To accommodate diverse learning styles as well as access to mobile content it has become increasingly important to use multimedia and instructional tools that enhance lessons. The tools featured in this webinar will be either free or cheap resources that easily incorporate a variety of multimedia into your SoftChalk content. Many of the tools have both desktop and mobile based solutions that are great to utilize with online and in class engagement. Plus many of these tools are great for student created content as well.

Presenter:

Josh Murdock – Instructional Designer, OIT
Adjunct Professor EPI, CGS, SLS
Valencia College

This year’s winners demonstrate the rich variety of ways that SoftChalk content can enrich teaching and learning. In Little Things Mean A Lot you will learn how a typical lecture driven class was transformed into an interactive learning experience where students learn not only about shaken baby syndrome, but also about brain development and child abuse prevention. Students and teachers who are required to take this training annually comment that they are learning new things in this format.

In Advance Web Design you will see an exciting way to present media, add text-to-speech and even an interactive tour of an animation program. Most importantly – and  particularly relevant to this class, students easily experience the basic web design principles that are being taught, just through the SoftChalk design and integrated elements!

In Physical Examination: Body Positioning you will see Dr. Larsen challenge his students to select the correct body positions for the next physical exam. This transformed text-filled page becomes a memorable learning experience for first year nursing students.

Winners/Presenters:

1^st Place Winner: Anna Raumaker, College of the Mainland, Little Things Mean A Lot

2^nd Place Winner: Alli Houston, Georgia Virtual School, Advanced Web Design

^3rd Place Winner: Joshua Farquharson, Allied Health Tools LLC, Physical Examination: Body Positioning

Faculty at New Mexico State University (NMSU) are using SoftChalk Cloud and Instructure Canvas to create web lessons that can be delivered on virtually any device, allowing students to access class material from their mobile phones and tablets. This is especially important for NMSU students since the university campus is entirely wireless.   In addition, the LTI integration of SoftChalk Cloud with Canvas enables faculty to make changes to their content in just one place (SoftChalk Cloud) and that immediately updates every class where it is used within Canvas. Using SoftChalk Cloud in combination with Canvas provides accessibility benefits, ease of development, and the creation of interactive, engaging content for online teaching and learning.

Presenters:
Sandra Johnson
Distance Education
New Mexico State University

Wenona Nutima
Distance Education
New Mexico State University

What does the research show about teachers actively engaging students in problem solving (i.e. homework) in the classroom and leveraging the power of technology to receive more traditional work (lecturing) at home via computer/smart pad/or smartphone?

In this presentation we will discuss the research and reasoning behind the approach. How does the approach work with what we know as best practices for teaching millennial students? How does flip teaching fit Bloom’s Taxonomy? How does the approach hold up to Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education? How is the growing field of brain-based research better informing this student-centered approach? Just what exactly does the research say about Flip Teaching? This will be a fast paced and highly visual discussion that summarizes and reviews the research and reasoning. You will also most likely pick up a Teacher Trick or two on how to better utilize SoftChalk to flip activities in your own classrooms.

 Presenter:
James May, Professor ESL
Faculty Fellow for Innovation and Technology
Valencia College

The Blended Schools Network’s upcoming MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), “Today’s Blended Teacher,” will use Google Plus to deliver the MOOC and BSNcloud (a private version of SoftChalk Cloud) for its content. The MOOC is designed specifically for educators who wish to improve their knowledge of quality blended learning and improve the quality of their existing content while growing their K-12 professional peer network. Beginning April 15, each week of this five week course will include a live panel discussion, course materials, curating quality resources and developing and critiquing new lessons.

During this presentation Mark Radcliffe and Dan Lucas from the Blended Schools Network will discuss their goals for this MOOC as well as the week to week agendas and strategies.  The presenters will also discuss why they chose the Google Plus platform to deliver the MOOC and why their content is created and delivered via BSN’s Private SoftChalk Cloud Learning Object Repository and Content Authoring platform.

This BSN MOOC is free to all. For more information, or to register: http://www.cvent.com/d/8cqflc.

Presenters

Mark Radcliffe
Director of Professional Development
Blended Schools Network

Dan Lucas
Blended Learning Specialist
Blended Schools Network

This flipped classroom program is used to both teach current community college students and to re-train auto industry employees.  This NSF funded National Center for Excellence, the Automotive Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC), involves 30 community colleges and virtually every automobile manufacturer in the USA. SoftChalk was used to shift the “lecture” to digital lessons students complete on their own so that the time they spend with their instructors can be better spent solving real-world problems. AMTEC subject matter experts and instructional designers developed a hybrid online associate’s degree program in general mechatronic maintenance composed of 12 courses, sorted into 90 stand-alone modules, each aligned to validated industry skill standards.

In this presentation we will discuss how AMTEC, this unique collaboration of colleges and industry partners, developed hybrid online lectures and in person labs to contextualize instruction so that students are more engaged and gain valuable experience in maintaining and troubleshooting complex integrated manufacturing systems. Discussion will include how AMTEC’s use of SoftChalk has been integral in developing a mechatronics maintenance curriculum that drives cost down, better aligns to industry skill standards, and helps instructors to target instruction based on student needs. In addition, we will discuss AMTEC’s current work using SoftChalk Cloud to create fault-based scenarios to further improve student learning and better analyze student performance against critical skill standards.

