First ELI webinar: "Guiding the E-Researcher"

Monday (6/8) was the first ELI monthly webinar held since NMU became a member. The CTA will be hosting group viewings and discussions of the ELI webinars all year.

The topic of Monday's session was "Guiding the E-Researcher." The session leader, Janet Salmons of Capella University, talked about conducting research about online tools and communities (forums, virtual worlds etc.) as well as about conducting research about other topics through online interviews in those types of environments.

Nine faculty members attended the group viewing of the webinar. An archived recording of it is available for viewing on the ELI web site. Because NMU is a member of ELI, members of the NMU community can get immediate access to the recording. To access it, you will need to set up an EDUCAUSE ID if you don't already have one. As long as you use your NMU e-mail address when registering, the site should recognize your affiliation. Contact me (msmock at nmu.edu) if you have any questions.

Because this webinar came right on the heels of the CTIP workshop, we simply invited faculty to come participate as a group. For future webinars we will add some optional NMU-specific elements to the group viewings:

• For at least the next few sessions we will schedule extra time ahead of the webinar itself, during which I (or one of my colleagues) will give a brief overview of ELI.
  
• For future also schedule a brief discussion period for NMU attendees immediately after the webinar.

June CTIP workshops

We officially kicked off CTIP last week (6/1-6/5) with a full week of workshops for the 14 members of the faculty cohort. We met from 8:30am - 4:30pm each day. Sessions included a wide variety of educational technology topics, including WebCT features, shooting and editing video for courses, using ELI and MERLOT resources, and using synchronous distance learning tools. If you're interested in seeing what all was covered, view the full schedule.

It was an intense week, as promised. Speaking for the project team, I can say that we enjoyed working with the very enthusiastic cohort members and are looking forward to continuing to work with them throughout the coming year.

Check out our photo album if you'd like to see some of what went on last week. In addition, one our IMS student employees put together the following YouTube video showing some of the week's highlights.

What is CTIP?

The Course Technology Innovation Project (CTIP) is a pilot project that seeks to increase the innovative use of technology in NMU courses. CTIP is presented by NMU's Course Technology Alliance and is made possible by an internal grant from the Wildcat Innovation Fund.

CTIP will engage a faculty cohort in an intensive, year-long instructional technology professional development program that directly impacts courses they teach during the 2009-2010 school year. CTIP activities can also incorporate assessment strategies and lead to scholarship possibilities. Cohort members make commitments to learn about, implement, and share experiences with course technology, and in return receive two stipends. More information about this aspect of CTIP is provided in the Course Technology Innovation Project (CTIP) Overview.

In addition, as part of CTIP, NMU has established relationships with two organizations that provide information and other resources to support educational technology in higher education:

• Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) provides re-usable online learning materials, professional development materials, and tools for peer review and dialoging. MERLOT's vision is “to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.”
• The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI), as its name implies, is a learning-focused sub-group of the EDUCAUSE higher education IT association, of which NMU was already a member. Among ELI’s resources are podcasts, videos, and live monthly webinars. Group viewings of the webinars will be hosted by the CTIP project team.

NMU has one year memberships with both MERLOT and ELI. During that year we will evaluate whether funding should be sought to extend our memberships.

Questions about CTIP can be directed to Matt Smock (msmock at nmu.edu).