Nomination of Jeff Ward, Highline Community College, Instructor of Business
Title: Faculty-in-Residence for Elearning
Nominated by: Marc Lentini, Director, Instructional Design at Highline Community College
Description:
Jeff Ward spent two years with Instructional Design at Highline, and is now working with our
Learning & Teaching Center (LTC). His work is a great example of what happens when faculty
are given release time and the opportunity to share their knowledge. This practice is one of the
faculty development recommendations from the Technology Task Force.
He is evangelist and consultant to faculty who are experienced elearning instructors and to new
explorers in this area. The award nomination isn't for one single activity. Jeff modeled a
complete package of how to be a supportive, knowledgable leader in both pedagogy and
technology.
Some examples include:
Just-in-time, one on one support for faculty - Jeff would meet all over campus with faculty for
everything from a quick question to a multiple-meeting project to set up a complete online
course.
Handy Camtasias shared with faculty just as they would need them - For instance, Jeff would
send a student orientation video that faculty could share with their students, just as the previous
quarter was ending. He'd follow that up with a Camtasia reminder about how to submit grades.
Custom training sessions for departments - Jeff would meet with faculty to develop departmentspecific training for Blackboard and then Angel, integrating department pedagogical practices
into the training.
AngelAid - Jeff started 2 hour drop-in help sessions, every day, in the LTC. This created a
consistent, go-to, help location for faculty, and were well attended throughout.
These are just a sample of the ways that Jeff reached out to faculty to encourage them to explore
and expand their use of elearning tools. Highline continues to add hybrid and online courses, and
faculty continue to develop more web enhancements to their courses. He's a great example of
how faculty-helping-faculty can be successful.
Nomination of Danielle Gray, Signee Lynch, Lori Martindale, and Sherri Winans, English
Faculty
College: Whatcom Community College
Title: WCC English Faculty Innovators
Nominated by: Michael Shepard, eLearning Coordinator, Whatcom Community College,
Description:
2009 Leadership and Innovation in eLearning Award
English faculty at Whatcom Community College have consistently lead our school toward new
and exciting uses of technology. As the eLearning Coordinator for campus I consistently rely on
these faculty as my early adapters, innovators, advocates and disseminators. The group I am
nominating has show leadership and innovation that has resulted in improved student learning
experiences, building the eLearning capacity of our college and acting as role models for other
instructors – both at our campus and within the CTC system. These faculty have excelled in
many areas of technology integration for teaching and learning. I will discuss three aspects that
stand out most: Lecture Delivery, Student Feedback and Moodle.
Lecture Delivery
This group of faculty are using lecture delivery technologies like Jing, Camtasia and Elluminate
Live to facilitate their pedagogical goals in online and hybrid courses. For example, in an online
American Literature course, the instructor provided 1-2 short lectures on each of the 30 authors
featured in the class. These lectures were personally narrated and were accompanied by images
relating to the author. These recordings help students connect with the instructional content on a
personal level, engage information using multiple senses and make meaningfully interact with
the instructor. In a hybrid course, the instructor is using Jing to employ a pedagogical technique
called the Inverted Classroom. In this model a majority of the lecture content is provided online
using Jing and Camtasia. Students listen to the lectures as homework before class allowing class
time to be used for interactive activities. This innovative use of technology makes possible
active student collaboration with each other and their instructor in meaningful ways. The student
feedback has confirmed that this model is worthy of promotion and replication. These faculty
have also been early users of Elluminate Live in online classrooms with great success.
Elluminate has been used to present interactive class lectures and guest speakers for online
courses. Use of the breakout room feature has proven especially successful in creating small
group dialogue on group projects. The ability to create large and small group discussion
situations result in both cognitive and social engagement that current research shows is important
for positive student achievement in online classes. Student engagement in meaningful dialogue
has been one of the hardest face-to-face instruction features to replicate online. Elluminate Live
has made this possible and this group of faculty recognized it immediately. Not only have these
faculty been leaders as early adopters, they have consistently show willingness to disseminate
their discoveries with the campus community in the form of workshops, presentations and
trainings.
Student Feedback
English faculty are providing student feedback using Jing for both their face-to-face, hybrid and
online courses. Writing detailed comments in response to student essays and draft papers can
take extensive amounts of time. These faculty are have been using Jing to create audio
commentaries for students. The faculty narrates their comments to the student as they highlight
specific parts of the paper on screen. The instructor can also reference the grading rubric,
assignment details or writing support website as needed. Not only does the student receive
visual and aural feedback, they are able to hear the instructor’s personality, excitement and
commitment to the topic. The audio/visual assignment feedback has been a real hit with students
and faculty feel they spend less time while providing a higher level of feedback. The campus
Writing Center is run by one of the faculty in this group and has also made successful use of
recordings for student feedback. Students are now able to send in papers electronically and
receive detailed audio/video feedback on their drafts. Not only has the Writing Center been able
to expand their services with online submission, they are providing high quality feedback that is
in line with their pedagogical goals.
Moodle
These faculty were a main force toward the 2005 acquisition and implementation of Moodle on
our campus to provide a free web enhanced component to face-to-face instruction. Before the
WAOL cost model changed, it was financially prohibitive for many courses to use an online
platform to support their courses. Their success in bring Moodle to campus opened the door for
the integration of the hybrid course model. WCC now offers a number of hybrid courses in
English and other disciplines that was possible through acquiring Moodle. Offering students
additional flexibility through a hybrid course without the cost of the BlackBoard/Angel platform
continues to serve the needs of our students.
This group of instructors are leaders in their field in online, hybrid and face-to-face instruction.
They consistently impress me with their excitement for learning and trying new technologies and
sharing their research with the rest of campus and beyond. They are leaders that contribute state
wide and are worthy of recognition for their efforts.