Presenter:
Walt Barlow
AMTEC Curriculum Director
Workforce Education Specialist
Kentucky Community & Technical College System

In this Public Speaking course flipping helps the student be “emerged” into the content. This is accomplished using ‘Learning Modules’ to gain competency along with WorkPacs for practice, and ComPacs to develop their own content (speeches in this case).

The ‘Learning Modules’ were created with SoftChalk and include auto-graded assessments and activities. The SoftChalk ‘Certificate’ feature is used to motivate and document! Thus, both student and teacher know the content has been learned. The student is pleased with the Certificate and earns points for it, and there’s no hand-grading for the teacher. WorkPacs (Work Packages) are created for student practice. They are imbedded in the Learning Module and use Bloom’s Taxonomy levels to indicate the expected learning level. These ‘Practice’ WorkPacs are automatically graded, and students earn Participation Points with successful completion. ComPacs (Competency Packages) align with the WorkPacs, but now students enter content related to their own projects. This requires some teacher-review and hand-comments. However, after students learned the content and application through Learning Module, Self-Assessments, and WorkPacs, the ComPacs are submitted in good shape.

In this webinar you will learn how this process can make student work ‘stellar,’ as opposed to simply meeting expectations. (A true joy for both teacher and student.)

Presenter:

Dr. Virginia Gregg
Professor, Communication Studies
Minnesota State University Moorhead

This fall, after teaching Introduction to Chemistry for over 20 years, it was, for the first time, taught as a flipped course. At Southern State, Introduction to Chemistry is a high school level course designed for those students who either did not take high school chemistry, or took it so long ago they need a refresher.  The course lessons were short video lectures which include animations, simulations, and a variety of video clips. These video lectures, with follow-up questions, are incorporated into SoftChalk which allows the lessons to be interactive. Students are also provided with handouts of the PowerPoint slides with QR codes linked to the video lectures. If the students have smart phones, they can access the video lessons on their phones using the QR codes. During class time the students do the usual problem solving, laboratory activities, etc. They also are asked to use clickers to respond to a series of questions tied to the course objectives. This formative assessment is compared with their responses to test questions related to the same course objectives.

Presenter:

Don Storer
Professor, Chemistry and Division Coordinator for Life Sciences
Southern State Community College (OH)

The Georgia Virtual School was established in 2005. Over the past seven years, GaVS enrollment has grown from 1500 to a projected 15,000+ in 2012-13. The primary reasons for the success of GaVS is the dedicated teaching staff and the commitment to high quality content created by a team of development specialists and subject matter experts who create or revise over 25 courses each year. SoftChalk plays a role because while there are many various “growing pains” in the process of establishing a quality program, a consistent content development process which allows content to be created once but used in a variety of online environments, including multiple LMSs.  Thus providing a stable learning environment for students and staff, and allowing the administration to concentrate on increasing student and parent communication, creating professional development, and improving the overall student experience. This webinar will focus on the elements of a quality online program and answer questions regarding successful implementation of a statewide virtual school.

Presenters:
Jay Heap, Director of Virtual Learning, Georgia Virtual School
Tami Echard, Manager of Instructional Development

Orange LIVE! (Learning through Interactive Virtual Education) is the virtual school of the Orange Unified School District in California. Their classes provide traditional high school students with opportunities to experience a technology-rich learning environment, gain graduation credits, and enroll in classes online that might be otherwise unavailable.  The content for the online courses are created by the teachers that teach the same face to face course. So although these educators are offered extensive training and mentoring, the content creation process must be streamlined and uncomplicated.

OrangeLIVE! students actively participate in weekly discussions via a discussion board or blog and in periodic “virtual chats” with the teacher and other enrolled students. They complete a technology-rich variety of assignments including projects, surveys, digital videos, interactive textbooks.  Students take all tests face-to-face with a teacher on campus, and must log into Blackboard daily.  This webinar will describe the unique roles of the students, teachers and administration in creating this successful program.

Presenters:  Pam Quiros, Coordinator of Educational Technology Services , Orange USD.

BlendedSchools.net is a not-for-profit company that empowers a network of schools to teach and learn online by providing K-12 curriculum, learning technologies, professional development and a professional network. BlendedSchools.net develops quality content with practicing teachers aided by instructional designers that it shares through a branded version of SoftChalk Cloud so that the content can be repurposed and customized to meet each school’s needs. BlendedSchools.net also supports member schools by training the school’s teachers to develop, share and teach online courses. Schools then use the master curriculum created by member teachers to start their own virtual school or blended learning opportunities using their own teachers to and teach the courses and customize the master curriculum to meet their students’ needs. This webinar will also discuss how blendedschools.net works with the more than one hundred separate virtual schools that it supports.

Presenters: Deanna Mayers, Director of Curriculum, BlendedSchools.net

In the world of K-12 education Virtual School models can vary greatly. In this webinar we will examine three. (1) Georgia Virtual (GaVS) is a statewide initiative which, requires their content to work in a larger variety of online environments, including any LMS; (2) BlendedSchools.net creates and shares their content with smaller virtual schools through a cloud based repository; and (3) Orange USD, a California virtual school, provides online courses for traditional f2f classroom students and requires their classroom teachers to build their own online courses. As you will learn, these organizations vary in their approaches to content creation, student orientation, and teacher training – to name a few.

Beginning in January each organization will have their own Innovator webinar to provide the details!

Presenters: Jay Heap, Georgia Virtual School; Deanna Mayers, BlendedSchools.net; Pam Quiros, Orange USD.

