Cindi's Comment: A Response

If you didn't see Cindi's comment on my first post, I've pasted it in here:

Cool! Thanks for setting this up. I'm glad to hear you think we each found some useful things. I liked 3 or 4 sessions I went to and was disappointed in others. Clearly there is much potential we have not had any clue about. I am going to try and work on the automated personalization for my class. Wow I may have to think about this.

I'll start by responding to the first half. I did find at least one thing useful or helpful or innovative in each presentation I went to - even the ones that I didn't think were that smartly put together. What I was most happy about was the conversation we had as a group during sessions, between sessions, in our hotel rooms, at dinner, and in the car on the way to and from the conference. I think that really showed me that we need to keep the conversation going throughout the semester - even when we're bogged down with grading!

Is it too silly to ask what the best thing we learned was? I have already set up a meeting with Linda (May 30) and am planning on talking to her about orientation (my best thing) and the conference in general. Anything else I should be sure to bring up? Cindi

Too silly? Definitely not! I personally found the following three things very useful:

1. Orientation for students is NECESSARY if you want to retain students. This orientation should be made available online for students who are learning from a distance. I also like Nancy's inclusion of a f2f session that is optional for her students. I can see how that would really benefit many students. I'm still not sure if I truly believe that they should have to go through the orientation before they are allowed to register for the course - I don't know if that would keep students from registering. I do think that it could be a great first module in all of our classes that students must work through before begining major assignments....but do we want to sacrifice that time?
2. Training for faculty has to be hands on, organized, incentivized (is that a word?), and progressive. We can't train faculty in one sitting. I love the idea of a 2 hour training with lots of hands on time within a course. I, like many, really just need a space to tinker around and make mistakes so that I can learn from those mistakes. I also like the idea of a fake or test course to work in so that I don't feel as though I could screw things up.
3. This CMS is basically a website that I can edit to serve my own purposes, whatever they might be. Perhaps the rest of you already have acknowledged this in your minds, but for me it took this conference to make me understand that I can adapt the code to make the course work for me. I've created websites before in frontpage and dreamweaver so I do have some coding experience (although it is fast fading). I realize that I don't have to be so tied to the construct that already exists. At the same time, however, I did enjoy hearing about some of the templates that institutions are "forcing" on their departments. I loved the idea of the course orientation, table of contents, etc that was standard on all of the PSU Ag courses. That made sense.

What about the rest of you? What did you find the most useful/informative/exciting about the conference? You can post a reply to this post or you can create your own post. If you aren't sure how to create a post, let me know.

-Carrie