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Active Learning at Conferences
Educators have come to understand the need to engage learners in all facets of education. Even face-to-face environments need hands-on learning activities so that participants are actually getting involved in the subject matter. When it comes to eLearning, it has been a challenge for distance educators to build activities into an online program that will force the learner to first do something and then secondly, reflect on the content. I am lucky enough to be able to attend and speak at many conferences throughout the year, and it has been a challenge that I have faced as well. I began to brainstorm ways in which I could engage the listeners and remove the lecture format that usually drives conference sessions.
As you may have read in my previous blog posts, I recently attended the ASAE Healthcare Associations Conference 2012 and co-presented “Professional Development Portal Triage: Planning for Distance Education Success” with a client from the Alliance for Continuing Education in Health Professions, Mary Martin Lowe, Director of Learning and Competency Development. For this session, we developed a card game that focuses on getting the participants to think about both success factors and other components of developing an online initiative including a Learning Management System and extensive courseware. I’ve been really excited about this concept because instead of the typical lecture format where you are basically showing a bunch of PowerPoint slides and talking to session participants who may or may not be engaged, using an active method can help with actual retention and absorption of the content.
It was interesting for me to see the results of this card game at the ASAE Healthcare Associations Conference 2012, as this was a unique “guinea pig” set of groups. As each group tried to create the best common hand with the most success factors, it seemed at first that a table of executives who were very strategic in their planning were going to win with the most cards. As the activity continued, though, I would introduce a new challenge to the teams, this usually forced the teams to lose a card/cards if they did not initially have the right cards in their deck. I introduced two challenges, and then there was a recovery period (draw additional cards from deck) to mimic a road of trials. The winning group switched from the strategic executives to the team who was actually losing at first, but made very tactical decisions for the final challenges. It’s great when a learning activity brings energy to a session!
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson and Jillian Bichanich. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Healthcare Associations to Meet
Learn, Network and Connect in Chicago this November
Though I have had the pleasure of attending many conferences held by ASAE, my first visit to the Healthcare Associations Conference will take place this coming November. This event attracts around 200 attendees and provides the opportunity to hear from numerous guest speakers, including the two keynote speakers Mark Graban and Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz. I am especially excited about this conference because it gives people the opportunity to connect with others in similar professions, facing similar challenges—it truly serves as a conference that is unique to the needs of healthcare associations.
While attempting to learn more about what was offered in this conference, I was very thankful to be able to speak with ASAE’s Senior Director of Learning, Mark Milroy, CAE, who generously gave his time to answer a few 
questions about the Healthcare Associations Conference 2012, and to shed light on some new exciting aspects of this year’s conference.
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What are some highlights of the conference?
This event isn’t a huge gathering where it’s easy to miss seeing people. The intimate nature, with around 200 attendees, provides a great opportunity for some valuable networking to occur. That’s been cited as one of the greatest benefits of this event by previous attendees.
We have an exhibit area with industry partners offering products and services of interest to the people who work for healthcare associations–and of course, there’s the opportunity to win prizes!
At the end of day one there will be a networking reception that provides attendees with the chance to mix and mingle with one another.
We have a really great selection of education sessions on a variety of topics ranging from finding your career path in healthcare associations, pitching to healthcare media, governance issues, minding your personal health, and much more.
Who do you expect will be there this year?
This is the fourth year for this event and it typically draws about 200 attendees, mostly senior-level executives from associations throughout the healthcare sector. What’s great about this conference is the opportunity for these people to connect with one another, perhaps in ways that their members might not. It’s a great way to network and find out which organizations might be dealing with similar issues to yours.
What talks/events are you most excited for?
We have two keynote speakers who bring unique dimensions to the conference. We open with Mark Graban, a consultant, author, and blogger whose new book, Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, explores how the ideas of lean production and other concepts from the world of manufacturing are applicable in the healthcare arena. His message deals with the idea that continuous improvement belongs to everyone in the organization, and he’s going to share stories about some phenomenal changes brought about by implementing these processes.
