In this post, the ELI KEY issues are presented, along with the role of eLearning and Emerging Technologies as it relates to supporting and responding to each issue.
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Academic Transformation and Faculty Development
The eLearning team at GVSU is focused on both of these as we strive to:
“Support faculty pursuing innovation in teaching and learning…”
Instructional technology and new pedagogies are the eLearning team’s focus as we provide creative professional development and a enterprise campus technology resources in an effort to create the next generation of teaching and learning. In fact, eLearning aligns with the GVSU 2021 Strategic Plan in the following areas that support academic transformation and innovative faculty development:
Institutional outcome D: Grand Valley supports innovative teaching, learning, integrative scholarly and creative activity, and the use of new technologies.
Objective 1.D.2: At least 93% of faculty members regularly use electronic course management tools, such as Blackboard, in their teaching. Baseline: 89% of faculty indicated either daily or weekly use of Blackboard in their teaching according to a GVSU faculty survey conducted winter 2016.
Objective 3.D.2: At least 30% of undergraduate courses are offered in innovative approaches and formats, such as hybrid, online and competency-oriented.
Objective 3.D.3: At least 30% of graduate courses are offered in innovative approaches and such as hybrid, online and competency-oriented.
Objective 4.D.1: Effective technologies are integrated into every function and structure across the institution.
For many institutions, training sessions and seminars are often provided to faculty as part of a professional development program. To successfully engage faculty at GVSU, the eLearning team offers a wide array of sessions that focus on best practices in the application of technologies to solve instructional problems. Throughout the 2017 academic year, over 80 training seminars covering a large scope of instructional technology topics were offered to faculty. These seminars are centered on the effective pedagogical integration of technology in teaching.
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Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Accessibility and UDL continue to be important key issues and the eLearning team supports these initiatives through professional development and shared resources along with collaborative services with the Disability Support Resources department.
eLearning Web Resource – Universal Design for Learning
eLearning Web Resource – Accessibility Tips for Online Course Content
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Online/Blended Learning and Instructional Design
Distance education continues to grow at GVSU with a +25% increase in enrollment in online/hybrid classes since 2017. With nearly 5,000 student enrollments in the Winter 2018 semester, just over 17% of all students are taking at least 1 online or hybrid course. To support distance education initiatives, eLearning has trained over 250 faculty to teach online/hybrid classes in just 1 year through the Foundations of Online and Hybrid Course Development and Delivery course.
As one of the most desired professional development opportunities, the “Foundations of Online and Hybrid Course Development and Delivery” workshop is a required training for all faculty that teach an online or a hybrid class at GVSU. As part of this professional development, Blackboard competencies are also required. Faculty must demonstrate basic competency in using the essentials of Blackboard, whereas the Foundations training focuses on best practices in online/hybrid pedagogies.
All in all, the required Foundations training has led faculty to develop and teach high quality courses at the university. This professional development experience has been created and is delivered entirely through Blackboard, showcasing and modeling best practices, as well as a variety of technology tools that are available to faculty to use in their own teaching. Applications that integrate with Blackboard, include technologies such as: Ensemble, Echo360, Panopto, TechSmith Relay, and a variety of other web services (Padlet, Flipgrid, Vocaroo, etc.).
Finally, in order to successfully complete the Foundations training, faculty must create a week of instruction using Blackboard. The week of instruction is peer reviewed using a quality rubric that is based on the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program and Quality Matters.
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Privacy and Security
The key issue in privacy and security is in maintaining the integrity of our enterprise systems while ensuring student privacy. This is also essential when 3rd party technologies are used as part of a course. The eLearning team has created a few tips for instructors who are using external web services and social media with their students and in their courses.
eLearning Web Resource – Social Media and Third Party Tools in Teaching
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Digital and Information Literacies
As a liberal arts educational institution, GVSU’s mission is as follows: “Grand Valley State University educates students to shape their lives, their professions, and their societies. The university contributes to the enrichment of society through excellent teaching, active scholarship, and public service.”
Part of this work is the role of critical thinking as it relates to the use of everything digital. The eLearning team supports the equipping of students and the campus community in supporting a variety of enterprise applications as well as the advancement of digital literacies through support and infrastructure. Inclusive education and the support for digital media is most notable in the work of the eLearning Digital Studio. The studio maintains a project list that provides great breadth and depth of leveraging to technology that contributes to dialogue around 21st century literacy skills for students. Further, the eLearning team is hoping to host “design thinking-based”conversations around establishing more support for student-based digital media creation at GVSU.
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Open Education
GVSU has been involved in the open education resources (OER) movement for many years, and most recently has seen a growth in the adoption and use of #OER in teaching and learning. For example, there have been several adoptions of OpenStax textbooks in Chemistry and Mathematics and a new interdisciplinary team lead by the university’s library is helping to coordinate resources and raise awareness.
