Blog written by:

• Dr. Rhonda Blackburn
• USDLA Board Member

The winner for the United States Distance Learning Association’s 2018 Excellence in Teaching/Training Award in Higher Education is Dr. Stacy Southerland, University of Central Oklahoma Professor of Spanish.  Dr. Southerland has developed an innovative approach to support engaging, high quality learning experiences for UCO online elementary Spanish I and II students.  Through this approach, she increases the students’ confidence in their ability to learn Spanish and help them achieve academic success. These initiatives are not only integrated in courses she teaches, but also in the course template she designs as a foundation for all sections of online elementary Spanish.

UCO’s undergraduate core curriculum requires one semester of a foreign language and some majors require two. Out of all the language courses, Elementary Spanish experiences the largest enrollment. Students are increasingly selecting online delivery for these courses with approximately 30% enrolling in online sections each fall and spring and 55% each summer. This amounts to nearly 700 students taking online Spanish at UCO each year. 

Many of those learners have no prior study of Spanish and indicate low confidence in their ability to learn it and many have little prior experience with online learning. Dr. Southerland has led UCO’s efforts to develop and implement various innovations to support learner success in these courses.  

One of these innovations is a course-specific online orientation that promotes a successful semester startup. Three online orientation modules provide comprehensive, concise information about course procedures and language learning strategies, courseware setup and use, and LMS tools. The modules also familiarize students with site navigation, module organization, and basic technology topics. They also include links to additional online learning and language learning resources and address frequently asked questions. 

Another innovation that has met with wide success is UCO’s award-winning Online Spanish Learning Community. It houses an extensive collection of diverse resources that allow students to create personalized informal learning pathways that complement and support their success in formal—classroom-based–learning experiences. Moreover, it offers flexible, convenient, cost-effective, anytime, anywhere learner support. The community is set up as a course in UCO’s LMS, thereby bringing a familiar feel to students and increasing its accessibility and affordability. Each semester, Dr. Southerland coordinates and participates in site tutoring and refreshes its resources.  

Two other initiatives that model excellence and innovation in learner support are Dr. Southerland’s strategic implementation of digital courseware and integration of Learning Environment Modeling. 

Digital Courseware: UCO’s online elementary Spanish uses McGraw-Hill Connect to provide extensive practical application of language skills, grammar tutorials, and an immersive language learning game. Dr. Southerland’s strategic courseware integration plan has promoted high faculty and learner satisfaction with Connect. Recent pedagogical adjustments were followed by an 84% decrease in video test non-completion rates and performance on the tests rose by more than 4 points.  Metrics also indicated that an average of 94% of spring 2017 students who passed the course Connect component also passed the course.  

Learning Environment Modeling: This internationally award-winning visual design technique developed by UCO’s Center for eLearning and Connected Environments promotes the design of engaging, effective, and efficient learning experiences. UCO uses LEM to guide online course development and Dr. Southerland has leveraged it to support student efforts to prepare course assignments effectively. The models provide a visual overview for study sessions and video narrations accompany the visual diagram as an additional level of support.  

In addition to these innovations that reflect an understanding of and empathy for the needs of online learners, overall design and facilitation practices evidenced in Dr. Southerland’s online teaching of Elementary Spanish are nothing less than a pillar for effective online teaching and instructional design at UCO.  

She models excellence communicating with learners and promoting learner engagement through discussion forums, announcements, and intelligent agents. These features are leveraged to: offer responsive, engaged, personalized, and encouraging feedback; share study strategies; provide assignment reminders; and share information about campus and community events related to the Hispanic culture. 

Dr. Southerland also created and maintains a Twitter account with posts on diverse Hispanic language and culture topics that is embedded in her course and course templates. Her instructional strategies and assessments effectively engage learners’ reasoning and critical thinking skills and challenge their perceptions of their local and global community. 

