Call for Presentations is now open for Cite. It will be in Denver April 11-13 and in the past has been a great conference with strong key note presentations. The deadline to submit a proposal is Jan. 14th 2011.
For more information, visit: http://www.pearsoncite.com/landing_cfp.html
“Asked to create list of research articles, journal articles, or other “credible” evidence that distance ed works. What would you include?”
I have been asked similar questions in the past. While I usually start by saying that as a whole research on distance education and online learning is still in its infancy, the following are a few articles I point to. These tend to be literature reviews or meta-analyses.
Did I miss any? What would you include? Please comment.
Involved with post-secondary education (ideally Teacher Preparation) and technology? If so, you should consider 
attending and presenting at SITE 2011. I am a strong believer that if you are attending a conference for professional development then you should consider presenting at it as well. The call for presentations is out for SITE 2011. You have until Jan. 3rd to submit your proposal.
http://site.aace.org/conf/call.htm
Every semester we get calls from faculty and students about issues viewing videos (almost always windows media video format) in Blackboard or eCollege (the two Learning Management Systems we use). While not always, most of the time these calls come from Mac users. While Mac users can use Flip4Mac or Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, for whatever reason there are times where even with these media players supposedly installed (note: these are distance students so we can’t verify easily if they installed it correctly) students can’t view the videos.
As a result, we offered a workshop yesterday about avoiding some of these problems. You can watch a recording of the workshop online: https://connect.cuonline.edu/p43536068/
A copy of the basic presentation can be viewed below. But the basic gist of our presentation was to avoid using formats like .wmv or real media and instead focus on using common formats like .flv or .mp4. We talked about the pros and cons of using “Flash Video” (.flv). We specifically went over three different tools faculty can use to convert their videos themselves, namely:
—Zamzar (great for short videos; web-based)
—Hamster (perhaps the easiest tool out there; but only available for a PC)
—Handbrake (very robust tool)
Finally, we concluded with encouraging faculty to put all videos (but especially videos longer than 5 minutes) on a streaming sever. We talked about the benefits of using YouTube but also highlighted that faculty could use CU Online’s Flash Server.
Do you have problems with .wmv? If so, please share how you handle it.
“As online learning continues to grow each year, so do the number of new media and Web 2.0 technologies faculty have at their disposal, yet the majority of online courses remain heavily text-based. Online learning often mirrors the traditional classroom, with a focus on read and write (and at times discuss) — sometimes with good reason. First, we all find ourselves relying on our previous experience when trying something new. Second, many methods used in traditional classroom environments can be effective in an online learning environment. And third, over the past few years teaching online has become an increasingly complicated process, requiring both a specialized pedagogy and a technological aptitude possessed by few faculty. Given this, when confronted with the task of designing an online course (especially one taught previously in a face-to-face classroom environment), it is completely natural for faculty to replicate many, if not all, of the classroom activities in the online environment. We believe this is why so many online courses consist of little more than readings, online lectures in the form of PowerPoint presentations, and some online asynchronous discussions sprinkled throughout the semester.
Perhaps one of the most often used, but seldom talked about, vestiges of the past carried over from traditional face-to-face courses into the online environment is the digital dropbox — or more specifically, the practice of having students submit their work privately. The digital dropbox is essentially a tool incorporated into most learning management systems that enables faculty to designate a virtual inbox where students can privately submit their assignments and later retrieve them (presumably with a grade and some type of feedback). While there might be a specific time when it pedagogically makes sense to have students turn in their work to a digital dropbox viewable only by the instructor and the student, we have found that mostof the time it makes little sense to do so. In this article we argue for use of a public performance model and explain why.”
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