Join us in 624 Southam Hall for a delicious lunch, meet and mingle with your colleagues, and participate in a variety of engaging sessions on聽topics ranging from the聽state of online learning at 杏吧原创 to聽dispositions of blended learning educators听补苍诲听dynamically generated math assignments.

Presenters from Teaching and Learning Services (杏吧原创 University OnLine, Educational Development Centre, Media Production Centre, and Instructional Media Services)聽will then lead concurrent sessions on some innovative and new developments within each of the units.

You’ll also have the chance to win some great prizes and giveaways during the workshop sessions!

Browse through the complete agenda and register here.

It has been asserted (see, for example, Tony Bates鈥� e-book, ) that a properly designed online course covering a topic that can be taught online can work as well as a face-to-face course. Such an assertion is backed by the anecdotes of some professors at 杏吧原创 who have taught online. Yet, it has been observed that the DFW rate of an online course tends to be higher than its face-to-face counterpart, if one exists. Is there something inherently wrong with online courses that lead to higher DFW rates? Is it simply that weaker students tend to sign up for online courses more often? Is a sage on the stage better than a $30,000 video production?

In the , Canadian Studies professor Richard Nimijean, who teaches CDNS 1001 online, was quoted saying, “I can lay it all out for you and I think that works well for a lot of students, but in the end of the day, you as a student need to be motivated to do the work.”

It is conceivable that academically strong students should have little trouble motivating themselves to log on and do the work. I would say that in a typical first-year core math course, students in the top 30 per cent of the class are able to self-motivate and keep a regular study schedule. At the other end of the spectrum, we have 10-20 per cent of the students who exert zero or nearly zero effort. Whether the course is online or not, the kind of help that such students need to succeed in the course is probably not something that an instructor can offer.

Having identified two groups of students (likely making up 50 per cent of the class) for which an online course can do no more harm than a face-to-face one, we need to look at the remaining students whose motivation is probably sensitive to factors in the learning environment. I would say that these students are the truly at-risk students because the outcome of their learning can be tipped one way or another by small disturbances.

In his book How to teach mathematics (3rd ed.), Steven Krantz noted the following reasons for the importance of the traditional physical classroom:

• going to class gets students out of their normal daily routine
• being physically present in a classroom separates students from their regular responsibilities
• the classroom brings people together who likely would not otherwise meet
• the classroom promotes bonding and networking among the students

One can infer from the above that having a scheduled time slot for being in a certain place at a certain time specifically for a course could be a deciding factor for student engagement. Another important factor is the physical environment. Interior designers take great pains to design spaces conducive to the activities for which the spaces are intended. Imagine yourself having a three-course French dinner. How would your appetite be affected if you were to have it in a brightly lit high school cafeteria with walls painted blinding white? Perhaps many students learn better in a room that screams “this space is for learning” than their own bedroom.

It is great that at 杏吧原创 we have the CUOL Student Centre to provide an environment for students taking CUOL courses to focus. The library study spaces also serve the same function. Other solutions to the learning environment problem include physical meet-up groups, synchronized discussion sessions, private tutors, etc.

As online learning becomes more and more popular, the move away from the traditional physical learning space will require development of suitable alternatives. It won鈥檛 be long before we have to deal with the issue of learning spaces for online students at a large scale to help the at-risk students.

As part of the third call for proposals for eCampusOntario (formerly the Ontario Online Initiative), MTCU made $4.5 million available to Ontario universities to encourage online course development. Close to 350 proposals were submitted by 19 Ontario universities. 杏吧原创 faculty and staff were awarded the second-highest number of courses of all Ontario universities that submitted proposals this round.

The new courses include:

• Intermediate Programming (BIT)
• Introduction to Computer Programming and Problem Solving (BIT)
• Introduction to Indigenous Studies (INDG)
• Neurodegeneration and the Aging Brain (NEUR)
• Criminal Behaviour (PSYC)
• Organizational Psychology I (PSYC)
• Police Psychology (PSYC)
• Sport and Performance Psychology (PSYC)
• Benefit-Cost Analysis for Program Evaluation (PADM)
• Qualitative Research Methods in Evaluation (PADM)

The new modules include:

• Experiential Learning (Teaching and Learning Services)
• Open Learning (Teaching and Learning Services)
• Journalism Media Tools and Techniques (JOUR)

Teaching and Learning Services will be working closely with instructors to develop these courses and modules for the 2016-17 academic year, in addition to a number of other blended and online courses across the university.