Dr. Southerland’s voice and presence is integrated throughout the course to provide many opportunities to connect with and engage learners. Constructive feedback and learner-focused interactions are supported through discussion boards on a variety of language, culture, and social topics. Quizzes and dropbox assignments allow for detailed and supportive personalized feedback in a timely manner.  

To ease the workload for other faculty and ensure that all sections reflect UCO online course quality principles, Dr. Southerland builds these facilitation and design features into the course templates that she refreshes each year to reflect learner and faculty feedback.  She also facilitates online Spanish instructor workshops for relevant and timely faculty development to bring consistency and quality to online Spanish learning experiences that others on campus strive to emulate in other multi-section core curriculum offerings.  

Dr. Southerland is an amazing instructor and has great passion for helping her students succeed in learning Spanish and building their self-confidence in the academic endeavors. Through all the various innovations she has implemented in her class and the course design template, we were very honored to present the Excellence in Teaching/Training Award in Higher Education to Dr. Southerland this year.

The USDLA thanks our 2018 International Awards program sponsor, Lifesize.

Save the Dates

November 5th – 9th, 2018 – National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 

November 28th – 30th, 2018 – International Forum for Women in E-learning (IFWE) – San Antonio, Texas

Learn more about the USDLA and how you too can be a member. The association supports all core markets including Enterprise, Government, Telemedicine, Education and others.

Blog written by

Janet Major

USDLA Board Member

2018 Quality Research Paper Award: “Difficult to Doable: Interprofessional Collaborative Practice in Education”

The Quality Research Paper Award is given to the author(s) of a high-quality research paper that advances the field of distance learning.  This year’s award went to: Dr. Patricia Cannistraci (left in photo) and Dr. Bonny Kehm (right in photo)  from the Excelsior College. Their research investigated the impact of interprofessional education, in a distance education setting, on student’s self-efficacy around the Interprofessional Collaborative Practice constructs. Their study revealed that interprofessional educational (IPE) is attainable in distance education, with significant changes in student’s self-efficacy. USDLA proudly presented them with the 2018 Quality Research Paper Award at the Annual USDLA Conference in Indianapolis in May 2018. Defined by the World Health Organization (2010) IPE or interprofessional education – is when two or more health care professions learn about, with and from each other.  As stated in their research paper, in 2011 six professions – medicine, nursing, dentistry, osteopathy, pharmacy and public health – collaborated to produce the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Practice (Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC), 2016).

Dr. Cannistraci and Dr. Kehm, our award winners, are from the school of nursing and helped design an online, asynchronous, IPE experience for Excelsior.  Students who participated were RN-to-BSN students, dietetic interns as well as Global Health students.  The students interacted thru “Moodle” (https://moodle.com) to facilitate their week-long discussions while answering 5 study questions.  Their results are impressive and confirmed that interprofessional education is attainable thru distance education with significant changes in student’s self-efficacy.  (Journal of Nursing Education Vol. 57, No. 4, 2018)

This was such a fun interview to do! The University of Arizona Health Sciences, where I work, has also been integrating IPE events and best practices into the curriculum.  We had a great networking visit and agreed that distance learning is the future for training in healthcare and particularly with regards to integrating interprofessional education.  Both synchronously and asynchronously, thru building web-based communities as well as hybrid curriculum formats that combine rich technology-based training with valuable in-person activities. Collaborative practice for improving patient care while promoting patient-centered health care is absolutely the future – and to integrate this kind of training into the curriculum now is critical for preparing the healthcare workforce of the future.

IPE has grown rapidly across the United States, Canada and England as collaborators working together around the world producing a variety of training experiences for IPE.  I really enjoyed our interview for this blog and learned so much from what they have done.  To network in the telehealth world –one part of the distance learning universe – is just one reason I truly enjoy participating in USDLA.

The USDLA thanks our 2018 International Awards program sponsor, Lifesize.

Save the Dates

November 5th – 9th, 2018 – National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 

November 28th – 30th, 2018 – International Forum for Women in E-learning (IFWE) – San Antonio, Texas

Learn more about the USDLA and how you too can be a member. The association supports all core markets including Enterprise, Government, Telemedicine, Education and others.

