Distance Education Projects
Welcome to the TWU Distance Education Project Page. Below you will find a list of current projects that our office is working on to contribute to the ongoing advancement and success of Distance Education at TWU. Please browse through the list, and if you have any questions or would like to be involved in any of our projects, please contact our office at (940) 898-3409.
Upcoming Faculty Development Opportunities
Online Course Development
This program helps faculty members new to distance education to design their first TWU distance education course. Participants will complete the online course to get started in the design of their course. Participants will work in conjunction with the instructional designer assigned to their college to complete the overview elements for their course during the summer and work with the designer to upload content and activities into their course during the academic year. More Information
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Distance Education Innovation Institute
This opportunity is an open competition for tenure or tenure-track faculty scheduled to teach a DE course during all 2008 and/or spring 2009. Successful applicants will design and test the impact of Web 2.0 technologies in one or more distance education courses during the 2008-2009 academic year. Participants will attend the Innovation Institute at TWU Denton campus for one week (July 28-August 1, 2008) for 20 contact hours. There is a required mid-point review due February 2, 2009. Funding is dependent upon successful completion of the Institute and successful progress toward project completion. More Information
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Adjunct and Graduate Assistant Training
A series of hands-on workshops are planned for adjuncts and graduate assistants who teach or assist with a distance education course. These workshops will be offered this coming August to adjuncts and GAs in Denton, Dallas and Houston. Sessions include "Developing good communication with students and faculty," " Managing discussion boards," " Addressing concerns and questions of online students" and " Essential Blackboard tools and why you should use them." More Information
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Online Educator Symposium
This half-day event is for all distance educators. The intent of this symposium is for faculty to share promising practices in distance education. Register for this event. More Information
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Quality Matters Pilot Project
Year three of the project will add 35 faculty members. Faculty will receive training on the use of the QM Rubric for their distance courses. This phase of the project will run from September 2008 – August 2009. Faculty will redesign one course to meet all standards found in the QM rubric. Participants will also review another course, according to the QM review process. More Information
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Distance Education Mini-Courses
The Office of Lifelong Learning created five mini-courses about distance education topics.
- (Mini-1) Managing & Maintaining the Discussion Board for Distance Courses
- (Mini-2) Managing your Distance Course
- (Mini-3) Establishing Tone in your Distance Course
- (Mini-4) Video in the Distance Course
- (Mini-5) Visual Design for Distance Education Content
All distance educators can access these courses by going to Organizations and browsing the Organization Catalog. You can locate these courses by name or by ID (in parentheses above). After you locate the course of interest, you can self-enroll in the course. There are no assignments and you can come and go in the course at will (once enrolled).
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Projects READI
The Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator (READI) is an online tool to provide students with information on their ability to succeed in distance education courses. The purpose of READI is to help students learn more about skills and traits that have been shown to help other students become successful in distance education. At this time, the READI assessment is available by request from each DE program.
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Student Life Collaboration
Members of the Office of Lifelong Learning meet on a regular basis with staff members from Commuter Services to discuss issues related to our distance education students. These issues relate to retention and student satisfaction on and off the TWU campus.
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Online Degree Information Center
The Office of Lifelong Learning is creating a robust web page of information about each of our online degree programs. When completed, the page will also feature video interviews from current distance learners, DE faculty, Admissions and Financial Aid representatives as well as interactive tools such links to live chat, email and other helpful TWU web pages. The goal of this information center is to provide the same information that is presented at the face-to-face Online Degree Information Sessions in a format that is accessible to all future students.
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TWU ID: Resources for Teaching and Learning at a Distance
TWU ID is a collection of resources for distance education faculty grounded in pedagogical and andragogical theory. The majority of the resources are carefully structured to provide a rationale for using certain Blackboard tools or instructional strategies to intentionally impact distance teaching and learning practices. This project’s goals are: 1) create a single location for DE resources that emphasizes pedagogical and andragogical foundations, 2) create a resource set that is easy to maintain and update and 3) allow search functionality to DE resources. More Information
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Demonstrating DE Faculty Workload
The Office of Lifelong Learning is researching issues related to where DE faculty spend the most of their workload - before classes begin or ongoing, throughout the semester. The goal of this project is to understand where the load falls. It will give us a better understanding of when and how DE courses can best be planned and developed.
