications for companies, include:

"July 27, 2010 Ten Factors that Determine Online Student Success at Community Colleges By: Christopher Hill in Distance Learning * * * ShareThis Community colleges are especially prone to problems with student completion of courses and retention of the students to graduation. To assist these institutions in addressing problems of persistence among online students, Robert Knipe, dean of learning technologies at Genesee Community College, undertook a study with area colleagues to learn what factors are most critical in predicting success, with an eye to understanding which factors are in the college's control and which may predict a student at risk for failing to persist. Persistence is a key issue for community colleges because they tend to be driven by FTEs. These institutions are typically open admission, and maintaining a certain level of FTE determines the school's funding for the next year. To better understand online course persistence, Knipe contacted colleagues at area community colleges. "All [were] seeing about a 70 percent on-time completion rate, down from 80 percent," he says. However, most research done at that point on online student persistence focused on programs at the baccalaureate level. So, Knipe constructed a "Top Ten" list based on his research that helps community colleges understand when students are most at risk for not completing an online course."

As online technology rapidly develops, the criteria for evaluating these sources develops as well. Online sources are so new that their status as accurate sources is not fully established; therefore, you should verify online sources before you invest time in browsing the web or assessing the credibility of sources you find there. Once you've determined that online sources can be used, you'll still need to assess their credibility. The following criteria for assessing online sources will help you to determine whether electronic sources are both professional and appropriate. Keep in mind as you review these criteria that many are based on standards used for traditional print sources; others are clearly relevant for electronic sources only.

Building an online learning community to support nurse education 24 March 2009 This article explores developing an online learning community that student nurses can use to support their education Abstract Lee, P. (2009) Building an online learning community to support nurse education. Nursing Times; 105: 11. This article explores the topic of developing an online community for student nurses to use in learning. It examines the different definitions and types of e-learning and outlines the online community's role in healthcare education, together with some of its pitfalls. A comparison is then made to the process of bidding on eBay, to determine possible similarities.

JISC Collections mission is to support UK education and research by delivering affordable, relevant and sustainable online content. Funded by JISC, JISC Collections provides its members with a catalogue of free and subscription-based online resources such as e-journals, e-books, full text databases, digital images, online film, and geospatial data. Core to the service provided by JISC Collections is the quality evaluation of online resources, the expert negotiation process and the efficient national licensing undertaken for each online resource. JISC Collections always strives to widen accessibility to online resources, save its members time and money and to evolve licensing in line with members needs and the digital environment.

Innovation in Online Higher Education Published November 14, 2008 Random... , Thinkses In an article in the Guardian a couple of days ago - UK universities should take online lead, it was reported that "UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education", with universities secretary, John Denham, "likely to call" for the development of a "global Open University in the UK". (Can you imagine how well that call went down here?;-) Anyway, the article gave me a heads-up about the imminent publication of a set of reports to feed into a Debate on the Future of Higher Education being run out of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

useful survey and comments on new govnt report on e learing from expert at the OU

8 Online Discussion Response Techniques Posted by: wiredinstructor in Course Design Reflections, Technology Integration, Top Posts, UW-Stout, Virtual School, e-learning, research, virtual high school Online discussion is the heart of a community of practice oriented e-learning course. However, it can be difficult to know how to respond. It's a good idea to think in terms of value added responses. What can you add to advance the discussion? I like to post the following list at the top of discussion forums in my online courses. It's a good reminder and a handy reference! Here are some suggestions to guide you as you respond to each other in discussion forums.

Why Facilitate Online? Online group interactions do not always "happen" spontaneously. They require care and nurturing: facilitation. The core of facilitation and hosting is to serve the group and assist it in reaching its goals or purpose. Some describe this role as a gardener, a conductor, the distributed leadership of jazz improvisers, a teacher, or an innkeeper. It can be this and more. Levitt, Popkin and Hatch, in their article "Building Online Communities for High Profile Internet Sites" wrote, "Communities are organic in nature and site owners can't make them successful or force them to grow. As site owner can only provide the fertile ground on which a community may grow, and then provide some gentle guidance to help the group thrive. Much of the challenge in fostering an online community is social, rather than technical." Facilitation is a balance between functions that enhance the environment and content, create openness and opportunity, and functions that protect the members from harassment.

