CCC Convocation 07

Distance Learning Awards and Recognitions

We’ve made great strides in distant learning over the past year. 45 faculty members have been Blackboard certified through our Blackboard Boot camps and 60 (100%) have met the professional development requirements for teaching online here at CCC. Ten faculty members (DL Pioneers) spent the past year learning a variety of new online teaching techniques and given the technical resources to upgrade their skills and courses thanks to the Title III Grant. Each one of them met ALL their DL goals and objectives as they related to the grant and were awarded certificates of achievement for their efforts. They will now be mentoring another ten in more advanced online teaching methods including incorporating video and audio content into their online courses.

I believe our online course offerings across curriculums have more continuity, better methodology and technical (and visual) sophistication than ever before thanks to all the professional development opportunities made available through the Title III grant.

Laurie Freshwater was awarded the Excellence in DL Award for 2006 – 07 at this years convocation for taking her teaching methodology and online courses to a higher level this past year.

Skip Kemp was awarded the Tom Harrigan DL award for most improved in both his online teaching skills and the courses he is designing and teaching online. Tom Harrigan passed away last year and this award is dedicated to him and his commitment to excellence in online instruction.

A meeting is planned for later in August for the Phase II Distance Learning Team.

DL Advisory Meeting 3/30/07 2 p.m.

I would like to welcome you all to the newly formed Distance Learning Advisory Team. There are a lot of exciting things going on with Distance Learning at Carteret Community College thanks to the Title III Grant and the varied resources it has provided us.

Our team of 10 DL faculty pioneers continue to move forward writing and producing their instructional podcasts and upgrading their online courses. My work study student Cameron Lockey has been designing course banners for a variety of instructor blackboards, in addition to putting the finishing touches to our ITunes U site. Terrence Smith has written the code for the instructor access to ITunes U and Cameron has written the Meta Deta protocol for our instructors to use when uploading their media content to their specified curriculum areas of the Itunes site. Terence has gone above and beyond the call of duty to get this complex code written for us.

Check out the CCC ITunes U Web Site by clicking here – you must have ITunes on your computer (free download – click here)

Pre-Ah Hill has just come on board as the Distance Learning Instructional Technologist thanks to Title III. Together we plan on conducting a variety of DL Professional Development training across campus, in addition to reaching out and upgrading our online adjuncts in all aspects of online teaching methods and course design.

CCC is confronting a variety of issues (and challenges) relating to DL such as SACS Accreditation, online course assessments, course upgrading, faculty training on Blackboard Enterprise 7.1, copyright of course content, and the integration (and interfacing) of ITunes U into Blackboard.

Pre-Ah and I will be looking to this Advisory Team for guidence, feedback, support and direction as we move forward with our DL initiatives in the coming year.

Our first meeting will be on March 30th at 2:00 pm in the Video Conference room of CMast room 406. Feel free to post comments, suggestions and/or ideas to this blog. Since we are all about distance learning, we will conduct some of our business online.

I appreciate you all agreeing to being a part of this very important team.

Patrick Keough
Director of Distance Learning