Academic Technology @ BGSU

Greetings. I am presently “live” at the 2009 LLT (formerly OLN) Conference. Dr. David Barber gave the opening remarks in a plenary session, emphasized the Chancellor’s and Governor’s vision for expanding tech-based educational planning and integration for P-20.

The most important thing he said was that P-12 students should not come to our college campuses with expectations for the same Web 2.0 tech tools they have mastered in their previous schooling, and find themselves disappointed by the lack of integration in their postsecondary work.

I will be updating as often as possible throughout the afternoon. Scroll down to survey evolving commentary.

The next sessions I plan to intend and blog from (blog entries follow below the session description):

1. 10:00 Walsh University, “WU’s Hybrid Course Learning Community”

One feature of Walsh University’s hybrid Doctor of Physical Therapy program, which uses SAKAI (a migration to open source from WebCT), allows program faculty to opt out of using the LMS. I asked how and why this was done. Dr. McCormick, the Director of the program, indicated that some “seasoned” faculty were not yet “comfortable with the technology,” but have begun to post some assignments. Students enrolled in the program courses that use the LMS formally are expected to complete 15 hours of online assignments out of the 45 hours required for contact hours in the graduate course.

It’s not clear to me, and perhaps the Q&A will qualify, how much is truly “hybrid” at Walsh–it may be that it is course by course or program by program.

Kathy Buttermore, who is the faculty administrator for Sakai and an English professor (and BGSU grad and one of my former students!), mentioned that the President of Walsh has just approved an instructional designer position. Up to this point, everything apparently had been done inload by early adopters. The grant had helped moved everything forward to this point.

2. 11:15 Terence Armentano, BGSU, University 2.0, How BGSU Leveraged Open Source to Create a Web 2.0 Learning Landscape

Terence is Ass’t Director of the Center for Online and Blended Learning at BGSU and has pioneered the implementation of our campuswide blogging system.

Terence is using PREZI–something I have not seen before. Much more electric than power point!

Terence is demonstrating that WordPress is a platform for more than just “blogging.” His survey of uses at BGSU is impressive and compelling. He has prepared discussion questions for the group: http://blogs.bgsu.edu/learninglandscape

Terence is generating a lot of Twitter traffic from his presentation; follow here: http://search.twitter.com/#LLT09

3. Lunch Keynote: Dr. Michael Wesch, Kansas State, “Mediated Culture” (I am especially interested in this keynote because K-State is one of my alma maters.)

Dr. Wesch is very well known among digital educators, and his Mediated Cultures website and videos are widely cited and influential across the web universe.

4. 2:00 Connie Molnar, et al., Collaborations in Quality: The Ohio Quality Matters Consortium”