Last week at this time I was locked into the 4th annual innovateOSU conference which showcases the work happening in educational technology at THE Ohio State State University. I was honored to have been invited to kick off the conference, and what I realized in my short time on campus was how engaged and focused group of administration and faculty at OSU is having the right conversations about the possibilities of online education—something that’s been bubbling up globally over the last 18 months. In fact, the great Barbara Sawhill came down from Oberlin, and we talked about just that, and then she blogged about it The night before my presentation I was breaking bread with OSU’s Provost Joe Allutto, Social Work Dean Tom Gregoire, Undergraduate Dean Wayne Carlson, math professor James Fowler, Chemistry professor Matthew Stoltzfus, Communications professor Nicole Kraft, and English professor Kay Halasek—and all of them to a person were deeply engaged in the … [Read more...]
Jim Groom Keynotes JMU’s Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference
Image Credit: Grover Saunders made this Animated GIF during the presentation with Echograph (neat!) Jim Groom, director of the Division of teaching and Learning Technologies, delivered the keynote presentation at James Madison University’s 9th Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology conference (you can see video of the presentation here). This presentation focused more specifically on the questions of universities outsourcing their expertise, how to design for online education, and how to build community online. The theme of the presentation was the overstatement of the death of higher ed in the media currently and how we can start to shed some of the reactionary rhetoric and start returning teaching and learning innovation to the colleges and universities rather than corporations like Pearson. Slides from the presentation along with links are available below: … [Read more...]
A Culture of Innovation
A Culture of Innovation from umwnewmedia on Vimeo. UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT) presented on Tuesday, October 2nd at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s Online Fall Focus Session on the theme of innovation in higher education. The basic question guiding the presentation, which was centered around the 7 minute video above, was the following: how does a university like UMW consistently foster innovative projects like UMW Blogs, ds106, and, more recently, A Domain of One’s Own? There’s no one adequate stock answer to such a question, so when preparing the presentation DTLT decided to interview students, faculty, and staff around campus to get a broader sense of the culture of innovation happening at UMW. What DTLT got in return for its labors was quite compelling. The video was shot and edited by Andy Rush, and it’s just a teaser for a much larger documentary that DTLT is planning on making this semester to start chronicling and narrating the culture of … [Read more...]