Richmond Times Dispatch | Grants to reduce textbook costs

May 032013
 

RTD.com logoHere is the small blurb in today’s edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant.

The Virginia Community College System has awarded $3,000 grants to 12 faculty members to increase use of open-resource materials to help reduce textbook costs. The grant program will promote the use of freely available Open Educational Resources in high-enrollment courses at community colleges.

A link to the item can be found by clicking here.

 Posted by on May 3, 2013 Grants-funding, OER, Open Textbooks, VCCS News No Responses »

The VCCS is getting even Googlier

May 022013
 

Google Apps for EducationWhen VCCS students, faculty, and staff log in to My VCCS to access their Gmail accounts after the Blackboard upgrade on May 17th-18th, they will notice that they have a host of new Google apps available to them. During the scheduled outage, not only will Blackboard Learn be upgraded to Service Pack 11, which includes new features like a survey tool and the on-the-fly embedded video tool, Video Everywhere, but VCCS’s Google Apps for Education tool set will also be expanded from its current set of core apps–Gmail, Docs, Calendar,Sites, and so on– to a broad selection of new “consumer” apps, such as YouTube, Google+, Maps, Books, Picasa, etc. There will be twenty-one new apps activated in all. These new apps will provide VCCS students, faculty, and staff with access to an even more powerful suite of cloud-based teaching, learning, social, and communication tools that can be used both in and outside of the classroom.

Google Apps TOS (click to enlarge)

However, there are some crucial steps that all students, faculty, and staff need to take to successfully access any Google Apps, including Gmail, after the upgrade. First, once these consumer apps are enabled, everyone in the VCCS domain must click through and agree to a new consumer Terms of Service (TOS) when they next login. No Google Apps can be accessed until users agree to these new TOS.

Second, when setting up a profile in Google Plus (G+), a Facebook-like social networking service included in the upgrade, it is especially important that users enter their correct date of birth. If they include a date of birth indicating they are younger than 13, they will be permanently locked out of all Google services. This cannot be undone without significant effort and additional costs.

While these steps are relatively easy to accomplish and will only be required once, it is important that all users, especially students, are aware of them in order for the upgrade to go as smoothly as possible. To that end, it is crucial that this information be shared widely with students, faculty, and staff at all 23 VCCS  colleges.

More information about VCCS Google Apps for Education can be found at http://www.email.vccs.edu/extra-apps (built with Google Sites, by the way). Or feel free to contact me at rsebastian@ vccs.edu.

 Posted by on May 2, 2013 Apps, Google, Tech Tools, VCCS News No Responses »

Zero. Zilch. Nada: Textbook Zero @ TCC

Mar 152013
 

I have to admit I am a bit giddy to finally and formally announce Tidewater Community College’s Textbook Zero project, an exciting and innovative pilot project aimed at easing the pain of soaring textbook costs for college student by offering a no-textbook-costs associate of science degree in business administration based on the Textbook Zero model developed by Lumen Learning. Lumen Learning is a Portland, Oregon-based company that helps educational institutions integrate open educational resources into their curricula.

textbook_zero

For students who pursue the new “textbook-free” degree, the total cost for required textbooks will be zip, zilch, zero. Instead, the program will use high quality open textbooks and other open educational resources, known as OER, which are freely accessible, openly licensed materials useful for teaching, learning, assessment, and research. It is estimated that a TCC student who completes the degree through the textbook-free initiative might save one-third on the cost of college.

TCC will be the first accredited institution in the United States to offer a degree in which students pay nothing for required textbooks. TCC’s Textbook Zero project will begin with the 2013-14 academic year.

 Posted by on March 15, 2013 OER, Open Textbooks, TCC, VCCS News 3 Responses »

2013 Horizon Report: Higher Education

Mar 152013
 

NMC_Horizon_2013I am a bit late to the game on posting this, but better late than never. A few weeks ago, the New Media Consortium released the 2013 Horizon Report for Higher Education, the yearly prognostications of educational and political thinkers on what educational technologies they see coming “on the horizon.” It is always an interesting read and thankfully the report authors don’t limit the focus to only technology tools but also include emerging practices. Below is a quick bulleted list of this year’s report. However, I advise you to download and read the whole thing. It’s free.