Sunchild E-learning’s challenge is to provide a high school education, at a distance, for both adults and students. In addition to meeting the challenge of their diverse populations, they are developing content for the devices (laptops, tablets, smart-phones) in which their students expect their learning to be delivered. In fact a recent study of their E-learning model and has determined several key elements that make the Sunchild model a gold standard for distance education.

Sunchild E-learning is a non-profit charitable organization and a fully accredited private high school that, for over 12 years,  has graduated more First Nations students than any other on reserve school in Alberta, Canada. Through their E-learning model, First Nations students can complete their high school diplomas without having to leave their home communities.   The program was developed to allow in culturally relevant content as well as to provide flexibility for students to access material online anytime and anywhere.

The Sunchild E-learning community program has seen course completion rates for aboriginal students of greater than 70% and graduation rates of greater than 80% in each of its 12 years of operations. This compared to graduation rates of less than 4% and course completion rates of less than 20% in nearby Alberta public school divisions.

Presenter: Mavis Sacher, Principal, Sunchild E-learning Community

Canisius College, a Jesuit institution in Buffalo, NY, has moved rapidly to build online programs, tripling the number in the last three years. To address this rapid growth, the college created and implemented a comprehensive and innovative collection of training offerings that helps connect faculty to the values and mission of their institution as well as addressing faculty members’ prior experiences with online teaching. Using Palloff and Pratt’s Five Phases of Online Faculty Development to guide the professional development offerings, the Plan is made up of three core workshops (novice, intermediate, and advanced), online course review tool, the Griff Guide to Teaching Online, resources for review and assessment, and professional development opportunities.

As a result, many faculty are using SoftChalk to help them develop their quality online, hybrid, and blended courses. The final portion of this presentation will illustrate some of the many ways faculty (and students) across the college are utilizing SoftChalk to teach and present online through real-world examples.

Presenter: Leah MacVie, Instructional Designer, Canisius College

This final webinar in the series will discuss hard data and ask if there is evidence that teaching online produces better learning outcomes? Is teaching online more an issue of cost and access or does it produce better results?

Presenters: Julie Nichols, Northeast Lakeside College (TX), Kristin Johnson, Northwest Vista College (TX), and James Brown, Ocean County College (NJ)

This fourth of five webinars will ask the question – Are different disciplines more effectively taught through one mode or another? What are the differences when teaching online in the sciences, in technology or for professional development?

Presenters: Lisa Dubuc, Niagara County Community College; James May, Valencia College; James Brown, Ocean County College

This third of five webinars will discuss Learning Styles and Best Practices. In the process of deciding the mode (online, blended, f2f) for delivering student content, what are learning style concerns and best practices?

Presenters: Julie Nichols and Kristin Johnson, Northeast Lakeview College; Patricia Trifilo, Wayland Baptist University; James Brown, Ocean County College, New Jersey

This second of five webinars will discuss institutional concerns such as affordability, accessibility and learning outcomes. What are the driving forces for an institution or a faculty member to go online? What are the issues and pressures? How do state mandates fit? What about accessibility?

Presenters: Patricia Trifilo, Wayland Baptist University; James May, Valencia College; Diane Painter, Shenandoah University

This first of five webinars will tell personal stories from educators in the sciences and humanities who have taught in all three modes. Also, explore the topic from a designer’s perspective touching on the role of Quality Matters.

Presenters: James Brown, Ocean County College, New Jersey; Stephen Holland, Eastern Iowa Community College; Leah MacVie, Canisius College

During this presentation the authors will discuss why they decided to change the model for teaching by moving the “studying” to the live (or virtual) classroom and moving the “lecture/learning” to “homework”. While many instructors are struggling with the content organization and presentation, and student engagement in the classroom, SoftChalk has emerged as an appealing tool for re-visiting how we teach.  Many instructors have used SoftChalk to develop media rich content with engaging activities to organize and present the content. They have used their SoftChalk lessons in various models to engage students in interacting with the content. In our presentation, we would like to share

1. Needs for Flipping the Classroom (F2F, Online and Hybrid)
2. The sample lessons Before and After: (PowerPoint Presentation vs. SoftChalk Lesson Modules)
3. Students’ Voices (what are students saying)
4. Strategies learned (roadmap for novice online instructors)

Presenters:
Jodi Brown, Ph. D., Dept. Social Work
Wendy Ashley, Psy.D. and LCSW, Dept. of Social Work
Li Wang, Ph. D., Faculty Technology Center

California State University, Northridge

The “Just in Time Medical Special Needs Shelter Training” module encompasses knowledge needed by nursing faculty and students, physicians, medical and non-medical volunteers as they work together to set up emergency shelters and meet medical needs of displaced populations.  The University of Texas at Tyler has been named a 2012 Laureate by IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program for the training module website and as part of this effort the university has been able to provide disaster sheltering efforts and provided volunteers for hurricane relief.

Project developers used SoftChalk to create and organize media rich content in a user-friendly format. The videos, graphics, and quizzes helped to engage the learner and facilitate comprehension and retention of the material. Their development model ensured that the content was user-friendly in an online environment and adhered to accessibility recommendations.

Presenters:
Cindy Smith, Director of Instructional Design
Jana Brown, Instructional Designer
Gina Parkins, Web Technician

The Office of Academic Affairs, The University of Texas at Tyler

The librarians at Northeast Lakeview College, one of the Alamo Colleges, used SoftChalk to develop tutorials to assist students in a first-year seminar course designed to support the transition of students enrolled in remedial courses into their college experience. Students are provided with instruction on using the library in preparation for their assignment to research and write a paper on a career they might be interested in pursuing.

