Four-day week in education

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Think about this, an innovative distance education program!

Colleges are experimenting with four-day school weeks as a means to cut back on expenses and travel. I think this innovative idea has roots in distance education. The Web-Hybrid model in becoming increasing popular for an alternative to delivering F2F classes. In the Web-Hybrid model, faculty still meet with the students F2F but half the class is delivered online, thus cutting down on trips to the campus and campus space and utilities. A win win situation for both faculty and students.

For the staff, administrators are authorizing alternative schedules as an employee-friendly policy designed to soothe the sting of increasingly costly daily commutes. The alternative schedule could be telecommuting, which again has roots in distance education. Without all the Internet tools available today, telecommuting wouldn't be as productive. With Web 2.0 tools staff have access to documents, can communicate and collaborate with other staff and even have virtual meetings. Additionally, telecommuting days could be designates training days. Training could be delivered online by the HR and technology departments, an innovative distance education program!

Online Teacher & Education Certificates and Programs

University of West Georgia offers a great Distance Education Certified Trainer Program online along with another online program Advanced Technologies for Distance Education. It seems everyone is getting on the band wagon by offering Education and Technology programs online. Upon the success completion of these programs students are awarded online diplomas and certificates.

At eLearners.com they have created a list of all the online educational technology degrees, and the list is impressive with programs for certificates, Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate degrees.

See the list at online educational technology degrees

Innovative Approach to Digital Media Training & Support

From Campus Technology, August 2008, 2008 Innovations article

At Ball State University they have a unique way of introducing more digital technology into the curriculum by developing a Digital Corps. Digital Corps is a student labor pool that works alongside faculty on media projects. In return students of the Digital Corps are offered training, conferences and even Adobe Certified Expert/Adobe Certified Associate programs. As a result the students in the labor pool are certified and get real world experiences, a win win situation for students and faculty.

According to Jonathan Blake Huer, director of the Digital Corps, "The biggest problem has been retaining students. As they ahve mastered their respective crafts, they have been recruited by outside companies ans also by other units within the university."

An innovative program like this would be a benefit to both faculty and staff and the campus as a whole because of the access to more digital media.

Formative vs Summative Evaluations

Do you have a difficult time figuring out what the difference is between a formative and summative (post-class) assessment? Here is a great video from an explanation of a professor's formative evaluation for his university class. The nine minute video is at http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/formative.html# . Thanks to David Pollock for this link. Visit Dave athttp://davidpollock.blogspot.com.

Another good article is: Formative Evaluation: A Practical Guide.I found this article by Lisa Neal, who just happens to work for Datatel (our college's enterprise software) and it cleared up some questions.

Her approach to using formative evaluations in course design was easy for me to understand. She points out that there are four stages to a formative evaluation; "planning the sessions, conducting the sessions, compiling the results, and prioritizing the results from the sessions."

Under the conducting the session' stage she says "For example, if a user says "I don't like these colors," an evaluation should ask "Why don't you like them?" or "Are there colors you would prefer?" In an online class, if I asked the colors question, I would make sure that I was able to get valuable feedback from them. Sure beats non-productive comments like "I don't like the colors!.

Although the article is geared more towards learning objects and interactive multimedia training elements I think the article was very understanding. I also enjoyed the Plimoth Plantation's Online Learning Center's, You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving Learning Object. I can see where using the four stages of formative evaluation would benefit a project of that scope.