This page displays the descriptions of the various sessions and workshops for Connections '09.

Blogs, wikis, Facebook, podcasts, online video - given the numerous options, how can educators decide which technologies to use in their teaching? This session will explore practical guidelines for selecting tools and planning effective integration into teaching and learning activities. Emphasis will be placed on emerging technologies.

After 16 months, the L.M.S. Review Working Group completed its Final Report and presented its findings and recommendations in January 2009. Now the really interesting work begins! The Senior Management Team informs us that Desire2Learn will be Mohawk’s “sole” system, so we’re all preparing for a big change in our e-Learning activity. Over the next 18 months or more, we will be migrating users and course activities from their current hosts to the new system. D2L is impressive; functional, powerful, intuitive. It also represents a big change from any of the systems currently in use at the College.

In this session, we’ll ‘walk through’ the D2L environment, and present a variety of the functions and tools. We’ll also show how courses may be developed, structured and delivered within the system, and identify some of the notable differences between it and whatever you are currently using.

You’re a committed L.M.S. user, you’ve invested years into your online course development, and you understand that you’ve got to move your courses to the new system. Perhaps you’re a light user, and have been using the College portal or a website to support your courses. Perhaps you’ve been waiting for a clear directive on where you should focus your e-Learning efforts.

For all teaching faculty at Mohawk, the e-Learning landscape is about to change, and the real work of learning Desire2Learn is about to begin. You’ve had a first look at D2L; many faculty are concerned about how the upcoming changes will impact on their e-Learning activities. This session will bring together faculty for a discussion and possible demonstrations, and will focus specifically on questions and concerns from participants.

Note: Workshop versions of this session are scheduled for “More Connections” (June 1 – 5).

The Challenge: How do you provide preceptor training to the staff of dozens of clinical partners across Ontario?
The solution: Online courses for clinical staff supervising and assessing students on clinical practica.
Over 200 people have completed these courses to date.

Blended learning brings together the best of both face-to-face and online learning, providing benefits that cannot be achieved by using either mode of delivery in isolation. It is an approach to course design where the web is used to deliver substantial course materials accompanied by a strategic reduction in face-to-face contact.  Online and face-to-face learning spaces are thoughtfully integrated maximizing the unique characteristics of each, in order to enhance the quality of the learning experience.   This session will include examples of blended learning, principles, tips and ideas to guide the development of blended learning spaces. 

If you have a will to customize, we have a way!
Come and learn how we can collaborate to package and customize library resources for your students.   Want specific library resources and links in your LMS site? No problem! Need to help students avoid courseware costs but still provide packaged readings, online? Easy! Learn about Library Guides, our customizable subject guides. See how easy it is to create links to library resources from right within your LMS course page. We’ll also demo the new library catalogue that will be launched in the fall; students will be able to search the catalogue for your reading lists!

Are your students coming to your lab classes unprepared? Do you have presentations you'd like to share with your students, but not enough classroom hours to do so? Have you ever thought that key elements of your content might be well delivered in video format? Would you like to improve consistency in sections that are delivered by multiple instructors? Then it's L.M.S. to the rescue!

The Building Sciences Department has very successfully utilized the Blackboard learning management system in their first year Surveying course, as well as other courses. Using the L.M.S., staff and faculty created a set of "Pre-Qualifier Quizzes" related to tasks involved in a weekly field session. With the help of course and lecture notes, and a brief presentation which also resides on the system, the students are required to complete and score 100% on the quiz, prior to their field session. Students also benefit from online instructional videos, developed here at the College. Evidence, both anecdotal and statistical, has shown a marked improvement in the quality of learning in these field labs.

This is just one example of how Building and Construction Sciences is embracing e-Learning with great success. In this session we'll take a brief look at other departmental successes using an L.M.S.

Most video games cost $60 before tax, offer few material incentives for mastery, and take the player 40-100 hours to learn and potentially countless hours to master.  Nonetheless, millions of players eagerly grab the chance to learn a new game.  Theorists such as James Paul Gee have argued effectively that games use a range of teaching and learning techniques to train players to play, and Gee suggests that contemporary educational practice, especially in courses with meaningful online components, need to analyze games as models of effective cross-generational learning.

This presentation poses the following question: how do video games make the learning process fun, and how can video games’ distributed learning model be applied in the classroom?  Using my Video Games and Online Communities elective, which is currently delivered both as a web-enabled and as a fully online course, I explore the successes and failures of these ideas in postsecondary education.

With the recent, local headlines – Cheating Increasing; Cheating Widespread; Cheating Scandal – Academic Integrity is front and centre. Learn how Mohawk is re-purposing plagiarism prevention software to empower and educate students. Discover how you can go from policing plagiarism to promoting student self-efficacy.
This overview and demonstration will show you how to combine two Mohawk tools, Turnitin  and RefWorks, into academic integrity agents. The only question you’ll leave with is, “However am I going to spend those hours I use every semester to type and check those too-perfect paragraphs through Google?”

Who needs YouTube and iTunes? We have D2L and streaming media servers!

Video and audio content has an ability to express concepts and knowledge that can be difficult to explain using words alone. In this session, we’ll use a variety of tools and software to create our own media programs. Using Camtasia, a webcam, a camcorder, and Windows Movie Maker, you’ll record and edit an original video production (think YouTube), and an original screen recording. Using Audacity, you’ll record and edit an original audio production (think Podcast).

Finally, we’ll integrate these files into our online course in Desire2Learn, using both the Content tool and by creating a custom Widget. We’ll also discuss and demonstrate the process of uploading and configuring files to play on the Windows and Flash Media Servers.

Are you looking for new ways to motivate and engage your students, including the shy ones? Would you like to be able to assess student learning immediately? If so, you may be interested in the Classroom Performance System from eInstruction.  

This interactive, hands-on session will explore pedagogy related to "gaming" as a teaching and learning strategy. As well, it will examine the the unique system features within the CPS program and discuss the construction and use of question sets and image representation.

In this session, you will be introduced to the convertible Tablet PC and how you can write on the screen and project in real time. Tablet PCs looks and work much like an ordinary laptop, and the $1000 price range has now made it affordable as a teaching tool. You will see how Office 2007 works with the electronic inking function of the Tablet PC, see how it can be used in the delivery of lessons in the classroom, and how it can be tied into a learning management system.

Twitter and Facebook and Blogs, Oh My! What are these wild and wonderful creatures from the Web world? And how are they used in education to communicate with and engage students? Come out and hear how these and other web tools are being used effectively in education and how they can be utilized within Learning Management Systems to reach out to students on their own terms.