Traditionally, library instruction was done in a face-to-face “one shot” library session. Moving the library instruction to online modules provides 24/7 point-of-need access to the materials students need to complete their assignment. The modules include library resources and engaging learning activities such as Xtranormal and Camtasia videos that enhance student learning.

This pilot program, initiated in Fall 2011 and continuing through Spring 2012, is being used to assess the differences in student learning in traditional instruction sessions versus online modules. The presenters will discuss the project background, assessment strategies, lessons learned, post-assessments, and next steps.

Presenters: Julie Nichols and Kristin Johnson, Librarians, Northeast Lakeview College (Alamo Community Colleges)

Bloom’s Taxonomy asks students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. So what does that look like in a SoftChalk lesson? Duke University Talent Identification program will demonstrate how it creates lessons for gifted K-12 students where higher-order thinking skills are a priority. Using SoftChalk tools of embedding media, handouts, quizzes, and quality web links, curriculum developers create lessons that present students with real-world problems such as a disease outbreak. See how a new epidemiology and medicine course presents a model for how students can think at the highest levels of the taxonomy.  Applicable to both adult and younger learners.

Presenter: Lyn Hawks, Assistant Director for Curriculum and Instruction, Duke University Talent Identification Program

In 2003, Ocean County College (OCC) was awarded a $458,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a One Day per Week Nursing Program which allowed students to attend clinical training one day per week while the didactic portion was delivered online. Almost immediately, they realized that the value of the program would be limited if the students were required to come to campus at all. We needed to put science totally online.

At the time the content was largely “all text” Word files. Two major changes allowed us to place science totally online. We discovered SoftChalk was an easily way of putting content online and providing an interactive format. The other was using home-based lab kits (LabPaqs) to provide a hands-on laboratory experience for our students.

SoftChalk was easy for faculty to learn, and eventually nearly all of our faculty members teaching online became “Chalkies”. Both the use of SoftChalk and Hands-On Labs LabPaqs were keys to our success in bringing a total of 14 online science courses with laboratory completely online. Students from as far away as Alaska, California, Europe and the soldiers deployed in the Middle East began taking OCC’s online science courses. The follow up surveys showed that the students loved both the LabPaqs and the interactive SoftChalk content.

Presenter: Dr. Jim Brown, Associate Professor of Science at Ocean County College (OCC) and former Dean of Science, Engineering, Health Sciences and Human Performance.

Niagara County Community College (NCCC) is one of the 64 State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and a member of the SUNY Learning Network (SLN).   The faculty development materials they create follow the course development and design process developed through the award winning SLN, the instructional design strategies from Quality Matters, and the design research using the Community of Interest (COI) collaboration model.

The presentation will showcase the three major online lessons used by Teaching Well Online to support eLearning faculty:

1. Teaching Well Online at NCCC
2. Hybrid Course Design and Development Process
3. NCCC’s Easy Guide to Course Accessibility

In addition, the presenter will share their two Guides  (“NCCC Course Design Standards, Tips for Successful Course Management”, and “How Visible are you to your Online Students”).

Presenter: Lisa Dubuc M.S. ED –  Coordinator/Instructional Designer  of eLearning  - Niagara County Community College

This presentation will highlight how two educators used SoftChalk to transform traditional flat texts into engaging, interactive OER course materials.

As a key component of the Reading Curriculum Team for the Kaleidoscope Grant (http://www.project-kaleidoscope.org/), Jacqui Cain developed an interactive reader using SoftChalk to adapt “The Hound of the Baskervilles” for use in lower-level basic skills courses. Ms. Cain will explain the collaboration process and creation of the materials, demonstrate the reader, discuss the next phases of this project and briefly review two OER projects currently in development.

Malissa Attebery from Lone Star College created a World War II ecourse using the OER textbook written by Henry Jud Sage, a Virginia Community College faculty member. His original etextbook is located in the College Open Textbooks repository (http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org). Using SoftChalk, this flat text was made interactive and portable to multiple web-based learning environments, enabling the learner to see, hear, and further explore the content. The interactive etextbook can be found in the SoftChalk CONNECT repository (http://www.softchalkconnect.com/course/AIqErHuwVCURZM).

Presenters: Malissa Attebery, Lone Star College.  Jacqui Cain, College of the Redwoods.

Interactive articles (and e-books) are an enriched form of digital publication which may build in deep exploration, interactivity, and value-added learning for readers.  These articles integrate multimedia and other digital contents, are accessible and have mobile friendly content.

This webinar will highlight the building of two published articles created with SoftChalk, with a focus on organizational structure, strategic “activity” selection and multimedia choices, and tailoring to a broad audience.  We’ll also discuss the how’s & why’s and do’s & don’ts when considering authoring an interactive article.

The two examples that will be introduced are recent publications in the peer-reviewed Educause Quarterly:

• “Creating an Online Global Health Course and Game” by Brent A. Anders, Deborah J. Briggs, Shalin Hai-Jew, Zachary J. Caby, and Mary Werick
• “The Participatory Design of a (Today and) Future Digital Entomology Lab” by Shalin Hai-Jew

These articles include an exploratory space about insects, a sidebar about rabies prevention, and a built-in game on global health.

