Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Faculty Focus Special Reports...June 2010...Download Free PDF Reports!
Distance education is only now overcoming its status as an academic upstart, or the poor relation of classroom education. Like any new movement, it has its growing pains. But in experiencing these challenges, it’s important for distance educators to know that they’re not alone. Many of these difficulties are actually common experiences, and your colleagues across the country have been working on ways to meet them and turn them to their advantage.
Strategies for Teaching Large Classes
Sometimes you look out from the podium at the sea of faces looking back at you, and you wonder: Is this a class or a rock concert? Most educators would agree that their ideal teaching environment would be (to carry the musical theme a little further) the equivalent of an intimate, acoustic, coffee-shop performance.
Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom
One of the best teaching tools in a traditional classroom is the team project. When students work together, they learn a great deal – not just about what they’re studying, but about how to work with others toward common goals, with shared responsibilities, for shared reward. Traditional classrooms have an innate advantage in bringing students together … the students are sitting there right in front of them. A collaborative project can begin by simply seating the team at the same table.
12 Tips for Improving Your Faculty Development Plan
Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other faculty development courses are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how faculty teach, which in turn will help students learn.
Put to the Test: Making Sense of Educational Assessment
Educational assessment is one of the most talked about topics in higher education today. Despite the admirable goal of improving student learning, the trend toward greater accountability through increased academic testing carries with it a diverse range of educational assessment tools, methodologies, perspectives, and stakeholders.
10 Effective Classroom Management Techniques Every Faculty Member Should Know
Effective classroom management is much more than simply administering corrective measures when a student misbehaves; it’s about developing proactive ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place while creating a positive learning environment.
Online Course Design: 13 Strategies for Teaching in a Web-based Distance Learning Environment
Good online course design begins with a clear understanding of specific learning outcomes and ways to engage students, while creating activities that allow students to take some control of their learning. It also requires a little extra effort upfront to minimize two of the most common frustrations of online learning.
Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction
As an increasing number of colleges and universities identify online education as a critical component to their long-term strategy, the issue of retention can no longer be ignored. It is mandatory for everyone who touches the distance learner to understand why these students leave their online courses, and what it will take to keep them there.
Effective Group Work Strategies for the College Classroom
From understanding course content to developing problem solving, teamwork, and communication skills, group work is an effective teaching strategy whose lessons may endure well beyond the end of a course. So why is it that so many students (and some faculty) hate it?
Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Tools: 15 Strategies for Engaging Online Students Using Real-time Chat, Threaded Discussions and Blogs
Opportunities for meaningful synchronous and asynchronous interaction are plentiful, provided you design and facilitate your online course in the correct manner and with the proper tools. This free report provides practical advice from educators who’ve found effective ways to promote learning and build a sense of community in their online courses.
Best Practices for Training and Retaining Online Adjunct Faculty
As colleges and universities continue to expand their online course offerings, increasingly they’re turning to adjuncts to teach the courses. This report features proven strategies for ensuring your distance education faculty have the necessary training and support to succeed.
Faculty Promotion and Tenure: Eight Ways to Improve the Tenure Review Process at Your Institution
This special report will provide you with new perspectives on the promotion and tenure process. Some will challenge your thinking. Others will confirm your suspicions. All will lend valuable perspective to your academic tenure and personnel policies.
Tips for Encouraging Student Participation in Classroom Discussions
A lot of students seem to assume that as long as the assigned work is completed on time, test scores are good, and attendance is satisfactory, they shouldn’t be forced to participate. This special report will help you create favorable conditions for more active classroom discussions.
Distance Learning Administration and Policy: Strategies for Achieving Excellence
Although distance learning is no longer in its infancy, there are still a lot of unknowns. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the questions and the possibilities of what you want your online program to look like today … not to mention five years from now. Here’s your chance to take advantage some of the best practices learned by those who blazed the trail before you.
Assessing Online Learning: Strategies, Challenges and Opportunities
If you want insight into how to assess online learning at the course, program, and institutional levels, you’ll want to download this new special report that will help you create more effective online assessment exercises and strategies.
Philosophy of Teaching Statements: Examples and Tips on How to Write a Teaching Philosophy Statement
Writing a philosophy of teaching statement can make even the most experienced educator feel intimidated. Motivate students? No problem. Juggle an endless list of responsibilities? Check. Make course content come alive? Done. But when it comes to putting their teaching philosophy to paper, it’s hard to even know where to start.
10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education
Despite the many benefits, teaching online also comes with its share of challenges. This special report will help you establish online instructor best practices and performance expectations for creating a successful teaching and learning experience.
Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator
All too often new administrators are left to fend for themselves when it comes to discovering and developing the skills they need to succeed in their new position. This report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively.
Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments
Professors often believe students should arrive on campus knowing how to write research papers. Unfortunately, many do not. Download this free report for proven assignment strategies that are easy to implement.
