Current News

Belinda Russell Named MSVCC Instructor of the Year

From L to R: Dr. Howell Garner, MS Community College Foundation Chair; Dr. Willis Lott, MGCCC President; Mrs. Belinda Russell, NECC; Dr. Johnny Allen, NECC; Dr. Phil Sutphin, MACJC Technology Chair; Dr. Christian Pruett, SBCJC eLearning Director

Belinda Russell, a Speech Communication Instructor at Northeast MS Community College, has been named MSVCC Instructor of the Year.

"She was selected from a highly qualified pool of online faculty from across the state," said Dr. Christian Pruett, SBCJC eLearning Director.  "Each college nominated up to two faculty, and the team of college evaluators were impressed with all nominations.  Mrs. Russell is a pioneer and constant innovator.  She achieved the highest overall rating from our panel, and we are thrilled that she is our first recipient.  She is truly setting the bar."

Russell earned a $1,000 stipend with the newly created honor.  The stipend is funded with a ten-year commitment from the Mississippi Community College Foundation.

Russell has been teaching for 31 years at New Albany High School and Northeast CC.  She earned her Bachelor of Science degree MUW in English and Speech, and earned her Masters from the University of Mississippi in Secondary Ed with an emphasis in Communications.  She has also completed graduate level work above her masters at UM.

"The challenge in teaching in my discipline," says Russell, "is that most of my students have never gotten up in front of students to conduct a speech.  When I began teaching online, even though students had discussion boards and links to great speeches out on the web, the human element was still missing."

"I learned about podcasting as a result of attending the Creating Futures Through Technology Conference a few years ago.  I had heard of podcasting, but I had never been exposed to it in that way."

"Now, with the help of my college DLC Holly Melvin, among many others, they helped me get the equipment to make the podcast and to make the podcast come to life.  I put it together using Apple's Garageband program.  Part of my podcasts include instructions through video and audio, while other parts of them include what my students create.  I link to free instructional podcasts that students can use, and now, I have students write me, personally tell me, and email me saying that they never could have successfully completed this class without this podcast.  

"I can see and hear you," they say.  "You are real to me.  I know who you are."

State Board and College Staff Selected to Present at Wimba 2010 Conference

SBCJC eLearning Director Christian Pruett, eLearning Specialist Terry Pollard, and NWCC Instructional Technology Specialist Rebecca Butler will co-present at the Wimba Connect 2010 Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The State Board-offered portion is entitled "Envelop, Develop: Building a Statewide Professional Development System with Wimba and your LMS."  The session description is as follows:

The best kind of training is circular: informed trainers, engaged faculty, and an administration that supports efforts to improve instruction. Come learn how the Mississippi community college system is building an ambitious Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Wimba course training program that delivers training anywhere, anytime. The presentation will be two-tiered discussion of the training offerings by Terry Pollard, SBCJC eLearning Specialist, and a statewide perspective offered by Dr. Christian Pruett, SBCJC eLearning Director. Pollard will speak to the Wimba training curriculum, enrollment growth, and facilitator selection. Pruett will speak about statewide efforts, including challenges and lessons learned.

Move It Online! Using Wimba to Create our Online Professional Development Program:

We all know that Wimba is a great tool for connecting teachers and students together, but what about for training and professional development? In this session, we will explore the online program Northwest Community College Instructional Trainer Rebecca Butler created to train faculty located at three different campuses, and adjunct faculty from around the state.

For the full conference agenda, visit the Wimba Connect 2010 site.

Need Blackboard, Wimba, or Turnitin Help? Click 411!

Wimba Pronto Owl Yarly

The State Board office will soon be offering ad-hoc training in the month of December and January for faculty preparing their Blackboard courses for the spring.

"Over 250 faculty--a quarter of those teaching in the MSVCC--have already downloaded and installed the Wimba Pronto program," says Terry Pollard, SBCJC eLearning Specialist, "so it seemed like an appropriate time to give this training method a shot.  It was designed for this."

The training will be delivered and administered through Wimba Pronto; Pronto delivers desktop sharing, two-way audio and video broadcasting, application sharing, a whiteboard, and chat communication.

