Abstract

Title: Wimba Pronto: Instant Collaboration to Support 21st Century Learning
Purpose, Objectives, Practical Application, Information & Relationship to conference Theme:
Whether the goal is to improve student engagement, increase administrative efficiency, or enhance security by bolstering disaster preparedness plans, Wimba’s Collaboration Suite supports academic and administrative operations across an entire campus and addresses the complex challenges facing higher education today. Hear from industry leaders partnering with Wimba to meet these challenges.
During this session we’ll explore how Wimba Pronto, the only instant collaboration platform designed for education, enables students and teachers to uniquely collaborate and learn in an informal “virtual venue,” replicating the exchange of ideas and communication that happens naturally in the hallways, cafeterias, or libraries of a physical campus.
With features like blended video and audio, application sharing, a state-of-the-art whiteboard, classmate lists that auto-populate from your CMS courses, queued chat for office hours, a Spanish language option, and personalized user profiles – your learning community can be transformed as it meets the requirements of 21st Century learners by delivering campus services, office hours, library services, or tutoring sessions online.
Students in online classes especially need courses that are designed to enable interaction between instructor and student, as well as among students. This interaction engages learners and faculty members, and encourages students to feel that they are part of a community. For off-campus students, access to supplementary services—such as writing centers and libraries—is also important. Wimba Pronto allows these students to enjoy and benefit from the same range of services as their on-campus counterparts.
Wimba Pronto is part of the Wimba Collaboration Suite, recently awarded the 2009 “Best Education Solution” CODiE award by SIIA.
Participants will garner perspectives on ways to augment existing tutoring, advising, office hours, help-desks, and other academic and administrative functions:
• Improving the overall quality of online programs
• Building online student/school community
• Increasing the number of online offerings
• Improving Online Student Retention
• Reducing Costs –
• Green Initiatives: fuel, travel, facility

There is a direct correlation between the TTIX theme of the technological advancement of distance learning and the Wimba product demonstration.

Presenter

Shelley Constant

Abstract

Service Learning at a Distance: Engaging Online Learners in Applying Their Knowledge and Skills to Help Others

Purpose of the Presentation: One of the challenges of teaching an online course is to get students involved with the content beyond simply reading and discussing it. When students are separated from the instructor and each other by distance and time, how can they be effectively guided in arranging, participating in, and completing service-learning experiences? The presenter will share instructional strategies he has utilized to rise above such challenges.

Target Audience: Higher education faculty, but all are welcome.

Instructional Context: The presenter is a professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah. The college offers six courses for the endorsement of content-area teachers (whether pre-service or in-service) in teaching English as a second language (ESL). The program is designed to help them develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions associated with adapting, designing, preparing, and providing instruction to meet the academic, linguistic, and social needs of ESL learners in K-12 schools. Many of the university students who are interested in obtaining this ESL endorsement work full time, and some live at a great distance from the university, so they are not able to attend a traditional, face-to-face class; therefore, the program is offered as an e-learning opportunity using the Blackboard Learning System to provide online, virtual classrooms. The service-learning experience associated with several of the courses requires students to find non-native English speakers in their own geographical area and provide them with tutoring.

Presentation Plan and Objectives: Out of the 45 minutes available for this presentation, the first 20 minutes will be used to describe the context of the investigation: the courses, the instructional materials used (case studies, multimedia, practical experiences, and discussion activities), the online learners and instructor, and the various approaches used to engage learners with the content of the course and to apply their recently acquired knowledge and skills in a service-learning experience. During the next 15 minutes, the methods and results of the investigation will be explained and discussed. The remaining 10 minutes will be used for participants’ questions and discussion, sharing of their ideas and experiences, and ideas for future investigations.

Practical Applications: Participants of this proposed session will hear about and see the presenter’s processes and the end results of selecting high-quality instructional materials (including case studies, multimedia, practical experiences, and discussion activities) that were originally designed for face-to-face delivery and adapting them so that they could be effectively implemented in a completely online learning environment to engage the learners with the content of the course, with each other, and with English language learners. The participants and the presenter will gain useful insights from one another as they discuss successes and failures in actual efforts to engage online learners with case studies, multimedia, discussion activities, practical experiences, and service-learning experiences.

Relationship to the Conference Theme: Teaching with technology in an online learning environment can be made more effective by implementing instructional strategies that engage learners with the content and give them opportunities to apply what they have learned in service to others.