The slide show presentation used during the webinar can be found at http://www.softchalkconnect.com/lesson/serve/CM7O30mpz5nisA/html.

Presenter: Shalin Hai-Jew, Instructional Designer, Information Technology Assistance Center, Kansas State University

OC Global is an approach to an educational environment with asynchronous learning opportunities that support a complete online community. From choosing majors, to time management, to creating portfolios, to flexible start dates – multiple support functions are available to students along with self-paced deadlines. In addition they plan to make this content available for students of all ages and life situations, and for all mobile devices.

This webinar will walk participants through the development of the OC Global, particularly the way in which SoftChalk, and open source content, is used to re-create the course textbook, making it more accessible for diverse learners, including English-language learners, low-performing students, students with learning disabilities, and students with psychological problems. You will see the unique design aesthetic and instructional approach that is driven by models of accessibility, usability and personality.

The session end with a Q&A.

Presenter: Corey Davis, Executive Director of OC Global, Odessa College

In this live webinar you will see how Georgia Virtual School uses ReadSpeaker’s online text to speech service, and SoftChalk’s eLearning authoring product, to help students get better access to, and understanding of, its courses.

With ReadSpeaker, Georgia Virtual School students can now click a button on a page of any lesson and have the text on the page read to them. ReadSpeaker makes the online content created with SoftChalk more accessible to students with cognitive issues, learning disabilities, and vision problems, as well as individuals who do not speak or read English as their first language. Additionally, it provides multitasking opportunities for learners and portability of content to other devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Georgia Virtual School will demonstrate a variety of courses created with SoftChalk’s award-winning software and show how students view lessons using any standard web browser or on mobile devices.

Presenter: Jay Heap, Georgia Virtual School

As blendedschools.net (BSN) creates their learning initiatives it is committed to providing their teachers, students and parents with quality sharable learning objects. BSN is the first to use an independent branded version of SoftChalk CONNECT to enhance their blended learning initiative. BSNCloud will host Open Educational Resources (OERs) built by BlendedSchools.net. The resources will be available worldwide and teachers will be able to directly embed these resources in their learning environment or link to the resource to expand and enrich instruction. During the session BSN will discuss next steps with this tool and how it they plan to use it to encourage and support blended learning initiatives across the country.

Presenters: Jed Friedrichsen and Deanna Mayers, BlendedSchools.net

Open Educational Resources Series, Session 4:

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Imagine teaching music fully asynchronously as David Hooten does at McLennan Community College.  How does he resolve the copyright issues with so much of his material? What kind of software can be integrated with SoftChalk to make an even richer experience for the students? Where do all the media reside and how are they integrated?  These are a few of the questions our presenter will discuss as he describes how he uses SoftChalk to create engaging and effective learning experiences. The session ends with a Q&A.

Presenter: David Hooten, McLennan Community College

Open Educational Resources Series, Session 3:

Who is developing OERs? Who should be? How are they doing it? How can standards allow OER content interoperability? How can standards assure quality? How can I get started? How can I find the tools for creating OER content?

These questions, and more, will be answered by Rob Abel from IMS Global and others. In addition we will discuss different models for developing OER materials and demonstrate various authoring tools for creating OER content.  Models for OER development will include work by the math department at the College of the Redwoods. You will also see how Jacqui Cain from Tacoma Community College, as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grant, re-purposed Sherlock Holmes stories to create a full online course in Remedial English.

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk. 

In your CourseSite by Blackboard courses – are you ready to move beyond static PowerPoint and pdf content?

Learn how easy it is to create engaging Blackboard courses using SoftChalk for CourseSites by Blackboard. Combine the resources of digital repositories with your existing content. Add interactives, video, web widgets and other rich media to develop engaging learner content. Track student score results into your Blackboard gradebook.

This session provides an overview of SoftChalk’s content authoring solution that integrates with CourseSites. You will be amazed at how easy it is to use SoftChalk for CourseSites. (And did we mention that SoftChalk for CourseSites is FREE?!!!) Sign up now!

Open Educational Resources Series, Session 2:

Where can you find quality OERs? Where are they distributed, and where and when should you use them? Are they easy to find? What kind of standards (quality, accessibility, licensing) are relevant and why are they important?

Cathy Swift from MERLOT will provide an overview of these and other questions to consider as you discover, use, repurpose and share OERs. Rob Abel from IMS Global will address the licensing and standards questions. The session will include demonstrations of how different OER collections (OER Commons, College Open Textbooks, Connexions, MERLOT and SoftChalk CONNECT) can be used to find appropriate, quality content. You’ll also see OERs in action as Malissa Attebery, Online Instructional Designer at Lone Star College-Online in Texas, demonstrates how she transformed a comprehensive WWII history eText by Henry (Jud) Sage, Professor at Northern Virginia Community College, into an engaging, interactive learning experience.

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk. 

Open Educational Resources Series, Session 1:

What is an Open Educational Resource? Why is the OER movement growing in popularity so quickly? Why would you want to use or create OER materials? How do you license OER materials?

In the first of this OER webinar series, Cathy Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons, will answer these questions and more in an interview by Mitchell Levy, CEO of Happy About. Cathy is formerly the Director of OER Initiatives at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She was also Senior Partner and the Vice President for Innovation and Open Networks at the Carnegie Foundation. Several OER collections will be reviewed including College Open Textbooks, Connexions, MERLOT and SoftChalk CONNECT.

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk.

