DDO Workgroup Update January 2007
From Shifted Learning
January 24, 2007 Webconference
Contents |
[edit] Welcome and Introductions
Attending the meeting: Andrea Deau - WiscNet, Ross Wilson – CESA 10, Alicia Mundt - WiscNet, Jill Gurtner – Middleton Cross Plains SD, Sam Boynton – CESA10, Bethany Sorem – WiscNet, Nancy Toll – Hudson SD.
[edit] Chair Report
Ross welcomed the participants and commended the workgroup on the progress being made. He shared his reaction from his and Andrea’s DDO presentation at WASB.
[edit] New Members
DDO welcomes new member: Spooner SD (1324 students)
[edit] Announcements
Andrea shared information about the WASB workgroup booth. We will be reviewing the expenses and time investment involved in this activity to help us decide if we should do this again.
[edit] Financial Updates
Heidi has been out of the office recovering from a fall. When she returns, she will forward an update to the workgroup mail list.
[edit] Course Review Schedule
The workgroup continues to emphasize the importance of having our courses reviewed for quality and standards alignment. Andrea shared a draft course evaluation cycle document (include in these minuets). The document shows the number of DDO courses in the catalog on a 3-year evaluation cycle. Evaluators will be contributed from the DDO member institutions based on the student FTE count. After discussion, the group confirmed they want to go with the 3-year cycle and are comfortable contributing the evaluators as stated in the plan. Alicia and Andrea will work on finalizing the plan and developing training materials for evaluators. Several comments and questions were: How will evaluators get access to the courses? Course evaluators will need to be Wisconsin certified teachers. Should we have lower priority for evaluating courses from certain providers?
[edit] Communications Activities
Alicia gave an update on the DDO member orientations she is doing. She talked about the upcoming and fireside chat webconferences aimed to build awareness and increase membership. And updated the group on conference presentations that are scheduled: WEMA, Charter Schools Conference and Brainstorm.
[edit] Learning Objects and the Repository
Andrea gave a status report on the DDO learning objects repository. The Metasoft license had run out which is what was causing the issues with accessing the objects. Metasoft renewed our license at no charge for another year. We will need to be making some decisions in the next 6 months regarding this repository. Our license with Fox Valley TC runs out this coming year. They are currently hosting and supporting the server that hosts these objects. We are exploring an open source tool that might be another way host these objects locally. The experimental site is up at http://cwis.wiscnet.net. Nancy commented we may want to review our investment in learning objects. Since so many others are good at doing this, we may want to refer people to these resources instead of hosting and creating them. We will be discussing this topic again at future meetings.
[edit] Online Learning Experience as a High School Graduation Requirement?
Carole WittStark from Merrill SD is interested in discussing this topic with other educators and school officials. She is exploring the possibility of implementing this in Merrill and wants to learn from and work with others interested in this topic. The group thought this was a great topic and volunteered to participate. Andrea will meet with Carole to plan a summit on this topic. Tentative date: March 30, 2007 in Stevens Point.