Information to Support What is Advocated: Examples of the instructional materials utilized, the strategies implemented in several online ESL endorsement courses, the theoretical base, and data gathered from three years of the presenter teaching these courses will be shared during the presentation.

Presenter

Thomas Cunningham

Tom Cunningham, professor of education, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT. Degrees: dual-major B.A., linguistics and Spanish (BYU, 1984); M.A., teaching English as a second language (BYU, 1986); Ph.D., instructional technology (USU, 1994). Career as teacher started at LDS Missionary Training Center, teaching Spanish (4 years). Taught ESL (7 years total) at Provo Adult High School, BYU, BYU-Hawaii, and USU. Faculty member at SUU since 1994 in various roles. For 8 years in Library, taught instructional technology and library media courses, directed SUU’s faculty development program, and served as reference librarian, library instruction coordinator, and collection development specialist. Next 3 years, taught information systems courses, e.g., multimedia production, systems analysis and design, and IS project management for School of Business and College of Computing, Integrated Engineering, and Technology. Since fall 2005, has been teaching instructional technology and ESL teacher training courses in SUU’s College of Education and Human Development.

Abstract

Title: Increasing Student Engagement in Distance Learning Courses

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to introduce participants to key elements of student retention theory and how it can inform best practices for distance learning teachers at both K-12 and postsecondary levels. The presentation is intended both for distance learning instructors and faculty/staff assistance centers and professional development personnel who work with distance learning instructors.

Objectives: During this session, we will:
- Explore key elements of student retention theory, including academic and social integration, academic engagement strategies, and social engagement strategies.
- Explore ways in which student characteristics influence engagement.
- Discuss how to connect students with academic and social support services normally available to on-site students.
- Share proven practices and tools for promoting and assessing student engagement.

Practical Applications: Participants in this session will be better prepared to implement practices that promote student engagement, retention, and success. Additional resources for further exploration will be introduced for those who wish to pursue this topic in additional detail.

Relationship to Conference Theme: For those who teach with technology, promoting student engagement is critical to combat the potentially de-humanizing elements of technology-delivered instruction.

Theoretical Base:
Educational institutions have long puzzled over how to help students succeed. Successful outcomes include degree attainment, intellectual growth, social growth, job placement, and so forth (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005). Two closely related areas of concentration in the field of student success are research on student retention (how institutions retain students) and student persistence (what factors lead a student to persist to graduation). While much of the literature base for this presentation comes from the higher education literature, the ideas also apply to secondary students participating in non-traditional educational experiences.

Of all the recent models of student retention, perhaps none is more influential than the model first proposed in 1975 by Vincent Tinto. Tinto proposes that voluntary student withdrawal from higher education institutions, like suicide, results from “insufficient interactions with others in the college and insufficient congruency with the prevailing value patterns of the college collectivity” (1975, p. 92). Specifying two realms of interaction within colleges and universities, the academic and social realms, Tinto forms a conceptual schema that “argues that it is the individual’s integration into the academic and social systems of the college that most directly relates to his continuance in that college” (p. 96). He uses two constructs – goal commitment, or dedication to finishing a program of study, and institutional commitment, or dedication to staying at a particular institution – to explain student retention and proposes that the degree of academic and social integration experienced by a student in the college environment directly influences these two forms of commitment (see Figure 1 on p. 95).

Tinto (1975) defines academic integration as the degree to which a student is incorporated into the academic fabric of his or her institution. He argues that academic integration can be measured both in terms of grade performance and the more nebulous construct of intellectual development. While the former refers to how successfully a student meets explicit academic standards, the latter, he asserts, is more closely related to how well the student comes to identify with the norms of the academic system (p. 104). Calling upon the work of Rootman (1972), Tinto proposes that “voluntary withdrawal can be viewed as an individual’s response to the strain produced by the lack of ‘person-role’ fit between himself and the normative climate of the institution that establishes certain roles as appropriate to the institution” (p. 106). Hence, the retention of students depends heavily upon how successfully the institution can integrate students into the academic realm of the college or university. In a similar vein, social integration “involves notions of both levels of integration and of degrees of congruency between the individual and his social environment” (p. 107) and is also a key predictor of student retention.

