Understanding how informal learning occurs is critical in e-learning. Welcome to an interview with Sarah Elaine Eaton, whose research has focused on how, where, and when people learn in informal settings including e-learning and mobile learning. 1. What is your name, affiliation, and connection with e-learning?Sarah Elaine Eaton, Principal Consultant of Eaton International Consulting Inc. and

In case you're wondering why you should register for Sloan-C/MERLOT's 7th Annual International Symposium of Emerging Technologies for Online Learning in Dallas this April 9-1, 2014, here's 7 darn good reasons.Early bird registration closes February 10th. Hope to see you in Dallas!

Lifelong e-learning is essential in one's professional development and career trajectory. Much of the ongoing training and development is available in a situated learning context, which is facilitated by the existence of integrated technology and content. Bringing the elements together is often challenging, but has been made possible because of the vision and sense of mission of individuals who

College degrees and certificate programs are constantly evolving to meet the ongoing and emerging needs of people seeking to keep their skills up to date. The recent economic crises, combined with an awareness of human impact on the environment have led to a new surge of innovation and new programs. Here are new directions in degrees and certificates programs.Environmental LeadershipEven before

Yesterday's Center Hangout was fabulous so I wanted to share the archive front and center on my blog.  This topic relates curiously to a post I wrote back in June of 2010.The Value of Open-Web Faculty Websites  +Dean Patti Flanigan , Dean of Online Learning, and +Kathryn Damm , Professor of Psychology, both from Saddleback College spent some time discussing the values of open-web faculty websites.  "Open-web" differs from content pages that faculty create and post inside an LMS. Content stored in an LMS requires students to have a password to access or at the very least (in the case of a course that is set to "guest access") requires a particular set of skills be understand how to locate the information. Open-web faculty websites are simple links that become most valuable when they are woven into the fabric of the student enrollment experience. Increasing student access to instructors and courses before registration occurs, improves student preparedness and satisfaction, especially in a social, web 2.0 world where most students rely on anonymous Rate My Professor reviews anyway.Weaving Faculty Websites into the Student ExperienceTo demonstrate this, Patti and Kathy discussed the faculty profile system developed at Saddleback which provides a basic webpage to each and every faculty member.  This basic page is linked directly into the online class listings. As a student is scanning for classes, she simply may click the link to learn more about that profess. Now what is on that page certainly varies but, as Kathy demonstrates in the video, a faculty member may choose to include a link on the profile page to his own personal website (which may be institutionally hosted or not). Kathy, for example, developed her website using Google Sites. What's important is that the site be accessible to everyone -- students (remember, videos must be captioned) and the instructor (there should be no barriers to making edits to one's webpage).A Strategy for Improving Student Success?Patti reflected on the higher than average online retention and success rates that Saddleback College has, which, to me, is admirable.  While statistically there is no way to validate a causation between the faculty websites and the higher rates, I am certain I could find a steady flow of online faculty who do not have this type of fabulous support system that would argue there is a correlation.  When classes are in short supply -- as we know they are at California Community Colleges -- doesn't it make sense to allow a learner to understand the personality of the instructor (through a video on a website), the requirements of the class, and other essentials before registering?  Time and time again, I see students drop my own class upon gaining access to the course materials.  Replicating this Saddleback model, which includes supporting faculty with both a place to link a website within the class registration system and an institutionally provided webpage that may be augmented by a faculty member with an external website link, and researching its impact on student success seems like a worthy experimentIn the second half of the Hangout, you will see me demo how to create your own beautiful faculty website using a brand new tool called Populr.me. Here is a link to my own faculty site created with Populr.me. The video will show you how to make one just like it!Sign up for your free Populr.me PRO educator account here:  http://populr.me/coupons/poppinteacherWant to chat about this topic? Join in on a #CCCLEARN Twitter chat on the topic of Faculty Websites next Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 3pm PST.

New degree and certificate programs that focus on sustainability and sustainable business continue to gain traction in the economy, particularly as there continues to be a need for energy efficiency, cost-savings, and positive public relations.Many of the online schools require capstone projects and extensive research papers. For example, Anaheim University offers a graduate diploma in