One Year or Less

  • MOOCs
  • Tablet computing

Two to Three Years

  • Games and Gamification
  • Learning Analytics

Four to Five Years

  • 3D Printing
  • Wearable Technology

Key Trends

  1. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information–is becoming a value.
  2. Massively open online courses are being widely explored as alternatives and supplements to traditional university courses.
  3. The workforce demands skills from college graduates that are more often acquired from informal learning experiences than in universities.
  4. There is an increasing interest in using new sources of data for personalizing the learning experience and for performance measurement.
  5. The role of educators continues to change due to the vast resources that are accessible to students via the Internet
  6. Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models.

Here is the full link to download the 2013 Horizon Report: http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed

 Posted by on March 15, 2013 3D Printing, Edu Trends, Horizon Report, Innovation-disruption, Learning Analytics, MOOCs, NMC, VCCS News Tagged with: ,  No Responses »

Innovations Conference | Dallas, TX

Mar 142013
 

Here’s a quick update on my brief visit to Dallas for the Innovations 2013 conference to present on a Textbook Zero project of a VCCS college that I will discuss at length

First, a little bit about my trip to Dallas. I have no illusions about air travel–I always take it as a given that something is going to go wrong, whether a delayed flight, badinnovations_2013 weather, or being stuck in a middle seat between two garrulous and unshowered seatmates. It was the first day of Spring Break for a number of Virginia colleges and universities so I ended up getting bumped from my midday flight on Saturday for one a few hours later.  This wasn’t too big of a setback since I was in no rush and it gave me some more downtime to tweak my presentation on the next day.

All was going smoothly with my new itinerary until we were just to about to take off (early!) from Atlanta. A huge thunderstorm was rolling over Dallas and we were notified that our flight was prevented from taking off until it passed. Unfortunately, it took 3 1/2 hours for the storm to move on, which my fellow passengers and I spent sitting on the plane on the tarmac. What was worse for me was how late it was when we finally landed in Dallas. By the time I deplaned, fetched my luggage, and fought off a horde of travelers for one of very few cabs at the airport at that hour,  it was almost 2 a.m. Adding to my pain was that it was also Daylight Savings Time so, when I walked up to hotel reception at 2 am it was actually 3 am.

This all goes to the point that I was not firing on all cylinders during my presentation the next day. Despite that,  it went well, I think. I was a bit “off” for the rest of the conference, however, and by off I mean terribly exhausted.

Anyway, as I said during my presentation, I think ‘innovation’ is the most overused word in education today, similar to  ’21st Century Skills’ from a few years ago. So, a conference called Innovations is at risk of promoting more buzzword-usage rather than truly innovative ideas. The opening session by Diane Oblinger, CEO of Educause, didn’t give me much hope. Here are my initial thoughts, posted in the comments section to a post on the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog:

While I liked [Dr. Oblinger's] idea of the Connected College at first, the solutions she imagined… were almost exclusively “use Tech Tool X to solve Educational Problem Y.” What ails post-secondary, according to her premise, is we don’t use “the best technology has to offer.” Again, like so many of the thinkers in educational technology, she mistakes the symptom for the disease. Except for the collaborative gene-splicing tool–don’t remember what this was called–the tools she presented, both third-party and college-developed, were administrative: data analytics, college and career pathway tools, etc. Don’t get me wrong, without a doubt using these tools effectively would be of great benefit to community college students. But what Dr. Oblinger’s Connected College didn’t address, at least in much detail, was what happens in the classroom. How do we use technology to reinvigorate and re-imagine teaching and learning? Not even using “the best technology has to offer,” but implementing mundane, unsexy, and dusty innovations like blogs. Or Google Apps.

Her talk, like any good keynote, sets the tone for the rest of the conference. And for me, that tone was a general acceptance, even promotion of, the further commercialization of education. Not what I consider innovative. Perhaps my lack of sleep made me somewhat irritable, perhaps I chose my sessions poorly, so I would love to hear any other, divergent opinions of Innovations 2013. Overall, my experience didn’t give me many reasons to want to return to the conference next year.

