OER and Competency-based Learning Webinar

Dec 2: OER and Competency-based Learning Webinar

Please join the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) for a free and open webinar on how OER is being used to design and offer low-cost competency-based certificates and degrees.  Competency-based degrees can offer a shorter path to a degree because students advance as soon as they master the subject matter. Students work at their own pace and move as far and fast as their proven knowledge takes them. With competencies that are clearly aligned to career skills, graduates are more employable.

Washington community colleges launched their first competency based degree with an online business transfer degree that uses only open educational resources and no commercial textbooks.  The program has been in pilot mode at single college since summer 2015 but will be expanding to 7 more colleges in Winter 2016.  Students in this particular competency-based program are taught by highly qualified instructors and receive guidance from completion coaches.

Lord Fairfax Community College (LFCC) launched competency-based education this fall with their Knowledge to Work program. With approval from its accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, LFCC becomes the first institution in the region to offer 100% direct assessment, competency-based education. Direct assessment does not involve counting hours in the classroom. Instead, the focus shifts to documenting learning and the attainment of competencies using OER and low cost curriculum which makes college both more affordable and accelerated.

Date: Wed, December 2, 
Time: 10 am PST, 1:00 pm EST


Featured Speakers:

• Mark Jenkins, Director of eLearning & Open Education, State Board of Community and Technical Colleges, Washington State
• Kiri Johnson, Digital Librarian, Knowledge to Work, Lord Fairfax Community College, Virginia

Participant Login Information:

No pre-registration is necessary.  Please use the link below on the day of the webinar to login and listen.

http://www.cccconfer.org/MyConfer/GoToMeetingAnonymousely.aspx?MeetingSeriesID=0b39cf48-aa30-4bc6-bb9d-cbecc9256384

READ THIS PRIOR TO YOUR FIRST CCC CONFER MEETING TO ENSURE YOUR COMPUTER IS READY!

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Telephone: 760-744-1150 ext 1537, 1554 or 1542 
Email: clientservices@cccconfer.org

If you need dial-in access, you may use the following number:
1-888-886-3951 (passcode: 781859)

Food for Fines

This has little to do directly with online education, but it's a cool idea, and it does illustrate creative thinking to solve campus problems.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/18/food-fines-elizabethtown

OER Zero Cost Textbooks for Core Courses

From Inside Higher Ed

Tuesday, November 17, 2015 - 3:00am

Northern Virginia Community College's zero-textbook-cost degree programs are going open source. The community college, with help from open-courseware provider Lumen Learning, on Monday made nine of its courses available under a Creative Commons license, meaning instructors at other institutions are free to reuse and repurpose the content. The courses, which use free open educational resources instead of textbooks, satisfy requirements in NOVA's associate degree programs in general studies and social sciences. Lumen Learning and NOVA plan to release a total of 24 courses.

http://lumenlearning.com/partner-nova-zeli/

Videos as supplementary instruction

Here are a few YouTube videos I taped recently for RHETx, a two day “Ted Talk” even at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Andrew Hollinger, who supervised the event, asked for a few short videos (the longest is four minutes) on “Threshold Concepts” in writing for first year students.  

Production values are poor. I taped them quickly on an old HP laptop, the only computer I had handy with a camera. What I like about these video is they illustrate the diversity of digital pedagogies. Andrew showed these videos between the talks. I will download them to the website for the first year class I teach, as well as make them available to any of my colleagues who’d like to jump-start reflective thinking for their students by providing an alternative perspective on writing.  

Writing is a Conversation https://youtu.be/g6YTZovKYJE

Writing is Identity https://youtu.be/yOElDve8H3o

Writing is fun: https://youtu.be/o3EvbilqfxE

Writing is risky: https://youtu.be/fZXaO-qJ_VA

Writing Never Ends https://youtu.be/AgkK0zyVbtc

Writing is Situational https://youtu.be/s50Z7M1ImIY

Looking forward to THATCamp in Austin in January

The Variable

The most intriguing thing: the variable wasn't the technology or support. It was the individual teacher. Makes you think online instruction is not that different from f2f.    

