Sept. Online Ed News You Can Use

Hope your semester is off to great start.

MOE Initiatives for 2015-16

At its first meeting, MiraCosta Online Educators (MOE) decided that it would lead two major efforts this year. Look for more information very soon on how to get involved in:

  • re-evaluation of MiraCosta’s course management system, and
  • creation of online class quality guidelines.

Student Orientation to Online Learning

Over 230 students have attended one of these one-hour sessions this fall, bringing the total to over 850 since we started in spring 2014. If you are incentivizing student participation and did not receive the email I sent on Friday, contact me and I’ll share the attendance list with you. Two more orientations remain this week, and two will be held when 8-week classes begin in October – see TASC’s site for details.

Support Services for ALL Students – Online

I find during the student orientation sessions that most students are not aware of (but get very excited about) MiraCosta’s free online tutoring, online writing support, and 24×7 Ask-A-Librarian (under Ask Us) services available to all students. Please direct your students to these great resources!

Professional Learning this Fall

You can get Flex credit for exploring technologies for teaching, reviewing online workshops, and participating in online professional development. Some examples:

  • Participate in a live webinar – from Turnitin (Sept 10); from WCET on accessibility in online teaching on Sept 20, 24, and 29.
  • View archived workshops from MiraCosta online ed; CCC Confer; @One; and the Program for Online Teaching.
  • Be a pilot of Zaption, a tool which enables creation of assessments within videos, and integrates with Blackboard to provide detailed analytics on video viewing and assessment results. We still have a few faculty spots for a pilot over the 2015-16 year. Please contact me if you are interested.
  • Sign up for an @One fall class. Several starting on 10/19 remain open.

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education