If online video is the future, will I have to put it in my online course?
We are in a time when it is commonplace for everyone to easily discover,
watch and share videos online. The objective of this workshop is to provide
an overview of basic online-video principles, compare video
solutions that integrate with Learning Management Systems and address
whether they belong in a course in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Drupal’s use is exploding in Higher Education. This session will introduce a new Drupal distribution designed to serve as a platform for building rich intranets for educational institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Instructors consider personal interaction to be the most valuable element of the teaching and learning process. This presentation will demonstrate how the 21st century online learning environment allows faculty and students to build relationships by combining state-of-the-art interactive technologies such as voice, video, application sharing, polling, and whiteboarding, with traditional best practices of instruction. Read the rest of this entry »

An update on BYU’s efforts to develop a “loosely coupled gradebook” to serve as a central data collection and communication tool for teachers and learners. Read the rest of this entry »

Teaching the Facebook generation:
A wish list for course management software

Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley

Today’s generation of students know how to use the web for a lot more than just checking their email. They’re perfectly comfortable with dynamic web pages and highly interactive content. They spend hours a day on social networking sites communicating and collaborating with friends. So why is it that the only interaction they have with Learning Management Software is when they check to see if their grades have been updated?

LMS systems offer a hub of interaction for today’s online students — at least, they should. Instead of collaborating within an LMS, students are organizing themselves into independent Facebook and Google groups, and teachers are making outside blogs for their students to follow. Some teachers avoid LMS software altogether because it’s too clunky and confusing. There’s a growing disconnect between what LMS solutions provide and what students and teachers actually use or want.

At Instructure we’re working to create a new type of course software that embraces the open technologies of the web. Our real goal, though, is to create a system that will actually get used. We have our own ideas about how to make a modern LMS really shine, and we’ll start the presentation off by going over some of these thoughts. Then we’ll open it up for discussion to hear what you want/need in an LMS. We’re building this product for you, and we want to make sure it’s something that will actually fit into your educational plans.

This presentation will be the chance to start participating in the creation of a meaningful, useful educational product. It’ll be an open-discussion opportunity for us to get to know you better, and for you to get excited about a fresh new take on educational software.