Our closing speaker is Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, who is co-author of a fascinating new book called Zoobiquity. She is a cardiologist at UCLAMedicalCenter, but she has worked extensively with the Los Angeles Zoo. Her book looks at how many of the conditions that humans face, such as heart problems, cancer, stress, and OCD are also found in the animal world, and that there is a great deal that human medicine can learn from our veterinary brethren. Hers is a compelling message that all too often we dismiss possible areas for collaboration because we let preconceived notions get in the way.
Why should people make sure to attend this year’s Healthcare conference?
This conference is unique because it’s the one event from ASAE University designed specifically for a sector of our membership. An estimated 21 percent of ASAE members are affiliated with an association within the healthcare sector. Unlike other ASAE programs where there might be a session or two relating to the management of healthcare-related organizations, that is the sole focus of this event. Everyone speaks the same “healthcare language” here and understands the challenges and opportunities of working for members who are in primary care, allied health, research, hospitals, long-term care, or any of the other disciplines within this sector.
Any other additional information you may want to add?
We are back in Chicago this year! We’ve alternated between Baltimore and Chicago the past three years, but we’re back in the WindyCity at McCormick Place this year.
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I am very excited to be heading to Chicago this November to attend the Healthcare Association Conference 2012, and furthermore to present at the conference on November 9th. A client from the Alliance for Continuing Education in Health Professions, Mary Martin Lowe, Director of Learning and Competency Development, will be in attendance to co-present “Professional Development Portal Triage: Planning for Distance Education Success” with me, and I’m enthused about having an opportunity to speak with many healthcare association professionals about how eLearning can benefit the medical world’s education system.
If you would like further information on this years conference feel free to browse their brochure.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson and Jillian Bichanich. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Online Education Growing- Making Madison DL Conference Relevant
This year’s conference promises to bring some exciting ideas to the eLearning table.
Higher education has been in the news a lot lately: From the rising tuition at Wisconsin’s state schools to the recent announcement of a new online degree program through the University of Wisconsin System. It’s an understatement to say the field of higher education is just “changing,” which is why the 28th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison coming next month is so promising– Bringing experts and professionals together to share ideas on distance learning bodes well for the future of higher education, and education in general.
Along with a bounty of workshops and speakers from across the country, the conference’s top-billed events pose some interesting predictions for the future of eLearning.
The two key note speakers at the conference will focus on the hard science and technology behind innovative eLearning technology. Dr. James Zull, professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University, will discuss how neuroscience can help people better understand how others learn. Zull will speak to the delicate relationship between the overflow of information available through new technology and how we process and learn it. This is where neuroscience comes in: Understanding how people learn, he argues, will equip educators for the future of education.
The other key note speaker, Judy Brown, will help learners navigate through the uncharted waters of mobile learning to find methods and strategies which will propel learning and on-the-go instructional education. While not many people have educational or instructional apps on their phones yet, Brown predicts a mobile learning landscape where those who can build effective mobile learning apps will be leaders in the eLearning pack.
I’ll be speaking about key strategies to creating effective eLearning with my colleague Penny Ralston-Berg, an instructional designer at Penn State World Campus and co-author of our book, “MindMeld: Micro-Collaboration Between eLearning Designers and Instructor Experts.”
MindMeld is the product of the work and research of Peggy Ralston-Berg and myself, published in 2011.
Sure, every student and instructor wants an effective and interesting eLearning course, but how does one create that? Partnerships between instructional designers and content experts can be fraught with communication breakdowns and confusion about roles during development. A key factor is “micro-collaboration,” which is necessary between instructional designers and subject matter experts, and that collaboration can be hard to achieve.
Without that connection, the chance of effectively conveying information in a course is slim. Penny and I will be using our workshop to define “micro-collaboration” as well as discuss important strategies necessary to achieve it. With discussion, games, and examples from educational, corporate and non-profit settings, participants will discover what micro-collaboration is and how it can flatten power relationships, and will develop the strategies necessary to bring back micro-collaborative techniques to their own organizations.