11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses
If you think the flexibility of online teaching also means that it’s OK to “wing it” now and then, you’d be wrong. If anything, you have to be more organized, more consistent and more prepared for anything than ever before.
Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty
A survey of approximately 2,000 higher education professionals found that 30.7 percent use Twitter. More than half (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter. This report examines how college faculty are using Twitter, and why some believe the micro-blogging service is a colossal waste of time.
Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning
What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked. This special report helps you discover new ways to build strong connections between the two with strategies for engaging students, giving feedback, creating a climate for learning, and more.
Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips
Of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education one of the most persistent to remain, and thankfully so, is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium.
Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom
One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.
Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning
In order to improve online programs, courses, and instruction, you have to first determine your goals, select metrics that will tell you what we want to know, analyze these metrics for clues about needed changes, and then make those changes. It may sound simple, but it isn’t.
Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges
It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. But what does it really take to be an effective leader?
Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom
If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of teaching mistakes. This report features more than a dozen essays by instructors who were willing to share their early-career missteps and the lessons they learned. Because sometimes you just have to follow your gut, and sometimes your gut is wrong.
Course Design and Development Ideas That Work
This 17-page report features proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines. It’s sure inspire you to rethink how you could change certain components of your courses to build a better learning environment.
Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education
Online education didn’t invent cheating, but it does present unique challenges. This 20-page report provides proactive ways for meeting these challenges head on.
Faculty Focus: Non-Traditional Students: Understanding Adult Learners’ Needs
By: Mary Bart in Trends in Higher Education - June 9, 2010
Students dropout of college for a variety of reasons – some are not ready for the academic rigors, while others leave to raise a family, get a job, or join the military. Many of these students are now in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They’re more mature, and they’re ready to come back and finish what they started. Is your school truly committed to do what it takes to attract and support these students through degree completion? The adult degree completion market offers a growing and potentially lucrative opportunity for higher education institutions nationally. According to Dr. Bruce Chaloux, president of the Sloan Consortium, there are more than 50 million working age adults with some college credit but no degree, or who have a high school diploma but never entered college.
During the recent online video seminar Effective Strategies for the Adult Degree Completion Market, Chaloux pointed out that many of these adults would like to get their college degrees, but only if they’re given practical “adult friendly” alternatives to traditional, campus-based programs.
The eight key factors that influence an adult learner’s decision to attend college are:
•Convenient time and place for classes
•Flexible pacing for completing the program
•Ability to transfer credits
•Reputation of institution as being adult friendly
•Need the degree for current or future job
•Receive credit for life/work experiences
•Financial aid or employer assistance
•Child care
How well you can meet these needs, and provide adults with the flexibility and support they require to complete their degrees will determine how successful your institution is in serving this growing student population. Not surprisingly, online or blended courses are particularly attractive to adults who are often juggling family and work responsibilities along with their coursework.
Chaloux shared with attendees a set of guiding principles developed by the Southern Regional Education Board of the factors it believes are essential to meet the needs of the adult degree completion population:
•Online or blended delivery
•Accelerated (or compressed) terms
•Adult friendly policies
•Supportive credit transfer and prior learning assessment
“These are the kinds of strategies that have proven, at least in the short run, to be quite effective at not only attracting the adults back to your campus but in getting them to degree completion,” says Chaloux. “Essentially what we are arguing is that you need to create greater pathways to degrees and provide some form of hope that they can complete their degree in a reasonable amount of time."
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
New Items at www.WorldCat.com Libraries - May 2010
The top five items that WorldCat Libraries added in May 2010 are:
1. The Red Pyramid has a reading level of elementary and junior high school. The Red Pyramid was added by 1001 WorldCat libraries.
2. Making Toast: A Family Story, a biography, was added by 955 WorldCat libraries.
3. Castle Waiting, has been added by 869 WorldCat libraries.
4. Crash, the DVD, has been added by 825 WorldCat libraries.
5. Storm Prey, by John Sandford, has been added by 824 WorldCat libraries.
The full list of recent items added by your library last month (May, 2010) appears on the WorldCat Library's profile page. You can find your own local library's profile by searching WorldCat Libraries, if they are a WorldCat library, you can see their recent items. 705 libraries have a new WorldCat recent items list - for a total of 10,942 recent items list for the month of May.
Inside Higher Ed: The E-Book Sector
E-textbooks might be the most-talked about and least-used learning tools in traditional higher education. Campus libraries and e-reader manufacturers are betting on electronic learning materials to overtake traditional textbooks in the foreseeable future, but very few students at traditional institutions are currently using e-textbooks, according to recent surveys.
