In 2008 my colleague Rob Malinowski and I took it upon ourselves to conduct an informal investigation into the trend of online course enrollment within the College of Education at Michigan State University. What we found was a trend that supported our initial hypothesis that online course enrollments have increased in the last 5 years.
Data Collection:
The data we collected was from the online course scheduling website provided by Michigan State University. At the time of this study (Spring of 2008) we only had data that went back to fall of 2003.
Graphical Representation:
Once we had the data we were able to construct a series of graphs that showed the overall enrollment as well as the semester and course breakdown. When viewed on the original site, the user can click through the various semesters to see a more detialed makeup of the enrollment per semester.
Results:
We found that:
Using the data collected we were able to build a detailed graph of enrollment broken down by semester, and then further identified by department offerings within the college. As seen in the graph below there is distinctive trend of increasing online course enrollments within the College of Education. Of the varying departments within the college, it appears as though the Teacher Education program is growing at the largest rate.
Future Study?
It is my intention to revisit this research in the coming year to further investigate the trend. It would also be beneficial to broaden the scope to include more colleges across the university to get a more generalizable result to the university setting as a whole.
CRIBS - This past summer during our summer Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) program we (the instructors) decided to shoot a quick MTV style cribs video for our participation in the last installment of the student run weekly news. It has been a tradition for the instructors to contribute a small segment in the last week of the news, and since we weren't about to disappoint we grabbed my camera and started filming.
One of the challenges that our students face consistently in their professional capacities is making the most of the equipment they can get their hands on. In many public schools this means doing what you can on a shoestring budget. So in the spirit of leading by example we used an minimalist kit to shoot this video. While we didn't go super low-tech we did keep it very simple, no lighting kits, only one camera, one lens and some creativity. This video was shot entirely on a Nikon D300s DSLR with the 18-200mm VR Nikor Lens and a single Sony wireless lapel mic. The video was all hand held, with the occasional shot being held steady by attaching the camera to a tripod and holding the legs of the tripod against out bodies.
Overall, the shoot took us about 1 1/2 hours to film (including all the goofing around) and then a quick overnight editing job. Given the fact that we started filming around 7pm the night before the video was due we were very pleased with the final result.
Leigh and I challenged our year 3 MAET students to the infamous REMIX, REUSE, RECYCLE quickfire. It was only fair that we too took the challenge our selves. We dusted off the video decks and got to work...see if you can tell which learning theory we were trying to demonstrate?
What is a lecture capture you ask? Well, its exactly what you might guess, capturing a lecture. Now the trick is to capture the lecture professionally so you can use that information at a later time.
I recently returned from a lecture capture trip in Shanghai China for the 2009 Coca-Cola Food Safety Conference. I figure what better way to share the information about what lecture capturing is than to share my experiences first hand. Here are a few videos that will help explain what a lecture capture is.
Equipment Overview:
Behind the Scenes in Shanghai
There are many different ways you can capture a lecture or presentation. Typically the "low-end" consists of just a screen capture of the presentations with audio. Normally I am required to capture at a high production value so that includes the presentation slides, audio and external video that are then edited together to create a digital asset that can be used for sharing, dropped into online learning environments, or burned to DVD as training materials.
Typically to capture a lecture you need the following items
When on location, there is really only one rule...everything ALWAYS goes wrong. Your laptop will crash, your camera will freeze, your batteries will die, you will lose power, your tapes will jam, your hard drive will tear itself apart. So to prepare for the certain uncertantity of equipment failure I can offer three suggestions, all learned the hard way.
Use the high quality professional equipment where possible. This seems like a no-brainier but seriously, spend the money for high end gear, its expensive for a reason...it works, and it works better than the cheap stuff. This is especially true with microphones and cameras, do not skimp on those, buy the best your budget can afford.
Test your equipment and setup thoroughly, again this seems like an obvious statement, but in the heat of the moment when you are supposed to capture a once-in-a-lifetime speech or presentation and something goes wonky you better know how to set that white balance, or fix that audio level on the fly quickly without having to "figure it out".
Have a backup plan. I can promise you this, at some point something will go wrong, so plan ahead. You should have a plan in case each component fails. If your camera fails what will you do? If the laptop freezes up, what will you do? If your batteries drop on you half way through a presentation and they were supposed to be fully charged what do you do? You should have answers to all of these so WHEN they happen you will be prepared to handle it right there on the spot and you can minimize the "damage" of losing footage.
More and more often grants for workshops and conferences are coming with stipulations that the information given at these events be shared openly for the greater good. This is where a lecture capture comes in, with the lecture capture you can preserve the information presented so participants can get access to the information again, and so those who were unable to attend the actual event can still benefit from the information presented.
For this event, the content created will go directly on a website used for food safety training for industry professionals. You can see the agenda, pdf versions of the presentations at www.fskntraining.org once the produced lecture capture videos are finished they will be posted to that site.
If you are interested in learning more about these types of captures drop me a comment and I'll get back to ya.
The following is my semester long project: Research Development Portfolio. This project is part of my CEP 900 Prosem course as an introductory course to my Ph.D Program. This project has been an ongoing project that I have been working on all semester long. As I have progressed through this project it has been very inspiring, has been providing me with very valuable lessons in educational research, and sparked my interest in several areas of online learning that I will continue to pursue in my doctoral program. Traditionally this project is printed and a physical copy is turned in, however, an online option was available for those students who could submit electronically. The entire portfolio is contained within this section, you may skim through the contents or use the index to jump to the desired section.