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Taskstream
TaskStream is a customizable electronic toolset which is useful for developing and managing e-portfolios. One of the primary strengths of the program is the ability it gives TWU faculty to provide formative and summative assessments of student work without having to get together in one place or time to do so. Tracey Mac Gowan, Instructional Design Specialist in Lifelong Learning, has been building the structure of e-portfolios to fit the needs and desired outcomes for program, department, or individual faculty needs. More Information
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Paired Course Redesign: Developmental Mathematics and Computer Literacy
The Paired Course Redesign project is funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to investigate different ways to restructure courses to improve retention and student learning. The TWU project will restructure one developmental mathematics course and the computer literacy course with the goal of improving student learning in these courses to allow students to exit to more advanced courses.
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Zip Files for Menu Items
This project is to prepackage Blackboard course content for DE faculty. The prepackaged content would be for a syllabus file, help file and resource file. The goal of this project is to consolidate information for faculty and provide an easily modified template of content DE believes will be beneficial to online students.
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Gender and Online Learning
Lifelong Learning hopes to lead the effort to build TWU’s national reputation and activity related to the topic of Gender and Online Learning. Research areas range from how women learn and interact online, to how courses are designed and delivered. Possible outcomes include the creation of an institute to conduct research activities, create publications and host events. The results could have profound effects in the areas of online course design, online teaching and learning, learning outcomes for women and best practices for online pedagogy.
An updated literature review will be published this spring, and presentation on the topic will be given at TxDLA and USDLA. Will issue a call for scholarship and research to TWU faculty and staff prior to summer '08.
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Plagiarism Prevention
With the support of Lifelong Learning, the TWU Libraries have put together a plagiarism presentation that educates its viewers on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. To view the presentation, click here.
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Sharing Faculty Resources
Resources for TWU Distance Education faculty, produced by the Office of Lifelong Learning, are now available to a larger audience through Connexions, the Creative Commons Repository of Rice University, as well as the Texas Distance Learning Association (TXDLA) website. Dr. Keith Restine, associate director of Distance Education, along with his instructional design team, have created a blog, The Online Instructor, a wiki-based set of resources for distance educators, TWU ID, and a set of mini-courses for TWU faculty who teach online.
The TWU Distance Education Mini-Courses are available on the Connexions website at http://cnx.org/ and can be located by searching for "restine" under the content tab. Links to the TWU resources on the Connexions website, as well as links to the DE faculty blog and wiki are available on the TXDLA website at http://www.txdla.org/resourceLibrary.asp.
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Product Trials
Smarthinking
A partnership between the College of Nursing and Lifelong Learning is providing nursing students the opportunity to receive online tutoring. The tutoring is provided through a trial of Smarthinking - a virtual tutoring service that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. The tutoring is conducted online by knowledgeable, experienced professionals in different content areas such as English, science and math. The initial trail project was concluded in December, 2007. The formal proposal and product review is currently underway.
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Synchronous Interaction Technology Trials
Instructional Support Services and Lifelong Learning are teaming up to find a product that will provide synchronous communication technology for distance education courses. This spring, ISS and Lifelong Learning are conducting a six-month trial of two products: Wimba and Elluminate.
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Course Capture Trials
The Office of Lifelong Learning is working in partnership with academic departments to explore specific uses for course/event capture technology in their distance education programs.
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Involvement
Conferences
Many prestigious conferences and trainings are attended throughout the year by nine of our staff members dedicated to distance education in the Office of Lifelong Learning. The staff use the knowledge gained at the conferences to better support TWU’s online faculty. Several major conferences that are attended by our office each year are Blackboard, Educause, Sloan-C, Texas Blackboard Users Group (TBug) and Texas Distance Learning Association (TxDLA).