Discover how you can find open and sharable educational resources in MERLOT and use them with SoftChalk to create engaging, media-rich learning content. You will also learn how to create learning objects and share them with other educators by publishing into both MERLOT and SoftChalk CONNECT.  We invite you to see how easy it is to create, collaborate and contribute to the global educational community.

At Shenandoah University, students in teacher education preparation programs are learning to create lesson content that are given to large and small groups of children on interactive whiteboards such as Smart Technologies’ Smartboard and Promethean’s ActivBoard. To create this content they use Thinkfinity.org resources such as lesson plan ideas, primary sources, and links to content partner sites along with SoftChalk to develop interactive lessons that are given to K-12 students during their field placement and student teaching experiences. A brief video will show how a student uses the Interactive Whiteboard in class.

Join special education teacher-educator, Diane Painter, as she begins with a brief overview of Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity.org website and shares some of the lessons that have been created to support K-5 content through various kinds of SoftChalk activities such as photo album, sorting, jigsaw puzzle, DragNDrop, labeling and other engaging activities that spark the interest and active learning of elementary-aged students.

Presenter: Dr. Diane D. Painter, Assistant Professor, School of Education and Human Development, Shenandoah University

Ferris State University is developing a modular online laboratory manual to enhance student participation and learning in introductory Microbiology courses. These modules include animations, embedded videos, and library resources.

In the past, instructors used a variety of published laboratory exercises in these classes but all exhibited the same shortcomings.  The students rarely read the exercises, they poorly understood the concepts and procedures, and demonstrated low retention. As a result, faculty spent too much time on pre-lab talks and trouble-shooting rather than facilitating student learning.

SoftChalk laboratory modules are being developed to address this situation. They have been simple to author and easy to deploy as SCORM modules in our LMS. Instructors can now track and grade student pre-lab activities – remediating as necessary in class. In addition, these resources have simplified document distribution in the lab and serve as an excellent review mechanism for quizzes and exams. The online modules, furthermore, reduce student costs by replacing relatively expensive published manuals for the course.

During this session, you will see several of the lab modules that have been created thus far and how they are incorporated into the learning management system.  In addition, we will discuss how the students and faculty at Ferris State University have received these modules.

Presenter: Dr. Clifton Franklund, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Ferris State University

The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio is using case-based learning activities to attempt to improve student satisfaction and learning outcomes for nearly-graduated medical students.

Traditionally faculty distribute case scenarios in a handout-lecture-question/answer cycle. They have wanted and needed to transform the cases into more engaging learning activities for individuals and groups, incorporating decision-making, feedback, self-assessment, and reflection. But the faculty’s challenging teaching/clinical course load limited time to accomplish this.

The task for an instructional designer: develop a simple-to-use template for turning existing cases into engaging activities. And the solution: use SoftChalk to build the template faculty can adapt to their needs.

During this session you will see the template they created plus samples of the case-based activities in three specialties.  In addition they will discuss both student and faculty satisfaction with the process.

Presenter: Bonnie Taylor, M.Ed., CAPM, Educational Development Specialist,Online Teaching and Learning, UT Health Science Center San Antonio.

Learn how to create detailed, personalized lecture notes that enhance the student learning experience in both the traditional and non-traditional classroom setting utilizing the many great features of SoftChalk.

When Raritan Valley Community College switched to WebStudy Learning LMS for hosting and delivery of all of their courses, Derek Weber used the opportunity to blend content created in SoftChalk into his online course.  WebStudy uses a unique approach called a Timeline (interactive syllabus) to deliver the material in a way that makes sense for the students to complete their work. Derek created the idea of customized e-Notes; whereby he used SoftChalk to create e-Notes that include a detailed chapter summary with embedded images, hyperlinks and related videos/animations hosted by sites like YouTube.   These e-Notes are delivered seamlessly to the students using this approach.   The benefits for faculty include easy to create media-rich content that combines the picture viewing capabilities of PowerPoint Presenter, the text constructing capabilities of Microsoft Word, and the ease of storing quality media-rich content in a Learning Management System that allows easy retrieval and re-use semester after semester.

Presenter: Derek Weber, Raritan Valley Community College

Canisius College wanted to come up with an innovative, engaging, and custom way to train faculty to use SoftChalk. MISSION SoftChalk is based on the popular online game, Urgent Evoke. Participants enroll as agents and have to complete a series of missions and quests, present evidence, and engage with other agents and their leader. This presentation will walk you through their process for setting up MISSION SoftChalk in their LMS, the missions that agents encounter, and show you how to create a training game that can include both synchronous and asynchronous components.

Presenter: Leah MacVie, Instructional Designer, Canisius College

Would you like to develop media rich lessons for your online courses?  We will show you how easy it is to use SoftChalk and the INTELECOM Online Resources Network to find high quality instructional video that you can use in developing engaging lessons for your online courses.  You will see how to -

• Integrate media using the SoftChalk Media Search Tool
• Search for content on the INTELECOM Online Resources Network
• Learn how Marilyn Larsen from College of the Mainland uses SoftChalk and INTELECOM to author media rich lessons in Developmental Math

Presenter: Marilyn Larsen, College of the Mainland

Learn how James May, the Association of Florida Colleges’ Professor of the Year for 2010, uses Web2.0 services and applications along with SoftChalk.