The training will be offered by a ranging group of State Board staff and college trainers.  The goal is to assist faculty in answering questions related to these topics: 

• Blackboard content presentation,
• Blackboard course design,
• the Blackboard Grade Center,
• Wimba Podcasting
• Wimba Voice Tools
• Turnitin Grademark functionality

It should be noted that some questions cannot be addressed through the Help Desk, such as textbook store questions, course cartridges, and procedures specific to individual colleges.  "Given that all 1,000 faculty can view this Help Desk in Pronto once they install the program," says Pollard, "we need to scale back the level of service that we will offer.  Any kind of question might come at us, so we are focusing on the above list."

"This is intended as a help desk for ad-hoc requests from faculty who are preparing their spring courses.  We want to help faculty at the close of the fall semester, and if the program is successful, we'll deliver additional services throughout the spring.  Any faculty who tries to reach us through Pronto when the Help Desk is open will be prompted for their problem or issue before being helped.  If we cannot answer it, or if the answer is better suited to a particular college, we will refer that individual to the appropriate school and contact person."

Faculty should first install Wimba Pronto prior to attending any of the sessions.  Instructions for downloading Wimba Pronto and finding the help desk are located here.

Training Details:

1) Beginning Tuesday, December 8, 2009, faculty should login to Pronto during the day to see which topic will be covered in the Help Desk that day. Topics will vary depending on demand and level of interest and will be listed within Pronto by 10 a.m. each day; these will be listed in the Pronto schools tab.  We are hoping to assist each individual within a 5-7 minute timeframe. State Board offices are open throughout most of the Christmas break; Help Desk Hours, if closed for a day or series of days, will be published within the Pronto schools tab area each day.

2) The system will work best for faculty if they are not on a wireless network.

3) For general information on using Pronto, visit these tutorials here.

Beverlin Givens Earns MCCFP Certification

Mrs. Beverlin Givens, SBCJC Program Specialist, recently received a certificate of completion with the Mid-South Community College Fellowship Program (MCCFP).

MCCFP, established in 1994, is a year-long comprehensive professional development program aligned with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) leadership competencies.  The purpose of the MCCFP is to identify, develop, train, and nurture middle and lower level community college emerging leaders. The program encourages greater vitality across the entire community college system to renew communities and their economies.  It locally initiates educational improvement and economic development, while supporting action and leadership for policy development at the local and state levels.

Mrs. Givens received a Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Instruction for Adult Education from the University of Phoenix in July 2008.

Registering for MSVCC Academy Courses

Development is nearly complete on the MSVCC Academy registration system.  Faculty will be able to manage the entire registration process; faculty will be able to

• self-register for courses,
• download a PDF stepsheet with registration instructions,
• review courses previously taken (not retroactive for courses taken prior to September 2009),
• apply for CEU credit (not retroactive for courses taken prior to September 2009), and
• modify or delete enrollments in courses.

Distance Learning Coordinators will also be able to register their faculty, receive reports, and track professional development hours for their faculty.

The site is expected to go live on Monday, August 31, pending approval for release.  The link for the site will be published here when the site becomes available.

Learning Simulation Series to Teach Students Blackboard Basics

 

Sharon Hudson, Instructional Technologist at Hinds CC and a member of the state’s eLearning Trainer group (ELT) has been hard at work this past spring and summer building tutorials for students new to Blackboard.

The Flash-based tutorials are part of the new Learning Simulation series, intended to teach students and faculty about particular tasks using a linear model of progression.  The first set in the series are intended for students.

The tutorials play inside a browser and are available now in the Institutional Content area of Blackboard for faculty to place in their courses (see news story, Installing Bb Tutorials in Course).

Colleges may decide to incorporate the files in their course templates for the spring 2010 semester.

The primary investment for Sharon Hudson was to better serve students.  "When thinking of a way to increase student retention through the MSVCC, the concern that kept coming to mind dealt primarily with the students’ level of competency with Blackboard.

There are multifaceted approaches and services that can increase the capacity to serve, retain, and satisfy online students, and I felt that creating simulation tutorials was one solution.  The tutorials are between three to five minutes and students can access them as often as needed."

There are four videos in all: Navigating Blackboard, Submitting Assignments, Understanding Your Blackboard Gradebook, and Orientation to the Blackboard Discussion Board.

This marks the first time that tutorials have been built specifically for students and made available for faculty to place directly in courses; the tutorials were built using Adobe Captivate.