For nontraditional students, the implicit norms of an institution are just as powerful as explicit expectations in their effect on students (Weidman, 1989). In addition, factors outside the institution exert a strong pull; nontraditional students tend to experience lower degrees of social integration on campus because of their off-campus obligations (Bean & Metzner, 1985). Academic integration seems to have a greater effect on the persistence of nontraditional students than social integration by having a direct effect on commitment (Cleveland-Innes, 1994). Tinto also acknowledged this more recently: “In most cases, academic integration seems to be the more important form of involvement” (1998, p. 169).
Other authors have highlighted the critical role of the classroom experience and the role of faculty in fostering academic integration and goal commitment (Sandler, 2002; Sorey & Duggan, 2008; Weidman, 1985). Though he did not include it as a part of his original conceptualization of academic integration, Tinto himself later highlighted the critical role of the classroom: “student engagement is, for most institutions, centered in and around the classroom” (1993, p. 132). In creating a model of college outcomes, Donaldson and colleagues have placed the “connecting classroom” in a prominent position, calling on prior research to highlight its importance (Donaldson, 1999; Donaldson, Graham, Kasworm, & Dirkx, 1999; Graham, Donaldson, Kasworm, & Dirkx, 2000). Said Donaldson concerning nontraditional students, “their class-related learning and their relationships with faculty and other students become the most powerful influences on their campus experiences” (Donaldson, 1999, p. 28).

Elsewhere McGivney identifies high-quality course content and presentation together with a supportive learner group as critical success factors for nontraditional students (McGivney, 2004). Negative academic experiences, such as lack of access to counseling, mentoring, and academic advising, are identified as primary causes for adult student dropout (Hensley & Kinser, 2001a; 2001b; Sissel, Hansman, & Kasworm, 2001). From the sources cited above, it becomes apparent that for the nontraditional student with substantial off-campus obligations and limited social interaction on campus, instructional experiences play a major role in institutional persistence. That is, positive instructional experiences lead to stronger commitment and a greater likelihood of retention.

Presenter

Nate Southerland

Nate is an Instructional Services specialist at the Utah Education Network. A former high school physics teacher and educational technology specialist on the Navajo Reservation, he is currently finishing his PhD coursework in Educational Leadership and Policy department at the University of Utah. Nate’s research focuses on student retention in higher education.

Presenting the research results of the adoption and implementation by Tecnologico de Monterrey College Faculty of Open Educational Resources (OERs) through the use and help of the Knowledge Hub search engine initiative created and managed by this institution (http://khub.itesm.mx/) in 2008. The purpose of this paper presentation will comment on the best practices used by professors on incorporating and implementing Open Educational Resources available at the World Wide Web within their college courses (http://www.itesm.edu/)(http://www.ruv.itesm.mx/).

Abstract

Title: The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) by Tecnologico de Monterrey faculty through its Knowledge Hub search engine initiative in Mexico and world wide: Best Practices.

Purpose of the presentation:

1.What audience will learn? And what audience will find in the session? To recognize the importance on the Open Educational Resources (OERs) movement and the educational perspectives on the use of open access resources, data-bases, and metadata for distance education, e-learning, and traditional face-to-face education.
2.To enrich the practice of distance education professionals through the understanding of disadvantages and advantages of open educational resources, and learn about best practices in the use and adoption of Open Educational Resources from the Internet.
3.Audience will find a practical case of an open educational resources search engine available globally within the Internet.

Audience:

Higher Education, Community Colleges, Professionals of Distance Education and Distance Learning, Open Educational Resources, Open Access, and General Audience interested in distance education, e-learning experiences, computer education, and open access issues.

Objectives and Practical Applications:

1. Presenting the research results of the adoption and implementation by Tecnologico de Monterrey College Faculty of Open Educational Resources (OERs) through the use and help of the Knowledge Hub search engine initiative created and managed by this institution (http://khub.itesm.mx/) in 2008. The purpose of this paper presentation will comment on the best practices used by professors on incorporating and implementing Open Educational Resources available at the World Wide Web within their college courses (http://www.itesm.edu/)(http://www.ruv.itesm.mx/).
2. Describing the documentation and indexing process of Open Educational Resources (OERs), within the Knowledge Hub (KHub) website search engine initiative, also how OERs are adopted and implementing by teachers and professors to enhance the course material and class presentations. Describing KHub characteristics, potentialities, goals, target audience, functions, successes and constraints.
3. The paper conference will present two surveys results, as a part of a research study conducted during the past 2008 fall semester, to evaluate and to know how was developed this initiative of Open Educational Resources, and how faculty professors used them in their courses. One faculty survey on the documentation and adoption of OERs (149 professors responded the survey) was conducted, and a student survey was also conducted the fall semester of 2008 (471 students responded). Also, 25 qualitative structured interviews were conducted as a part of the qualitative section of the study, included two focus groups among faculty who are adopting and using these OERs at the Tecnologico de Monterrey.
4. Finally, the paper will present the result of the evaluation process of the effectiveness and quality of the Knowledge Hub search engine initiative and the best teaching practices developed by faculty while are using OERs.

