In continuing efforts to strengthen partnerships and to support UNL faculty teaching at a distance, the College of Arts & Sciences and Extended Education & Outreach recently undertook a series of collaborative activities. To highlight outstanding features of distance courses taught by Arts & Science faculty, a Distance Education section was added on the Arts & Sciences homepage.

The first two distance education courses and their featured components are:

• GEOG 120 - Introduction to Economic Geography and its use of Google Maps for assignments that involve adding notes, place marks and other elements to maps.
  
  
• POLS 479 - Insurgency and Terrorism and its opening podcast that draws student interest by showing them images of insurgency, guerilla warfare and terrorism before going into introductory course materials

A second collaborative activity resulted in adding the EE&O staff that support the distance education efforts in the college to the Dean’s Office Website.

Their contact information and areas of responsibility are provided so that faculty can more easily connect with the appropriate individual.

Finally, the three Instructional Design Technology Specialists supporting the college recently moved to an office on the ninth floor of Oldfather Hall in order to increase their visibility and accessibility to the college faculty.

UNL’s independent study high school has developed two courses in visual and performing arts: Introduction to Film Studies and Modern Photography.  These courses were developed through a collaboration between our course authors, teachers, instructional design team, and University partners.

Introduction to Film Studies was written by Bill Fech, a 2008 University of Nebraska–Lincoln graduate who majored in English and film studies. Bill and the instructional design team have created a film appreciation course that presents the techniques of cinematography and film analysis interactively and visually.   Students discover the filmmaking industry through video clips and discussions of movies from the early years to today. Topics include music, special effects, sequels, ratings, and much more. The course ends with a list of “top ten” movies students shouldn’t miss (according to the course author). Students create a short film for their final project.

Modern Photography is a hands-on training experience in the art of photography that features black and white, color, and digital images. Topics include focus, exposure, processing, printing, and artistic techniques – plus appreciation and evaluation strategies. Courtesy of NET, a  highlight of this course is the video segments of well-known National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, a UNL graduate in Studio Art and Educational Administration.  Amy Rauch and the instructional design team have created a learning experience that enables students to enhance their appreciation of the photographic arts and to build successful portfolios of their own work.  One of the students in this course has already won a photography award!

EE&O recently hosted a series of "Distance Education Dialogs."  Support staff from each college were invited to ask any questions that they had regarding distance education at UNL.  Information was shared on topics such as Online Worldwide, the role of EE&O, undergraduate degree completion, distance student services, distance enrollment figures, the various distance course formats,  funding, and the nuts and bolts of getting distance courses listed correctly into SIS+.  EE&O is going to make these dialogs an annual event.

The Confucius Institute at UNL is offering non-credit courses in Chinese language, culture and music. Classes are taught by university instructors from Xi'an Jiao Tong University. Classes are offered in both Lincoln and Omaha and begin in September. EE&O helps coordinate the registration efforts of these courses. 

Click for more details on the courses or to register online.

The best instructional technology tools enrich learning or extend the possibilities of a given learning environment. UNL Connect is such a tool and includes Adobe Presenter, a rich, robust PowerPoint authoring tool, and Adobe Connect, a desktop Web-based videoconferencing tool. Adobe Connect has provided an array of synchronous communication and collaboration options for otherwise asynchronous online courses, helping to merge the best of the classroom and online learning environments.

Adobe Connect is accessible both through Blackboard or an independent Web link. Faculty around campus teaching online courses have made use of one or more of Adobe Connect’s features: online audio and video, chat, whiteboard functionality, document sharing, and "break-out" rooms. Instructors in a range of disciplines use Adobe Connect in many different ways: for office hours, class seminar discussions, guest speakers, student presentations, live exam reviews, demonstrating and talking through equations and problem-solving, displaying and analyzing rich visual images, and to set-up online breakout rooms for student collaboration during the term. Some instructors also integrate remote distance students into specific meetings of residential classroom-based courses, allowing for learning and discussion across residential and distance course sections. Adobe Connect also includes an archive feature; thus, students may view or review sessions later.

Because Adobe Connect is essentially a communication tool, it has many potential campus uses outside of instruction, particularly when it is a challenge to have everyone meeting in one place. To date it has been used at UNL for search committee meetings, Master’s and Doctoral presentations, grant-related meetings, department guest speakers, consulting, and technology troubleshooting with a remote user.

UNL Adobe Connect is supported by the Instructional Technology Group (ITG) of UNL’s Information Services. Before the next annual contract expires at the end of the upcoming academic year, ITG and EE&O, with the help of user groups, will be exploring support needs for wider scale usage as well as comparing Adobe Connect to similar products on the market for best pricing, performance, support, and user-friendliness.

For an UNL Adobe Connect account, contact:
Andrew Frye in the New Media Center
Phone: 402-472-0511
Email:afrye2@unl.edu

For UNL Adobe Presenter or Connect training, guides, and best practices, go to:
http://itg.unl.edu/workshops/UNLConnect.shtml