SLOAN-C ONLINE WORKSHOP SERIES: Accreditation: Community College Case Studies Point the Way
Links to important information about the workshop:
Key Information
Workshop Description
Workshop Schedule
Technology Information
Attendance Pricing
Panelist/Presenter Biographies
Registration closed
Key Information
Total Minimum Length: ~ 5 - 10 hours/week
Start Date: Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 (Start of online activities and discussions; viewing recorded presentations)
Synchronous Date: Friday, March 21st, 2pm-3pm ET – Live session conducted in online meeting room
Resources Provided:
- Presentations and other workshop materials, viewable online until December 31st, 2008
- 1-hour Live Panel Discussion – Friday, March 21st, 2pm-3pm ET
- During the Panel Discussion – Participation in Live Q&A
- After the Panel Discussion – Viewing of Q&A Session until December 31st, 2008
Workshop Agenda at Glance
Activities begin Wednesday, March 12th. A live synchronous Question and Answer Online Session will be held on Friday of the second week, March 21st, 2pm-3pm ET. All activity is recorded, even the live events, allowing you to watch the events at a later date if you are unable to attend. All workshop content will remain available until the end of the year.
Workshop Description
Accreditation is a major issue in distance learning. Many distance education researchers feel that regional accreditation should not be a problem for quality online education programs. In March 2006, the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Post Secondary Education, released a report entitled: "Evidence of Quality in Distance Education Programs Drawn from Interviews with the Accreditation Community". This report highlighted a series of best practices supporting quality distance education programs. Through a series of case studies, participants will learn how a selection of community colleges applied these best practices within their institutions. This workshop will:
- provide insights and spur thought among institutions building and assessing quality in distance learning,
- provide some new ideas even for distance learning veterans, and
- provide an opportunity to dialog about distance learning concerns.
Whether you come from a community college or a four-year institution, you will benefit from understanding how you can augment the quality of education being delivered. Workshop facilitators will present a variety of possible strategies for institutions seeking to meet emerging accreditation standards for distance education programs. The conversation has now started, but what are the implications of these “good practices” for institutions?
Schedule
March 12th – March 14th Activities: Learn Moodle, the workshop's learning management system, and Elluminate Live!, the workshop's web conferencing platform. Watch recorded presentations and begin reviewing guest courses.
March 17th – March 21st Activities: Continue reviewing presentations and ancillary materials; participate in discussion forum with workshop facilitators, Candy Center, Matthew Olson, and Bill Sakamoto.
A Live Web Conferencing Session is conducted on Friday, March 21st at 2PM(ET) (Online using Elluminate Live!): facilitated by Candy Center, Matthew Olson, and Bill Sakamoto. We will begin the session with an open round of comments from the facilitators and then open the forum up for Q&A and/or presentations/show-and-tell from workshop participants. We will finish with summary thoughts from the facilitators. THE SESSIONS WILL BE RECORDED FOR LATERVIEWING AT YOUR CONVENIENCE.
Technology Information
Sloan-C brings you the following technologies to provide an exciting experience during the workshop:
 Elluminate™ Live! ™ -- Elluminate’s powerful Live! software will take this workshop to a whole new level of interaction. Well suited for the classroom environment, Live! provides the flexibility our workshop needs, from a speaker delivering to hundreds of workshop participants, to multiple small discussion groups occurring in unison. Live! effectively delivers lecture-type speeches, while also having the ability to facilitate collaboration among many individuals. For more information about Elluminate™, please visit the Elluminate page in the Sloan-C Vendor Corner.
 Moodle -- Sloan-C will use an open-source learning management system called Moodle to administer the asynchronous component of the workshop. Sloan-C has found Moodle to provide a flexible and user-friendly set of asynchronous collaboration and learning tools. As with most open-source technologies, the Moodle software is free, making it a very cost-effective software package for any institution or company. We have found though that low-cost does not mean that you have to sacrifice quality. Moodle still provides a robust environment that is dynamic, interactive, and provides cross-platform learner access through a standard web browser.
Attendance Pricing
Price: $295 Each
Individual/Premium Sloan-C Member price: $145 with coupon code* (That's a $150 discount! Find out how to become a Premium Member)
College Pass Member Pricing: Free with coupon code* (Find out how to become a CollegePass Member)
*This workshop is part of the Select Series and College Pass Members must use their additional 50 seats provided to take advantage of this workshop.
*(Individual Premium Members receive 1 discount with membership, Institutional Premium Members receive 20 discounts, and College Pass Members receive 150 "free" seats in the entire 2007 Sloan-C Workshop series.)
Presenter Biography:
Candy Center, Massasoit Community College
Candy Center is the Dean of e-Learning and Non Traditional Programs at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts. She has been involved with innovation in classroom instruction first as a full time faculty member and then as an administrator for fourteen years. She has presented regionally, nationally, and internationally on a variety of topics including communication, learning communities, and online faculty professional development.
Candy Center has been involved with statewide collaboration in Massachusetts as the Chair of the Massachusetts Distance Learning Consortium (MDLC), a collaboration including all three sectors of public higher education in Massachusetts. She served as the Academic Programming Administrator for Massachusetts Colleges Online to assist with the development of collaborative academic programming and policies and continues to serve an active member of the statewide consortium.
She has paired her passion for instructional creativity and innovation with faculty professional development to create unique professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. Recently, she organized and was the lead facilitator for the first statewide collaborative professional development opportunity for online faculty from Mass Colleges Online member institutions using facilitators from nine institutions.
Matthew Olson, Middlesex Community College
Matthew Olson is the Director of the Middlesex Interactive Online Learning Network at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts. He also serves as the Senior eLearning Consultant for the online training firm of Instructional Solutions. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and his research focuses on effective community college online instructional design practices regarding online collaboration. He has fifteen years of experience in community college education and online learning.
Dr. Olson has actively participated in a variety of consortia for distance education in Massachusetts including the Massachusetts Consortium of Distance Education (MassCODE), the Massachusetts Distance Learning Consortium (MDLC), and most recently, Mass Colleges Online (MCO). He has vast experience in technological professional development, and has presented on online teaching and learning to a variety of local, national, and international audiences. From 2002-2005 Dr. Olson was a key participant in a Department of State grant implementing an online learning program at the Azov Academy of Management and Information Technologies in Berdyansk, Ukraine.
Bill Sakamoto, Bunker Hill Community College
Bill Sakamoto is the Dean of Distance Education and Weekend College at Bunker Hill Community College. He has been involved with flexible learning programs for almost 30 years. He has extensive experience in the development and use of media based instruction as a delivery system for individualized instruction and has provided consulting for a number of colleges in the development of student support centers.
He has provided oversight in the development and implementation of instruction delivered through PBS and Cable Television. He served on WGBH’s community advisory board for a number of years and provided input for increasing access to educational programming through this PBS local affiliate.
Bill Sakamoto has been very involved in the development and implementation of technology plans at the local and state level. Initiatives included network infrastructure projects, library services and instructional technology. He was involved in the development of a videoconferencing consortium that provided instruction to high schools and colleges. Most recently he has been engaged in the development of a comprehensive distance learning program at his college and an online distance learning consortium in Massachusetts.
Cancellation Policy
If you register and pay for a Sloan-C workshop/seminar and are unable to attend, we will be happy to apply your payment to another Sloan-C workshop/seminar at your request. However, no refunds will be given. This offer is good for one year.
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