Theoretical Framework (Information):

Currently Open Educational Resources (OER) is one of the most important trends that are helping education through the Internet all over the world, and it is every day more used in many higher education institutions; especially those which have embraced distance education and any other form of e-learning as one of their major institutional and teaching efforts, such as “The Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey” (ITESM –Tecnológico de Monterrey) has done in Mexico.
One of the most competitive private higher education institutions in Mexico, “El Tecnológico de Monterrey” (ITESM) (also named TEC de Monterrey), has implemented for more than 15 years videoconferencing, TV satellite and online instruction to deliver distance education courses and programs, and also more than 10 years using different e-learning platforms (LearningSpace, BlackBoard, FirstClass, BSCW, WebTec) to enhance its traditional face-to-face and distance education programs at undergraduate and graduate level (Masters and Doctoral).
Through this e-learning electronic delivery educational platforms ITESM has reached all its 20 or more campuses around Mexico; allowing them delivery, currently, more than twelve thousand e-learning courses every semester. Blackboard is its major e-learning platform, and it is widely used both locally (each campus has certain autonomy in its use) and through the entire ITESM system.
To help this institutional distance education effort and to respond to Mexican and Latino American educational needs “El Tecnológico de Monterrey” has developed an important educational initiative, named : “Knowledge Hub” (KHub). It is a search engine for open educational resources, which is available in the Internet for any people interested in educational resources available online, especially for teachers and professor of higher education level (undergraduate and graduate) (its website: http://khub.itesm.mx/).
Knowledge Hub is an academic search engine, which is specialized on academic material with educational content to help and support courses of different topics. It was created to assist mainly “Tecnológico de Monterrey” faculty, also to help professors and students from outside and other educational institutions and entities (http://khub.itesm.mx/) (http://khub.itesm.mx/legal), as an open educational resources search engine. The main idea of KHub is to have an open data base of educational resources (e.g.: PPT presentations, podcasts, videos-on-demand, web sites, blogs, and so on) available in the Internet to help students and teachers all over the world. Educational material from different universities world wide will be available openly, following the global open access trend. Already has educational material from MIT, UCLA, Berkeley and Tecnlógico de Monterrey.
Currently, after more the one year to be online, KHub has more than 230 faculty members (Tecnológico de Monterrey professors) working on the selection, gather, and evaluation of these educational resources available in the Internet, following academic criteria in its selection and copy right issues. The educational resources already selected (5,192 indexed material –July 2008) are from diverse higher education topics on the fields of: administration, accountability, business, marketing, engineering, telecommunications, physics, architecture, social sciences, liberal arts, ethics, etc.
The main goal of this paper presentation at the TTIX, Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange Conference is to comment and describe the best teaching practices on the use of Open Educational Resources through the KHub, and comment and describe how has been working and its characteristics, how the target audience has been responded to it, how faculty and students have used it.

Presenter

Fernando J. Mortera-Gutierrez

Presenter Qualifications: B.A. in Social Anthropology at ENAH, Mexico city; M.A. in Sociology (Socio-Demography) at FLACSO, Mexico City; Ph.D. (Doctor) in Educational Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Currently, Full Time Research Professor at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM),Virtual University (UV), Monterrey City campus, Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

Most Recent Presentation Experiences:
1. “Fostering Creativity in a Qualitative Research Course Using Blackboard with a Blended Learning Approach: Best Practices”. At the Ed-Media 2007 –World Conference: Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications-, Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Montréal, Vancouver, Canada, 2007.
2. “Quality Issues in the Blended Learning and E-learning Instructional Model of “Tecnológico de Monterrey”, Mexico City Campus: A Mexican Case Study”. At the Ed-Media 2005 (AACE), Montréal,Quebec, Canada, 2005.