'07-'08 DE Annual Report / Projects
"Distance Education has been a lifesaver for me. I am a wife, mother, have a fulltime job and am still able to attend school fulltime, therefore the only way for me to continue my education is through the distance education program. This program gives me the freedom to “go to class” anytime, thus making it possible for me to still wear all my other hats." - Lisa Arrington, General Studies
Fostering Successful Research
Partnership with Admissions
Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator (READI)
Online Degree Information Center
TWU ID: Resources for Teaching and Learning at a Distance
Taskstream
Paired Course Redesign: Developmental Mathematics and Computer Literacy
Zip Files for Menu Items
Gender and Online Learning
Sharing Faculty Resources
National Distance Learning Week
This year, the TWU Libraries began a student-centered, interactive tutorial series called Doing Research, that when completed will include four tutorials that cover different aspects of academic research. The first tutorial, “Avoid Plagiarism” was completed this year and is a video demonstration of what plagiarism is and how it can be avoided. To view the plagiarism tutorial, please go to http://www.twu.edu/library/tutorial/plagiarism/player.html
The second tutorial, “Understanding Information Sources” is due to be released in late October. It will address why students should use a large variety of sources and the difference between scholarly vs. popular, current vs. historical, qualitative vs. quantitative and primary vs. secondary sources. This tutorial will also be in video format and will include a test at the end that produces a score that students can email to their professors.
The Office of Lifelong Learning has provided funding for the first two tutorials so that they can be put online for all students, including distance learners. These tutorials were created by the Texas Center for Educational Technology at the University of North Texas.
The library will release the final two tutorials later this academic year. The third one, “Find and Access Information Sources”, will cover how to use the library catalogs, databases and subject guides, as well as how to create a search strategy and determine search terms.
The fourth and final tutorial in the series, “Find Scholarly Information on the Internet” will give information on how to search for, evaluate and understand quality sources that are taken from the Internet.
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The Offices of Admissions and Lifelong Learning have teamed up again to increase enrollment. They have worked together to put information about TWU on Gradview.com which is an online, graduate-program search engine created by Hobsons, an enrollment technology company. Each participating school’s profile includes general information about the school and its location as well as information about admissions procedures, financial aid, majors and programs and student life. View TWU’s profile at here.
The two departments are still supporting My TWU, which is an online product that allows potential students to create a profile of their academic and extracurricular interests. This profile provides information that can help admission counselors send personalized follow-up communications with potential students that create a profile.
Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator (READI)
The Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator (READI) is an online tool to provide students with information on their ability to succeed in distance education courses. The purpose of READI is to help students learn more about skills and traits that have been shown to help other students become successful in distance education. At this time, the READI assessment is available by request from each DE program.
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Online Degree Information Center
The Office of Lifelong Learning has created a robust web page of information about some of TWU's online degree programs. The page features video interviews from current distance learners, DE faculty, Admissions and Financial Aid representatives as well as other helpful TWU web pages. The goal of this information center is to provide the same information that is presented at the face-to-face Online Degree Information Sessions in a format that is accessible to all future students. Click here to see the Online Degree Information Center.
TWU ID: Resources for Teaching and Learning at a Distance
TWU ID is a collection of resources for distance education faculty grounded in pedagogical and andragogical theory. The majority of the resources are carefully structured to provide a rationale for using certain Blackboard tools or instructional strategies to intentionally impact distance teaching and learning practices. This project’s goals are: 1) create a single location for DE resources that emphasizes pedagogical and andragogical foundations, 2) create a resource set that is easy to maintain and update and 3) allow search functionality to DE resources. More Information
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TaskStream is a customizable electronic toolset which is useful for developing and managing e-portfolios. One of the primary strengths of the program is the ability it gives TWU faculty to provide formative and summative assessments of student work without having to get together in one place or time to do so. More Information
Paired Course Redesign: Developmental Mathematics and Computer Literacy
The Paired Course Redesign project is funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to investigate different ways to restructure courses to improve retention and student learning. TWU faculty members will restructure one developmental mathematics course and one computer literacy course. Lifelong Learning will provide support to move faculty-created materials, resources, and support structures online. The goal of the project is to improve student learning to allow students to exit to more advanced courses.
This project is to prepackage Blackboard course content for DE faculty. The prepackaged content includes a syllabus file, help file and resource file. The goal of this project is to consolidate information for faculty and provide an easily modified template of content DE believes will be beneficial to online students. Online faculty can get the files through their instructional designer. The existing files will be updated as needed, and more files will be created as necessary.
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Lifelong Learning hopes to lead the effort to build TWU’s national reputation and activity related to the topic of Gender and Online Learning. Research areas range from how women learn and interact online, to how courses are designed and delivered. Possible outcomes include the creation of an institute to conduct research activities, creating publications and hosting events. The results could have profound effects in the areas of online course design, online teaching and learning, learning outcomes for women and best practices for online pedagogy. An updated literature review was compiled this spring and shared with faculty who expressed interest in this project. Presentations on the topic were given at TxDLA and USDLA.
Resources for TWU Distance Education faculty, produced by the Office of Lifelong Learning, are now available to a larger audience through Connexions, the Creative Commons Repository of Rice University, as well as the Texas Distance Learning Association (TXDLA) website. Dr. Keith Restine, associate director of Distance Education, along with his instructional design team, have created a blog - The Online Instructor, a wiki-based set of resources for distance educators - TWU ID, and a set of mini-courses for TWU faculty who teach online.
The TWU Distance Education Mini-Courses are available on the Connexions website at http://cnx.org/ and can be located by searching for "restine" under the content tab. Links to the TWU resources on the Connexions website, as well as links to the DE faculty blog and wiki are available on the TXDLA website at http://www.txdla.org/resourceLibrary.asp.
National Distance Learning Week
The 2007 National Distance Learning Week was November 12 - 16. Throughout the week, Distance Education sent out articles to all TWU faculty and staff, highlighting distance education at the University. The articles focused on DE numbers across the nation and at TWU, our services to distance learners, our distance learner demographics, how we train DE faculty and their achievements and finally, a look ahead to what distance education at TWU might hold. A small reception for all distance education faculty, staff and students was held on November 13. The 2008 National Distance Learning Week will be November 10 - 14. Click here for more information.
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page last updated 12/15/2008 13:53