Open Education Week

What have you been up to for Open Education Week?  Or even “What is Open Education”?

Open Educational Resources, or OER, are free, openly licensed resources that anyone can use to learn for free.  The vast majority of the time you can also “rip, remix and burn” them – in other words, pull them down from online, make changes,and republish them with citation.  OER is in alignment with the mission of access of community colleges, and its use is expanding geometrically within the field!

Check out this great, short video that explains the basic concept:

Are you on Twitter?  A Twitter event has been going on for OER, a non-stop, 24 hour online discussion! Use #AllAboutOpen to check it out:) #OpenEducationWk

Also, check out the Open Educational Resources page on this site:  http://elearningandinnovation.com/pilots-and-initiatives/open-educational-resources/

Open Education Week 2014 : What is Creative Commons Licensing?

In the spirit of Open Educational Resource Week, watch the following video to learn about Creative Commons licensing:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Want to learn more about Open Education Resources? Check out the Open Education Week 2014 website: http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Stay tuned for information on how students feel about open resources.

The Tri-C Private SoftChalk Cloud is Here!

SoftChalk users we are happy to announce that the Tri-C SoftChalk Cloud is ready for use!

New to SoftChalk? Well, now is the time to give it a try! Whether you are a new or an existing user, you can access your Tri-C Private SoftChalk Cloud account by logging into https://tri-c.softchalkcloud.com/ with your S# and network password. The new Tri-C SoftChalk Cloud gives faculty a browser-based interface to preview and manage lessons stored in the cloud. Best of all, it allows faculty to open the SoftChalk Create application from the browser and create or modify content from any computer with an internet connection. No more waiting to get to your home or college office before you can work in SoftChalk! Is there more? Yes! Updates and modifications to lessons stored in the cloud and linked to Blackboard automatically update in Blackboard!

Existing users take note! Moving to the Tri-C SoftChalk Cloud means you won’t use the SoftChalk Create desktop version any more. After setting up your Tri-C SoftChalk Cloud account, you will always open the SoftChalk Create application from the browser instead of the desktop. This will ensure that SoftChalk Create is connected to your cloud account. You will also want to open your old packaged SoftChalk lessons and save them to the new Tri-C SoftChalk Cloud, so you can take advantage of the new automatic updates.

Do you want to know more? Getting Started documentation and How to videos are available on the Tri-C Private SoftChalk Cloud page of the eLi blog.

MOOC Grant Report – What were the results of that MOOC anyways?

At long last, we’ve analyzed the first level data and have some encouraging results to share regarding our experiment with the MOOC.

We had an 18.4% completion/success rate – over double the national average for MOOCs.  We reached our target audience, with many high school students, as well as many adults with some college credit.  About a quarter of MOOC participants were enrolled in a degree program of some sort – the majority at the associate’s degree level.

How did it work out for Tri-C students?  Of the Tri-C students who took a pre- and post-test (a very small sample size of 13!), over 75% either improved their dev ed course placement or tested out of developmental math entirely – a fantastic finding, as the course itself does not cover content designed to take a student to college-level math!

Learn more by reading the full report to the Gates Foundation HERE.

Want to learn more about the MOOC, the process, and how to check it out for yourself?  Visit the MOOC page.

Tri-C’s Math MOOC has officially earned Quality Matters recognition!

Tri-C’s Math MOOC has officially earned Quality Matters^TM recognition through QM’s Continuing & Professional Education Program.  To earn recognition, a course must meet all of the 21 essential standards and receive a minimum of 85% of all the standards.  The MOOC significantly exceeded these expectations!

The faculty who participated in the development of the MOOC were Math Professors Idrissa Aidara, Don Gabriel, Curtis Kaschube, Cathleen Rossman, and Michael Wilkins.   These faculty worked very closely with eLi’s instructional design team – MaryAnne Nestor and Cheryl Knight.

This recognition speaks to the caliber of the collaboration between the faculty subject matter experts, and the high level of expertise of the instructional design team.  Very well done!

Congratulations MOOC Team!

Congratulations US! Tri-C receives MOOC grant from Gates Foundation!

MOOC!

Yay!  Yesterday, the Gates Foundation announced that Tri-C was awarded one of three MOOC grants awarded to community colleges nationally!  The project includes 10 colleges total, the goal of which is aimed at investing in scaling post-secondary education.

This is Tri-C’s FIRST experimentation with Massively Open Online Courses!

Want to read more?

This is the formal announcement from the Gates Foundation.

This is the information from Quality Matters about the project.  It will be the first time that Quality Matters is involved in a MOOC!

Want to hear it from Inside Higher Ed?  Check out their article HERE.

Our very own Cleveland.com has info on it too!  Check out their article HERE.

Want to know more about Tri-C’s MOOC, what we’re doing and how we’re doing it? We’re currently crafting an FAQ to help answer any questions faculty might have about MOOCs, and this MOOC at Tri-C!

Free Rice is HUGE Success

1.5 MILLION grains of rice and counting…

That’s right.  Tri-C students and staff have answered 150,000 quiz questions correctly, donating 1.5 million grains of rice to the United Nations Food Programme!  Want to check it out?  Go to freerice.com, and be sure to “play for group” every time you login!

 

Have you adopted OER?

If you’re looking for a great webinar to attend on Open Educational Resource (OER) adoptions, check out this one by the College Community Consortium for Open Educational Resources.  Our own Danielle Budzick will be sharing about Cuyahoga Community College’s adoption of a Flat World Knowledge textbook, and the results for both faculty and students.

The announcement includes this description:

Presenters from the Kaleidoscope Project at College of the Redwoods, Cuyahoga Community College, and Scottsdale Community College will talk about their challenges and achievements in finding, evaluating, and adapting high-quality OER to replace high cost publisher textbooks.

So check it out September 25th at 1 PM!

 

TED-Ed aka “Lessons Worth Sharing”

Are you a TED fan?  Now there’s TED-Ed, currently in Beta, that has an interesting, simplified way to share content and provoke thought for students.

As an amusing introduction, check out this “Some Study that I Used to Know.”  It a “Best Flips” – TED-Ed’s term for a user-generated lesson.  Featuring a YouTube video parody of “Somebody that I used to know,” it questions what from high school was really necessary learning.

If you’ve got another five minutes, go through the questions.  It will cause some interesting reflection, guaranteed.  (Did you hear that?  It’s a guarantee!)

Keep those synapses jumpin!

Sasha

eLearning 2.0 – Are you in the nextgen world of teaching and learning?

 How do you feel about connectivism, social constructivism, student-created and curated content?  Not sure how edugaming and mLearning fit into the picture?  Check out this Learn.ist board that attempts to explain the concepts surrounding eLearning 2.0.  Check out the board HERE, or by clicking on the screenshot from the page.