DLC meeting minutes 10/11

MINUTES: DLC MEETING, 11 OCTOBER 2007

Speaker: Dr. James Oliverio. Presentation available online.

· “The interface defines the experience.” – Oliverio

· More than 150 colleges have a presence in Second Life [http://secondlife.com/]

· Gator Nation Island in Second Life is controlled to limit “germs.” Contact james@digitalworlds.ufl.edu for access.

· Second life training not currently available. DWI needs 50 or so participants to make it worthwhile. DWI is considering offering a class next Summer for faculty, staff, etc.

· Invitation for DLC to meet at the DWI REVE. Schedule for the future.

· “… the Future is already here; it’s just not equally distributed.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer.

Innovations Initiative: Fedro is finishing up the mandate for the group and eliciting some additional volunteers from across campus to broaden representation. He plans to present the list and mandate to DLC at the next meeting.

Open Floor: What type of issues would you like to see on the agenda for the future?

· Policies and vision for DE. DE is a competitive environment and we are falling behind, becoming less competitive. Sense of urgency among faculty but “we don’t understand what the rules are.” Possible revenue generating programs are on hold because “our hands are tied.”

· Question about new “tech” fee. Who is involved with making this decision and implementing?

· Elluminate launched in ALS/IFAS. More than 50 moderators in two weeks and very active use. IFAS interest in idea sharing, perhaps in the context of the faculty IT symposium. Doug will request a UF Elluminate users listserv.

· Question: Could our next meeting take advantage of Oliverio’s invitation? Fedro and/or Doug will investigate.

· Doug requested group assistance identifying presenters for future meetings.

Next Meeting: 8 November 2007

Distance Learning Council Meeting Minutes

Distance Learning Council Notes
9/13/2007 10:00 AM-12:00 PM
507 Computer/Science Engineering Building

Local Expert Presentation: A Toolbox for E-Learning (Becky Williams)
CITT resource --- Toolbox for faculty and using technology on line and in face-to-face classes –
http://www.citt.ufl.edu/toolbox/ PPT will be put on DLC website http://www.at.ufl.edu/dlc/

4 part mission of CITT --

• Faculty lab with lots of software and computers.
• Instructional design and development -- teaching with technology class for TA’s Interactive tutorial synchronous computer mediated
• Classes offered for faculty to CITT including e-learning and instructional design for distance learning
• Will launch online just-in-time classes

Important Points for Designing/Delivering Effective Instruction:

1) Technology does not improve learning. Pedagogy improves learning. Most important is the method behind learning. Objectives, faculty involvement and “classroom assignments” are important. Should match objectives to content and assessment.

2) Adding interactivity and computer special effects may make material more presentable but not always necessary.

Questions that Faculty ask CITT: How do I know what to use? How do I incorporate technology? - Is technology needed to deliver all content?

CITT asks: What are your learning objectives? What are students required to do to demonstrate mastery of content?

Different ways and applications for facilitating discussion: discussion boards, break-out rooms, Elluminate, second life, twitter Go to http://www.citt.ufl.edu/toolbox/ for more information.

CITT asks: Why do you want to incorporate technology, what do you want to accomplish?

Different types of learners… kinesthetic learners interact with technology.

Communication with peers and faculty are important, esp.for undergrads who have the high risk of failure.

Are synchronous vs. asynchronous needed? Use of Role play, web quests,

Communication possibilities: Elluminate live, discussion boards, Face book, myspace, instant messaging, white boards. Mapping mashups

Media vs. method debate

Elluminate being used by 4 UF depts./ colleges-- pharmacy, education, audiology and engineering .

ECAR Study on Student Preferences (Dr. Zazueta) - ECAR newsletters are available to every one. Contact Fedro to receive.

ELI Meeting Report (Jennifer Smith)
Theme of Educause meeting… “Being Net savvy student”
Choosing resources, Developing critical thinking skills, developing habits
Integrate information across disciplines
Ethical use of internet information
Role of user-generated content
Importance of participation and content creation not just consumption

Recommendations:
Need for common language for student use
Students need to have greater responsibility and be a part of it as well as faculty
Web 2.0 learning environments.
HUB and library renovations are part of WEB2.0 ?
Collaborative space for students to use technology.. is needed
Rigorous assessment with student involvement

Initiatives presented:

Univ. of Minn. Developed program to support faculty in use of technology. Collaborations across campuses and classes have been developed. Tiered approach. Length of classes last 1 week to 3 years. Faculty mentors to guide faculty in use of resources and technology. Have administration support with funding for these initiatives. Survey will be online. There was a handout distributed… go to ELI website for the convention presentation.