The workshop will be held on Wednesday, August 8 from 9am-Noon. Penny and I will also be doing a special author discussion on Thursday, August 9 from 11:30am-12:15pm. You can register for the conference here.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson, Karissa Schuchardt and Adelaide Blanchard. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Multiple Choice Test Questions May Be Replaced with Game-Based Assessments?
Earlier this month, I previewed a talk at the Games+Learning+Society Conference 8.0 at the University of Wisconsin. Jody Clarke-Midura and Jennifer Groff have since given their much anticipated talk titled “Formal Game-Based Assessments: The Challenge and Opportunity of Building Next Generation Assessments” and it is now available to watch online here. I think they make some important and realistic points about the future of game design in education, especially when it comes to using games in educational testing.
Clarke-Midura and Groff laid out the pitfalls facing innovations in game-based assessments as well as their promise. They also provided two examples of current game-based assessments which blend the methodology necessary for a reliable assessment as well as the engaging and creative elements of game design that are just as important.
One prominent example presented was a game-based assessment which tested middle-school age children on critical thinking, research and evidence collection. In the game-world, students used an avatar to navigate through a virtual world to solve a problem—they need to figure out through research and evidence collection why a frog was mutated to have six legs. They could be assessed based on their actions and conclusion in the virtual world.
Clarke-Midura and Groff don’t want actual games to be assessments though. Instead, they want to take aspects of game design and incorporate it into building more effective assessments. That crossroads promises better assessments, but also poses issues for both game developers and those who measure and evaluate psychometrics.
It may seem counterintuitive to draw from games—which are dynamic environments—to design assessments, which must be tightly contained environments to ensure standards are consistent. However, there are parts of game design which should be incorporated into tests, Clarke-Midura said, such as
- Clear goals
- Freedom to experiment
- Freedom of identity
- Narrative
- Agency
- Interaction
There is some tension in actually incorporating game-based assessments in schools. Clarke-Midura explained that Race to the Top, a program put forth by the Obama administration to foster learning in K-12 public schools, has provided funding to schools, which in turn means there is more interest in game-based assessments. However, there has also been some hesitation—while teachers and administrators see game-based assessment’s value, they are hesitant for it to become mainstream and widely-used even though the assessments would work on existing technology.
But why make the switch from pencil and paper tests to game-based ones? Clarke-Midura said multiple choice tests—which are widely used in Wisconsin to test fourth and eighth grade competency in many different subject areas—show proficiency in facts, but do not show proficiency in reasoning, research and critical thinking. A game-based assessment can measure actions in a virtual world to measure those cognitive cornerstones.
An Expert’s Opinion
Clark Aldrich
Clark Aldrich, author of the Complete Guide to Games and Simulations is a thought leader on how scenario based test questions could add to the validity of high stakes tests like the SAT. I was very curious as to his reaction to the GLS Session on Game based Assessments.
Click the play button below to listen to the interview.
Clark Aldrich Interview – Thoughts on Formal Game-Based Assessments
The traditional multiple-choice assessment has some flaws, and people are turning to computer game models to try to not only fill some of the gaps, Aldrich said, but also to test individuals in different professional and academic spheres on many different and complex topics that traditional tests cannot.
“As far as game-based assessments go, the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. We’re already seeing assessment models that are pushing this boundary. But it brings up a lot of questions. In this example that we saw [in the presentation], one of their big takeaways is a computer game is necessarily a teaching mechanism. Inherent in almost any computer game design is learning. With this kind of academic assessment, you don’t have the option of teaching them anything. There’s no feedback. All the cues that we’re so used to aren’t there. It’s a whole new way of designing an interactive experience and has the ability to capture a lot of information,” he said.
“[We should move] toward this kind of assessment because we can do it now. It’s the simple reality of, if we can measure more kinds of things, measure them faster, come to conclusions faster and feedback the information on what we’ve learned faster, and at less cost, then we ought to do it. It simply makes sense to do. Simply putting it online has benefits, but online testing also has the potential to tap into more advanced assessments and applications, like the example in the presentation,” Aldrich said.
