Celebrate National Distance Learning Week

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has been providing distance education options for 100 years – an accomplishment deserving of recognition and celebration. In conjunction with National Distance Learning Week, UNL and Extended Education & Outreach will be featuring activities during the week of November 9-13. The activities will be focused on acknowledging UNL's achievements in distance education. You are invited to attend any and all of the activities. For a complete schedule of events and to RSVP, please visit http://eeando.unl.edu/ndlw/.

Reminder - Distance Course Funding Applications Due Oct. 16

EE&O is again offering funds for the development of new distance courses. Priority will be given to courses that support an online UG degree completion option or UG certificate, approved graduate program, term-based X and College Independent Study courses. Proposals are due by October 16, 2009. For more information, please visit http://extended.unl.edu/faculty/newproposals/.

Continued Growth in Distance Courses

For the Fall 2009 semester, our campus distance education numbers continue to grow – number of courses, number of students taking them, and the credit hours generated by them. The largest growth has been at the undergraduate level with a large increase in the number of undergraduate distance courses available.

Development of Non-Credit Modules for Department of Veterans Affairs

Drs. Paul Savory and Susan Hallbeck from the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering have been awarded $175,000, the first part of a larger $475,000 grant, to develop a series of non-credit topic modules to provide medical residents basic training in operational analysis terminology, tools, and methodologies. Each module will follow a general format: Module learning objectives; Content presentation aided by text explanations, descriptions, clarifications; scenarios and examples, summary/organization graphics, photographs, line art; short video clips, and/or audio clips; self-help and review activities, a case study, and an end of module quiz. The Special Projects Team within the Instructional Design & Development group at EE&O will lead in the design and creation of these modules.

Closing of the Office of Academic Conferences

As part of the first round of campus budget cuts, we have closed the Office of Academic Conferences. This decision was not an easy one given the useful and important work Academic Conferences provided to the UNL campus. The challenge for our conference unit was the need to generate enough revenue to cover their costs. At other conference units around the country, financially successful ones are often located in a major metropolitan area (with 1 million or more people) or receive some level of university/state funding. In closing the department, two staff positions were eliminated and one was transferred to EE&O. Moving forward, EE&O is looking to partner on developing more non-credit events (workshops, webinars). Feel free to contact Paul Savory (472-3326) with ideas.

Faculty profile - Dr. Chris Marvin

Dr. Chris Marvin, Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders in the College of Education and Human Sciences, has taught courses focused on the developmental and educational needs of young children under age 5 with disabilities (and their families) since 1988 at UNL.

Dr. Marvin began teaching distance education courses in the late 1980s when it meant driving to satellite locations in the state to meet rural students closer to home. In 1999, Dr. Marvin offered her first distance education course at UNL via satellite broadcasts across Nebraska, sometimes linking to as many as 10 different communities simultaneously where groups of students awaited her summer course. In 2000, Dr Marvin introduced her second distance course with Blackboard and the NET Video-Conferencing system that allowed for two-way synchronous interactions with students and distant guests a few times each term from any of Nebraska’s Learning Centers.

In 2003, UNL’s meet-me-phone-bridge provided Dr Marvin easy synchronous communications weekly with groups of students to complement the online Blackboard information in yet two more courses. By 2006, Breeze Meeting (Adobe Connect) was being used in concert with Blackboard for class meeting sessions in four of Dr Marvin’s courses. Breeze Presenter and video-taped interviews were introduced in 2008 to offer guest presenters a forum for presenting narrated presentations to online students. The phone bridge, email, and even Blackboard chat rooms have continued to be utilized when appropriate for bringing guests, students, and instructors together for Q/A sessions during the semester. More recently, Dr. Marvin has mentored Adjunct Professors from out of state in the use of Blackboard and Adobe Connect Meeting systems to teach the increasing number of UNL courses required for the specialization in young children with disabilities.

Over the years, Dr. Marvin has tried to utilize many of the Blackboard features to support her course learning objectives. Wikis are used for group projects, and Blogs offer a format for students’ journals. The Discussion Board continues to support asynchronous discussions of case studies, problem-based learning, and student-instructor dialogue about assignments and course content.

Flip cameras, UNL’s Large File Dropbox, and Quicktime video and audio clips are staples in Dr. Marvin’s tool box. Students can expect to receive an audio-recorded feedback clip from Dr. Marvin for at least one assignment each term. The array of technologies that interface with email and Blackboard have allowed Dr. Marvin to address her teaching and learning objectives creatively to assure student engagement with course content, interactions with peers, and ongoing support from the instructor. The advances in Blackboard and other technologies over the years have enhanced Dr. Marvin’s teaching, student learning, and recruitment of graduate students to UNL’s Special Education program.