Well, this is cool! During my experience at the Elgin Community College Drive-In Technology Conference (March 6, 2009), I learned lots of new things. For example, there was a session during which I learned about how I can create and use a talking avatar in my online class and in other websites. I used a different program from the one presented during the session, but I created the one below specifically for a group of my colleagues at work. Check her out (click the play button to hear her speak)…
Pretty neat, huh? Well, we’re going to play around with this a little more and see how it goes…
Another interesting event was keynote speaker Barry Dahl. Both his keynote and breakout presentations were thought-provoking and informative. His ideas were food for thought about some of the faculty development initiatives my team is working on right now. If you’re curious, here is a link to the slides from his breakout session: http://www.slideshare.net/barrydahl/e-learning-mythbusters-elgincc-2009. Slides #31-38 were particularly helpful for me in that his “three-legged stool” approach to online course assessment served as an alert to me to expand our approach to evaluating online course effectiveness.
Yet another exciting event was Xeturah Woodley’s lunch keynote during which she discussed some truly great strategies for engaging and retaining online students. Additionally, during her breakout session she shared her institution’s approach to training faculty to teach online–an approach which had some similarities to the revised model that my team has recently put in place at my institution.
Overall, the conference was a terrific experience–stimulating and informative (and free!). Thank you, Elgin Community College, for making our Friday really rock!
Tracey