The next call for proposals is expected in Fall 2016.

Native Spanish and Russian speakers across the country will have the unique opportunity to formally study their respective languages through four new online courses at 杏吧原创 next fall.

By placing emphasis on students familiar with Spanish and Russian linguistics, often the product of childhood upbringings or birthplaces, 杏吧原创鈥檚 School of Linguistics and Language Studies (SLaLS) is redirecting the focus of typical language classes. While the majority of programs concentrate almost exclusively upon those with little to no understanding of languages, 杏吧原创鈥檚 heritage speakers series is geared towards students with medium to advanced knowledge of their mother tongues.

Professor Ioana Dimitriu will be teaching SPAN 4015 and SPAN 4025, or Spanish for Heritage Speakers I and II. She says she鈥檚 eager to teach those who have achieved a high level of verbal competency, a proficiency that usually prohibits registration in conventional Spanish courses.

鈥淎 number of students are turned back from registering into the lower-level Spanish classes every semester. Their placement tests show that their level is too high for enrolling in a standard language course,鈥� says Dimitriu.

On the Russian front, this issue affects approximately five to 10 students each year who are flagged as too advanced. This often disadvantages heritage speakers who, though literally well versed in the basics, lack comprehension of academic terms or concepts.

SLaLS professor Iryna Kozlova is aware of gaps in expertise that frequently characterize members of Russian communities who may be comfortable with the ethnic alphabet without being able to read or write.

鈥淭hese speakers have never been extensively educated in the language鈥ome are children of immigrants. They may have only finished elementary school,鈥� she says.

Kozlova will be running RUSS 3015 and 3025: Russian for Heritage Speakers I and II, which, along with the Spanish courses, will make use of virtual tools to enhance vocabularies, oral communication and proper grammar.

EDC educational technology development coordinator, Kirk Davies, is overseeing the design of these courses. By way of quizzes, ePortfolios and a 3D environment simulating 杏吧原创鈥檚 campus, Davies is confident that students will benefit from the multifaceted system.

鈥淭his is an authentic way to learn the language. There is less intimidation,鈥� says Davies. 鈥淪ometimes when you鈥檙e looking at someone, you can intimidate them. But this environment will have avatars instead. Students won鈥檛 be intimidated to use the language.鈥�

In addition to minimizing a potential sense of intimidation, the online format will also accommodate a wider pool of registrants. Rather than offering the courses to 杏吧原创 students only, Dimitriu and Kozlova are calling upon anyone with substantial exposure to the languages.

Even with registration not yet open for the Fall 2015 and Winter 2016 terms, Kozlova has already received a great deal of interest in her courses. 杏吧原创 political science student Daria Kazhdan is among this group of Russian speakers. She is intent on learning more about the words she was introduced to at a young age.

鈥淚 only know how speak and read Russian. My writing skills are non-existent. So I would really like to learn how to send letters to my grandparents. I know it will be useful later on,鈥� says Kazhdan.

For first year 杏吧原创 criminal justice student Polina Tsyban, this course will not only develop her writing skills, but also her relationship with her own ethnicity that she holds in high regard. Since moving to Canada from Kazakhstan in 2005, Tsyban has tried to maintain a balance between her usage of Russian and English.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important to preserve our language and our heritage…it鈥檚 important for me to be really fluent in my language and to not forget it,鈥� says Tsyban.

The heritage courses will also help Tsyban connect with her cultural roots through reading and writing assignments that highlight events related to family, friends and holidays.

Running alongside the engaging content will be a flexible learning environment stemming from the online setup. Davies is convinced that by eliminating the need to physically attend class, virtual academic structures accommodate busy schedules.

鈥淭his opens up doors for a lot of people. If you have other commitments, it gives students more flexibility. They don’t have to be fixed to a certain time and place, so there鈥檚 a lot more freedom,鈥� says Davies.

Of course, this freedom comes with the need for self-motivation, which, luckily for Dimitriu and Kozlova, is often the case with enthusiastic heritage language speakers.

