Academic Innovation Blog

I had so much fun with my team at the Desire to Learn (D2L) Fusion conference in Kissimmee, FL. We all learned a lot and came back with new ideas for training, faculty development, instructional technologies, and services. The keynote speaker, who is the president and CEO of D2L John Baker, delivered a very inspirational speech on how technology transforms the way the world learns. He included the importance of continuous learning in the workplace and emphasized the growing demand for updating skills because of the rapid rate of change in jobs and their skill requirements. This conference was an excellent opportunity for us and our ongoing skill development. 

I want to highlight a couple of sessions that I attended. The first one is "Distinctive Design: How to Brand Your Online Program in Brightspace," by Dr. Niki Davis and the MyCourses administrator J.P. Dunn, MS from Southern Illinois University. They discussed how to set your program design apart by creating a specific landing page. The program-specific design allowed students to recognize how the layout connects to their programs, and provided program - or major - specific information to students via the RSS widget on the homepage. Additionally, it enabled faculty to copy their own courses to the template and standardized all the courses within the program.

Another exciting session was "To Create or to Curate? That is the Question!", by Angela Reid and Nakita Hogans, who introduced the eCampus service unit of the University System of Georgia (USG) and its partner institutions. Under eCampus, the eCore program students/textbooks utilizes Open Educational Resources (OER). The session offered an engaging and practical discussion on how to implement OER materials in teaching and the challenges it creates at higher education institutions. 

I also attended a session that introduced new additions (quick evaluation, annotations, assignment improvements, quizzing improvements, rubric redesign, dashboards, discovering, and learning paths) to the Brightspace Learning Environment for higher education. We will be introducing these tools to our faculty in the upcoming Fall Welcome back sessions.

I personally want to thank Cheryl Kohen, Director, Division of Online Studies, for giving me the opportunity to attend this conference and John Brady at the Office of Professional Development for supporting the instructional designers through the Professional Development Opportunity Award.  

Rose A. Kapucu, MLIS, MA
Coordinator IV, Instructional Designer, Division of Online Studies
rose.kapucu@daytonastate.edu
386-506-4277
http://www.daytonastate.edu/onlinestudies/ 

I am excited to announce that we are attending the Desire to Learn (D2L) Fusion conference in Kissimmee, FL on July 15 & 16th. The attendees will be Jasmine Checchi, Bill Harrison, Rose Kapucu, Roberto Lombardo, Hector Valle, and myself. D2L Fusion is a global annual professional conference that highlights many aspects of teaching and learning within Brightspace, which is the software we use for Falcon Online. The sessions include topics such as: instructional design, innovation, engagement, inclusiveness, online teaching and learning, faculty support, and administration.

It is essential for our instructional design and instructional resources teams to know the latest technologies & products and directions in online learning, so we can apply them to our initiatives within the Division of Online Studies. Here are a few sessions at the conference that relate to our initiatives:

Engaging Faculty in Designing Courses explains how to support faculty in creating engaging course content, which applies to every instructor but especially our Faculty Fellow in Innovation.

Ensuring Course Quality Through Continuous Improvement highlights innovative means to quality assurance by incorporating a course design rubric with a collaborative review process and by using customized Brightspace widgets. The presentation relates to our Distance Learning Gateway initiative.

View the Full D2L Fusion agenda.

Craig Collins, Chair of Computer Information Systems at Temple College, is hosting a session to focus on new procedures for training online faculty. The session applies to the online faculty training series. 

Finally, McGraw-Hill will be on site with a demonstration devoted to deep integration with Connect courses. Additionally, HonorLock will be on site to demonstrate their virtual proctoring services.  

The most exciting part of our educational discovery will be our follow up blogs highlighting the most poignant and important sessions. We expect to inspire each of you to look at innovation, the future of teaching and learning, and how you can revolutionize your online classrooms.  

We will extend a big “thank-you” to John Brady and the Office of Professional Development for supporting us through the Professional Development Opportunity Award.  

Aaron Sunday
Instructional Designer, Division of Online Studies
aaron.sunday@daytonastate.edu | 386-506-3209 
http://www.daytonastate.edu/onlinestudies/

FA19 Course shells are available July 7, 2019.

Around this time of the semester, we often get asked when the next semester course shells will be made available to students and faculty. Falcon Online college credit courses are controlled by an automated process that creates the course shells and enrolls students and instructors. Falcon Online shells are generated 45 days prior to the start of the following semester. Instructors are also enrolled during this period into their specific course shells. If a course shell is not visible, the department has not released it in the schedule for open enrollment, or it may be a limited access course.

Student enrollments begin 30 days prior to the start of the semester, students can see their courses, but cannot access the course until the first day of the semester start date. All students can access the Falcon Online home page that has announcements for students and faculty. If you wish to contact your students before classes begin, you can use the Falcon Online course shell to send an email to your class list welcoming students and providing any housekeeping updates such as information about course materials or initial assignments.

The Falcon Online enrollments are updated daily at 7:30am, 2:30pm, 9:30pm, and 2:30am.  As always, if you have questions, feel free to contact the Faculty Innovation Center at 386-506-3485 or FIC@daytonastate.edu.

IT/Instructional Resources
helpdesk@daytonastate.edu | (386) 506-3950
http://daytonastate.edu/help/faculty.html