In transitioning to a hybrid delivery model, faculty are presented with an opportunity to engage in a systematic instructional design process which can bring coursework in line with pedagogical best practices that may not exist in traditional face-to-face classes. This paper presents a model whereby Marist College Academic Technology & eLearning staff focuses faculty attention on designing effective student interactions with content, the instructor, and other students. These interactions promote deeper levels of engagement in student learning.
A number of contemporary factors have combined to create a situation that encourages and supports international collaboration among institutions of higher education. Factors such as the globalization of the economy, the increasingly international nature of higher education, and the development of an inexpensive and virtually worldwide system of communication, the Internet, have all played their part. This paper focuses on one aspect of international collaboration-the creation and dissemination of information resources and information/educational technologies, such as software. Movements such as Open Source and Open Access have encouraged colleges and universities to consider alternatives to the dominant model for acquiring everything from college textbooks to academic computing software. Today for-profit companies supply most such resources to institutions, faculty, and students. The open source software approach is an alternative based on collaboration between both institutions and individuals, and it is a viable alternative to commercial, for-profit development and dissemination systems. Today, open access journals, for example, compete with journals from commercial publishers and provide free access to anyone via the Internet. Resources such as the courseware management system, Moodle, and the multipurpose software package, Sakai, are examples of open source software-developed
This paper looks at the process of collaboratively creating and disseminating information resources, such as journals, books, papers, and multimedia resources in higher education. This process has been facilitated and encouraged by two relatively new movements, open-source and, especially, open access. The most definitive expression of the principles of open access is the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It calls for the creation of journals that are freely available via the Internet to anyone. The broad principles of open access can be the foundation for creating many types of information resources-from online textbooks to sophisticated instructional videos. What distinguishes such open access resources is that they are distributed without charge to users and that most of the individual and institutional authors give permission for them to be revised, remixed, and reformed by users, who may then distribute the "new" version of the resource. Much of the work on open access information resources is collaborative and involves international teams with diverse experiences and areas of expertise. Such collaboration is not easy, but there is a growing set of electronic toolsthat support such work. The electronic toolbox for collaboratively creating new information resources includes tools that can serve as "electronic hallways" where potential collaborators can meet and interact informally; gateway Web sites and document repositories that support the exchange of information; Web tools that support groups with special interests; tools for supporting project
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