Keri Cole, Dean of eLearning at Hinds, sees great value in the tutorials.

"These tutorials will ensure students are receiving effective and consistent training in the technologies made available to them.  Exposing students to the tools used by their instructors will allow our faculty more time to concentrate on course curricula."

MSVCC Partners with Wimba for Full-Featured Version of IM Software

All community and junior college users now have access to the full version of Wimba Pronto, billed by Wimba as "the only instant messaging system designed for educators."  The program downloads to a faculty or student's computer after a quick signup and download process on the Wimba server (see News Story, Installing Wimba Pronto).

The application provides blended audio and video conferencing, application sharing, a whiteboard, and queued chat functionality.

"This service changes the paradigm," says Christian Pruett, SBCJC eLearning Director. 

"We are seeing elearning companies embrace tools that assist the entire institution, and this new version of Wimba Pronto is a prime example.  This tool is intended not only for faculty and students, but for administration at large.  Imagine setting up a help desk for your financial aid office.  Your financial aid staff are at their computer, working as they always do.  But now administrators can provide assistance to students at home--the queue in the hallways has been augmented by the queue function in Pronto."

Once installed, the tool performs syncs with Blackboard course enrollments. 

"So imagine a Jane Doe, who installs the program, and is enrolled in a Biology course," says Pruett.  "When she opens the program, she will now see William Doe, who is also enrolled in the course, assuming he has installed the program.  This happens without any forethought by the student--they're merely installing the program.  From there, they can start up a whiteboard session, chat, or see and talk to one another through a headset."

Chat functionality can be turned off by the instructor prior to quizzes or tests.  "Regarding test integrity," says Pruett, "our recent partnership with Respondus will allow us to lock down any browser or quiz, so instructors should use this tool in addition to Pronto."

There is also the ability to turn off Pronto chat within an entire course from within the program settings.

A Spanish language preference is also a part of the software.

Alicia Shows, Dean at SMCC, is impressed.

“I've been with the MSVCC since the beginning,” says Shows.

“Communication between student and instructor and among students, has always been a problem. Pronto can be a great tool for solving some of these communication issues and can allow the student to be a part of a learning community, not an electronic correspondence course. 

I'm a math teacher, so the idea of easy access to a whiteboard is fantastic. 

I expect that the faculty at SMCC will make immediate use of the whiteboard feature, because as soon as one instructor uses it, the word will spread, and the students will be expecting it from all instructors.”

The MSVCC has had access to the free, limited version of Pronto since January 2009.

MSVCC Academy to Offer Alternative Model for Professional Development

The soon-to-launch MSVCC Academy will provide an alternative for MSVCC faculty seeking professional development training, through short courses on podcasting to courses on best practices for online instruction.

The Academy is a “sunrise to sunset service”—faculty enroll, participate, graduate, and receive certification through a single process, all managed through a new enrollment system built by SBCJC’s Ive Burnett.  The enrollment system will accommodate both Blackboard and Desire2Learn users.

Courses fall into one of three categories--the Teaching Effectively Online series, and two new categories: a Tools in Focus series and a Best Practices series.

The Tools in Focus courses drill down to the deepest level of a tool or technology.  The Best Practices course offerings are meant to be organic and evolve over time through input from participants.

The Academy launches September 7 and will offer half a dozen courses, ranging from the six-week general orientation course, offered since 2007, to the newly built Wimba Voice Tools course and Blackboard Early Warning System course.

Faculty can begin registering for the free courses at the beginning of September.

Seats are provided on a first-come, first serve basis, and most courses will be capped at 15 or 20 participants.

Faculty can enroll in these courses through the SBCJC Enrollment Tool.  Distance Learning Coordinators can also register their faculty for these courses through the ET.  Registration instructions will be published on msvcc.org by August 24.

The enrollment system will provide colleges with the ability to track their faculty participation in these courses; contact hours are provided for each course.  This should aid colleges in establishing a professional development program for their online faculty if they do not have one in place.

Faculty and staff from across the system serve as facilitators, and new courses with a pedagogical emphasis are peer reviewed by deans, instructional technologists, and distance learning coordinators prior to their launch, using the Quality Matters rubric.

