Faculty Development News This Week:

CONFERENCES

--TCC Worldwide Online Conference : "LOOKING BACKWARDS OR INTO THE FUTURE?"

This event is hosted by University of Hawai'I Kapi'olani Community College in association with Osaka Gakuin University, Japan and in partnership with LearningTimes.org.

April 19-21, 2005

Pre-Conference Dates: April 5-6, 2005

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The TCC Online Conference coordinators invite faculty, support staff,
librarians, counselors, students, administrators, and consultants to
submit proposals for papers, discussions and other presentations that
address the impact of technological change, the Internet, and other
technologies on how we teach and learn in colleges and universities
worldwide.

Here are some questions to help formulate your presentations:
- Keeping up with the times -- what's the best way to do this?
- Are learning communities real or imagined? How do we sustain them?
- Which is best: face-to-face, hybrid, or online learning?
- Is there a future for learning objects, open-source software, blogs,
wikis, e-portfolios, etc, that are being touted today?
- What is the status of educational technology around the globe? Is
there a way to help one another?
- What was our profession like ten years ago and how does it compare with
today?
- What are some useful models for delivering student services online?
- How do students react to online learning and online student services?
- How will recent copyright and intellectual property laws change the way we
teach and learn? Do they need to be adjusted?
- How can today's technology accommodate diverse cultural backgrounds and
learning styles?
- Where is instructional technology headed?
- What are some technologies that we need to watch out for?
- What staff and faculty training or professional development models have
met with success?
- Is global learning a reality or myth?
- Is online learning a fad or paradigm (or both)? What is the new paradigm
for learning?
- Does the Internet help or hinder learning?
- What are the lessons learned from the past 10 years of instructional
technology and the Internet?
- Should an institution adopt a single courseware management system?
Who should determine this - faculty, IT staff or administrators?
- Are we out-of-control with technology spending? Could it be better
utilized for other institutional purposes? Did we invest our funds wisely?
- What's the best way to provide for disability access for students?
- What are the barriers to the digital divide and how can we overcome them?

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

In your proposal, be sure to describe the content, goals, and expected outcomes of your presentation. For details on submitting your proposal,
go to the conference home page and click on "Proposal Submission" link: Proposal Submissions

Submissions should be in the form of a paper, discussion, poster
session or pre-conference tutorial. For details about presentation
formats, see: Presentation Information.

The deadline for proposals is December 31, 2004.

Mailing address: TCC Worldwide Online Conference (IMTS), University ofHawai'i, Kapi'olani Community College, 4303 Diamond Head Road, Honolulu, HI 96816, USA.

TCC Worldwide Online Conference

TECHNOLOGY

--IT Issues & Strategic Viewpoints in Higher Education

This article explores a study recently conducted to identify today's most pressing IT issues at colleges and universities. The study also compares the 2004 results to the 2003 results.

IT Issues

DISTANCE EDUCATION

--Assessing Teaching Presence in a Computer Conferencing Context

This paper presents a tool developed for the purpose of assessing teaching presence in online courses that make use of computer conferencing, and preliminary results from the use of this tool. The method of analysis is based on Garrison, Anderson, and Archer's [1] model of critical thinking and practical inquiry in a computer conferencing context. The concept of teaching presence is constitutively defined as having three categories - design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction. Indicators that we search for in the computer conference transcripts identify each category. Pilot testing of the instrument reveals interesting differences in the extent and type of teaching presence found in different graduate level online courses.

Assessing Teaching Presence

--Assessing Social Presence in Asynchronous Text-based, Computer Conferencing

Instructional media such as computer conferencing engender high levels of student-student and student-teacher interaction; therefore, they can support models of teaching and learning that are highly interactive and consonant with the communicative ideals of university education. This potential and the ubiquity of computer conferencing in higher education prompted three of the authors of the present paper to develop a Community of Inquiry model that synthesizes pedagogical principles with the inherent instructional and access benefits of computer conferencing (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). The present article explicates one element of the model, social presence. Social presence is defined as the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry. A template for assessing social presence in computer conferencing is presented, through content analysis of conferencing transcripts. To facilitate explication of the scheme and subsequent replication of this study, selections of coded transcripts are included, along with inter-rater reliability figures. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications and benefits of assessing social presence for instructors, conference moderators, and researchers.

Assessing Social Presence

This is a 38-page PDF file.

--Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer
Conferencing in Distance Education

This article describes a practical approach to judging the nature and quality of critical discourse in a computer conference. A model of a critical community of inquiry frames the research. A core concept in defining a community of inquiry is cognitive presence. In turn, the practical inquiry model operationalizes cognitive presence for the purpose of developing a tool to assess critical discourse and reflection. Encouraging empirical findings related to an attempt to create an efficient and reliable instrument to assess the nature and quality of critical discourse and thinking in a text-based educational context are presented. Finally, it is suggested that cognitive presence (i.e., critical, practical inquiry) can be created and supported in a computer conference environment with appropriate teaching and social presence.

Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education

This is a 24-page PDF file.

--Methodological Issues in Analyses of Asynchronous, Text-Based Computer
Conferencing Transcripts

Read an excerpt from this article:

This paper will explore the particular difficulties that researchers have
encountered and the advances that they have made in the struggle to extract
meaning from conferencing transcripts. It is not meant to be a meta-analysis of
results, but rather a review of the methodology. Our intent is to document the
evolution of content analysis techniques as they have been applied by us and
other researchers to analyze transcripts of asynchronous, computer mediated
conferencing in formal educational settings. Hopefully, this will facilitate the
larger goal of improving the quality of teaching and learning using this medium.
To accomplish this, we have reviewed a sample of 14 studies that are commonly
referenced in the literature (see Table 1). We hope that this will provide
subsequent researchers with a privileged starting point for their studies and
refine the application of this powerful technique.