Last week, a few members of the EDC team travelled to Toronto for the , a mini-conference organized by Ryerson鈥檚 G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and the Ontario Universities鈥� Council on e-Learning鈥檚 () annual meeting. While the Chang School Talks were slightly disappointing (more about the disappointment in one of the next posts), the OUCEL meeting was (as always) informative and marked by a meaningful discussion with colleagues across the province.

The OUCEL gathers representatives from e-Learning units across all Ontario universities, and it is committed to a scholarly approach towards e-learning in relation to teaching, research, and service. Attending annual meetings and OUCEL鈥檚 summer institute are always great ways to learn about new projects that our colleagues and peers are engaged with.

Not surprisingly, this year we spent lots of time talking about , the Government of Ontario鈥檚 initiative to establish and expand online learning opportunities for students across the province and provide an opportunity for universities and colleges to share their resources and expertise in online teaching and learning. The second round of Ministry funding has just been announced, and with eight projects that received funding. Only Queen鈥檚 University and the University of Toronto did better than 杏吧原创, obtaining funding for twenty and nine projects respectively.

An issue聽with this round of proposals, according to the discussion at the meeting, was the inequality in the number of successful projects per institution, with some institutions (Trent University, for example) not getting any of their proposed projects funded, and others (Queen鈥檚, for example) becoming Ontario鈥檚 Athabasca in their online presence for courses and programs.

The Ontario Online representative explained that the quality of proposed online projects was the main criterion used in the review process, but she also noted that sometimes there were really slight differences between those that were selected and those that fell below the 鈥榓warding line.鈥� Thus one needs to wonder whether the blind peer-review process would better serve both the Ontario Online initiative and the Ontario post-secondary community in general. In addition, as noted by the representative from the University of Windsor, if we want to build a province-wide capacity of institutions that offer blended and online courses and programs, maybe in the next round (with a new call for proposals planned for fall 2015), in cases where there is a slight difference between two proposals regarding their quality, funds might be streamlined toward smaller institutions that have not had any luck in this competition so far. Whatever approach Ontario Online takes in the future, it would be important to ensure that we are not in a situation where only a handful of big universities dominate the field of online learning, with smaller institutions pushed aside.

Part of the OUCEL meeting was devoted to updates on new projects from each institution, and not surprisingly, with the increased need to develop students鈥� critical thinking skills in all types of classrooms (face-to-face, blended, and online), some of them are piloting, or fully implementing, the , originally developed by Professor Steve Joordens, a 3M National Teaching Fellow from the University of Toronto, and currently owned by Pearson Education. The tool allows students to submit their written assignments (text or images), and to use to evaluate their peers’ work, provide constructive feedback, and then reflect on their own work as compared to their peers鈥�. As Harvard鈥檚 professors remind us, peer assessment helps students develop their skills in 鈥渃ritical enquiry, reflection, and 鈥榣earning to learn,鈥欌�� as well as 鈥渧aluable workplace skills such as the ability to collaborate and the ability to evaluate the work of other professionals鈥� (p.1). Our own has a workshop tool, with similar capabilities for peer assessment and peer feedback, so if you are interested in exploring and implementing it in your course, please contact the EDC and we will show you how it works.

In addition, many Ontario universities are piloting online exam proctoring tools, such as 听补苍诲听. These tools allow distance students and students enrolled in online courses to take a proctored exam online from anywhere, with the only requirements being that they must have a reliable high speed Internet connection and a web camera. Via their web camera, students connect to their proctor and take the exam online. The whole exam is recorded, and these recordings, together with warnings from proctors, are shared with course instructors. So far results at universities who tried this method are positive, even though an open question remains about how this process can be scaled if all students come online during, let鈥檚 say, final exams. We are proud to tell you that our office is piloting online exam proctoring and that some of 杏吧原创鈥檚 students have already had the opportunity to take exams in this fashion. If you are interested in exploring this tool, please contact our team at cuolexams@carleton.ca. Other activities at different Ontario universities include projects on and programming for TAs and instructors who teach in blended and online environments. It is good to know that many of them, when planning their professional development programs, draw upon 杏吧原创鈥檚 resources, which the EDC and CUOL teams created last year and offered to anyone interested in using it, re-using it, and adapting it to suit their own needs.

