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June 13-17, 2011, MPICT held its 3rd annual Summer Faculty
Development Week at the City College of San Francisco Ocean
Campus. A total of 81 people attended, including faculty
representatives of ICT related programs at 34 community
colleges in four states (California, Oregon, Nevada and
Hawaii).
Faculty Development Week Attendees Networking at Lunch
Faculty Development Week is an intensive, 4.5 day event
designed to help ICT faculty stay current on emerging
technologies, learn to teach new material that is current
and relevant, and learn to use new teaching practices and
tools.
WORLD ORGANIZATION OF WEBMASTERS: ALIGNING AND IMPROVING
WEB CURRICULUM:
The
World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) is a 12-year-old,
non-profit professional association dedicated to the support
of individuals and organizations that create, manage or
market web sites. WOW provides education as well as
certification, technical, employment and member advantage
services to thousands of aspiring and practicing web
professionals worldwide.
Most community colleges are teaching web curriculum, but
curriculum varies widely across colleges. Many do not teach
current best practices for optimization for mobile device
viewing, for web crawler results, or for ADA compliance, for
example.
This track provided common structure, best practices,
curriculum, standards, teaching tools, labor market
information, standard DOL job descriptions, and
certification preparation for faculty who want to create or
modify web programs to align with industry best practices.
Faculty received a free web certification test and learned
how about emerging web technologies, like HTML5 and CSS3.
It was taught by Mark DuBois, who serves as Director of
Education for WOW and has been teaching at Illinois Central
College for over a decade.
Mark DuBois Sharing Web Knowledge, Skills & Tools
CERTIFIED INFORMATION SYSTEMS
SECURITY PROFESSIONAL (CISSP):
The
International Information Systems Security Certification
Consortium, Inc., (ISC)˛ is the global, not-for-profit
leader in educating and certifying information security
professionals throughout their careers. Recognized for Gold
Standard certifications and world class education programs,
(ISC)˛ provides vendor-neutral education products, career
services, and Gold Standard credentials to professionals in
more than 135 countries. Its membership includes nearly
75,000 certified industry professionals worldwide.
This class covered information security in depth, including
access control, application security, business continuity,
cryptography, risk management, legal issues, physical
security, and telecommunications and network security. The
class helps prepare students for the Certified Information
Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential, which is
very valuable for high-level information security
professionals.
CISSP certification adds to faculty value and credibility as
an industry professional and professor, and it provides
global credibility to students as security professionals.
Students and career changers considering moving into the
field of information security, or just starting out in the
Information Security workforce, are eligible to become an
Associate of (ISC)˛, something that helps them stand
out, even without a lot of work experience as a security
professional.
This track was taught by Sam Bowne, a City College of San
Francisco faculty superstar. He taught Ethical Hacking and
Network Defense at MPICT’s 2009 Faculty Development Week.
Sam Bowne (Right Front) Keeping It Secure Over Lunch
INTRODUCTION TO JUNIPER OPERATING
SYSTEM (IJOS) and JUNIPER ROUTING ESSENTIALS (JRE):
Juniper Networks, Inc. is a leader in high-performance
network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted
environment for accelerating the deployment of services and
applications over a single network.
The
Juniper Networks Academic Alliance is designed for
colleges and universities to offer Juniper Networks
Enterprise Networking courses to their students.
This track prepared faculty to deliver an introductory
course that provides students with the foundational
knowledge required to work with the Junos operating system
and to configure Junos devices.
This track also provided faculty exposure to the cutting
edge “Junosphere Classroom” virtual Junos environment, a
first in the industry, which was announced at MPICT’s 2011
Winter Conference.
Junosphere is a cloud-based environment that enables the
creation and modeling of virtual networks using actual
routing, switching, and security platform code (not a
simulator).
The track was taught by Brandon Wilson, a Juniper trainer,
and Nic Xenos, Senior Manager of the Juniper Academic
Alliance Program, was at the event to share information and
enthusiasm with all.
Bill Saichek (Left) Will Be Teaching Juniper This Fall
VMWARE VSPHERE: INSTALL, CONFIGURE,
MANAGE:
Virtualization is ICT technology to replace many computer
resources dedicated to specific functions with fewer
computer resources shared by many different functions.
Virtualization is at the strategic intersection of 3 major
ICT trends: ICT cost management, cloud computing and Green
IT.
In these tough economic times, all kinds of organizations
are under pressure to reduce ICT capital and operating
costs. Virtualization is a ripe method to do that, and it is
being implemented rapidly by many organizations for that
purpose.
Cloud computing moves away from many high-powered computing
resources at the edge of a client-server architecture to
thin clients at the edge of the network and consolidated and
centrally managed computing resources hosted in data centers
or outsourced. Virtualization is a key strategy for
cost-effectively implementing data center cloud based
services.
Globally, 2-3% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to
ICT. A key way to reduce those emissions is to reduce the
number of computing resources in use, the space required for
them and their cooling and electricity requirements.
Virtualization is a key method for addressing reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions attributed to ICT.