UCalifornia Berkley Mellon fellowship through the library.
Community of faculty…. Enable undergrad skill development

Innovation (All) A lot of technologies have use for education, training and extension. We missed the boat… blogs, wikis, portfolios have come and we were not monitoring / developing use. Fedro wants a small group to work on adoption of innovation in order to make progress to keep “eye on horizon” and look at new activities that should be considered Wants to develop this as a project with a funding source. Joe Burley, Mary Edwards, and Doug Johnson are volunteers.

Peer 2 Peer program Sept 15
Fedro reported that E-learning report to Provost is still in Provost Office.

Next meeting: 2nd Thursday in October.

UF Distance Learning Committee minutes

DLC MEETING, 10 May 2007-05-18

10:05: Fedro called the meeting to order and distributed a signup sheet and agenda. After reviewing the agenda, Fedro indicated he wanted to drill-down into the future agenda items topic and planned to use the Turning Point classroom response system to use its polling capabilities to prioritize future items.

TurningPoint Demo

TurningPoint is an audience response system installed in 150 of the main campus auditoria and classrooms as well as in some HSC facilities. Students are presented questions via PowerPoint and use “clickers” to respond. Responses are recorded, and can be graphed and published “on the fly” at the instructor’s discretion. Instructors use TurningPoint for presentations, polling, quizzing (not recommended), and attendance taking. The AT classroom support website [http://www.at.ufl.edu/classrooms/] has more information.

Students buy a clicker ($30-$40) which can be used for any classes using this technology; so this is a buy-once tool. Instructors can download the TurningPoint software free. RF devices are purchased by AT and installed on computers in classrooms.

Instructors create a PPT using the installed software (it’s a PowerPoint plug-in accessed directly within the software interface) and then simply run the presentation in the classroom. Creating interactive slides is remarkably easy, as Fedro demonstrated.

Fedro demonstrated the “Ranking Wizard” function that allows an instructor to identify items (e.g. WebCT, Holiday party) and characteristics (e.g. cost, urgency) and showed how the technology will automatically collect audience feedback and generate grids plotting the items as they rank in audience assessment of those characteristics and generating a prioritization matrix. This function was used for the Future Agenda Items discussion.

Future Agenda Items

	Presented for Consideration	Rank
	Vendor demonstration	9
	Future of WebCT	8
	Individual reports	7
	Governance discussions	6
	Strategic discussions	2
	Administrative discussions	6
	Operational discussions	5
	New technology adoption process	1
	Local expert presentations on technology topics	3
	DETF updates	2
	Develop standards of best practice in DE	4

Updates
Kristian Serrano will be attending a regional job fair at Fort Benning, GA and will be glad to represent UF Distance Learning programs.

Doug Johnson was asked to speak about the anxieties surrounding the Blackboard/WebCT merger. Many people perceive Blackboard functioning more as a corporation and less as a “colleague,” resulting in increasing interest in open source CMS alternatives, especially Sakai.

Fedro talked about the DETF. Subcommittee reports have been submitted. Another subcommittee has been established to draft the final report and should produce that document within 2 weeks. That report will go to the Provost to suggest edits. When the report meets here approval, it will be published.

Next meeting: 7 June 2007

DLC Meeting 5/10

Fedro Zazueta conducted the meeting.

The main reason for the meeting was to gather future agenda items - it was decided that the following might be considered:

Vendor demonstrations
Individual reports
Governance discussion
Strategic planning
Operational issues
Administrative issues
Future of WebCT
Identify clear technology adoption process
Bring local experts in to talk about experience
Distance Education Task Force updates
Best practices of Distance Education
Develop standards for best practice

Doug Johnson reported on Blackboard migration and said all is well there. There are some anxieties about it in the IT community, but at this point, all is running smoothly.

The DL Task Force report will be presented at the next meeting by Cammy Abernathy (possibly), however, it will just be a review of the findings. The report itself still has some reviewing that needs to be done to it before it's finalized, especially by Provost Fouke, who will determine the final draft and will publish it once she is satisfied with it. The deadline was not extended, at least in regard to what was mentioned at the meeting.

Library Services Checklist

Here is an interesting Library Services Checklist put out by NCSU: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/instruction/checklist.html

I might like it better if I could see everything on the page without scrolling down, but it seems like an interesting approach to support off-campus programs.

DL university and library pages

Recently on the OffCamp list serv there have been examples of successful university distance learning pages and library distance learning pages. Thought I would post them:

http://www.cel.cmich.edu/future/ecampus/aboutdl.html.
http://www.stedwards.edu/it_dept/instcom/online_student/index.html
http://www.dbu.edu/online/

Univ. of San Francisco Podcasts

University of San Francisco has several podcasts on how to use Interlibrary Loan services, as well as on their return postage shipping methods for undergraduate students. For more information, see: http://www.usfca.edu/library/remote_campus/docdelivery.html