YouTube, Google Docs, VoiceThread, ScreenJelly, Prezi and others are engaging, powerful tools that, when combined with SoftChalk, change learning landscapes. In this presentation learn how to harness the power of a variety of FREE and Easy-to-Use applications. With respect to content development, learn to utilize tools to analyze text, identify key vocabulary, and enhance reading. Heighten content delivery with multimedia widgets and incorporate your own voice and your own videos made with Prezi, ScreenJelly, and YouTube. Enhance student interaction with VoiceThread by enabling students to text, talk, or video comment in threaded discussions. Expand formative assessments by embedding Google forms. Moreover, take home a link to a SoftChalk module that showcases all of these tools and resources.

Presenter: Dr. James S. May, Professor of English as a Second Language, Valencia Community College

February 2011

Though not taking the place of the physical daily practice sessions, conditioning and playing the game itself, online and in-class technologies reinforce and enhance the players understanding of the scientific and tactical concepts by allowing them to review, question and assimilate different aspects on their own. In that process the coach saves valuable in-person time and resources but still keeps in contact with the players in and out of season.

This presentation will show how SoftChalk and other media programs and software can promote and enhance a college athletic program’s profile, coaching, education (in this case mens soccer) and efficiency. The presenter will introduce how the idea was born moving through its genesis to topics such as the off-season, preseason, and in season; as well as player expectations and game reviews. And in the process also integrates them into the technology and environmental mission statement of the school.

Presenter: Desmond Lawless, Head Men’s Soccer Coach/Department of Kinesiology, Shenandoah University

January 2011

Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning discusses how SoftChalk provides both the support and the mechanisms to insure that online lessons are accessible to all students, including those with disabilities, from the start. A series of questions are addressed:

• Why are we having this conversation? (What are the legal mandates that require access to online learning opportunities? Is just having the right technology enough?)
• How can I tell whether my lesson is fully accessible? (How does a review of the functional limitations created by disability help to guide the creation of accessible lessons?)
• How does SoftChalk make it possible/easy/fast to take control and construct an accessible lesson from the start? (What tools are built into SoftChalk’s that allow me to build in accessibility?)
• Where can I get more information? (What’s this about a virtual open house to explore a new resource regarding accessibility of online learning?)

Presenter: Jane Jarrow, DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning

February 2010

In this presentation will discuss the results of a study that shows a significant improvement in both learning and satisfaction for learners who followed a pathway that matched their learning styles – then demonstrate possible ways to incorporate instructional strategies, based on these pathways, into lessons using SoftChalk.

This study investigated the effects of following learning style pathways on learning and satisfaction in an online biology laboratory for non-science major undergraduates. Results of the study show a statistically significant improvement for students following their pathways that matched their learning styles compared to learners who failed to do so

This presentation will include a description of learning pathways, dominant and subdominant styles, and related instructional strategies.  And also show how SoftChalk created content can be used to optimize learning and satisfaction.

Presenter: Dr. Patricia Trifilo, Hardin-Simmons University

Through a series of online classes and workshops, Broward College has realized their need to properly train and certify educators that do online teaching. During the presentation you will see demonstrations of the content Broward has created using SoftChalk and how they provide the necessary professional development to educators wishing to teach online.

Presenter: Sharon Rifkin, Broward College

Ten years ago only those with special skills were able to design computer-based or web-based instruction. Today, almost any subject matter expert can find an authoring tool that suits their skill level. Although exciting, effective instruction starts with sound instructional design principles – principles that should be the foundation of any type of online instruction.

The presenters will address the question “what is effective instruction” through one very popular web-based instructional method – the tutorial. Participants will learn what a tutorial is, when to use a tutorial over another method of instruction, and how to structure and sequence a tutorial. An engaging and effective web-based tutorial designed using SoftChalk will be presented.

Presenters: Martha M. Snyder, Ph.D. of Nova Southeastern University and Becky Whittemore, M.P.H., M.N., B.S.N. of Oregon Health and Science University

December 2010

Diane Painter shows how students in teacher education preparation programs at Shenandoah University are learning to use Thinkfinity resources with SoftChalk to develop K-12 lessons that embrace the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. This initiative teaches education interns how they can easily and quickly create lessons that enable them to present content information in many different ways and actively engage their students in a variety of online activities. The teaching interns include a variety of interactive activities in their lessons that allow them to monitor student progress while determining what the student knows.

The presenter will begin with an overview of Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity.org website and its many different teaching resources such as lesson plans and student interactives that are aligned to state and national standards. Then the presenter will share some of the lessons that have been created for both direct instruction as well as independent learning.

Presenter: Diane Painter, Shenandoah University

Hampton City Schools is creating a Model Technology Classroom in which exemplary teachers collaborate with the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher and Teacher Librarian. Together they integrate technology into their teaching strategies and model a learning environment based upon the national 21st Century Skills Framework. In this session a model team will share professional development activities showing how to use SoftChalk as a tool for creating i-21 lessons that correlate with Curriculum Pacing guides. They will also demonstrate how teachers access these lesson plans, models and activities through their Learning Management System.

Presenters: Cheryl Grobel, Clint Rickman, Laurie Smith, Cheryl Ashley and Nancy Terrel – Hampton City Schools

November 2008

Malissa Attebery, an Instructional Designer at Lone Star College shows how a small group of designers can create a thousand online courses! In this online presentation you will see three examples:

1. Converting e-packs : a Psych course from a Cengage ePack;
2. Making e-textbooks interactive: combing learning objects from McGraw-Hill and instructor e-texts;
3. Student Orientations: a MathLab orientation from Pearson.

