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A Fortnight of Sharing

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SharingAcademicPractices_Branding_SAP button2015 marks in inaugural year for the Sharing Academic Practices Fortnight being offered by ICT, University Library, and the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness. The event has been planned in partnership with Faculty members from across campus. This year, the event is comprised of two weeks of workshops, talks, celebrations, as well as dedicated time for Instructors to progress teaching and learning projects all centred around enhancing teaching practice.

http://www.usask.ca/gmcte/announcements/2015/04/sharing-academic-practices-fortnight

DOC Instructor’s Network: Social Wine & Cheese

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On Thursday, October the 2nd, DOC will host a Wine & Cheese social event for it’s incredible team of distance delivery instructors.

If you can’t make it in to CCDE to meet in person, please feel free to join us live and online at the Google Hangouts On Air! where we will be live streaming the event in an interactive two-way environment. Come ask questions and network with colleagues.

DOC Social Poster

 

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

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As part of the TransformUS project here at the University of Saskatchewan the CCDE is being disestablished over the next few months. It looks as though the operations of the Distance, Off-campus, and Certificates (DOC) group that deals with Degree-Credit courses will be unaffected at this time, which includes the Curriculum Development team that this site is associated with. Here’s is a communications release from the Director of DOC, Cheri Spooner.

The following email is being sent out on behalf of Cheri Spooner.
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I am sorry to have to tell that as part of the TransformUS action plan (www.transformus.usask.ca), the University of Saskatchewan announced today that it will be disbanding the Centre for Continuing & Distance Education (CCDE). Degree-credit classes and programs currently under development through the Distance Learning, Off-campus & Certificate unit (DOC) within the CCDE will continue and will not be affected by these changes, although our unit will report somewhere else within the University.

The University is committed to continuing quality distance learning degree-level classes and programs.

If you have any questions, you can visit our FAQ page at https://ccde.usask.ca

PLSC 234 Student Work Showcase

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We’re working with Brenda Frick from Ag and Bio right now on a really great showcase of her students work from PLSC 234. Students are asked to create Weed and Crop profiles as part of their Crop Rotation Plan. These profiles will now be shared openly and contribute to the Organic Agriculture discipline at large. The resources are available at words.usask.ca/plsc234 and will continue to be updated with exemplary work from the PLSC 234 student body.

Course Evaluations with ZEF

Jordan Epp

Well it’s that time of the year again when we look to the students to tell us what they thought. As most instructional designers know, the evaluation component of any course development is usually the first thing to be dropped when time issues arise. But this year we have committed to evaluating our new developments using a standardized survey that we hope will allow us to implement far more term by term evaluations of the course and curriculum design. ZEF Evaluation software is a fantastic survey tool. If you haven’t seen it before I suggest a quick goolge search. It allows answers to be plotted on a two-dimensional graph so that the data collected is presented in a visually understandable way. No more data interpretation for weeks and weeks. The ZEF system shows you where the gaps are and where your energy should go to make improvements. Ok Now I sound like an infomercial so just go check it out for yourself.

 

Job Perks

Jordan Epp

So there are some perks to being an instructional designer. Today I spent the morning over in Agriculture Meat Sciences with eMAP as they finished up production on a video we are creating for the AG 112 course development. This video will fill a gap for online students who do not have the opportunity to participate in the live “Hot Dog Lab”. This lab is a highlight of the face-to-face class and is an important part of the course. I, of course, showed up to “supervise” just in time for the sampling portion of the video. Yum! The footage will go into post-production this week and will hopefully be ready for the course later this month.

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