 Posted by on March 14, 2013 Conference, Innovation-disruption, OER, Open Textbooks 1 Response »

OpenVA closed for the winter

Mar 052013
 

ODLR ConferenceEveryone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

Because of the threat of severe winter weather, the First Annual Open and Digital Learning Resources Conference to be held at the University of Mary Washington this Thursday (March 7th) is going to be rescheduled for Fall 2013. It can’t be helped. While it is uncertain how badly the storm will impact the Fredricksburg area–forecasts are calling for anywhere from 0-4 inches of snow–it is likely Southwest Virginia, where almost half of the conference’s registrants are from, will be hit pretty hard. So rather than risk holding a sparsely-attended conference for those who can brave the storm, the OpenVA steering committee wisely decided to cancel the conference, regroup, and reschedule for Fall 2013.

The Fall conference will still be held at the University of Mary Washington. I will post the new date and call for proposals here once a new time has been identified.

 Posted by on March 5, 2013 Conference, MOOCs, OER, Open Textbooks, VCCS News No Responses »

Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant Announced

Feb 082013
 

open_arrow.jpg
Today, Chancellor Glen DuBois of the Virginia Community College System announced a Request for Proposals for the Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant. The goal of the grant is to enlist VCCS faculty to help reduce costs for their students by adopting free, openly-licensed materials for their courses. Fifteen proposals will be selected to receive a $3000 grant to be used to customize existing high quality open educational resources (OER) and adopt them as the only required material in a high-enrollment course. Grantees are expected to identify and refine these OER during the spring and summer before piloting them in their courses during the Fall 2013 semester.

In his email announcement to VCCS faculty, the Chancellor offered a compelling reason for providing funds to develop free materials for these VCCS courses:

One significant obstacle hindering the success of our students is the rising costs of textbooks. Because of the exorbitant costs of course materials, many of our students are forced to go without their course texts, or they delay enrollment in some of their courses until they can afford the course materials. To fully succeed, our students need access to inexpensive, high-quality course materials on the very first day of class.

Faculty of fifteen of the highest enrolled VCCS courses, such as introductory courses in Biology, English, Chemistry, and Math, are eligible to submit proposals.

This grant is just one of several OER initiatives currently underway at the VCCS.  The VCCS Reengineering Task Force has assembled a Textbook Costs and Digital Learning Resources Work Group to develop recommendations for reducing textbook costs across the system. In addition, several colleges have been awarded mini-grants through the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund to develop open educational resources for courses at their colleges. Also, the VCCS has joined with SCHEV and other public, post-secondary institutions in the Commonwealth to develop and sponsor the Open & Digital Learning Resources Conference to build awareness of and promote innovative OER initiatives at 2- and 4-year institutions across the state.

 Posted by on February 8, 2013 College Open Textbooks, Grants-funding, Innovation-disruption, MERLOT, OER, Open Textbooks, VCCS News No Responses »

VCU Online Learning Summit 2013

Feb 052013
 

VCU Online Learning Summit

If you are in the Richmond area on May 14th, or want to justify a spring trip to our fair capitol city, you may want to consider attending the Online Learning Summit at Virginia Commonwealth University. Seasoned keynoter Gardner Campbell will be headlining. There is no opening band or cover charge. That’s right: it’s free.

If you haven’t seen or heard Gardener speak before, you can get a taste of what you are in for by viewing his spectacular keynote speech at the OpenEd conference in Vancouver, BC last year. I wrote about it here. The link to the recording is here.

More info from the VCU Summit website:

The VCU Online Learning Summit is organized by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Virginia Commonwealth University. This regional conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications of all topics related to teaching and learning online. We invite proposals of substantive, interactive sessions that will raise provocative questions, engage participants in discussion, and foster conversations.

If you want to submit a proposal, you have until Monday, March 1st, 2013. Visit the Online Learning Summit web site for more details: http://wp.vcu.edu/onlinesummit2013/

 Posted by on February 5, 2013 Conference, Digital Literacy, Ed Policy, Edu Trends, Mobile, MOOCs, OER, Online Learning, Open Textbooks, Research, Social Media, Tech Tools 2 Responses »
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