Methodological Issues

TOOLS

--CiteULike.org

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organize academic papers that they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself

CiteULike

I acquired this resource courtesy of Research Buzz, 29 November 2004.

--FeedDirect.com

FeedDirect is the premier provider of high quality general and consumer news headlines for websites.

We gather and categorize millions of articles from thousands of news sites worldwide and deliver them as topic-based Webfeeds. FeedDirect enables webmasters to enhance the experience of their sites’ visitors and increases loyalty by providing relevant, topical and up-to-date news on any area of interest.

FeedDirect is able to provide its high-quality service free of charge by including contextual, text advertisements within the Webfeeds.

FeedDirect.com

--Web Site Reviewer

This site analyzes and critiques websites; looks for errors and problem areas; and make suggestions for improvement.

Web Site Reviewer

--Game: LEGO Worldbuilder

LEGO Worldbuilder

--Guide to Convert VHS to DVD

This guide will provide the following:

The right hardware to convert VHS to DVD

How to make sure you have enough memory

Editing techniques to create professional looking video

Professional DVD burning techniques

Software tools for making DVDs

How to connect your VCR or camcorder to a PC

The best software for authoring DVDs

The guide costs $17.00

Convert VHS to DVD

--INCSUB

INCSUB is a new service set up partly through a frustration with current mainstream online teaching and learning technologies (& the pedagogies they inflict!) and partly through a desire to explore the possibilities that wikis, weblogs, open source CMSs and other emerging technologies offer {teachers}. Get in touch today and see what we can do for you

INCSUB

STUDENTS

--Community College Students Taking More Years to Complete Course Work

This article from USA Today, 28 November 2004, is devoted to the situation of many community college students today. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The notion that community college students arrive fresh out of high school, study for two years and move up to a four-year college is quietly dissolving, a survey suggests. Instead, the experience for millions of students now involves spending four or more years piecing together an education at several colleges, and many never even earn an associate's degree.

Two-thirds of community college students attend only part time, and a handful try out several colleges or enroll in two simultaneously, according to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, out today. Meanwhile, nearly one in six students already have a bachelor's degree. "People just don't go to college like they used to," says Kay McClenney, the survey's director and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas-Austin, which sponsors the survey.

Read the article:

Community College Students

DIVERSITY

Fight Hate and Promote Tolerance

This Web site is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

There are resources here for campus, work, and community.

Tolerance

--Ramayana

Ramayana is a beautifully illustrated comic book featuring historical and mythological characters. It has also been instrumental in imparting education on Indian culture to people worldwide.

Read the book online:

Ramayana

ONLINE CULTURE

--A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age

A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age is the sixth report released by the U.S. Department of Commerce examining the use of computers, the Internet, and other information technology tools by the American people. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey of 57,000 households containing 134,000 persons, this report provides broad-based and statistically reliable information on the ways that information technologies in general, and broadband more specifically, are transforming the way we live, work, and learn.

This is a 37-page PDF file. Also available in hypertext and WORD.

Entering the Broadband Age

BLOG GRAB BAG

--Which Operating System are You?

Take the test and find out which one you are.

Which OS Are You?

I acquired this resource from Geomblog, s7 November 2004.

--Science Daily

This site provides links to the most recent research news in science.

Science Daily

--Washington Calligraphers Guild

Founded in 1976, the Washington Calligraphers Guild is a nonprofit organization of approximately 500 American and international lettering artists of all skill levels, from professional scribes to enthusiastic beginners and even some non-calligraphers who appreciate the lettering and book arts.

Washinton Calligraphers Guild

This resource acquired from lii, 24 November 2004.

--NASA Goes Hypersonic

This is all about the NASA ScramJet.

This is interesting not only for the technology (Mach 9.8) but for how tax dollars are spent. See the video: NASA Video.bmp

NASA Goes Hypersonic

--Lorum Ipsum

Have you ever wondered why Web developers dummy the Latin text, Lorum Ipsum, into their pages?

Well, this site will interest you. Read on:

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Find out more:
Lorum Ipsum

Fact Monster

FactMonster is an atlas, almanac, encyclopedia, and dictionary.

Fact Monster

Until next week!

Blog Editor

Image Credits

--"American Association of Community Colleges Logo," 201 x 222 pixels - 5k
www.wscc.edu/links/
--"Ansel Adams Quote," http://www.calligraphersguild.org/scripsit.html
--"English Holly," 250 x 250 pixels - 20k
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Holly
--"Fact Monster Logo," http://www.factmonster.com/index.html
--"Happy Hanukkah,"230 x 297 pixels - 9k
www.waldoward.com/ cards/hanukkah.gif
--"NASA ScramJet," http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html
--"NASA Video," http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/x43-main.html
--"Nation Online Cover," http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/index.html
--"Pilgrimage," www.dropbears.com/.../ medieval_costume.htm
--"Ramayana Cover," http://www.askasia.org/students/virtual_gallery/exhibitions/
--Tolerance," http://www.tolerance.org/campus/index.jsp
--"Truus fan e Wel," Steven L. Sobel Canon
--"XP operating System," http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz_results.php