We have presented at:
2007 Online Educator Symposium
- Mike Simmons
- "Using Third-Party Tools and Toys to Enhance Your Course"
- "Getting the Most From the Assignment Feature and Discussion Grader in Bb"
- Dr. Lynda Murphy - "How TWU will conduct Online Course Evaluations"
- Dr. Keith Restine
- "Promising Practices in Online Teaching and Learning: An Online Course for Faculty "
- "Applying Quality Matters Elements to your Distance Courses"
- "Are they Learning?" Replace Formative Feedback Options in Bb"
- "TaskStream"
- Alli Peterson - "Communication Strategies for Online"
- Robin Bartoletti
- "Let's Talk: Pedagogical Uses of Discussion in Distance Learning"
- "What TWU's Instructional Design Team can Do for You"
- "Are they Learning?" Replace Formative Feedback Options in Bb"
- Tracey Mac Gowan
- "Community and Collaboration"
- "What TWU's Instructional Design Team can Do for You"
- "TaskStream"
- Heidi Ashbaugh
- "Planning and Organizing for Distance Education"
- "What TWU's Instructional Design Team can Do for You"
- "Blog! Blog! Blog!"
2007 Texas Blackboard Users Group
- Dr. Keith Restine
and Alli Peterson
- "Socializing New Faculty Members into Blackboard for Teaching and Learning"
- "When Proving Quality Becomes Critical"
- Robin Bartoletti - "Let's Talk: Pedagogical Uses of Discussion in Distance Learning"
- Allison Mabry - "Lead the Journey; Draw Faculty into your DE Events"
2008 Texas Distance Learning Association
- Mike Simmons
& Dr. Lynda Murphy - "Gender and Online Learning"
- Dr. Keith Restine and Alli Peterson - "Navigating Toward a Comprehensive Distance Education Faculty Development Program"
- Heidi Ashbaugh - "Blogging for Better Learning"
- Robin Bartoletti - "Let's Talk: Pedagogical Uses of Discussion in Distance Learning"
- Allison Mabry - "Be a Lighthouse – Draw faculty into your DE events"
2008 United States Distance Learning Association
- Mike Simmons - Gender and Online Learning
2008 Teaching Public Administration/PAT-net Conference
- Mike Simmons - Teaching Public Administration in the Online Environment
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Groups
Lifelong Learning is involved either directly or as a point of contact for many different committees on campus and for the State. These groups represent many different facets of distance education and overall, academic affairs. They include:
- Blackboard Executive Group
- Mike Simmons, Dr. Patricia Edwards, Dr. Lynda Murphy and Jean Mankoff
- Distance Learning Advisory Group
- Dr. Wes Adams, Dr. Pam Baker, Raedean Bolton, Scott Bynum, Stephany Compton, Dr. Kim Grover-Haskin, Dr. Gay James, Dr. Ruth Johnson, Brandy Klug, Dr. Barbara Lerner, Teresa Mauk, Glen Ray, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Pam Wilson, Kelly McCullar
- TWU Information Technology Committee
- Faculty Center
- THECB Distance Education Advisory Committee
- AA/IT Working Group
- Dr. Patricia Edwards, Rob Placido, Mike Simmons, Teresa Mauk, Sherilyn Bird, Dr. Judith Bean, Dr. Carol Kominski, Governor Jackson, Dr. Victoria McGillin, Mary Ann McDuff
- Distance Education Coordinators