USDLA Membership

Blog written by:

Pat Cassella

President, USDLA

Winning the USDLA Eagle Award requires more than just demonstrating leadership qualities

I’ve written many a blog over my career but admittedly, none ever about a US Senator. While I have some award information about Senator Brian Schatz’s contributions to the educational community, I truly wanted to meet him and pick his brain a bit on where he stands on Education. However, I’m not from Hawaii and don’t have his cell number; I lived in Connecticut most of my life and only recently moved to the sunshine state of Florida. Short of scoring a phone call (I did request one through his website) I began to research what I could find out on my own.

I quickly discovered that he was not only a leader but also a politician with a heart and understanding of the challenges faced by today’s college students. He is a strong supporter of tuition-free colleges; this year, Senator Schatz introduced an extremely bold plan to make college more affordable: a federal-state partnership that has a $95B price tag but would result in debt-free college for public universities.

I had to think about that for a bit; $95B is a lot of money and 30+ years ago I had to sacrifice and put myself through College with no outside financial support. My father was a small blue-collar business owner and sole supporter of the family so I had to bear the cost on my own, with one caveat; they let me live at home rent-free as long as I kept my grades up. This little fact is important as tuition is often only 45% of the total cost of a college degree and this is one of the main components of the Senator’s proposed plan.

Now, there have been a number of free education plans proposed in the past (Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, etc.) but these have just been tuition-free, not debt-free plans. What’s more is that Brian is proposing something that is more than a hand out; it’s a hand up as it requires the students keep their grades up and also requires that states split the cost with the Federal Government.

Reversing the trend of state-level disinvestment is certainly not going to come easy, but his plan of having the feds put some money on the table in the form of a match should certainly help. I do agree with the senator that student debt is family problem as it impacts not only the students, but also parents and often grandparents that often try to offset the cost with personal savings.

Brian has been looking at education policy for five-plus years, and is skeptical of the for-profit universe, going as far as calling it scandalous. That’s a bold statement, but student loan interest rates, institutions that might not deserve accreditation and targeting specific student demographics to maximize revenue are all important issues to address in terms of financing and making college affordable, showing how Brian truly cares and has done his research before proposing a plan.

His understanding of the issue appears strong and hopefully he can put enough details together to get such a plan passed in the House and Senate. He truly demonstrates leadership qualities that we look for in our Eagle Award nominees, but he also has a heart and truly wants to make a difference in the country by making it easier for students to obtain a degree, a characteristic we’ll continue to look for in future Eagle Awards.

Learn more about USDLA and how you too can be a member by visiting www.usdla.org/membership. The association supports all core markets including Enterprise, Government, Telemedicine, Education and others.

USDLA Membership

Our Association is unique, not only for its historical commitment to distance learning, but also for engaging with a broad spectrum of distance learning professionals – K-12, higher education, corporate, government, military, telehealth, and home schooling. While more narrowly focused organizations have an important role, a powerful perspective emerges when bright minds serving diverse constituencies come together.

The USDLA was formed in 1987. At that time, companies like Yahoo and Google were still years away. “Power users” were boasting of their Intel 386 processors. In that context, DL was a concept well outside the educational mainstream. Granted, a few people knew something of the process but hands-on DL experience was rare. USDLA, then, provided a means for these pioneers to find one another.

Today, with more than one-third of college students taking an online class, it’s a far different world but USDLA remains a vital player. Our members continue to seek out other DL professionals. These practitioners still want to grow and want to offer students a strong education in a robust community of learning. Today’s USDLA stands out as a remarkable resource for teachers and administrators who want to enhance the learning experience.

The USDLA thanks our 2018 International Awards program sponsor, Lifesize.

Save the Dates

November 5th – 9th, 2018 – National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 

November 28th – 30th, 2018 – International Forum for Women in E-learning (IFWE) – San Antonio, Texas

Blog written by:

Chuck Sengstock

USDLA Board Member

The USDLA’s 2018 Student Achievement Award Winner

The winner of the United States Distance Learning Association’s 2018 Student Achievement Award is Natalie Marlowe, a 2018 graduate of Kenai Central High School in Kenai, Alaska. Natalie received this award for her work as a student in a two-year video conferencing and technologies course that was team taught between Kenai Central High School and Soldotna Prep School in Soldotna, Alaska.

This two-year course is divided into four levels. Level One, Enhancing Curriculum/Team Teaching, is a semester long course that takes place outside the regular school day and is designed as an introduction to Videoconferencing Technology, focusing on basic video conferencing etiquette as well as practicing becoming comfortable speaking in front of the camera.  One of the main components of the course was for students to participate in “meet and greets” with other classrooms around the world. Level Two gives students the opportunity to connect with industry professionals to hear how they are using video conferencing solutions for professions such as telemedicine and telejustice.

Level Three requires students to spend five hours job shadowing multiple business professionals who use video conferencing on a day-to-day basis and requires a more in-depth study of the different video conferencing platforms, different models of equipment, and includes the do’s and don’ts of videoconfrencing etiquette. Level Four is the student Internship portion of the program and Natalie was selected as an intern for i2i Technologies in order to fulfill this requirement. While an intern, Natalie created a LinkedIn profile that she updated monthly with a blog denoting news specific to video conferencing on the Kenai Peninsula. She also acted as a resource for teachers in the school and community and helped identify and coordinate video conferencing opportunities.

Overall, this course afforded Natalie the opportunity to become a Certified Video Conferencing Coordinator through Polycom. She also gained experience using a variety H.323 and SIP hardware solutions in addition to several cloud-based software solutions. Natalie taught educators on a national level how to apply aspects of distance learning through collaborations such as her monthly blog. She promoted the use of educational resources such as CAPSpace as well.

Through this experience, Natalie served as a distance learning coordinator for remote schools in Alaska and promoted video conferencing to local teachers, showing them how to effectively use it to collaborate and enrich their classrooms. She has also connected with students from Palestine, Ghana, and Malaysia as well as with students from Canada and the United States for events such as Child Soldiers: Caught in Conflict, Dignity Day, and International Day of the Girl Child Conference

Natalie has created multiple presentations to demonstrate how distance learning is being used on the Kenai Peninsula and has presented them to groups such as the New York Consortium for distance learning. She also gave a presentation for the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) during National Distance Learning Week. Natalie is highly respected by her peers, teachers and those who have worked directly with her. In fact, Meredith McCullough Natalie’s Language Arts teacher stated the following: “Natalie is a positive role model in our school. She has served in our student government, has participated in numerous clubs in various capacities, and is known by her peers for her kindness and empathy.”

Elaine Shuck, Director Communication & Development, i2i Technologies stated: “I have watched Natalie develop into a high caliber academic achiever.  As an intern with i2i Technologies she had several responsibilities. She spoke frequently, both physically and virtually, to K-20 educators and at company events, and used her social networking communities to share her experiences as an intern.”

Natalie’s participation in this course has taught her lifelong skills such as problem solving, coordinating, and public speaking. It has also provided her with a vision as to  how videoconferencing can be used moving forward. In fact, Natalie stated, “It would be beneficial to the future of society to incorporate the technology that is available to it, to provide the quality education that students deserve. This investment would reduce the inequalities that rural students suffer without causing undue stress upon the state’s budget.”

It is safe to say that Natalie is well deserving of this award and her future is very bright. After graduation she will be attending George Fox University in Oregon and pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

The USDLA thanks our 2018 International Awards program sponsor, Lifesize.

Save the Dates

November 5th – 9th, 2018 – National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) 

November 28th – 30th, 2018 – International Forum for Women in E-learning (IFWE) – San Antonio, Texas

Learn more about the USDLA and how you too can be a member. The association supports all core markets including Enterprise, Government, Telemedicine, Education and others.

USDLA Membership