Distance Learning E-News
Monthly Newsletter from CNM's Distance Learning Department January 2008
What's Happening
CNM’s Distance Learning Department have been awarded Title V funding to increase the enrollment of Hispanic and low-income students via online education. Title V funding is closely monitored to ensure the funds are used for approved activities only. Activities that have been approved for the Distance Learning department include professional development, curriculum development, and faculty support services. The Distance Learning Department will use Title V grant funding to ensure access to high-quality education across the state of New Mexico despite the barriers of distance, funding and family responsibilities that have prevented some from attending college in the past. Distance Learning will produce help documents and video demonstrations to support faculty in creating and managing their online courses. The department is also looking into providing additional support in the form of Blackboard lab sessions for faculty. If you have specific teaching and course management issues for which you would like to see a help document, please email your topics list to jluther@cnm.edu. |
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Blackboard HELP for Students! Spring 2008 Introduction to Distance Learning Sessions (Drop-In Labs for Students) Please remember we are offering the Intro to Blackboard for our students on various Campuses. The sessions will cover the following:
The
sessions
follow a
drop-in
lab
format
so
students
are
helped
as they
come to
the
labs.
Let your students know about these sessions. This will help them feel comfortable with their online course(s). |
DL Faculty Spotlight
Bill Meador of Communication, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Bill Meador is a DL faculty member in the School of Communication, Humanities and Social Sciences Bill teaches History 1161 (U.S. History I). Here are a few answers Bill provided us in his interview. Be sure to click on the link below to read the rest of the interview.
Question: If you could change one thing about your online courses, what would it be and why?
Answer: I would like to meet my students, but many of them are taking a distance learning class because they can’t come to campus. I don’t want to impose the burden of requiring a meeting, so I don’t have that name and face association online that I get on campus. I teach online because I feel that I am providing an important service to students as well as to the school, but it is not as enjoyable as teaching in a classroom.
Question: Knowing what you now know about online instruction, what advice would you give other seasoned online instructors?
Answer: Seek student input so you can improve aspects of the class that could work better, and try to improve the class every semester, so that you don’t feel like you are in a rut. I do not feel the same personal satisfaction teaching an online course that I feel when I teach an on ground course, and the satisfaction from ongoing improvement helps to fill that void a little.
By the same token, set time aside for yourself. You could be doing something with your online course 24 hours a day, every day. There is a higher risk of burnout in distance learning because people don’t set personal limits.
Read Bill Meador's complete interview
Eight Pieces of Information that every DL Course Should Have Research undertaken by the State University of New York identified eight pieces of information that were crucial to the success of an online course. The table below shows each piece of information and outlines one way that Blackboard tools could be used to provide students with this critical information.
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Holiday Potluck Good food and good fun flowed in abundance on December 13th as staff from the Main Campus Library, Academic Affairs, and Distance Learning got together to celebrate the end of the Fall semester and the upcoming winter break. Some of the attendees are shown in the photos below.
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DL Leadership Team
Xeturah Woodley
Executive
Director
Academic Affairs
Brian Ditmer
Distance Learning
Specialist
Rafael Martinez
Distance Learning
Specialist
Jeannie Luther
Robin Fernandez |
Contact Information:
Distance
Learning Dept.
525 Buena Vista SE
Albuquerque, NM 87106
(505) 224-3317 – office
(505) 224–3321 – fax
CNM's
Distance Learning Site
Unplug Your Backup Plan
Imagine that you just survived midterms only to find that you have three sections worth of project work to correct in the next three days. Then imagine that your home computer and laptop are fried by a monsoon storm because you do not use 1200 joules (or higher) power strips. Oh yeah, the surge also took out the jump drive that was plugged into your home computer.
By coincidence, all CNM campuses are shut down by a bomb threat. The threat will later turn out to be a misspelling of a culinary arts student’s midterm project “Warming: Chocolate Bombe Event to Hit CNM”. For security reasons no one can explain, CNM’s primary server is down, but it was not necessary to take down the Blackboard server. Your work is still due on time.
Did you come up with a complete backup plan and print out every spec of related information? We are too likely to back up our electronic information with more electronic information today. Do you realize that only a half dozen national internet hubs keep the electronics of our nation connected? Maybe you should have backup plans for other data, and maybe some of the really critical stuff should be printed.
We'd love to hear your feedback about our newsletter. Please send comments to dl@cnm.edu.