Digital Dog

For several years we have offered a face-to-face (f2f) Bb institute for faculty. An intensive three-day affair, the institute was designed to introduce faculty to both the mechanical and pedagogcal aspects of teaching online. With close to 200 pariticpants the Bb Institute can be termed an all-out success story. After some time it occurred to us that it would be ideal to offer an online version of the institute. Three reasons predominated: 1. to reach people who could not commit to the f2f version, 2. to provide a refresher to people who had already taken the f2f, and 3. to act as a model for teaching online.

While we accomplished the first two goals the third remained elusive. In fact we did demonstrate something very important: how easy it is to make many rookie errors! For details see the PPT presentation: http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/faculty/harrisr/ll_bio.ppt

Lessons Learned:

• Faculty skill levels have to be more even – perhaps we can split them into “alpha” and “beta” groups
  
• Five weeks may be too long
  
• Five weeks are definitely too long during the semester – in the future it needs to be offered during breaks
  
• Feature less on the mechanics and stress pedagogy

The conference was under-attended – lots of people from Florida registered and did not show up . . .

. . . except for lunch. The lunches were well attended. The food wasn’t great, but it got eaten.
The lunch speakers were good: Robert Zubrin (Mars exploration), and Edward Albee (civil liberties and the arts).

The conference organizers were cheap in a number of unexpected areas: no bags, pads of paper, or breakfast. Limited coffee and nothing else to eat or drink.

The hotel was fine; view was great and the food mostly horrible. The hotel switched management (to Hyatt) in the middle of my stay, which was somewhat odd.