September 5

Web Writing for Online Courses – Upcoming Webinar

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

This Thursday at 2 pm there will be another Best of the Summit Webinar Series webinar, Web Writing for Online Courses featuring Ann Fandrey, University of Minnesota Academic Technologist.

Have you heard the term write for scannability? What about, student’s don’t read online content, they skim it? While that may be true, how does that impact your online courses? What should you do when you are creating online content? If you have these questions, attend the webinar for information on writing for the web plus receive other handy instructional strategies.

Webinar Details

Thursday, September 7, 2017 2:00 pm CT

Session number: 281 467 896

Session password: MNLC@2017

Category: Course Design, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 8

Short and Reusable Recordings

Our colleagues from the U of M presented at the Minnesota E-Learning Summit on using videos in your courses. The handout below summarizes their main points about creating engaging, relevant, sustainable videos. One interesting point they made is that students will rather watch several videos that make up 20 minutes total, than just one 20 minute long video. I guess the “binge watching” culture prevails. 🙂 The Reusable Relevant Recording Creating Engaging and Evergreen Course Content handout: granualr, modular, reusable, quality, aligned, engaging, short (video), sustainable

Category: How Does It Work?, Online and Distance Education, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 4

MN eLearning Summit Resources

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

 

After an excellent gathering at Normandale college, many presenters have shared their handouts or presentations (new tab).

One of my personal favorites was the presentation on accessibility or specifically how to accessify your digital instructional materials (opens in new tab) , by Sara Shoen and Ann Fandrey from the U of M. In addition to their presentation they also provide a handout with core skills to be addressed on the path to accessible documents, presentations, emails, website, and videos.

 

Category: Accessibility in Online Learning, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
July 6

2017 Minnesota eLearning Summit

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

 

This year’s MN eLearning Summit will happen August 2-3 in Normandale Community College. The program draft is already out and the HIED topics will range from online discussions, MOOCS, course development, telepresence classrooms, asynchronous courses, etc.

Registration is open and discounted for any MN State employee ($61.25 − Enter promo code C118 at checkout, by July 14).

Hope we see you there!

Category: Online and Distance Education, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 3

Minnesota eLearning Summit 2016 Presentation Materials

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

Just like last summer, the MN elearning Summit organizers encouraged the presenters to share their presentations with the broader audience. Here, you will find the various 2016 sessions materials.

Some of our favorites:

Category: Open Educational Resources, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 19

Minnesota eLearning Summit 2016

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

This year, Minnesota Learning Commons (a partnership of Minnesota Department of Education, MnSCU, and the University of Minnesota) organize another conference July 27−28 at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College. The purpose is to provide a gathering place for presenters and exhibitors focused on technology in education. You can find a detailed description here.

Although it is early for the full schedule of concurrent sessions and exhibitors, you can read about the keynote speakers and last year’s presentations.

Great news for all MnSCU employees is that the registration fee is $61.25 (you must be an active MnSCU employee, with an MnSCU e-mail account, to receive this registration rate.)

This is a great opportunity for collaboration, networking, and sharing ideas on best practices in teaching and learning in online, blended, and face-to-face courses. Also, for anyone who would love to learn more there is a wide variety of sessions on elearning tools, resources, and best practices. A very convenient location and price for any faculty from any department. We hope to see you there! 🙂

Category: Online and Distance Education, Online Collaborative Learning, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Open Educational Resources, Professional Development, Spotlight on Ed Tech | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 3

Free Webinar from Minnesota eLearning Summit: Exploring Affordable Course Content

As our team members attended the Minnesota eLearning Summit this summer, there are some follow up sessions related to the presentations. Here is the information we got:

Over the next eight months, the Minnesota Learning Commons (MnLC is the sponsor of the MN eLearning Summit) will be offering a series of free webinars, many based on the most popular sessions at the 2015 Summit.

This coming Thursday from 1-2 pm,  a session on affordable course content featuring Kristi Jensen and Shane Nackerud from the University of Minnesota is featured. A description of the webinar and connection information is provided below.

Exploring Affordable Course Content: The University of Minnesota Libraries Partnership for Affordable Content Project

Thursday, November 5, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Session Description

The cost of textbooks and course materials continues to rise and has created financial hardships for many students. In response to this dilemma, the University of Minnesota Libraries created the Partnership for Affordable Content, a competitive grant to help faculty find and use alternative, high-quality, low- or no-cost materials for their courses. The Partnership provides faculty with the opportunity to explore innovative course content options from Open Textbooks to student created course content. Customized teams including library subject and technology specialists and other campus partners focused on teaching and learning will support the creation of innovative, alternative course content. This session will discuss the initiative including goals, project design, proposals received and reviewed, library team development, and next steps.

Connection Instructions:

To join the WebEx:  https://mde.webex.com

Meeting number:  804 981 853

(WebEx can provide both the audio and video)

[If you need to use telephone instead of computer audio, you can also connect via phone:

Call-in toll-free number:  1-888-742-5095

 

Conference Code:  710 945 5454]

 

Related Project Website: https://www.lib.umn.edu/elearning/partnership

 

Category: Open Educational Resources | LEAVE A COMMENT
July 31

Minnesota eLearning Summit 2015

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

Image credit: https://cceevents.umn.edu/minnesota-elearning-summit

Last week, the Academic Technologies Team, as well as several other members of SCSU faculty, attended the 2015 Minnesota eLearning Summit which had a record number of participants (+400). There were too many wonderful presentations to mention, but you can click here to access the many of them!

For those of you interested in OER (Open Educational Resources), please check out Lumen Learning (co-founded by keynote speaker, Dr. David Wiley) and the Open Textbook Library (set up by David Ernst, Chief Information Officer at the University of Minnesota).

Relating to some of our previous posts on game-based learning, our very own Dr. Plamen Miltenoff (Learning Resources Services) gave a presentation on Gamification and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) based on his constructivist research in which he created mobile interface templates for gamifying library instructions and tested them in educational leaderships classes. For more details about Dr. Miltenoff’s research, please view his web page on Library Instruction Using Mobile Devices.

Category: Game-Based Learning, Open Educational Resources, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT