ITC 2012 - Long Beach, CA

There were many thoughts on how to develop a learning community online from Beth Mathieson, Capilano University, CA

1. Use Voice Thread for your introduction, ask students to respond via VT also, using audio
2. Video email (Canvas has this embedded)
3. Phone of course
4. Joinme.com allows you to share desktops
5. Real-time get-together to go over the syllabus via webinar software like elluminate (note: it really helps to have 2 moderators - one to talk and one to chat.)
6. Students introduce each other via Voice Thread - puts up pictures of coffee mugs and tells students to choose the one that best describes them
7. Or use pictures on Voice Thread and have students write a story - start with first picture, first student writes a sentence, etc.
8. Student generated weekly questions in discussions
9. General question area in discussions
10. Interactive lectures via VoiceThread (ask them to use audio and video, no text)
11. Use Voice Thread to bring in a guest lecturer
12. Book chat:  students choose from 1 of 3 books, the assignment is a book review, they must meet in real-time with 2-3 fellow students to discuss the book.  5 minutes for intro, then 1 to 1.5 hour discussions
13. Wikispaces: cooperative review of the week's reading.  Everyone puts up questions, you look at every page and respond to one unanswered question. (A twist on Louis's homework forms).
14. Audioboo to record audio
15. voki.com
16. Blogs
17. Collaborative exams - students write the exam questions (give them Bloom's first, no recall questions allowed).  They can choose to find a partner and turn in a single exam.
18. Collaborative exams, idea 2:  groups develop 2-4 questions, then respond to another groups set of questions.  Grade responses to your own questions.
19. freeconferencecall.com to go over syllabus

I tied this to Monday's Keynote by Josh Jarrett from the Gate foundation.  Josh talked about the 2 sigma problem - students getting one-on-one tutoring do two standard deviations better than students in a traditional F2F classroom.

Josh gave us many statistics:

• students who log in before class starts have a 90% likelihood of successful completion of the course.
• 75% of students are non-traditional (we know this already because we teach in a CC)
• by 2014 1/2 of students will take at least one online course.

He made me wonder if advising could happen online ala Amazon. 

Classes need to be scalable, replicable, sustainable to break the iron triangle of cost, quality, and access.  (Not sure I agree there).