Comments for Sherman Dorn

Comment on Books on college teaching: The get-in-it-and-drive list by Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:41:35 +0000

Delaney, thanks for adding your book! I have it on my own teaching-books shelf. Lots of others one could add…

Comment on Books on college teaching: The get-in-it-and-drive list by Delaney Kirk

Delaney Kirk — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:36:34 +0000

Sherman,
Lots of good book choices here. Might I also recommend my own that is based on my 30 years of teaching experience and 12 years of facilitating teaching workshops? It’s “Taking Back the Classroom: Tips for the College Professor on Becoming a More Effective Teacher,” available on Amazon. Thanks!

Comment on Reports on college student learning leave out passion by Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:37:29 +0000

CCPhysicist,

Each institution interprets accreditation standards slightly differently, and because of the reputational damage from SACS probation (see Edison State College), some places go overboard in the paperwork as compensation. As an example, rubrics aren’t required, but they COULD be convenient for an institutional officer/professional staff who then goes around stating that of course it’s required.

For the record, and feel free to point anyone you know at this blog, any institutional officer that refuses to spend time up-front to reduce time by faculty to comply with SACS assessment requirements — i.e., who creates a form that is user-unfriendly or absurdist — should have a serious rethink about what the heck their job is and who they serve. If you turn assessment into a compliance exercise, congratulations! you have just killed the whole purpose of it.

Comment on Reports on college student learning leave out passion by CCPhysicist

CCPhysicist — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:47:48 +0000

If all you know is what is in their manual, you know essentially nothing about what is actually required to have your accreditation reaffirmed. One single clause in there describes something that has added about 10 hours of work for each class I teach, and that doesn’t count what has to be done each semester to get results in just the right box in some form.

Comment on HypeX: What edX can and can’t do by Glen S. McGhee

Glen S. McGhee — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:02:51 +0000

Y’all continue to step over whether these courses are part of the schools’ educational programs, as defined by Title IV, or not. Are they giving away free courses, and free credits that appear on transcripts issued by the school? No, of course not.

This is nothing. It will only work for the ambitious high schoolers that want to puff their college applications for elite schools. Why aren’t they on your list?

Comment on Florida third-grade retention study by Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:58:59 +0000

Thanks, and ha! My brain was cross-wired when I wrote that sentence, and then just followed along in the rest of the blog entry. Fixed, now.

Comment on Florida third-grade retention study by Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:29:29 +0000

Marcus Winters (occasional co-author with Jay Greene, but not here).

Comment on Kale chips and the LMS by Melissa Rizzuto

Melissa Rizzuto — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:10:15 +0000

Our institution is currently in the middle of a gradual migration from WebCT/CE6 to Canvas, and so far the response from students and faculty alike to the new LMS has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re especially impressed with how easy it is to integrate third-party applications such as Khan Academy and Quizlet. Instructure has been receptive to our feedback and nimble in implementing changes. We expect to have our migration substantially completed by the end of 2012.”

Comment on Kale chips and the LMS by Jason Gilbert

Jason Gilbert — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:15:04 +0000

Really enjoyed this post. Our college recently completed an LMS migration, and it’s nice to know we’re not the only school who wrestled with decisions like this.

We were on WebCT CE. Our user base had outgrown the infrastructure, new technology was so far out ahead of the platform, and the lifecycle of WebCT was pretty much at an end. So, an upgrade was defiantly in order.

There were a few “must haves” on our shopping list:

1. As of Spring 2012, we’re the fastest growing community college in Texas, so scalability is a must have! The technology has to scale up as quickly as our program grows.

2. Over 60% of our total enrollments are online, so air-tight data security, disaster prevention/recovery, and “as close to 100% uptime” SLA are must-haves. The platform simply cannot go down.

3. Our teachers are not web designers or computer experts, and we have a ton of non-traditional students, so overall ease of use for teachers, students, and admins is a must.

4. One instructional support guy against hundreds of online teachers and courses means that built-in migration tools that work are a definite must.

Our final decision was between Bb9, Moodle, and Instructure Canvas. The original direction was to “upgrade” from WebCT CE to Bb9, but we heard a lot of scary stories about migration and the demos were not impressive. We actually found Bb9 a more difficult user experience than WebCT; it was definitely an “iceberg ahead” moment for us.

Our Moodle findings were pretty lackluster too.

Neither Moodle nor Bb9 were native cloud platforms, the migration tools were kind of sketchy, and ease of use just didn’t meet our requirements. Then, we met Instructure Canvas.

Honestly, we went into our first Canvas demo without a lot of hope, but by the end of the first demo, we knew Canvas was the platform for us. Just to make sure, though, we ran demos with faculty and students and had a sixteen week pilot with thirteen teachers/six hundred students.

So many great stories to tell! The boosted productivity and excitement of our teachers were really encouraging; they would tell us how much time the SpeedGrader in Canvas was saving them. The student experience was pretty great too: Only three (of around six hundred) students came to the pilot orientation, but hardly any (if any) help desk calls from students. Crazy.

So, what really rocked our socks and sealed the deal?

1. Canvas is a native cloud app. It’s scalable, load balanced, and physically redundant.

2. Functionality of the grade book, calendar, migration tools, and the rich content editor — these aren’t afterthoughts or extensions, they’re core features that our teachers can’t live without now.

3. SPEEDGRADER!!!!

4. Mobility. Canvas works great on mobile devices and there are iOS apps (including SpeedGrader for iPad) that we don’t have to pay extra for.

5. Support and product development. We know the support team at Instructure; they provide immediate support, especially for critical matters. And the development cycle is every two weeks! Improvements (most ideas coming from the Canvas community) roll out every two weeks!

…Okay, sorry to be so long winded. We are one of Instructures first customers, and although we’ve experienced some growing pains, we’re still really, really happy with Canvas. Not only has the platform itself improved our online program, but the excitement of embracing a new platform that gives our teachers and students everything they need to express themselves in learning has brought fresh energy to the program and the campus.

Hope our story is helpful. Wishing you all the best!

Jason Gilbert
Coordinator of Instructional Technology
Panola College

Comment on Kale chips and the LMS by Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:14:46 +0000

Great post, excellent thoughts, and a really good comparison. I wanted to chime in on Rubrics in Canvas. They are just cool. This is my second semester with Canvas, and I must say this is the first time I have been willing to use Rubrics, only because Canvas has made them really easy to use while grading. Even their iPad Speedgrader app does the rubric thing really well. I am hooked.