Discussions started by Gina Bennett

hi Colleagues,

I'm delighted to join this forum, & the interest I see in Open Textbooks is yet another sign that Openness is becoming mainstream in academia. I've been interested in the Open movement for some time now & am currently serving on BCcampus's Open Textbook subcommittee.

In my day-job I support curriculum, innovation & distance learning for College of the Rockies, a small, rural community college in Cranbrook BC. Encouraging faculty to consider & adopt open textbooks has been a challenge & I'm really interested to see how the adoption process can be encouraged through smaller steps.

Looking forward to learning with/from you all!

Gina

Well, fellow SCoPE denizens, it's been a week since we launched the asynchronous component to our 'Pimp your Post' live session, brought to you by BC's Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG). This async discussion has been fairly quiet & I'm assuming that's because the synchronous session was so invigorating that you are all completely absorbed in re-vamping your entire online introduction processes ;-)

As always, this SCoPE discussion will remain open for a long time, as an area to post your additional suggestions & comments as they occur to you. How to launch your online course or presentation on the best foot forward will continue to be an important topic & no doubt we'll see a bit more action when people are thinking about this again (probably in September for us Northern Hemisphere types).

Thanks for your participation! We'd love to see any & all of you at ETUG's Spring Workshop, taking place in fantastic Victoria, BC, on June 7 & 8. Keep an eye on http://etug.ca/ for news as it unfolds.
In our live-time "Pimp your post" session yesterday, several people mentioned that their particular learner audience was not technically sophisticated and that online introductions requiring video and/or audio would only scare them away. But with a good, simple text post, you can do a LOT to bring together a group of learners.

So the question for you in this thread is: what's the best conversation starter you've experienced, either as a teacher/facilitator or a learner? If you can describe the context a bit, that would help too.

I'll start the ball rolling with an example: One of the best 'introductory post' starters I experienced was pretty low-key & low-tech. The instructor asked us to think back to our university or college years & to recall the course that has had the most impact on our lives. What made it so memorable?

This is a pretty simple question... but it worked for our group. We were a class of mostly educators, all strangers at the start of the class. The topic was personal enough but not too personal; it was related to the course we were taking (curriculum design) but not too related. It certainly did a good job of launching the course as a whole.

SCoPE: Seminars -> Pimp Your Post: February 12 - 19, 2010 -> Welcome!

by Gina Bennett -
Hi everybody,

This is just a quick note to let you know that if you're coming here from the synchronous ETUG session "Pimp your Post", you're in the right place. Or if you're just interested in any aspect of doing good introductions for online courses & workshops, you're in the right place too. Please post a 'hi' when you arrive here... I'll be back after our synchronous session with a 'proper' introduction & to carry on the conversation.

Gina
I've been leaving this discussion forum to lie fallow for a week & give us all time to reflect on new ways of teaching science.... OK, ok: actually I've been 'way too busy & just didn't get around to posting a wrap up until today! One of my emerging talents is the ability to make oversights look like strategies blush

I really appreciate the involvement of all the wonderful SCoPE-ers out there. So many of you presented great links, insights, & reflections on what it means not only to re-think the teaching of science, but to generally re-think traditional teaching in a number of ways. As I mentioned at the outset, the teaching of science has been near & dear to my heart since I first set foot at the front of lab classes for Bio. 150 at UVic, many years ago... And especially since becoming involved with our BCcampus- & Inukshuk sponsored Web-based Associate of Science Program Development Project.

If, indeed, you have been reflecting on this thread over the past week, or if some even-marginally-related notion occurs to you later, please post here again!

And once again, thanks for your contributions.

Gina