Blackboard Upgrade on the Way

MCC will soon be upgrading to a new version of Blackboard. The new version, called Blackboard Learn™, Release 9.1, will go live on August 8. Here are some of the great new features:

Student Engagement is the Key to Success
In Release 9.1, exciting new social learning and teaching tools foster more logical, visually impactful, and active learning opportunities for students, helping them stay connected to their educational experience 24 hours a day with features like wikis, gradable blogs, and mashups.

Educator Efficiency is Important
New capabilities in Release 9.1 will save educators and organizational leaders time and effort, making it easier to focus on student achievement and retention. Enhanced grading workflow, an assessment manager, and learning modules for course organization allow instructors to be more efficient.

For more information, check out these resources:
• A new on-demand learning center with free access to videos, quick tutorials and getting started guides
• DES teaching and tech resources wiki; on the right-hand sidebar, select "9.1 Upgrade Center"
• Access a tutorial on the new Blackboard system; select "Preview"

Watch The MCC Insider for more details on the upgrade.

Dual goes digital

MCC has long provided dual-credit courses and online courses, but this semester marks the first time the college has combined the two to offer an online dual-credit course.

As part of a growing partnership with Kearney High School, MCC is testing out this innovative course structure with a pilot English 102 course that began in early January. The course is taught by Jodi Puls, who teaches dual credit at MCC-Maple Woods and full-time at the high school.

Lynn Barron, associate dean of instruction at MCC-Maple Woods, said that more online dual-credit courses are currently being explored.

Faculty preparing for spring classes? You need captions

Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a priority of Metropolitan
Community College. In order to better prepare our students, the ADA department at MCC created a captioning department to help make classroom (on and off line) materials available for all students.

The closed captioning department was created to keep up with the growing demand of online courses offered. Additionally, it was a cost saving measure. Sending instructional videos out to be closed captioned was very expensive. Outside vendors charge $6 per minute, which is $360 for every hour video.

The closed captioning magic is all done by Michele Clapp. “Most of the material we do is for online classes,” said Clapp. “However, it is important for traditional class media to be captioned as well. A lot of people believe that if you have an interpreter in class, that is compliant. But if you are showing videos in your class, a student has to look away from media or television in order to watch the interpreter, so they can’t see what’s happening in the video. They miss a lot of information.”

“For material to be prepared ahead of time, a deaf student has to identify themselves in order for anything to be done. It’s nice for them to not to have to do that. To just be another student in the class,” added Clapp. That is why it is so important to have not only the online material captioned, but also in class media as well.


Distance education now requires all videos to be captioned before being loaded to Blackboard.

For more information about captioning, the process and FAQs, visit these two links:
http://mcckcdes.pbworks.com/w/page/Distance-Education-Services-Wiki
http://mcckcdes.pbworks.com/w/page/Captioning

Hirner Brings Home the Bacon

Leo Hirner, MCC director of distance education, has been awarded the 2010 Jonathan Bacon Leadership Award from Colleague 2 Colleague, a professional association whose goal is to share technology expertise, resources, and training with a special emphasis on distance education and instructional technology in Kansas and Missouri.

Hirner received the honor at the organization’s regional Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology. Each year, the award is given to a person who has "pushed the envelope at any level in support of instructional technology,” according to Johnson County Community College’s Ed Lovitt, chair of Colleague to Colleague.

Nominees are chosen based on the following criteria:

• Setting organizational direction or climate to create an innovative, technology-based student-centered, learning-oriented climate
• Encouraging or using key comparative data and information to track student learning to support operational and strategic decision making for learning innovation
• Promoting diverse ideas among faculty and students to enhance a culture of technology usage
• Staying up-to-date on learning technology innovation and promoting funding streams to support growth to improve student learning

Hirner’s nominator said he should be recognized because of his diligent work "to create an innovative, technology-based learning environment for online and hybrid students.” The nominator goes on to say, “The ultimate goal that he has embraced since his days as a full time faculty person is to insure a quality learning experience for students engaged in online learning."

Hirner has been at the helm of MCC’s distance education program since 2000. Since then, MCC has seen enrollment grow from about 200 students to more than 6,000 each semester. Before his current role, Leo spent 10 years as a physics and engineering instructor at MCC-Longview, where he helped pioneer the teaching and development of TV, online, and hybrid courses.

Hirner holds a Ph.D. in educational technology from the University of Missouri, where his research focused on the quality measures used to assess online programs in community colleges. He participated in the inaugural SLOAN–C Institute for Emerging Leaders in Online Learning in 2009; has served as the committee chair of KC REACHE, a local distance education consortium; has been on the Board of the Missouri Distance Learning Association since 2005; and has served as a consultant-evaluator for the Higher Learning Commission since 2007.