Aldrich said the presentation was important simply because people need to start thinking about game-based assessments and their possibilities, especially in their nascent stages of development. The efforts at game-based assessments definitely indicate that there is a long road ahead for them to be all they can be, however, the first attempts are nonetheless impressive.
The other opportunity is moving away from putting people on a bell-curve when results are measured. Instead say, “What are you good at, and what are you bad at, and what are you good at in ways other people are not?” Future analysis wouldn’t look at a percentile, but rather what people are uniquely good at compared to others, and how can we design a customized curriculum, not how you stack up against your peers.
Don’t miss Clark at the Serious Play Conference in Redmond, WA from August 21 to August 23, where dozens of speakers will talk about the future of gaming, education and industry.
Speaker Bios
Jody Clarke-Midura is a learning scientist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, currently heading the Virtual Assessment Research Group. The group’s research focuses on designing and studying virtual assessments as a way to gauge critical thinking and inquiry in scientific disciplines.
Jennifer Groff is currently the Director of Learning and Program Development for the Learning Games Network. She has also worked and researched at the MIT Education Arcade as well as the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has multiple graduate degrees—one in educational technology, and another in neuroscience in education. Her research has a specialized focus concerning how the crossroads of education, technology and design work together and are evolving.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson, Karissa Schuchardt and Adelaide Blanchard. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Experts Need Checklists, Too! Health Insurers Meet While Supreme Court Decision Looms.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success
I will be heading to Salt Lake City, UT this week to attend the AHIP Institute 2012. This is my first visit to the annual event that attracts several thousand Health Insurers. This year’s conference provides the opportunity to hear from two of my favorite authors: Malcolm Gladwell and Atul Gawande, MD, MPH. Both are accomplished writers: They have been contributors for the New Yorker and are authors of multiple award-winning books. The authors’ publications feature thoughts on how experts behave and suggest why different methods of encouragement are important to the entire healthcare marketplace. I am a strong believer that programs and processes that focus on continuous improvement–whether personal or institutional–are at the core of solving issues facing all aspects of healthcare. My views and my commitment to continuing medical education have been influenced by these two authors.
Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
I am excited to hear them speak at the conference on the area of expertise during their joint session, Cowboys Versus Pit Crews: How to Build a Sustainable Health Care Delivery System. Our interests dovetail in our understanding of what types of processes motivate people to improve programs and initiatives. In Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, he explains how the 10,000 hour rule, based on a study by Anders Ericsson, dictates what constitutes being an expert. Also in this work, he articulates the value of keeping things simple so tasks get accomplished.
This is where Gawande and Malcolm are of like mind. Gawande, professor at Harvard Medical School, has looked at ways doctors can improve medical practice. In this most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, he examines how various experts make errors and how checklists can prevent them. For example, he explains how a checklist procedure implemented at Johns Hopkins Hospital prevented an estimated 43 infections and 8 deaths over 27 months.
Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, emphasizes the importance of a seemingly simple organizational method.
The theory was later tested in Michigan’s Intensive Care Units resulting in a 66% decrease in infections. The checklist can apply in seemingly the most basic of situations, such as reminding doctors to wash their hands before touching a patient. I’m looking forward to their discussion on contributing to solving healthcare issues in the US. As I sit amongst health insurance executives with a significant Supreme Court decision on recent health care reform looming, it’ll be an exciting place to be.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson, Karissa Schuchardt and Adelaide Blanchard. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
GLS 8.0 Conference Fuses Videogames & Education
Leaders and top researchers in the videogame industry will gather tomorrow and Friday for the eighth annual Games+Learning+Society Conference, held at the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union. The videogame landscape has changed both in technical capacity and creative development, and videogame and learning experts will discuss how these innovations can be applied to learning and education systems.
