NCDLA Presentation – Collaborating with Sakai

This is the second of two presentations at that I am making at The North Carolina Distance Learning Association’s 2011 Virtual Conference: Engaging Online Learners. This presentation will look at using Sakai to manage and collaborate with multi-sections or groups. It is a co-presentation with Dr. Anastacia Kohl from the Department of Romance Languages at UNC-Chapel Hill. Abstract This [...]

Creating Virtual Student Introductions

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Whether you are teaching a face-to-face or an online course, you will want to create a sense of community for your students. Typically, the first day of a face-to-face class is spent reviewing the course goals and syllabus as well as doing introductory icebreaker activities. You can use one of two online tools – Voicethread or Glogster – to create this interactive icebreaker activity.

Should Your Course be Online?

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In direct response to the changing economic climate, higher education has turned to online courses as a solution to meet the increasing demand. Some motivations are financial – they hope to be able to teach more students with fewer instructors – while others are motivated by a lack of resources and are struggling to meet the demands of the student population. Regardless, the success of developing online courses is not a decision to be taken lightly and requires careful planning and organization. Working through each of these steps will dramatically improve the success for your online course development.

3 Social Media Tools for Connecting with Students

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With the prevalence of Smartphones, affordable phone plans, and texting, social media is quickly becoming one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to inform the masses. There are several tools that aid in the creation and maintenance of your online presence; implementing these tools correctly can provide make a big difference.

Taking Our Toys to a New Sandbox

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the most recent institution added to the growing list of colleges and universities that are abandoning Blackboard to move to the Sakai Learning Management System (LMS). This change comes after a highly successful pilot at UNC that started in the fall of 2008. The decision to move to Sakai is greater than just a change in a learning management system; it also is a major indicator of the direction of instructional technology in higher education as a whole.

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