"One of the biggest problems with doing group projects online (and face-to-face) is student resistance, says Jan Engle, coordinator of instruction development at Governors State University. "One of the best ways to overcome resistance is obviously for students to have a positive experience. Unfortunately, many of them come into an online class having had a very negative experience with group work. Almost always, those negative experiences stem from problems where they've been on teams where they ended up doing most of the work and other people did nothing and everybody got the same grade," Engle says. "

" The following document is posted by the University to guide SFU faculty members, employees or students who manage social media channels online in the name of the University. It may also aid those who have personal social media channels. It is a compilation of "best practices" from universities and social media pioneers. Blogs, social networks and Web sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr, Second Life and YouTube are exciting channels to share knowledge, express creativity, and connect with others. The University supports your participation in these online communities. The following guidelines from respected online university, agency and industry sources will help you use these forums effectively, protect your personal and professional reputation, and help you to follow SFU branding and policies. "

"There's more to using social media tools than just quick updates and playful banter among friends. Sure, you can post pictures on Facebook, tell friends what you're doing via Twitter, and upload videos of your roommates doing something crazy to YouTube. But social media can be useful, too. More than 2,000 colleges across the country use Blackboard's online learning system-an online tool that allows professors to post assignments, schedules, questions, and more information while keeping the conversation with students going outside of class. Plus, countless colleges and universities use the usual suspects like Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter to interact with students, and students can use those tools to enhance their online profile for employment purposes. Yet as much as these technological tools have become commonplace on campus, there's still a caveat: The Internet can be misused, and missteps can be costly. "

Facilitator Qualities and Skills These online facilitator qualities and skills started with the the QUALITIES FAQ created by the Group Facilitation Listserv GRP-FACL@CNSIBM.ALBANDY.EDU. I took the qualities posted to the list, then sorted them alphabetically. After letting them set, I started sorting and adding in context for online facilitation. I'm looking for sets of qualities and patterns. What do you think is important in the online context? What is less important? What is missing?

"As a matter of fact, the questions that zip through my mind everytime I think of how I can improve my own skills at community building, are so many that I always end up with more unanswered doubts than solutions. * How do you nurture engagement inside your community? * How do you keep the community going? * How do you get people to socialize inside a new community? To get some answers to these critical questions, I have briefly taken hostage online facilitation and community-building expert Nancy White during her last Rome visit, a few days ago.Nancy is a truly experienced person in this area and she always speaks out of the ongoing in-depth experience she has with real communities, both online and in real life. Her answers are non-technical, pragmatical, and if you are not into community building yet, quite enlightening."

"Welcome to Quality Matters Quality Matters (QM) is a nationally recognized, faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components. Colleges and universities across the country use the tools in developing, maintaining and reviewing their online courses and in training their faculty. "

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On An MS-Word version of this essay is available at http://www.downes.ca/files/future2008.doc In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. "We want a plan," said my managers, and so I outlined the future as I thought it would - and should - unfold. In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today. In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year's experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper - time has done that - but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.

Online Education - Introducing the Microlecture Format by Thomas Most college students would likely concur - fifty minute lectures can be a bit much. With current research indicating that attention spans (measured in minutes) roughly mirror a students age (measured in years), it begs the question as to the rationale behind lectures of such length. teddY-riseDGiven that it is tough to justify the traditional lecture timeframes, it is no surprise to see online educational programs seeking to offer presentations that feature shorter podcasts. But in an astonishing switch, David Shieh of the Chronicle of Higher Education recently took a look at a community college program that features a microlecture format, presentations varying from one to three minutes in length.

"Online community building is a key role of a the community manager, This role is a fairly new one, and although it has its roots in the roles of those who managed bulletin boards and discussion forums - when they were often known as facilitators - the role is still emerging and evolving. However, the role of a Community Manager is essentially to encourage, foster and support the engagement of participants in the community, although the way this takes place will depend on the nature and purpose of the online community"