- Dr. Stoerm Anderson, Dr. Johnnie Aven, Dr. Gloria Byrd, Dr. Catherine Candler, Stephany Compton, Dr. Douglas Coyle, Dr. Don Edwards, Desiree Elliott, Dr. Cindy Gill, Dr. Nerissa Gillum, Brandi Golleher, Betty Henderson, Dr. Ling Hwey Jeng, Dr. Rae Langford, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Dr. Jody Early, Allison Peterson, Dr. Barney Sanborn, Sharyn Opbroek, Dr. Anne Stiles, Dr. Kerry Webb, Dr. Al White, Dr. Jerry Whitworth
- Graduate Advising Task Force
- Dr. Anne Stiles, Dr. Chris Hawkins, Dr. Gay James, Dr. Jennifer Martin, Dr. Jerry Whitworth, Dr. Joann Barbour, Dr. Johnnie Aven, Dr. Lettie Albright, Dr. Lisa Zottarelli, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Samuel Wheeler, Susan Eitel, Teresa Mauk
- Undergraduate Advising Task Force
- Dr. Allen Waldo, Allison Mabry, Dr. Barney Sanborn, Bonnie Lowther, Dr. Carolyn Bednar, Diedre Leslie, Erma Nieto-Brecht, Heather Speed, Dr. James Chenevert, Dr. Judith Bean, Dr. Kathryn Tart, Kendyll Castles, Nancy Anderson, Ronda Barnett, Teresa Mauk, Teresa McDaniel, Traci Stiles
- Faculty Senate
- Graduate Council
- Academic Directors/Administrative Council joint meetings
- Undergraduate Council
- Dr. Stoerm Anderson, Ronda Barnett, Dr. Judith Bean, Dr. Marie-Anne Demuynck, Patricia Devereaux, Dr. Karen Dunlap, Dr. Don Edwards, Dr. Ronald Fannin, Dr. Kenneth Foster, Dr. Russ Greer, Dr. Penelope Hanstein, Dr. Lydia Hodges, Dr. Joni Jensen, Dr. AnaLouise Keating, Dr. Carol Kominski, Sally Lambert, Dr. Guy Litton, Dr. Kay Marsh, Teresa Mauk, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Dr. Lynda Peebles, Laura Rocchio, Dr. David Rylander, Dr. Barney Sanborn, Mary Schultz, Dr. Terry Senne, Dr. Roger Shipley, Heather Speed, Dr. Ann Staton, Dr. Sharon Van Sell, Dr. Allen Waldo
- Curriculum Committee
- Dr. Johnnie Aven, Brandon Bays, Dr. Judith Bean, Dr. Kyle Biggerstaff, Dr. Rhonda Buckley, Dr. Gloria Byrd, Dr. Linda Caldwell, Dr. Peggy Gleeson, Dr. Vicky Imrhan, Rosemarie Jaekel, Dr. Linda Ladd, Glenda Lehrmann, Dr. Jennifer Martin, Dr. Tony Medlin, Dr. Phyllis Mercer, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Jeff Robb, Kathy Roberts, Laura Rocchio, Anne Simpson, Linda Stuckenbruck
- Assessment Advisory Committee
- Ronda Barnett, Dr. Chris Beatty, Dr. Brenda Binder, Sherilyn Bird, Dr. Mary Bold, John Cissik, Patricia Devereaux, Juanita Duenez-Lazo, Dr. Don Edwards, Sarah Gamblin, Lisa Haynes, Dr. Paula Hughes, Dr. Carol Kominski, Dr. Kelley Moseley, Dr. Lynda Murphy, Dr. Jane Pemberton, Dr. John Radcliffe, Dr. Deborah Tapler
- P-16 Council
- Dr. Ann Staton, Dr. Don Edwards, Erma Nieto-Brecht, Dr. Jerry Whitworth, Dr. Jimmy Ishee, Dr. Judith Bean, Mike Simmons, Dr. Monica Mendez-Grant, Dr. Nan Restine, Dr. Richard Nicholas, Teresa Mauk
- TWU Leadership Institute Advisory Board
- Dr. Nancy Anderson, Dr. Don Edwards, Ms. Amanda Simpson, Mr. Dennis Hoebee, Ms. Carolyn Ishee, Ms. Christianne Kellet, Ms. Deidre Leslie, Dr. Guy Litton, Mr. Jimmy Renfro, Dr. Barney Sanborn, Dr. Kathryn Tart, Dr. Kerry Webb, Mike Simmons
- Other University Groups
- Staff Council - Alli Peterson
- Association of Service and Support Employees of Texas Woman's University (ASSET)- Allison Mabry
- External Groups
- United States Distance Learning Association, Texas Distance Learning Association, Educause, Educause Learning Initiative, The Sloan Consortium
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