In conclusion, I am happy to report that 杏吧原创鈥檚 Teaching and Learning Services do very well compared to our counterparts at other institutions. While we can envy universities who have four or even five instructional designer positions or three or more educational developer positions as part of their base budgets, we should be proud of our EDC, CUOL and IMS teams, which produced comparable results and are always enthusiastic about exploring and implementing new innovative learning tools and methods.

With eight approved proposals, 杏吧原创 was awarded the third聽highest number of courses of all 21 Ontario universities.

Courses:
Structural Equation Modeling (PSYC) – Andrea聽Howard
Big Data History (HIST) – Shawn Graham
Forensic Psychology (PSYC) – Adelle Forth and聽Shelley Brown
Written Comprehension I (French) – Nandini聽Sarma
Business Statistics I and II (MATH) – Wayne聽Horne and Patrick Farrell

Modules:
R for Biologists (BIOL) – Tom Sherratt
Fundamentals for Polyhedral Combinatorics聽(MATH) – Kevin Cheung
Children’s Rights (Landon Pearson Centre for the聽Study of Childhood and Children鈥檚 Rights) – Virginia Caputo

TLS will be working with instructors to develop these聽courses for fall 2015, as well as a number of other聽blended and online courses from across the university.

Did you know that 杏吧原创 University has its鈥� own TV channel? If yes, do you ever watch it?

If you are old enough and have lived in Ottawa long enough, the answer to both questions was probably yes at one time, but maybe not anymore.

Instructor Gerry Dupont’s business class being recorded for broadcast in the 1990s.

杏吧原创鈥檚 cable channel started as itv in 1978, and later became CUTV, then CUOL. In 1978, cable TV subscribership was just starting to gain a foothold in the Ottawa area. itv was channel 15, and it鈥檚 safe to say that in the 20-channel universe, most cable TV subscribers routinely flipped through all the available channels and would regularly see itv, even if just passing by. It is also safe to say that with very limited alternate choices, itv, even with its unpolished production values, was often the most intellectually stimulating programming at any given time. itv had a viewership that extended well beyond enrolled students. Many of our early instructors, such as Robert Lovejoy, Charles Haines and Don Westwood, would often be recognized and engaged in conversation while out and about town. This gave 杏吧原创 University a significant community presence.

CUTV’s VHS check out area

In 2004, Rogers moved itv from basic analogue service to digital service and the channel was rebranded as CUTV. Our penetration into Ottawa households plummeted. Cable TV had long lost its monopoly and relatively few households with cable had the digital service. Although digital service is now ubiquitous to cable households, the number of premium TV subscriptions is going down, especially among the age group that is the university鈥檚 primary target demographic. Meanwhile, CUTV courses were made available online and developed into the Video-on-Demand service we have today. As high-speed Internet access has practically become universal, VOD has become the most popular way, by far, for our students to take CUOL courses.

The last 10 years have seen a massive shift from cable TV to online access as the primary means of participation in CUOL courses. Now, 85 per cent plus registered CUOL students attend their courses online. Every year, the catalogue of CUOL web-based courses, only available online and not broadcast on the channel, grows in number.

So few students rely on the channel and the once significant casual viewership by the general public now appears to be negligible. Once one of two dozen, the channel is now one of 1,000. People no longer flip through the channels to see what鈥檚 on.

A university having control of a local television channel is an unusual thing and something that 杏吧原创 can be proud of. But perhaps the channel has approached its point of obsolesce? In 2011, CUTV was rebranded to CUOL, 杏吧原创 University OnLine, to reflect the importance of our online presence and the diminished role television plays in reaching our students. Perhaps it鈥檚 time to pull the cable on 杏吧原创鈥檚 channel and direct its resources to services that better support our growing number of online students?

On August 28 in the River Building Atrium, you鈥檒l have the chance to network with fellow educators and learn more about where online education is headed. The event will feature a keynote by the Education Advisory Board鈥檚 Director of Member Education, , who will be accompanied by Associate Director of Strategic Research, . The keynote will be followed by a 鈥渃racker barrel鈥� session 鈥� a series of small group discussions 鈥� all centered on trends in online learning.

The session runs from 8:30 a.m. 鈥� 1:30 p.m. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Take a look through the .

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to see what’s in store for blended and online education. Book your spot today!