Not so in the world of for-profit online education. Online for-profits such as American Public University System and the University of Phoenix have for years strategically steered students toward e-textbooks in an attempt to shave costs and ensure a more reliable delivery method that, in the context of online education, might seem to make more sense. At Kaplan University's law school, digital texts account for around 80 percent of assigned reading. At Capella University, e-textbooks are an available and accepted option in nearly all 1,250 courses. In for-profit higher education, more than any other sector, the traditional book is becoming obsolete.
Phoenix actually mandates that instructors assign digital materials “whenever feasible” -- a strategic turn the company started to take back in 2003, but which has come to fruition more recently, with so many more materials now available in digital format. At this point, roughly 90 percent of Phoenix’s course content is delivered via e-books or other electronic means -- the only exceptions coming in courses such as art history, where copyright issues surrounding digital renderings of images such as paintings remain a hurdle for e-book publishers, says David Bickford, the vice president of academic affairs at Phoenix.
The American Public University System -- which is a private, for-profit university, despite its name -- has also been consciously promoting the use of e-textbooks, resulting in widespread adoption of the new format among students.
Of the company’s 400 fully online courses, about 300 assign e-textbooks as the default delivery method (with exceptions for overseas military personnel, who make up a significant proportion of the institution’s enrollment and tend to have irregular Web access). While the institution allows stateside students the option of buying print books, more than 90 percent of students opt for the e-textbook, says Fred Stielow, dean of libraries.
Those are staggering adoption rates compared to those at nonprofit online programs and on traditional campuses. Among the respondents to a 2009 Campus Computing Project survey of 182 online programs at nonprofit universities, only 9 percent said e-textbooks were “widely used” at their institutions, while nearly half said electronic versions were “rarely used.” Even fewer brick-and-mortar institutions are deploying e-books in lieu of hard copies, with fewer than 5 percent citing e-book deployment as a key IT priority in the short term, according to another Campus Computing Project survey. And according to data from the Student Monitor, e-textbooks accounted for only 2 percent of all textbook sales last fall.
One reason American Public University System students have adopted e-textbooks so enthusiastically might be because of the company’s unusual practice of including course materials such as books in the cost of tuition. Historically, it has bought students their textbooks. Now, it only buys e-textbooks; if students want to keep using print volumes, they have to pay for them out of their own pockets. “Given textbook inflation… it’s the only way we can continue to underwrite the materials cost for our undergrad students,” says Stielow.
For-profit institutions in general are moving toward wider e-textbook use than other sectors of higher education, Stielow says. “I think a great many [for-profits] are certainly trying to move toward this model,” agrees Bickford. And the ones that have appear to be succeeding.
Why is that?
John Bourne, executive director of the Sloan Consortium, which studies online learning, posits that it might be a function of the more centralized administrative structures at for-profit institutions. “For-profits do things like provide lesson plans for instructors, provide you with what you’re supposed to do; they hire all these adjuncts to deliver all these things that have been sculpted by instructional designers,” says Bourne. Being able to dictate to the faculty what text format they should assign to their students probably makes it easier to implement e-textbook adoption across the institution, he says.
It is more difficult to engineer change at such scale at nonprofits, because of their more distributed governance models. At those colleges, faculty control of curricular texts — including mode of delivery — is “sacred,” Bourne says.
Manny Rivera, a spokesman for Phoenix, says that the online giant’s centralized administration does indeed allow it to make sweeping changes without many hang-ups. “The university is set up to be more nimble to confront market forces,” Rivera says. “So we’re able to innovate more quickly.”
The wide adoption of e-textbooks has also allowed the University of Phoenix to reduce the price it pays for licensing rights to e-textbook material from publishers. “In return for predictable revenue stream, the publishers can generally give best-in-class pricing on digital textbooks and material,” says Bickford. That’s a financial windfall for Phoenix, which pays a licensing fee to publishers and then sells access to its students at a mark-up, investing the revenue in "the development of other multimedia resources."
APUS also gets “deep discounts” -- 30 to 35 percent, usually -- for being able to purchase e-textbooks across the board and sparing the publishers from having to convert individual professors, according to Stielow.
Officials at the for-profits also said that using e-textbooks eliminated issues related to online students sending away by mail for hard-copy textbooks. “I can remember in my first decade of employment here, dealing with panicky student phone calls saying, ‘The UPS driver ate my textbook,’ ” Bickford says.
So switching to e-textbooks seems to be a prudent financial and logistical move. But is it a good educational one?
The jury appears to be out on that question. At APUS, Stielow says an internal survey last year revealed that 90 percent of students opted for the free e-textbooks in the courses where they were assigned. But price was evidently a factor in many cases, since about 42 percent of those said they strongly preferred print texts.
At Phoenix and Kaplan University, officials insist that internal research of e-textbook use has revealed that learning outcomes do not suffer as a result of switching from print texts to digital versions, although both declined to share specific data on proprietary grounds.