I’ve never been shy about the fact that I think a well-made game can teach players skills and concepts that translate to everyday life. Videogames cannot be dismissed as child’s play– multiple speakers at GLS 8.0 will make a compelling case that popular gaming systems and games themselves can change the way people learn and elicit problem solving skills in the gamer.
World of Warcraft will be just one of the many games up for discussion at this year’s GLS conference. Image courtesy of us.battle.net/wow
If you’re curious about the speakers but can’t make it down to the UW campus, the GLS 8.0 is streaming many of the presentations online the same day they are given. You can find them here to tune in.
There are some fascinating developments coming down the pipeline, including a presentation on potential game designs to teach playing musical instruments to a mobile app game which may help people quit smoking. But not every topic of study is on something in the early stages of development: Some researchers and experts will be offering academic takes on the educational merits and possibilities of well-known games like World of Warcraft and popular systems like the Xbox Kinect.
What would a conference about games be without, well, games? GLS 8.0 has an educational arcade conference-goers can peruse during the day on Friday. The arcade hosts a bevy of games, most of which take a creative approach to teaching and exploring complex topics. For example, “You Make Me Sick” lets students play as bacteria to show how infectious diseases spread, and “Crazy Plant Shop” lets players “build” fictional, wacky plants to demonstrate recessive and dominant genes.
Full Disclosure: Web Courseworks develops children’s health education programs using game-based learning.
While I won’t be in attendance at GLS 8.0, I’ll be keeping tabs on the event, especially Jody Clark-Midura and Jennifer Groff’s talk on Thursday at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Union about how testing systems relate to games, titled, “Formal Game-Based Assessments: The challenge and opportunity of building next generation assessments.” It is one thing to have a well-designed and stimulating game aimed at learning, but it is another to develop a system that gauges how effective players are learning. The speakers will posit some ideas as to how to connect effective games with equally effective assessments. You can watch the cast here.
Managing eLearning is written by the Blog team at Web Courseworks which includes Jon Aleckson, Karissa Schuchardt and Adelaide Blanchard. Ideas and concepts are originated and final copy reviewed by Jon Aleckson.
Healthcare Education Technology Handshakes – 2012 MedBiquitous Conference
I am speaking on a panel this Friday at Johns Hopkins at the MedBiquious Conference. Sounds really cool, but it’s really pretty geeky stuff. I am still studying up on the various “interface” standards this group sets. I hope to post an update on my understanding and reflection after the conference. The MedBiquitous Conference is over a decade old. Since 2001 members of this consortium have been working on developing a common technology framework for online systems to communicate with each other. It is really about promoting systems communications and interface technology standards so that healthcare education (often referred to as CME or continuing medical education) can promote professional competence and in turn better patient care. Here is what I think I know:
Goodbye CME Lectures in Hawaii
The medical education community is saying goodbye to the scenario where your doctor can take a vacation and listen to a speaker to receive CME credits for licensing or re-certification. Health reform advocates are insisting that your doctor stay updated on the speed of change and advancement by demonstrating practice improvement. This call for active learning is a good thing. Clinicians are being asked to enroll in educational programs that require them to actively participate and demonstrate practice improvement. This new CME philosophy and implementation requires numerous technology systems to talk to each other to be successful. Hello MedBiquitious Standards! And there are several types: Activity Tracking, Profile Exchange, Web Services Guidelines, Meta Tagging Rules, SCORM M, Standardized Patient Case Study Format, and others. It all reads a bit “big brotherish,” but when it comes to a license to practice, you probably want your doctor to be on top of the enormous speed of innovations in medical practice change. And, computer data when shared can be a part of a quality improvement program; the risk of evil resulting from data accessibility is the trade off.
REMEMBER SCORM?
eLearning managers reading this post, well, 
SCORM should ring a bell. So when you think of MedBiquitious Standards think of it as SCORM Plus Plus. SCORM is a common language that allows one online course to be “seamlessly” loaded and communicate with any LMS. It is code that provides the LMS with login information and quiz scores. Among its many standards, MedBiquitious has a SCORM M for medical. Yep, I told you this was pretty geeky. The SCORM M is special information in the otherwise typical SCORM manifest which provides for medical information and other special information sent to the LMS. It is all about interface coding for universal use and it should save thousands of “man-hours” of coders developing custom web services and custom profile transfer protocols.
