Sloan-C Blended Conference

I'm currently attending the Sloan-C Blended Conference in Oak Brook, IL....the conference has nearly doubled in size since last year and attendees represent 32 states and 6 countries. Many thought-provoking presentations yesterday, including one by Brenda Smith-Chant from Trent in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. She teaches an intro psychology course to 800 students!

Her presentation was a fascinating study about the use of webcasts of her lectures. She found a consistent pattern---webcasting did not affect attendance to any degree. As well, students tended to watch the lecture immediately after it was released (about two hours after the class, due to closed captioning) and then again in the days prior to the exam. In fact, there was a group of students who "saved" reviewing the lectures until prior to the exam and then watched all 24 hours (or attempted to).

The results of the study showed that highly resourceful students' watching had no significant impact on their grade, but for students who had lower resourcefulness scores (determined by the Zimmerman questionnaire), those who were able to watch the second half of the course's lectures had significantly higher grades.

Another highlight was a workshop given by folks from the University of North Texas on their NextGen course redesign project. Their two year process really involves faculty in rethinking courses, developing a course that mixes lecture, experiential learning and online work. It's clear from the two examples that they have a wealth of support in instructional designers---very sharp online reviews and web page designs. They have a Ning which you can join by writing Philip Turner (pturner@unt.edu). One of the highlights of the workshop was playing Monopoly with a twist, one of the experiential aspects of the "Sociology of Disasters" class. In it, depending on your position at the table, you were given a racial and gender identity as well as a bankroll in line with your social status. Some examples: a female character who rolls a 9 is pregnant and must stay at her location on the board for 3 turns, paying rent (if applicable). Men and non-minorities get $200 for passing Go. Women and minorities get $150....and so on. Students play this game (very thoughtfully created) and then later in the course have to analyze how their character would fend in a major disaster.

More later,

Jane