“Economics are not a primary driver at all,” says Steven Burnett, the vice president for auxiliary business at Kaplan University’s law school, where he says digital materials are assigned by default for about 80 percent of classes. “What’s been driving us in a lot of this is we’re an innovative institution.”
For the latest technology news from Inside Higher Ed, follow Steve Kolowich on Twitter.
— Steve Kolowich
Publishers Need to Offer Popular E-Books through Libraries
LISNews
June 7, 2010 - 2:07pm — Anonymous Patron (not verified)
Learning Something From Books, Before Their Texts Even Begin
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/nyregion/08bigcity.html?ref=nyregion
By SUSAN DOMINUS - Published: June 7, 2010
By SUSAN DOMINUS - Published: June 7, 2010
Hearldsun.com - HBCU experts stress importance of passionate campus leadership
By Neil Offen
June 3, 2010
DURHAM -- The leaders of many of the nation's historically black colleges and universities were gathered Thursday in a large conference room of the Sheraton Imperial Hotel.
But if they wanted to be "transformational leaders," they had better get out of their conference rooms and offices and walk around their campuses, a top African-American academic leader told them.
"Your best tool is walking around your institution," Belle Wheelan, president of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, told more than 400 academics at a two-day symposium on the future of HBCUs. "You have to get out and find out what's going on. You can't stay in your ivory tower, or whatever color your tower is," she said.
Wheelan, the first American American and first woman to lead the association that accredits Southern institutions of higher education, said leaders of HBCUs must get out and talk to everyone on campus, starting with the custodians. "When you talk to the custodians and tell them how good the lawn looks, they will take better care of the lawn," she said. "They will tell you things because you have shown you care about them."
Being out on the campus is particularly important during difficult economic times, Wheelan emphasized. "You can't go hide in your office when budget cuts come along," she said. "You have to show your staff and your faculty that you care about them, that you're with them."
The symposium, the culminating event of NCCU's year-long centennial celebration, attracted HBCU leaders from across the South. The leaders, Wheelan said, must have a passion for what they do, and most importantly, for their students. "If you're not passionate about students, leave, please," she said.
During the symposium session devoted to leadership, Duke University professor Paula McClain added that it's not just chancellors and presidents of schools who can provide leadership. It also comes from the faculty, she said. Many HBCUs, McClain pointed out, "take their faculty for granted."
But now HBCUs compete for faculty on a national market, and "you can't assume you can hang on to your faculty or recruit quality new members," she said. "You have to be willing to invest in your faculty. Strong faculty governance is not the enemy. They are the partners."
Innovative Educators Webinar: Embracing Technology to Promote Exceptional Student Services in Higher Education
Tuesday, July 13th ~ 1:00-2:30pm EDT
$345.00
Webinar Description
This session will offer participants an overview of the online self-services and other technology initiatives that higher education institutions are developing and providing for their students and their families. Explore how technology is shaping students experience with the financial aid and business offices and how administrators can leverage technology to promote student success.
The presenter will discuss various online student self-services and web applications that have proved successful for students to help them manage the business of being a student, including a look into student portals and mobile device initiatives that have been developed to provide personalized information and communications to students. The presenter will provide online views of various University of Minnesota web applications that have been highly successful including Financial Aid Status, a web application for students that has helped to demystified the complex financial aid process and Parent/Guest Access, an online web process allowing students to share information about financial aid status and awards, student grades, holds, enrolled courses, and student financials to their parents or other guests.
Objectives
The participants will learn more about:
• Self-service options that institutions have developed to assist with customer service
• How to leverage technology into seamless self-service Web applications that bring students from "in line" to "online"
• Examples of cutting-edge technology initiatives for student services including student portals and mobile device initiatives
Who Should Attend?
Higher education administrators and staff including student services professionals, financial aid directors, registrars, bursars, business officers, and student financial services staff.
Who is the Speaker?
Julie Selander, Senior Associate Director, One Stop Student Services, University of Minnesota
Julie Selander has worked in higher education administration and finance for over 22 years. Her experience includes student loan servicing operations, tuition payment plan sales and marketing, as well as management positions in student accounts receivable, billing, collections, financial aid, and customer service.
Julie is currently the senior associate director of the One Stop Student Services Office at the University of Minnesota providing seamless and integrated student services in the areas of enrollment, registration, financial aid, billing and student accounts receivable. Twenty-seven One Stop Counselors across three campus locations provide service via phone, e-mail, and in-person for over 51,000 students on the Twin Cities campus.
Julie presents frequently on various topics related to higher education student services and has written several articles for publication, including NACUBO's Student Centered Financial Services: Innovations That Succeed. She serves as a board member for Minnesota's College Goal Sunday initiative and is a founding member and on the board of directors for the Institute for Student Services Professionals. She has her undergraduate and master's degree from the University of Minnesota and is currently working on her dissertation as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota in the Higher Education Policy and Administration program.
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