USB for Tracking Medical Learning Activities and Learning Objects
This standards for interface code stuff is similar to a USB connection (who needs 20 different types of plugs) when one connection is universal. This means that when a medical association has an AMS (Association Management System) that subscribes to MedBiquitious standards, data can be sent from the LMS (which subscribes to the MedBiquitious Standard ) without special custom coding or custom web services code. The AMS can in turn send educational activity data to the licencing board or Registry System. This supports the concept of e-portfolios where health professionals track their own professional development activities. Another way these standards help is to provide special descriptive information or meta-tagging to learning objects: courses, white papers, and self pace exercises. This enables a clinician to use a tool that searches a number of online sources to find sophisticated medical content; possibly while with a patient in a clinic. How we label our medical papers and learning activities or paper based learning materials matter; again the USB concept for quick access—just in time when the doctor needs it. Equally important is how we organize user profile data. The MedBiquitious standard for profile data allows for consistency across multiple systems. So this week’s conference in Baltimore Maryland should prove interesting. I hope I have more to share with you next week.
Here is a good 2006 journal article on MedBiquitous.
Lessons from eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference
eLearning Guild a True Community of Practice
The Learning Solutions Conference serves as the largest of the eLearning Guild’s yearly conferences and brings together professionals seeking to identify, deploy and manage technology-based learning solutions. I was unable to attend the event last week, but I caught up with Jean Marrapodi, eLearning Guild and Learning Solutions Conference veteran, who was willing to share some of her insights on this year’s conference.
Conference Overview
Jean shared that what makes this conference different from others is the extent to which people are willing to share information. Attendees aren’t looking at each other like competition, they’re working together to develop best practices that they can leverage outside of the conference setting. It is truly a community of eLearning professionals. Jean noted that she personally came away from the conference with a lot of tactical information, particularly in regards to utilization of mobile learning as a performance support tool.
Session Highlights
In my conversation with her, we discussed a few session topic highlights including: the evolving role of the instructional designer as content curator in an increasing “data wasteland,” the power of conversation in learning, and the role of video in education.
I asked Jean to tell me about the session about Avoiding Information Overload: Creating Conversation session. I asked her what did the speaker suggest about the goal of incorporating conversation into the learning environment and not settling for a lecture style?
At Web Courseworks, we make the most of our video production department in our course development. I asked Jean about the session “Making the Most of Video,” .
Roundtable on Evaluation
Jean presented a roundtable on evaluation in the Foundations Intensive portion of the conference where she posed the questions: What’s the difference between an assessment and evaluation? How do we determine why a learner isn’t meeting the course’s goals? I asked for her take on how to best convince management or sponsors to take time and money to develop courses.
Looking Ahead
Looking ahead, Jean will be taking a systemic look at some of the course offerings at the New England College of Business where she serves as an instructional designer and faculty member. As an undergraduate online course developer, she will be doing her own evaluation of their program to ensure, as she says, “that we’re doing what we say we’re doing… tweaking and improving what we’ve got. We should be continuously improving what we’re doing and if it’s not meeting needs than why bother [offering the courses].”
This year’s Learning Solutions Conference was a huge success to say the least. Learn more about the conference and Jean Marrapodi online.
Career in Adult Education: Attend the UPCEA Conference
David Schejbal
The University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) began as an initiative at the University of Wisconsin – Madison nearly one hundred years ago. The association seeks to make education more available to adult learners and serves as an industry resource for continuing education institutions and affiliated organizations. Recently proposed reforms promote the incorporation of more technology into student recruitment and the classroom, solidification of the role of the UPCEA Center for Research and Consulting and development of new member association revenue streams.