I continue to be in awe about the options educators have today for simple, free tools that allow us to create video content in minutes -- with no video editing or recording skills whatsoever.Seriously...it's amazing!Not too long ago, I had heard about Movenote, an emerging tool that enables a user to upload PDFs and images and record video from her webcam at the same time. The video is sync'd with the slides, providing an incredibly simple method of creating a straightforward recording of a presentation.Yesterday, I received a pleasant Speakpipe voice message from one of Movenote's representatives who had seen me Tweet about their product. They told me about cool new feature they had just released that integrates Movenote with Gmail. I was intrigued. Here's the deal - if you use Chrome and Gmail, you can install the free Movenote Chrome app for Gmail and it will install a button directly in your Gmail interface that, when clicked on, will launch Movenote. From there, you can upload your content, record your video, and paste the URL directly into an email and send it. BAM! Integrated workflow. Nice.  Click here to see a video of the new Gmail to Movenote workflow.As for me, I still needed to experiment with Movenote. So I created a tutorial -- hhmmmm, what to share? What to share? I know! Yesterday, I was excited to see how simple it had become to launch and share either a Hangout on Air or a good ol' plain Hangout (which is basically a group video call) in Google+. To me, this process has been confusing for awhile and it especially took me quite a bit to understand how to invite people to my Hangouts if they were not in my Circles. So, I created a tutorial about "A Simple Way to Start a Hangout." This tutorial does not cover Hangouts on Air, only Hangouts (there is no recorded or public element in Hangouts).  I hope this is useful in understanding what Movenote looks like, as well as learning how to start a Hangout!Rule of thumb: When created any video, aim for 5 minutes in length. If you go over by one or two minutes, you're ok. If you are closer to 10, you should probably cut that content into two videos.In short, I found Movenote incredibly easy to use. The thing that took me the longest was creating my slides (simple annotated screenshots I made with the help of my friendly essential, FREE tool companion, Jing).  After I recorded with Movenote, the video processed quickly, I had the ability to copy the link, I was provided with embed code in different size options, simple social sharing buttons, analytics to see the number of views through each share method, and there is also an option to download my Movenote video to a non-watermarked .mp4 file. So I could use Movenote to create my video content and upload the videos into YouTube ... which, honestly, is more my workflow.  Once videos are in YouTube they can be captioned using YouTube's online captioning tool (listen, pause, type, repeat).I don't see any negatives here, folks.  Are you using Movenote? What are your experiences?I think this would be a great tool to have students generate simple, videos too.

For many -- not just those with special needs -- participating in an online course is very difficult without assistive technologies. Augmentive and alternative communication products can help students with disabilities. It is useful, however, to look at some assistive technologies as effective for learners who have specific learning preferences and who may benefit from being able to access

Health care programs are important, quickly developing and evolving in colleges and universities. Nursing, health care administration, medical coding, nurse practitioners, physician assistant programs, medical billing, urgent care administrators, nursing home administration, and more are growing.As our health care system changes, and the population ages, it is very important for all health care

Join me today, Thurs, 2/20 at 4pm Pacific, for a Center Hangout on Air with +Tracy Schaelen and +Dan Barnett. We'll be discussing how Tracy and Dan use voice and video to humanize the their instructor feedback and consider the impact this has the student experience. Tracy will be sharing feedback she has collected from her students. The Hangout will incorporate the Google+ "Q&A" feature, which allows anyone with a Google+ account to click the video and ask us a question during our live conversation. Questions will also be taken via Twitter using #CCCLEARN.Humanizing Online Grading with Voice and Video To view the LIVE Hangout, go directly to this link today, Thursday, February 20th, from 4-5pm Pacific. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiqrJU6fBRQ&feature=shareThe Center@Center_Ed The Center is brought to you by @ONE Center logo by Jim Bumgardner CC-BY-NC-SA

View this video on YouTube.Yesterday, I spent an hour in dialogue with +Dan Barnett and +Tracy Schaelen about one of my favorite topics ... humanizing the online learning environment for students. Despite a major fail on the part of Google+ Hangouts on Air (grumble) to stream half of our live conversation, we persevered and, fortunately, the archive of the Hangout turned out fabulous.  I am sharing it below and hope you will find time to view, reflect, share a takeaway about the conversation, and pass the link on to your own networks too.   Reinforcing Research FindingsI intended to end the Hangout with a reference to the findings from online teaching research, which, more or less, reinforce all the insights and findings shared by Dan and Tracy in the Hangout conversation. Unfortunately, I forgot.  So, here is the graphic I intended to share in the Hangout. The Center is brought to you by @ONE. Join The Center's Google+ Community.Follow The Center on Twitter.

