August 2007
Welcome to a new academic year! We are excited to announce our newly designed site. With this new format, you will be able to identify important information quickly and effortlessly. The old yellow pages adage "let your fingers do the walking" certainly is the intention for our design. Current workshops, most frequently requested FAQs, news, events, and QuickLinks can be found in one convenient location, the home page.
I would also like to take the time to highlight the following programs this fall:
1. e-Learning faculty Fellows will share findings about trends and teaching practices at NAU at our first annual Fellows' Findings Round Table, held on October 11th. Some of their findings are surprising while others confirm what we already know.
2. We are now accepting applications for Faculty Mentor Grants and Mini Grants. Although we will begin to review the applications mid-September, we will accept applications until September 30th. Final decisions will be made in October.
3. The Fall 2007 e-Learning Showcase on November 8th from 10:00am - 3:00pm at the Cline Library, Room 200 will spotlight faculty's effective use of Bb Vista and other instructional technologies not commonly used. Faculty members who would like to present a topic should contact me or Sharon.Gorman@nau.edu.
We are excited for a semester filled with engaging, effective, and efficient teaching and learning environments!
May 2007
The end of the academic year is quickly approaching, but nothing in e-Learning ever seems to wind down! The annual e-Learning Institute is to be held May 21-24 on the Flagstaff Campus. These four days will be full of presentations, interactive workshops, and time to explore new technologies and techniques with colleagues. The Assessment track is more prominent. Don’t miss our Assessment Speaker, Dr. Doug Eder from ASU.
Over the summer there are several projects including another round of fixes for Bb Vista. This summer we roll out the e-Learning Commons, complete with examples of online courses and streamlined templates for development of new course materials – online or web-enhanced.
February 2007
We have embarked into the second major term with all online courses in Bb Vista, and all courses at the university with a Bb Vista shell. Areas of future focus for ELC are interactive environments such as formal classrooms, informal physical spaces, virtual learning and collaborative environments, as well as emerging tools from the so-called Web 2.0 and social software sphere. Examples of Web 2.0 tools are wikis, blogs, Flickr, del.icio.us, MySpace, FaceBook, and Second Life. All of these tools share a high degree of interaction and user-created content. Look for opportunities to learn about these tools and how to use them for interactive engagement with students for learning.