You will see how you can combine publisher and instructor content, and how SoftChalk makes it easy to chunk the information to make reading and interacting with the content more manageable for learners. And with the ability to add images, multimedia, and various activities the content comes alive.

Presenter: Malissa Attebery, Lone Star College

As educators, we know that the best way to reach our students is with the use of interactive and engaging strategies. However, our online students are often inundated with PowerPoint presentations that carry little more than illustrated bullet points. Busy faculty members are understandably reluctant to devote a great deal of time to learn how to produce more dynamic online content – including multimedia.

Join us in this session as we demonstrate just how easy it is to take an existing PowerPoint and turn it into web content for training or teaching with built-in navigation, interactive activities, accessibility compliance, and professionally-produced streaming video clips. The presentation will describe the use of SoftChalk and INTELECOM as resources for accomplishing this migration.

Presenter: Deborah Kell, Dean of Instructional Systems and Institutional Effectiveness, Mercer County Community College

September 2010

Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning discusses how when we speak of accommodating students with disabilities in online classes, our first thoughts always turn to the highly text-based nature of online learning and making sure that students who are blind/visually impaired, or those who are dyslexic, have an alternative means of accessing material that other students will read on their screen. But there are other online learners with disabilities who can also benefit from careful prior planning and innovative implementation by instructors. This session will discuss the needs of – and solutions for – students who are deaf/hard of hearing, those with significant physical disabilities, and students with attention problems. Explore the pros and cons of transcripts v. captioning, learn more about how and why students with mobility impairments sometimes struggle in an online environment, and discover how the organization of your class may impact on how it is received and processed.

Presenter: Jane Jarrow, Principal of DCCOL – Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning

July 2010

SIRIUS, a Florida State College at Jacksonville strategic business unit, provides materials in two areas:

First, it provides online faculty development programs that help faculty become proficient in creating and teaching interactive, online and hybrid courses.
Secondly, the project develops and provides general education credit courses nationally that are highly interactive and creative for face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online learning.

SIRIUS courses are developed by faculty teams and designed with the latest customized learning technology tools including avatars, custom character development, and an abundance of multimedia and interactive learning tools. These courses are already being used nationally by a number of institutions.

SIRIUS is also supported by Project DELTA, a recent $728,000 FIPSE grant awarded to facilitate the dissemination of the faculty development program and beta testing of the SIRIUS courses throughout higher education. SIRIUS is looking for colleges whose faculty are interested in participating in this higher education consortium to test these courses.

Presenters: Patti Levine Brown, Director Delta Project and Peter Shapiro, Director of Creative Learning Services – Florida State College, Jacksonville

e-Notes combine the picture viewing capabilities of PowerPoint Presenter, the text constructing capabilities of Microsoft Word, and the media deposition capabilities of a Learning Management System (in this case, WebCT/Bb VISTA). To make this easy Derek Weber, Department of Biology, Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey uses SoftChalk.

These e-Notes include a chapter summary with embedded images and hyperlinks and related videos/animations hosted by sites like YouTube. Also embedded are instructor-developed virtual lectures that simulate a traditional lecture. At the end of e-Notes, students are able to assess their learning using instructor designed quiz poppers. Using this strategy, instructors can truly build a course that streamlines their material and provides a personal touch that is often lacking in online courses.

Presenter:  Derek Weber, Raritan Valley Community College

Lisa Young of Scottsdale Community College shares an overview of the presentation, which highlights the collaboration of three colleges that developed and implemented a training series to provide professional development to faculty who wanted to develop online or hybrid courses per Quality Matters (QM) standards. The four part training series used SoftChalk LessonBuilder and other practices to provide information on the QM rubric while modeling best practices aligned with the QM standards.

The presenters will demonstrate the lessons created with SoftChalk, provide information on why they chose SoftChalk, how they organized and developed the modules, as well as information on how the training was received.

Presenter: Lisa Young, Scottsdale Community College

Marilyn shows how you can use SoftChalk to ensure that students are actively engaged in the learning process. Marilyn shows how SoftChalk has provided an easy-to-use platform to design visually appealing, interactive and engaging lessons to meet all learning styles. You will see almost all of what SoftChalk has to offer in ways of activities, text poppers, hyperlinks, quiz ideas and tables. The lesson also demonstrates the effective integration of third party media. While the content is math, all disciplines will benefit from this presentation.

Presenter: Marilyn Larsen, College of the Mainland

Dr. Marie Maness, professor of Nutrition and Fitness at Brookhaven College and full-time online instructor, initially uses a Course Tour developed in SoftChalk to introduce student to her online course. She shows the use of “Chapter Reviews” to reinforce learning objectives with SoftChalk self-test activities. Her completed lessons incorporate images, quick time videos, PowerPoint presentations, audio, and links to the Internet. She uses SoftChalk to deliver a complete media package to her students.

Presenter: Marie Maness, Brookhaven College

How does storytelling make academics better? Using narrative, characters, and case studies, Duke University Talent Identification program creates lessons for gifted K-12 students using images, audio, slide shows, hyper-linked handouts, quizzes, and various other resources. Learn how critical thinking challenges students when they are immersed in story and asked to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize.

See mathematics, language arts, and science lessons that engage students in academically rigorous scenarios. Learn how SoftChalk aids instructors in developing creative and artful lessons that don’t feel like instruction.

Presenter: Lyn Hawks, Coordinator of Independent Learning at Duke University TIP