The UPCEA will be hosting its 97th Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon later this month March 28-30, 2012. Described on its website as “the premier, international association for educators, administrators and staff working in [professional and continuing education],” the conference offers an opportunity to explore how UPCEA members can make education more resilient and sustainable. Penny Ralston-Berg, Instructional Designer at the Penn State World Campus and co-author of MindMeld: Micro-Collaboration Between eLearning Designers and Instructor Experts, will be speaking at the event on “Student Perspectives of Quality in Online Courses.”
I recently sat down with David Schejbal, Program Chair of the 2012 UPCEA Conference, to learn more about the upcoming conference and his thoughts on what association and non-profit distance education professionals can gain from joining UPCEA and attending the conference. As more eLearning management opportunities become available, networking with these types of associations gains steadier importance.
Click play to listen to the interview (approx. 5 minutes)
MEPP Program Moodle & Web Courseworks
MEPP Program
About four years ago, the UW Department of Engineering Professional Development (EPD) approached Web Courseworks about hosting a Learning Management System (LMS). As a private sector partner, we were chosen by UW Engineering because of our attention to the workforce learner as opposed to supporting technology for on-campus learners.
Since 1949, the UW EPD has offered more than 300 continuing education courses to help engineers learn new technology, solve problems and network with others in their industry. Web Courseworks is a proud vendor and host of several instances of the Moodle LMS for various Department online initiatives.
Collaborating with EPD has created innovative uses of technology, including moving toward using Moodle 2.1. Through this partnership, Web Courseworks has learned more about uses for the open source Moodle platform and gained access to experts in the University’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT). This private sector/public educational institution collaboration is the embodiment of the Wisconsin Idea resulting in a Win/Win!
Photo: Bryce Richter
The 2011-2012 school year marks the 100th anniversary of The Wisconsin Idea, which signifies a general principle: education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom. One of the philosophies behind The Wisconsin Idea is Educating Young and Old. It opens doors to students of all ages, with many programs designed specifically to engage pre-college students, working professionals and retired people.
The strongest distance opportunity offered through the Department of Engineering Professional Development (and hosted on our server) is the 2-year Master’s in Engineering Professional Practice (MEPP) program. This Internet-based program is ranked No. 1 in the nation by The Sloan Consortium and features:
- Knowledge and skills you can use immediately
- Project-based learning with experienced engineers
- Award-winning distance learning design
- World-class faculty and a highly respected institution
Year of the Wisconsin Idea
The Wisconsin Idea’s roots begin in 1904 when former UW President Charles Van Hise declared, “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every home in the state.” He created the university’s extension division and forged closer ties between the university and state government. Faculty experts consulted with legislators to help draft many influential and groundbreaking laws, including: the nation’s first workers’ compensation legislation, tax reforms and the public regulation of utilities.
However, this concept did not have a formal name until 1912, when Charles McCarthy coined wrote “The Wisconsin Idea,” which hailed the progressive era reforms enacted by the 1911 session of the state legislature, many of which were developed by or in consultation with UW professors.
The Year of the Wisconsin Idea will provide a thematic link for a continuous stream of events and activities informing about and reflecting upon the Wisconsin Idea. An interactive Year of the Wisconsin Idea website debuted early this month, featuring more than 1,000 examples of the Wisconsin Idea in action, a history and timeline of the development of the Wisconsin Idea, a calendar of events, Twitter feed (@WisIdea), and a page on which UW staff, students and the public will be able to upload a personal statement about what the Wisconsin Idea means to them.
One Celebration event is the 10-day Forward Technology Festival, which kicks off Thursday, August 18th. This festival will bring the technology and start-up communities together to learn, share, and have some fun. It includes: the Ruby Conference, Sector67 meetup and open social with Capital Entrepreneurs.
Web Courseworks is only one example of how the Wisconsin Idea has enhanced private sector businesses, and are thankful to have the opportunity to work with the brilliant people at the UW, including the DoIT department’s great research and development.
Jon Aleckson, PhD - CEO of Web Courseworks Ltd.
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