 VMware
is a market leader in the virtualization space. Faculty in
the VMware vSphere track received training that costs about
$3,000 in the private market, received a voucher for
certification testing, got free course materials, learned to
teach the course and learned how to become part of the
VMware IT Academy program, which endeavors to help
public education deliver needed virtualization knowledge and
skills to the ICT workforce.
David Patrick from MPICT Regional Partner Ohlone College
taught the course utilizing a remote lab environment hosted
by
Network Development Group (NDG).
DESIGNING & USING INNOVATIVE, COLLABORATIVE & FUN
APPROACHES TO TEACHING & LEARNING ONLINE
Despite the prevalence of e-learning, recent data show that
most online instruction is composed of seatwork and
whole-class instruction led by the teacher. Often, students
become bored or distracted, their attention wanders, and
their learning and class performance suffers. As online
instruction grows in importance, it is increasingly
important to find and use ways of keeping online students
focused and engaged.
This very hands-on workshop in a computer lab helped faculty
explore and leverage the power of low-cost collaborative
tools to enhance online instruction and increase student
enjoyment and engagement. Faculty worked through a series of
design challenges to fundamentally re-think how effective
online instruction is developed, delivered and received and
walked away from the track with not only a toolkit for
increasing online engagement, but also useful course
management methods and materials.
Track instructors were Joyce LaTulippe and Lori Weir of
Boston-area
Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC), an
NSF ATE Regional Center, like MPICT.
Hands-On With Online Teaching & Learning
DELIVERING HIGH IMPACT, HYBRID ONLINE
COURSES
Even in good economic times, it is often difficult for an
ICT program to justify many advanced or specialized courses.
Often, the equipment and instructor development costs are
high, and the student demand at one school may not be large
or regular enough. In these difficult economic times, many
courses are being cut, especially more specialized and
advanced courses which do not routinely fill. Students are
being stranded, unable to get the course(s) they need to get
the credential they seek in their careers.
Spring semester,
MPICT featured 17 courses offered by community college
instructors teaching ICT courses from single schools and
making them available to students from many schools. They
were delivered in a
hybrid format. Students who could attend on time and in
person received in person instruction by a professor. Those
showing up on time on the Internet (from any computer, with
any OS or browser, at any network connection speed)
interacted with the class in real-time remotely. Students
unable to show up on time had access to class archives.
Remote access to real lab equipment was integrated to
provide real experiences. Online office hours allowed
personalized attention to students anywhere.
To do this, we used Blackboard Collaborate (formerly
Elluminate), offered free to California community
colleges with value added services as
CCC Confer, but this would work for teachers with access
to similar solutions, like
Webex,
Adobe Connect or
Wimba.
These technologies blow the walls off of classrooms,
allowing you to reach and serve students anywhere!
However, as we have observed faculty making use of these
platforms, we realize that reforming educational systems and
expanding the ICT education capacity of a region is not
necessarily what motivates everyone.
What motivates faculty is that by using these platforms they
can improve student, course and program outcomes. Student
enrollment increases, because more students can participate.
Student completion increases, because the multi-modal
delivery better meets diverse student learning needs.
Faculty satisfaction improves, because teachers no longer
have to drive to the office for office hours. Student
performance improves, because class archives are available
as study tools. Department meetings are less burdensome,
because everyone can participate from where they are…
There are amazing and unanticipated stories of success and
use of these platforms we could not have foreseen, such as a
faculty member saving his job because of increased
enrollments that kept his courses from being cancelled, a
faculty member with a disabling medical problem who could
continue to serve his students, a teacher delivering a class
from India, creating international collaborations between
students on projects, having high profile industry
representatives as remote guest lecturers without having to
leave their desks…
Faculty in this track received Moderator training by experts
at CCC Confer and MPICT Regional Partner Michael McKeever of
SRJC, were exposed to
MPICT’s Hybrid Course Delivery Model Toolkit and then
worked out with the platform - accomplishing amazing things!
Doing Amazing Things to Improve Course Delivery and
Outcomes
in Real Time
A main goal of Faculty Development Week
is to create community among ICT educators in the region and
promote the productive exchange of ideas, practices,
contacts, subject matter expertise, curriculum and programs.
A Wednesday evening mixer provided opportunities to
socialize and make informal and personal connections.
Breakfast and lunch together were other opportunities for
community building.
Great Connections and Interactions at Meals
Every classroom was in a computer lab,
and everyone had lots of opportunities for hands-on
practice.
Each morning, at breakfast, the
instructors presented to everyone what was going on in
individual tracks, so everyone had at least a high level
understanding of what the others were learning and doing.
Friday morning, there was an open microphone, when people
shared information and ideas with the larger group. We
agreed to try to continue information sharing through
MPICT’s Blog, for which everyone is invited to become a
contributor.
Because professional development and
travel resources have all but disappeared in this difficult
economic climate, MPICT provided travel assistance to
qualified attending faculty members.
MPICT is grateful to everyone who
participated in this event and contributed to its success.
If you attended, please let us know what
you do with your new knowledge and experiences!
Back to Q2 2011
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