How Much?! Calculating the Cost of Online Education

Is an online education a better bargain financially than a traditional program? There are conflicting reports and old assumptions may not be accurate anymore. For-profit and not-for-profit, four-year and two-year, changes in the economy are affecting all sectors. It's important for you to do the math on your own, comparing the schools and programs you are interested in, and ultimately choose a program that meets your career and education needs, and is within your budget. Read more... and feel free to share with students.

End-of-Course Evaluations: Making Sense of Student Comments

At most colleges, courses are starting to wind down and that means it’s course evaluation time. It’s an activity not always eagerly anticipated by faculty, largely because of those ambiguous comments students write. Just what are they trying to say? Read more...  

How to Design a Digital Media Assignment

Each year, faculty members would like to assign students a digital media project as an alternative to a formal written paper. Often their first thought is a video, but project ideas have also involved academic posters and podcasts. When it is designed well, a digital media assignment can be an excellent learning activity for students. This article provides a summary of best practices, some ideas for projects, and a list of resources to get you started. Read more...

Creating an Engaging Student Experience: SP10 Global Navigation and My Blackboard Webinar Event

Live Webinar Event: Thursday, December 6 @ 1:30pm Eastern Time 

By now you’ve heard the news – Blackboard Learn SP10 has been released and it is getting rave reviews.  Frankly it’s just SIMPLY. BETTER. And KCTCS will be installing SP 10 December 14 (5:00 p.m.) to December 18 (7:00 a.m.).

Learn how to put it into practice for you.  This training webinar will explore the new Global Navigation elements of SP10.  This navigation provides an entry point to My Blackboard and other Social Learning elements of Blackboard Learn.  In this training, we will explore the key components of Global Navigation and My Blackboard and look at ways that an instructor can build a more engaging learning space. Read more and sign up...

Online Course Provider Paves Path to College Credit

An increasing push for online courses with no student tuition has helped address the education access problem. But it's also left a gap when it comes to course credit. Massively open online courses do not offer college credit currently for students, even though established universities create them. And that's a problem for students who want to have something to show for their time, said Jessica Bayliss, director of education for Education Portal, a for-profit course provider. Read more...

Blackboard To Be Updated to SP10

KCTCS eLearning Services will be installing Blackboard service pack 10 during an extended maintenance period beginning Friday, December 14 at 5:00 p.m. ET until Tuesday morning, December 18 at 7:00 a.m. ET.

All Blackboard courses will be unavailable during this time. All content and student work on the current system will remain intact when Blackboard is back online Tuesday morning. When you browse to http://elearning.kctcs.edu, a maintenance notice explaining the offline activities will display. 

Once online, you will have access to Blackboard’s new My Blackboard feature, a facebook type page that pulls items into an active stream keeping you up-to-date on what’s happening in all your courses and organizations. Learn more at http://blackboardlearn.com/sp10#students. 

KCTCS eLearning Services

Helping Students Manage Their eRuputation

We often hear complaints about what students say and do online, but we often neglect to look into educators helping them manage their online reputation. This infographic is geared toward adults, but it can serve as a great starting point for conversations and activities that educators can engage in with students to help them to establish an active digital footprint that represents who they want to be perceived as online.

Deep Learning vs. Surface Learning

Sometimes our understanding of deep learning isn’t all that deep. Typically, it’s defined by what it is not. It’s not memorizing only to forget and it’s not reciting or regurgitating what really isn’t understood and can’t be applied. The essence of deep learning is understanding—true knowing. Read more...

Online college courses gaining popularity in Kentucky

Mirroring a national trend, online courses are exploding in popularity across Kentucky, grabbing an expanding share of students’ college educations, according to a recent Council on Postsecondary Education report. Roughly one in three students now take at least one online course each year, the report found, and nearly one in 10 take all their courses online. Read more...

81 Ways Teachers Can Use Google Forms with Their Students

Google Apps is one of the powerful digital toolkit for teachers. It is packed with all kinds of apps you can use both  in your teaching and for your professional growth . Think about services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Presentations, Forms, Google Calendar, Google Education, and the list goes on and on. Most of these tools are free and are part and parcel of our digital being. Read more...

Does Online Education Need to Be Free to Succeed?

A prominent venture capital fund—Union Square Ventures—reckons so, but it adds that academic credentials will also remain vital. At Technology Review, they have been doing some research for an upcoming business report on digital education. It’s an area that’s been receiving a lot of interest from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs—the general idea being that technology will “disrupt” education as we know it, and maybe create a few billion-dollar companies along the way. Read more...

Six Paths to More Authentic Teaching

Most frequently, authenticity is described as being “real” or “genuine,” and the advice often given to faculty wanting to develop authenticity in their teaching is to “just do what comes naturally.” But obvious definitions and easy advice frequently obfuscate deeper complexities, and that is definitely the case with authenticity. Read more...

KCTCS Online Trainings

Remember KCTCS Online Webinars are archived so you can access them at anytime. The trainings for this semester end this week. More will be available in the spring term. To access, go to Blackboard and login. Search for the KCTCS Blackboard Training Module (window) on your portal page and click the Fall 2012 Online Training Schedule.

Upcoming Webinars from SoftChalk

Check out upcoming webinars from SoftChalk.

Google Search Education: Empowering Digital Citizens

The new Google Search Education hub is a free site with materials for teachers to help their students learn skills to search the web, connecting them with a world of information and resources. Visit the site to access lesson plans, videos, and more.

KOLTS Support Site for Faculty

The KOLTS website provides a collection of resources; tools, tutorials, and information to enable you to develop a successful elearning experience for you and your students. Be sure to check out the different areas under Teaching & Learning and Professional Development. Additional resources are listed in the red/orange sub-list on the right side of the page.Great resources and tools will continue to be added to the site. If you have something you would like to share, contact Lisa Jackson of Paige Brooks-Jeffiers.

The blog is a weekly event where one member from our team will let you know what is going on in their area. Well, this was a special week, since we are announcing it, so you got to hear from two of us! But who knows, maybe we’ll even have a surprise blogger or two every now and then!
Be sure to add us to your RSS feed (by clicking the RSS icon) or come back weekly to check out what’s new and to be kept in the loop of initiatives going on with KCTCS Online and around the system. Read more...