In fact, GVSU has been participating with the K-12 community through the #GOOPEN initiative as part of the US Department of Education’s goal to encourage states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning. GVSU joined the #GOOPEN initiative in January last year.
Further, there has been activity across the state for several years, and one recent example is the #MIOERSummit, which brought together faculty across the state with the goal of improving student success through the use and adoption of OER.
eLearning Resource – Open Educational Resources (OER)
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Integrated Planning and Advising
GVSU IT supports a variety of student information system initiatives across the university. The eLearning team supports retention and student success through the use of Blackboard through automation to make faculty advisors more effective and efficient in communicating with students through the Blackboard Organization Advisor sites.
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Learning Analytics
The opportunities are abound with big data and small data. BIG data, meaning the large scale and mass amounts of data that can inform strategic decisions. Also, SMALL data in the use of course level information about students and their levels of engagement in their courses. Solutions that include early alert, intervention, and the closing of the loop between students > faculty > advisors are becoming powerful tools in the support of student retention.
Most notable here is “Clicks, Grades, Engagement, and Student Success” whereby, Blackboard has provided research in how successful students are using LMS tools.
“The most successful students are those who access MyGrades most frequently; students doing poorly do not access their grades. Students who never access their grades are more likely to fail than students who access them at least once.”
This impacts our campus with opportunities through applications such as Blackboard Predict which provides capabilities to inform campus advisors with students at-risk, and also at the individual instructor level through tools like the Blackboard Retention Center.
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Learning Space Design
As the campus continues to create classroom and in-between spaces for students to informally gather and learn, active learning becomes more important and so too the purposeful design of facilities.
Active learning classrooms provide a unique faculty and student experience as the spaces include flexible and movable furniture and technology to support: 1) a student-centered design, 2) enhanced collaboration, 3) increased faculty/student engagement, and 4) improved interaction through dynamic group work and classroom communication.
IT Resource – Technology Enhanced and Active Learning Classrooms
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Emerging Technologies – Technology Showcase
As part of the eLearning team’s work, the latest emerging technologies are a focus of the Atomic Object Technology Showcase. The mission of the showcase is to provide faculty, staff, and students with an immersive and engaging environment to: interact, discover, learn, and share how innovative emerging technologies can enhance teaching and improve student learning at GVSU. With over 40 emerging technology exhibits that include virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D printing, the showcase is an outstanding and very unique example of education, technology, and innovation.
While being a spotlight for campus tours, visitors, and also a destination for a variety of classes at GVSU, the showcase also engages with partnerships across the campus. For example, in a unique partnership with the GVSU Art Gallery, the showcase provided an innovative virtual reality experience at the opening reception which was held on January 15, 2018. To celebrate the grand opening of “Ebb & Flow: Explorations in Painting” with art by artist Herbert Murrie, participants were able to create their own painting in a 3D virtual reality experience using Tilt Brush by Google.
A GVSU campus wide beacon of emerging #edtech, the Technology Showcase has had over 53,000 visitors since 2015, hosting a variety of colleges and university visitors, including most notably the President of the country of Palau who brought with him the United States Secret Service!
eLearning Resource – Technology Showcase as Engaging Space with Emerging Technologies
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Competency-based Education/New Methods of Assessment
New Methods of Assessment – Open Badges
eLearning facilitated the implementation of open badges for faculty professional development. In fact, the first badge awarded at GVSU was eLearning’s “#EdTech Summer Teaching Institute” badge. Further, 7 badges are currently offered by eLearning, including 4 Blackboard badges, a digital media badge, an #EdTech Summer Teaching Institute badge, and a badge for the successful completion of Foundations of Online and Hybrid Course Development and Delivery.
What about you? What are some other key issues or trends that resonate and that bubble up in importance on our campuses?
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As Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies develop, the market for apps and their various uses has begun to broaden, particularly in education. Even two years ago, the selection of applicable programs was slim and considered by most to be very gimmicky. Faculty often have very specific needs from lesson to lesson and while the platforms are currently picking up steam, a prepackaged app often doesn’t have everything that faculty may need and can have a lot of things they don’t need. Instead of waiting for someone to make an app and bring it to market, I worked in Unity to create it myself.
Moderated by instructional designer, Kim Kenward, a panel of online and hybrid faculty talk about best practices in teaching at GVSU. Panelists (pictured from left to right) include: Jeffrey Rothstein, Lissa Brunan, Raymond Higbea, Maureen Wolverton, and Kerry Mohney.
This year, in addition to ePosters, a brand new “Technology Test Kitchen” was offered, full of tasty #edtech recipes.
At the symposium, Dean Annie Bélanger shared how GVSU University Libraries support the adoption and creation of open educational resources (OER) through advocacy, education, curation, and library publishing services. Further, she provided insight as to the importance of OER as a critical component of liberal education.
