Spring 2012 ICT Synchronous Online Courses

MPICT has been championing the use of online collaboration tools, like Blackboard Collaborate, Cisco Webex and Adobe Connect to improve community college ICT education.

These tools can be used in a wide variety of ways to positively impact student, instructor and department performance.

Among those is delivering instruction via these platforms. MPICT is currently promoting 19 courses offered in this manner in Spring 2012.

These online collaboration tools can empower instructors to reach and serve students in multiple ways simultaneously:

• In person, through classroom instruction

• Interactively in real time via the Internet,

• In real time on the phone,

• Anytime via archived classes over the Internet,

• Using ADA compliant, real-time transcription services,

• Anytime via audio or video podcasts on computers

• Anytime via audio/video podcasts on mobile devices

• Integrating remotely accessible real lab equipment

• With remote guest lectures/enrichment experiences

• With interactive online office hours

Delivering a course in this manner can improve student, instructor and department outcomes:

• Improved Student Recruitment, because students can attend in many ways from anywhere any time

• Improved Student Retention, because students have multiple engaging modes of learning and getting help

• Improved Student Completions, because there are many ways to get “unstuck”

• Better Student Performance, because many student learning styles are served at once

• Improved Student Relationships, because students can connect in multiple ways

• More Engaging Classroom Experiences, because it is possible to integrate rich learning experiences, like

  • Remote Guest Lectures

  • Remote Site Visits

  • Voices of Past Students

MPICT has been developing ICT faculty to teach effectively using these tools, through in-person faculty development events, through an online Toolkit and in other ways. For example, on November 19th, MPICT offered a one-day, hands-on workshop in Honolulu.

If more of us teach in this manner, we can improve ICT education and workforce development by being able to justify, offer and run more advanced and specialized courses – improving the availability, depth and breadth of ICT education offerings everywhere.

This spring, MPICT has been promoting the following community college courses offered in this manner:

• Cisco CCNA 3&4 (Las Positas College)

• Cisco CCNA Security (Truckee Meadows Community College)

• Cisco CCNA1 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNA2 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNA3 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNA3 (Santa Rosa Junior College)

• Cisco CCNA4 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNA4 (Santa Rosa Junior College)

• Cisco CCNP1 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNP2 (Ohlone College)

• Cisco CCNP3 (Ohlone College)

• CompTIA Linux+ (Coastline Community College)

• CompTIA Network+ (City College of San Francisco)

• CompTIA Linux+ Network-Security (Coastline Community College)

• Computer Forensics (Las Positas College)

• Flash Web Animation (Santa Rosa Junior College)

• Introduction to Dreamweaver (Santa Rosa Junior College)

• Network Security Sec+ (Las Positas College)

• VMWARE: Install, Configure, and Manage V5.X (Ohlone College)

• Whitehat Hacker Testing (Las Positas College)

• WIFI/Wireless Networks (Las Positas College)

Please make students aware of the possibility of taking these courses remotely if they do not have competing offerings by your college locally.

If you, or anyone you know who is a community college instructor in the MPICT region, would like to learn how to teach in this manner, or would like to offer courses in this manner, please contact us.

This multi-modal instruction method is powerful, effective and greatly appreciated by students. Use of CCC Confer for this purpose is absolutely FREE to instructors and students at community colleges in California. Use of Blackboard Collaborate licenses are free to faculty in Hawaii, and these platforms are affordable anywhere.

Other Collaboration Platform Uses to Improve ICT Ed:

Even if you are not ready to offer an entire course in a synchronous online format, there are many other great opportunities to use these platforms to improve ICT education, for example:

• Department Meetings

  • Online collaboration tools for department meetings allow faculty to attend, participate and interact with anything on any computer remotely, reducing travel time and costs, and providing archives for later review and documentation.

• Other Meetings

  • In the same way, you can set up remote meetings with anyone. Allowing remote attendance at advisory meetings increases the possibility of participation by busy professionals, for example.

• Content Capture

  • Faculty or others can use these platforms to record presentations and demonstrations for a variety of purposes, including video and learning module creation and sharing.

• Teaching Remotely

  • It isn’t just students who can benefit from attending remotely. When the teacher is ill or out of town, it is possible to deliver a class remotely from anywhere using these platforms, without having to physically be in the classroom.

• Online Office Hours

  • Using these platforms during office hours allows students to easily attend who would otherwise have trouble attending.

• Remote Guest Lectures

  • It may be difficult to get a business representative to physically travel to your classroom to address your students with valuable real-world perspectives, but it is relatively easy to have them talk to students from any computer anywhere.

• Mobile Device Content Creation

  • It is possible to convert material recorded via these platforms to be viewed or heard anywhere on mobile devices.

• Expanding the Impact of Events

  • Make conference sessions and other presentations available to remote participants in real time or asynchronously using these platforms, greatly expanding the impact of events beyond the relatively few who can physically be in the room.

• Serving the Disabled

  • Using these platforms can enable participation by people with hearing, visual and other disabilities.

• Serving High School Students in High Schools

  • Create a pipeline of students for your program by offering (dual/concurrent enrollment) courses to students in high schools (many with limited access to ICT courses).

We have been amazed and thrilled to learn of the many clever and impactful ways instructors are using these platforms to improve ICT education.

MPICT is interested in any use of these platforms by anyone to improve ICT education and workforce development.

If you would like to learn more, or if you have stories, techniques or uses of these platforms for ICT education impact, please share them with us at info@mpict.org.

We very much want to encourage YOU to use these tools!

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