Jennifer Leimer, Director of Distance Learning at MGCCC, and President of the DLC Association, is excited about the new program.

"Our instructors continually ask for training on emerging technologies. However, with such limited resources, we are often not able to meet their requests.  The MSVCC Academy will help offer training that is desperately needed to enhance our instructors' skills so that they can provide top-of-the-line courses.

New courses to launch on Wimba, Blackboard Early Warning System

 

Two new courses for professional development are near completion: an introductory course on Wimba and a course on Blackboard's Early Warning System.

The Wimba course, entitled Teaching Effectively Online: Wimba 101, is a three-week course, offered for professional development credit, and at no cost to the instructor.  The course is available to anyone teaching in the MSVCC.

The course was written, developed, and designed by Terry Pollard, State Board eLearning Specialist. The course, which consists of three one-week lessons, will introduce faculty to Wimba's set of audio tools and will emphasize pedagogy, not technology.

The course is intended for those looking to integrate voice into their course to improve student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction.

Participants will

• Identify key differences in communicating with face-to-face students and online student,
• Evaluate the effectiveness of first-generation online courses in terms of student engagement,
• Apply concepts learned by
  • responding to questions posed by facilitator (using Wimba)
  • building a Wimba voice lesson in their own online course (using Wimba)
  • building a Wimba Presentation lesson in their own online course
• View a Wimba tools matrix outlining features of all seven Wimba tools and learn to choose the best tool for the task
• Write a faculty action plan for use of Wimba tools.

The course will be limited to fifteen instructors; in order to use the Wimba voice tools, headsets will be required.

The course begins on March 9.

To register to the course, email Terry Pollard, SBCJC eLearning Specialist here.

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Jenny Jones, Instructional Technology Trainer at Holmes Community College, is nearly finished building a two-week course on Blackboard's new Early Warning System feature.

The Blackboard course, entitled Teaching Effectively Online--Blackboard Early Warning System, is also available for professional development credit and at no cost to the instructor.  The course is available to anyone teaching in the MSVCC.

Blackboard's Early Warning System tool, a new tool available in version 8 of Blackboard, has been identified as a tool that may improve identification of at-risk students. This course is intended for faculty seeking to more quickly identify at-risk students and communicate with them about their performance based on certain criteria such as attendance, grade performance, or due date.

Participants will

• learn how to use a Blackboard tool to notify students based on certain criteria, such as attendance and grade threshold,
• learn about best practices for using the tool, including the creation of a single rule rather than multiple rules, and
• learn about record-keeping for the tool, in order to track rules and rule results.

The course begins on March 9. 

To register for the course, email Jenny Jones here.

Instructional Technology Guru to Speak at Creating Futures pre-conference

 

Dr. Steve Harmon, Director of Learning Technologies at Georgia State University, will present at the 2009 Creating Futures through Technology pre-conference.

The pre-conference is hosted and presented by the MSVCC.

The session description:

"Technology has revolutionized every aspect of modern society except education.  In fact, Professor Chris Dede of Harvard has opined that if electricity were to somehow vanish from the planet tomorrow, Education would be the least affected of Societies' institutions. At long last though, that may be changing. Dr. Stephen Harmon will discuss recent developments in information and communications technologies that have the potential to substantially alter the way we work and the way we learn.  But will these advances change the way we teach?  Dr. Harmon will explore some some new and emerging technologies that hold potential for advancing teaching and learning, and will propose a way of examining them to look for any true advantages they offer for education.  Additionally, he will offer a theoretical basis for learning with new media that will help faculty decide which new technologies to use and when to use them. Dr. Harmon will conclude by examining specific applications of new technology in the disciplines."

To register, please visit the Creating Futures website here.

The full pre-conference flyer is available here.

MELO Site Adds Blog, New Resources

The state Library Directors MELO committee, led by Kathleen Hutchinson and Pamela Ladner, have recently integrated blogs into the MELO site.  Here is an excerpt from their first post.

We would like you to give MELO a chance.

MELO (Mississippi Electronic Libraries Online) is a credible, electronic collection of resource information selected by librarians to assist MSVCC students with their research and classroom needs. The site contains web pages, databases, Mississippi community college library catalogs, and links to Mississippi CC library web pages.

To read the post in its entirety, visit the blog here.