Resources for Faculty RE: Online Learning

Here is a great resource from the University of Texas, pick and choose the videos that interest you, go to the page and click on Teaching!
http://ctl.utexas.edu/

Prof. Prokop

Social Media and Higher Education

Educause Conference

I just got back from the Educause conference in Austin 2012, the emerging topics according to the new horizon report in one year or less is mobile apps and tablet computing, two to three years is game-based learning and learning analytics and four to five years out is gesture based computing and internet of things. Here is the report:
New Horizons Report 2012

Social Media

Social Media is what people are saying about you, your product and your institution. For example, Twitter is useful for "following" key contributors in your field and for research and trending purposes. Key tips for twitter include update your biography to personalize your twitter account and create hastags (#) for each event, workshop, production or class topic.

I am wondering how faculty is going to use Social Media in Online Learning, view the short video, do you agree with the statistics presented?

Higher Education Conference List

Looking for conferences to attend for higher education (updated annually), check out this list: Conferences 2011 Higher Education

How Students Use Twitter and AU's Social Media Club

To all faculty,

Not sure if you are aware but AU now has a student driven Social Media Club...this is great to learn about student's perspective and how students use social media outside the classroom. I especially liked Ben Loeb's article on "3 Things Students Should Know About Twitter." You can read it here:

3 Things Students Should Know About Twitter

Also the the first annual Social Learning Summit, brought to you by the American University Social Media Club is on April 1-3, 2011 at the American University School of International Service building.

Social Media Debate

Class,

This week we are on e-blogger to discuss on our next assignment. In the face to face class we will be covering Web 2.0 tools such as Google Docs, Google Sites, Blogs and Wikis. To see how a blog works, read the article on Social Media in Blackboard Week 4 folder, watch the video and post what you find most interesting about Social Media tools and the research behind it.

Here is a short video on social media, do you agree with it?



Looking forward to your posts!!

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Google Documents as a tool for Collaboration

Hello and welcome to this week's discussion on AU Online Learning.

Last week in class I discussed how I used Google Documents to streamline my group project. To remind everyone- the project was a group conflict analysis. The original format of the project as given to us by our professor was to generate a spreadsheet covering each week's reading topics and apply them to our conflict. Each week we would send our professor a copy of our document.

We originally used this service to eliminate the need to email drafts of our reseach document back and forth, however it also had  a number of unexpected, but very the beneficial consequences. One of these was of giving us the ability to work simultaneously and hold online discussions while doing so as Google Documents has an integrated chat setting which allows for communication between group members as we're working.

Google Docs is also a great way of sharing your own personal notes with a group. Here is an example from the Georgia conflict project.

I found this project to be one of the most rewarding of my projects at American University, in no small part because of this tool. The tool made group work easier and eliminated the need for most meetings outside of class hours. Rather than decreasing in group communication it actually increased the exchange of our ideas. It was interesting to see what each group member was contributing each week. This fueled a number of debates within our groups as we challenged each others perceptions and analyses. This was especially valuable, given the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives.

Since Google Documents is integrated with their other services such as Google's Picasa (a slideshow example is placed below) your students have plenty of room to come up with their own innovations.


At the Social Science Research lab Google Docs has been used in a number of ways to deal with the logistics of group work. Examples of this approach have been skill inventories and sign up sheets.

Altogether I've found Google Documents to be a great tool for making group more transparent and more collaborative.

I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts, questions, reflections and experiences.