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MCC Daily Tribune

MCC Presented Multiple Sessions at SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology - CIT 2017

MCC was well represented at the 2017 SUNY CIT conference at SUNY Oneonta in Oneonta, NY, held May 30 through June 2.

Instructional Services partnered with MCC faculty and SUNY colleagues on the following presentations.

Scaling OER Adoption to Support SUNY Excels' Access, Completion and Success Goals

Presenters: Laura Murray, System Administration and Josh Baron, Lumen Learning
Panelists: Katie DeRusso, Monroe Community College; Ryan Hersha, Corning Community College; Alexis Clifton, SUNY OER Services

Research has shown that adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) can reduce student textbook costs by up to 90% while resulting in increased course completion rates and content mastery. This panel discussed successful institutional strategies for scaling OER adoption and how they align with SUNY's Excels 16initiative and its access, completion and success agenda. Openly licensed materials were provided for participants to bring back to their campus to share with other institutional stakeholders.

Building Open: A Team-Based Approach to Creating an OER Degree Pathway

Presenters: Dr. Terry Keys, Tom Capuano, Katie DeRusso, Andrea Kingston, Anjali Parasnis-Samar, Monroe Community College

This panel discussed the steps they took to initiate the grant-funded redesign of a degree pathway at Monroe Community College (MCC) so that it consists of required and elective courses that utilize open educational resources (OER).

In June 2016, MCC and four other SUNY community colleges (Clinton, Herkimer, Mohawk Valley, and Tompkins Cortland) were awarded a grant as part of Achieving the Dream's OER Degree Initiative. At MCC, the Liberal Arts: Biology degree was chosen for the OER course redesign project. Librarians have taken on the task of coordinating the initiative; additional team members of the OER Course Support Team include an instructional designer and a part-time project manager for the grant. And rounding out the team, the library director is the principal investigator for the grant.

Getting the project off the ground was an iterative process, as instructors' needs varied widely and the grantor was still working out some of the details and requirements while the grant project was getting started. MCC's OER Course Support Team developed in-house guidelines, arranged for on-site training for faculty, met one-on-one with faculty as they redesigned their courses, worked with Open SUNY Textbooks to establish an online platform for MCC's OER content, collaborated with the campus print shop and bookstore to ensure print copies of OER material could be available, and more. The panel discussed lessons learned, including what worked and what didn't.

The Faculty Perspective on OER: Faculty Adopters of OER Share Their Experience and Advice

Panelists: Tori Matthews, Monroe Community Collage; Sofia Georgiakaki, Amber Gilewski, Tompkins-Cortland Community College; Ryan Hersha, Corning Community College

Open Education Resources have been growing in popularity as an affordable solution to overpriced course materials (textbooks, course software etc.) But if the replacement of these traditional teaching materials equals a reduction in educational quality, then there is little value for OER to be used in teaching and learning. However, if OER is a high-quality alternative to traditional course materials, what commitment should faculty be expected to make as they migrate over to OER? This panel featured faculty who have adopted existing OER and have spent time creating new OER for their discipline. Our colleagues on this panel shared their experiences and their insights and offered their advice to both faculty and the professionals on campus who are being asked to support this initiative.

Developing Game-based Student Engagement: MCC's Journey from Process to Product

Presenters: Andrea Gilbert, Dr. Larry Dugan, Monroe Community College

Monroe Community College worked with Muzzy Lane during the summer of 2016 to develop study skills games and financial aid games for new college students as part of an Open SUNY project. The goal of the project was to explore the process of game development and create several games for SUNY wide use. Using the Muzzy Lane Author tool, a rapid development web-based game tool, we created simple mobile friendly games. The team discussed the process of development and shared our games.

Officiating a "Marriage": Linking Course Assessment to Program Evaluation thru Blackboard

Presenters: Andrea Gilbert, Dr. William Drumright, Monroe Community College

Since summer of 2015, the authors have worked to integrate course evaluation of online course discussion with the assessment of program evaluation. The process has required iterative attempts in such areas as course rubric redesign, mapping of CLO's and, unsuccessfully, trying to manually compile data. To better comprehend change over time regarding student performance, in spring 2017, we investigated the use of EAC data software to examine the assessment data. We shared our results.

Student Engagement & Collaboration using VoiceThread

Presenters: Andrea Gilbert, Kathleen Borbee and Tom Capuano, Monroe Community College

This presentation reviewed the experiences of using VoiceThread in online courses to encourage student engagement and collaboration. Overall course structure was reviewed, VoiceThread integration with Blackboard was demonstrated, lessons learned were shared, and samples of student work including final project presentations were shown illustrating student academic growth. In addition, additional suggestions for using VoiceThread within classroom courses were also discussed.

Starfish Early Alert Initiative: Observations, Recommendations, Lessons Learned

Presenter: Dr. Larry Dugan, Monroe Community College
Panelists: Michele Forte, SUNY System Admin; Heather Darrow, SUNY Broome; SUNY Ulster

Monroe Community College is one of the leaders in the SUNY Starfish community. The panel discussed the benefits and challenges of implementing an early alert system. Dr. Larry Dugan served on the panel of campuses that included SUNY Broome and SUNY Ulster to discuss the importance of cross campus cooperation in student success initiatives and specifically, Starfish.

A Work in Progress: How Blackboard Portfolios are Being Used at MCC

Presenters: Tom Capuano, Martha Kendall, Monroe Community College

MCC adopted the Blackboard Portfolio tool as its e-portfolio solution. The Virtual Campus team has partnered with the COS (College Orientation) faculty to serve as a pilot group and design some Blackboard Portfolio templates. During this presentation, we shared the strengths and weaknesses of this tool, as well as what we learned through the process.

Super Time Saver for Uploading Multiple Files in Blackboard

Presenter: Tom Capuano, Monroe Community College

All users of Blackboard Learn can relate to the tedious task of uploading multiple files into an online course. This brief presentation provided an overview of a free building block that will allow any user to upload a zip file into any content area in Blackboard, which in turn produces multiple Blackboard items. Better yet, this tool maintains the folder structure within the zip file.

Terrance Keys
Instructional Services - AVP Office
06/27/2017