Thursday, February 26, 2004 Pedagogy in the Inter-Institutional Virtual Department 1 Copyright Statement Copyright Rebecca Frost Davis and Eric Jansson,

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Pedagogy in the Inter-Institutional Virtual Department

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Copyright Statement

Copyright Rebecca Frost Davis and Eric Jansson, 2004. This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.


Rebecca Frost Davis

Eric Jansson

Associated Colleges of the South



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Presentation Overview

• Associated Colleges of the South (ACS)

• Sunoikisis Virtual Department

• Problems faced by small departments

• Solutions of inter-campus collaboration

• Pedagogy of the Virtual Department

• Tools for the Virtual Department



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Associated Colleges of the South (ACS)



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Sunoikisis

• Association of Classics Departments within the Associated Colleges of the South

• Thucydides 3.3.1

• Competes with large

programs

http://www.sunoikisis.org/



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Sunoikisis Faculty & Majors Totals



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Problems Facing Small Departments

• Limited faculty resources

• Less diverse research community for students and faculty

• Problems attracting majors



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Collaboration: Strength in Numbers



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Impediments for Collaboration

• Institutions used to competing

• Faculty used to working alone

• Tension between asynchronous distance learning and liberal arts ideal– Close personal interaction between faculty

and students



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Sunoikisis Virtual Department

• Collaboration based on shared courses– 5 year cycle of advanced languages

• One Greek, One Latin, each fall

– Archaeology

– CGMA: GIS in Mediterranean Archaeology



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Inter-institutional Collaborative Courses (ICC)

• Distance education– Remote participation via ACS Course Delivery

System

• Distributed Teaching Responsibilities– Students exposed to diverse perspectives

from other students & faculty



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Course Elements

• Weekly Synchronous online lectures – Discussions via a chat room

• Asynchronous course components– Online readings– Study questions or threaded discussion– Exams

• Face-to-face class meetings with the home-campus mentor



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Lessons Learned

• Conclusions that confirm distance learning research

• Conclusions particular to ICCs



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Pedagogy

• Involve students in active creation and sharing of knowledge

• Faculty reevaluation of teaching practices

• Lecturer as coordinator of information



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Course Technology and Materials

• Streaming audio: lowest possible technology

• Strong visual focus and clear outline in lecture notes

• Efficiencies over time in developing course materials



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Advantages of ICCs

• Faculty lectures on areas of expertise expose students to current research and research practices

• Students experience scholarly discourse first-hand



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Administration

• Focus on common faculty interests rather than administrative structures

• No credit swapping

• Course Director



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Advantages for Faculty

• Larger network of peers for research and pedagogy

• Summer curriculum workshops– Professional Development– Liberal Arts training for new

faculty

• Recruiting new faculty

Creating Stronger Virtual Departments using

Learning Management Systems

Eric Jansson

Associated Colleges of the South Technology Center



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Creating Stronger Virtual Departments using LMSs

• Past: the Pre-LMS Years

• Present: the Course Delivery System LMS

• Future Tools

Past: the Pre-LMS Years



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Spring 1999 /1st ICC

• Conference call (recorded)

• Threaded discussion (WebBoard)

• HTML lecture documents



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Spring 2000 – Spring 2002

• Streaming audio (Real Server)

• Threaded discussion and chat (WebBoard)

• HTML lecture documents



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Fall 2002 – Spring 2003

Course Delivery System (CDS) v.1, integrated:• Streaming audio (Real Server) • Threaded discussion and chat (integrated)• HTML lecture documents• Plus a few LMS features: exam, email contact

lists

Present: the Course Delivery System LMS



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Fall 2003 – present

Course Delivery System version 2:• Streaming audio (Real Server) • Threaded discussion and chat (integrated)• HTML lecture documents• More LMS features: exam, email and IM contact

lists, web projects, media library, drop box, etc.



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[CDS Image]

[CDS image]

[CDS]



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Current challenges for the ACS Course Delivery System

• Support faculty lecturers in developing curriculum and lecturing online

• Foster student-student interaction

• Create collaborative workspaces



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Support faculty lecturers

• Provide access to instructional technologist online

• Offer easy access to past lectures, curriculum and classroom sessions



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Develop student-student interaction

• Student profiles: photos, course–specific profile questions

• Encourage use of existing communications: via integrated email, Quick Contact lists, IM handles



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Create collaborative workspaces

• Integrated web-based software for creating group-editable websites



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[Segue Image]



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Web Projects: A Comparison

Email Web Projects

Process

Media integration

Involving others

Publishing

Linear “tennis match”

Linear, hierarchal, hypertextual

File-sharing, decontextualized

Rich context, multimedia

Tricky, “catch up” process

Past work visible

Requires separate work

Automatic, “work-in-progress”

Future Tools



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Future of the CDS?

The problems with writing your own LMS:

• Keeping up with the Joneses (i.e. LMS vendors)• Distraction from developing tools that reflect

local research• Can’t commit to maintenance, versioning,

support, etc.



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Customize an existing LMS for ICCs?

• Inherit new features with new versions

• Focus on developing features specific to our needs

• Be able to distribute and support innovations



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Momentum towards“open” LMSs

Some higher education LMS demands:• Ownership of data• Enterprise integration: interoperability with

other administrative/academic systems • Customizability/extensibility • Lower costs



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Vendors responses to open LMS model

• Extensibility:: – Blackboard Building Blocks program– WebCT PowerLinks

• Enterprise versions



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Open-source responses to open LMS model

• Middleware: MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative

• Frameworks: CHEF/SAKAI

• Portal technology



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[diagram]



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Ongoing work at ACS

• Researching and developing tools for inter-campus teaching

• Advocating open, extensible systems to allow for sharing of innovations



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References

• ACS www.colleges.org • Sunoikisis www.sunoikisis.org • CDS cds.colleges.org• SAKAI www.sakaiproject.org• OKI web.mit.edu/oki/

http://www.colleges.org/

http://www.sunoikisis.org/

http://cds.colleges.org/

http://www.sakaiproject.org/

Documents

Thursday, February 26, 2004 Pedagogy in the Inter-Institutional Virtual Department 1 Copyright Statement Copyright Rebecca Frost Davis and Eric Jansson,