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/10/report-finds-successful-online-2-year-college-courses-california

http://http//www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=1152

OER or Pirates?

Some of the sites on this reddit list may be skirting the law. Some may be over the line. But there's some fascinating stuff here. 


https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/hrgmv/tracker_with_pdfsebooks_of_college_textbooks/c1xrq44

An OER Resource for Writing Teachers

Thank you, Colorado State. Quality OER resources have been sorely lacking for writing teachers--other than resources for technical and business writing.

This is a wonderful resource for anyone working in first year writing.  


http://writing.colostate.edu/textbooks/

UT Austin's Digital Writing and Research Lab

UT Austin's Digital Writing and Research Lab has some informative, and creative, projects on digital writing.  Well worth a look

http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/

Ethnicity and Social Networks

Here are some interesting websites and statistics on Ethnicity and Social Networks.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/03/social-media-preferences-vary-by-race-and-ethnicity/

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/03/07/ii-internet-use-3/

http://www.statista.com/topics/1867/hispanics-in-the-united-states-internet-usage/

http://www.capturagroup.com/whitepaper/hispanic-online-market/

http://nbclatino.com/2013/03/07/study-digital-divide-disappearing-as-latinos-catch-up-on-internet-usage/

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/technology-meets-culture-149178

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hispanics-turn-to-internet-for-political-news-but-use-is-determined-by-several-factors-fau-poll-finds-300049658.html

http://www.hispanicoutlook.com/mark-blankenship/2015/8/6/how-social-media-can-and-should-impact-higher-education

http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/jgcc_aprendiendoencasa.pdf

Though these statistics provide insight into student social interaction using technology outside of the classroom, and perhaps give clues how technology might enhance social interaction inside the classroom, these statistics also provide yet another method for labeling Hispanic students that may complicate those students’ interactions with each other, education, and the culture that tends to label them, and at times, manipulate them.

The possible benefits and problems are illustrated by the white papers from the Captura Group. At question is how do we use that information. The Captura Group sells that information to corporate clients.

College Open Textbooks Website

This is probably the best (at least the best I have found) resource for open source textbooks.

http://collegeopentextbooks.org/

It's Complicated, The Social Lives of Network Teens, Response II

“As teens move through different social environments—and interact with different groups of friends, interest groups, and classmates—they maneuver between different contexts that they have collectively built and constructed” (Boyd 41).

As I read these words it struck me that standard class policies about cellphone use are as antiquated as the standard lecture format. I wonder what would happen if, rather than trying to situate the class outside of social networks, we intentionally situated the classroom in that matrix of social networks. The naïve idea that the classroom can exist in a space prior to technologies that spawned the term social networks is as unworkable as all utopian ideals. If we are looking for ways to encourage student interaction, why do we seek to limit that interaction? (In another post, I suggested we distrust technology because it takes control out of our hands. But, that control was always illusionary in the first place.)

Ah, but how to create that space. That's the rub. 

Boyd, Danah. It's Complicated, The Social Lives of Network Teens. 2014: New Haven CT, Yale UP.

A Possible Motivation for Resisting Online Teaching.

In "Arts of the Contact Zone, "Mary Louise Pratt writes that, “The lecturer's traditional (imagined) task" is "unifying the world in the class's eyes by means of a monologue that rings equally coherent, revealing, and true for all, forging an ad hoc community, homogeneous with respect to one's own words” (39).

I can't shake this image of the lecturer in control, creating a community in his or her own image. Ah, it's what all of us long for. Yet, is it the best way for students to learn, particularly if our goal is for students to think for themselves? 

I remember one of those experts that the administration periodically invites on campus, usually for large sums of money. He insisted that critical thinking consisted of teaching students to think like us. I was always uncomfortable with that idea. 

If our goal is to teach students to think for themselves, certainly what I mean by critical thinking, then the measure of our success are those students who disagree with us, who think differently than we do, who reject our assumptions. If students all come out of our classes thinking like we do, we have failed. 

Yet, if we go online, there is the danger that we might lose control, that students might have a different "take away" than we envisioned, that they might actually be able to think for themselves instead of letting us do that for them.