The Five Components of a Successful Online Faculty Development Program

Faculty development is a crucial and vital component to any college or university. For institutions with geographically dispersed faculty who are teaching online, in some cases for the very first time, faculty development takes on a new level of importance. Here the challenges are not only ensuring instructors understand the technical aspects of teaching online and have the instructional skills to meet online learners’ needs, but also instilling a sense of community.

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The Teaching Professor Technology Conference Features a Jam-Packed Lineup of 72 Sessions

The Teaching Professor is pleased to announce the line-up for the Teaching Professor Technology Conference. With the conference theme of Blended, Flipped & Massive, The Teaching Professor Technology Conference will focus on the pedagogically effective ways you can harness these new technologies in your courses and on your campus.

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ExamSoft Makes It Easier Than Ever to Access Direct Evidence of Student Learning

As students and the accreditation bodies that regulate colleges and universities demand direct-evidence of student learning, being able to connect learning outcomes to assessments is increasingly important. ExamSoft, the leading provider of intelligent embedded assessment solutions, today announced updates to its platform that will help faculty members and institutions get information in real time and intervene earlier with students. Built for faculty, the new release offers simpler navigation, streamlined question creation, the ability to blueprint exams by learning outcome, and easier student management and report creation.

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Increase Grading Efficiency with a Comment Archive

One of the big challenges of teaching an online course is managing workload while providing the support and feedback that is essential to student success. A good way to become more efficient is to build an archive of grading comments to reduce the time it takes to provide feedback on assignments. By creating an archive, an instructor could insert a comment such as the following with a single keystroke:

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Major Grant Awarded to WICHE & Partners to Create Interstate Reciprocity in Postsecondary Distance Education

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and its partners have been awarded a $2.3 million grant from Lumina Foundation for a national initiative that will make distance education courses more accessible to students across state lines, as well as making it easier for states to regulate and institutions to participate in interstate distance education. WICHE and its regional partners – the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC), the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) – along with the Presidents’ Forum, the Council of State Governments (CSG), and the Commission on Regulation of Postsecondary Distance Education, created by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) and the Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU), worked together to forge a national initiative, the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA), that will create interstate reciprocity in the regulation of postsecondary distance education.

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Five Tips for Fostering Learning in the Classroom

During the final meeting with one of my speech classes, I asked each student to give a few parting words to the class. I found a similar message resonating from many who spoke. Soon after, I received an email from an advisor at our school asking me to share some tips on fostering learning in the classroom. Since I had recorded that final speech class, I decided to use my students’ comments as the basis for my advice.

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MediaCore video education platform announces Moodle plug-in at Campus Technology 2013

MediaCore, the cloud-based video education platform, is announcing at Campus Technology 2013 a new plug-in for Moodle the most widely-used Learning Management System in the world. Visit MediaCore at Booth 1211 to see how universities and colleges are using video to engage students, encourage peer-to-peer learning and support learning beyond the lecture hall.

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SUNY ITEC Chooses Ensemble Video Multi-Tenant Platform for University-Wide Video CMS

The State University of New York (SUNY) Information Technology Exchange Center (ITEC) today announced its acquisition of the Ensemble Video platform. Ensemble Video will provide streamlined video content management and publishing capabilities throughout the nation’s largest comprehensive system of higher education.

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The Instructor’s Challenge: Moving Students beyond Opinions to Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is defined as a reflective and reasonable thought process embodying depth, accuracy, and astute judgment to determine the merit of a decision, an object, or a theory (Alwehaibi, 2012). Creative thinking involves analysis, evaluation, and a synthesizing of facts, ideas, opinions, and theories. Possessing the capacity to logically and creatively exercise in-depth judgment and reflection to work effectively in the realm of complex ideas exemplifies a critical thinker (Carmichael & Farrell, 2012).

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