Podcast - download here. When you think of the best way to learn about the newest technology, what do you think of? Chances are, the first thing you'll do is to engage in informal e-learning, which is to say that you'll do a Google search and read articles, white papers, advertising, customer testimonials, and commercial promotions in order to familiarize yourself. At the same time, you may

SLN SOL Summit20th AnniversarySUNY Learning NetworkNew York, NYFebruary 26-28, 2014#slnsolsummitTomorrow, Wednesday, February 26th, I will be presenting a 3-hour workshop at the SLN SOL Summit in New York City titled  How to Help Faculty Humanize the Online Teaching & Learning Experiencefrom 2:15-5:15 EST  In the workshop, I will be sharing an overview of a brand new online faculty development course I developed and am now teaching for CSU Channel Islands, How to Humanize Your Online Class.  The workshop will showcase the contemporary and practical approaches to faculty development used to design the course, which place an emphasis on the importance of modeling how to effectively integrate web 2.0 tools into an LMS while supporting learning objectives and simultaneously reducing a learner's sense of alientation through voice/video and peer-to-peer interactions.   The workshop will be streamed live (starting at 2:15 EST) and you are invited to watch along here. Here is the site I will share in conjunction with my workshop presentation (which will be largely comprised of a walkthrough of the online course, with ample time for workshop participants to experiment with a few of the tools used in the design and instruction of the course).Please join in on the Twitter backchannel! #slnsolsummit

Welcome to an interview with Ed Rickers, founder of Studies Weekly, and eStudiesWeekly.com. E-LearningQueen.com is interested in the eStudiesWeekly.com format because the tight, condensed format is a good way to help students (and teachers) develop schemata for organizing what can often be an overwhelming amount of material. Their format also incorporates appropriate graphics and media which

I will be presenting a free webinar tomorrow for @ONE about The Center, @ONE's next-generation online learning community for which I am the community coordinator.  The Center is designed to support California's 112 community colleges but our events are open to everyone (and all are free!).  Learn how The Center can improve collaboration and community in your own professional development and help you get started with your transformation into a connected educator. The Center: @ONE's New Online CommunityTuesday, March 4, 201412:00-1:00 PacificAdvanced registration required, please click here for details.

Science education online is often a hit or miss affair, and it is difficult to develop an instructional strategy that both engages the learner and incorporates effective assessments at higher levels of difficulty. Welcome to an interview with Dr. James Caras, Sapling Learning, who focuses on science education.1. What is your name and connection to elearning?Dr. James Caras. I am the Founder and

Empowering elearning instructors and designers is a key element of making education widely available. While mentoring and tutoring sites are available through virtual worlds such as SecondLife, and many webinar platforms are available. However, packaging and marketing elearning courses is a different matter, and a place of great opportunity. Further, it may offer colleges and universities, both

Teaching in The Dark: Learning to Love What We Fear from Michelle Pacansky-Brock Yesterday, I was honored to be the keynote speaker at the 3rd Annual Tri-C eMerge Blended Learning Conference at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was a fabulous day filled with great dialogue and learning. For my presentation, I took the opportunity to take a risk, in an effort to model one of the main points of my presentation -- the importance of embracing vulnerability.  Vulnerability, according to researcher Brene Brown, is the birthplace of creativity and innovation.  It is also an experience that genuinely happy people regularly accept, welcome, and embrace into their lives.So, I planned to deliver my keynote in front of a live audience using a new tool, Presentain, that I had never used before (aside from testing it out in my home office).  Presentain was shared with me by my colleague and friend, +Vicki Curtis . Vicki is experimenting with Presentain in her face-to-face ESL class with success. The concept: load your presentation onto the Presentain site in PDF form, download the free app to your phone, and when you are ready to present connect your app to the website (you do this by entering a code into the website provided to you on your phone in the app).  This generates a unique URL that you provide to your audience. The audience then goes to that URL on their smartphone, tablet, or laptop and when you click "Start" they can they see your current slide on their device, click "ask a question" which submits their inquiry to me on my phone for me to preview and decide if I wish to answer it or not, or send a message to the speaker via email. Those who send a message can ask to receive the recording because Presentain also records the presentation as I speak, using my smartphone (remember, I'm holding it with the app loaded on it) as both a remote to click through my slides and a microphone! Oh...and I can activate polls from my phone that display on each viewer's device and then display the results immediately.Ok, does that sound cool or what? Well, I tried it. I took the leap. And it didn't work. Oh, well. The app started and the presentation didn't. I'm in touch with the company; they are a startup and I'm sure they are working through a lot of kinks right now. I understand the risks involved with using emerging technologies. Sometimes things don't work when you're using a tool that is brand new. But you're problems become part of their improvements.  And I intend to share my experiences with Presentain to help them improve.  And from the broader perspective of taking risks, the point is...I tried something new, I failed, and I survived. My good ol' Keynote worked fine as a back up.  And you know what? I'll try again.From there, I went on to share this presentation, which couched a teaching experiment within the context of the human emotions associated with risk and experimentation. To me, these are the topics that are too frequently left unmentioned at educational technology conferences and I believe they are some of the greatest barriers we face in the future.Enjoy.

Podcast: http://www.beyondutopia.net/podcasts/animations.mp3Flash-based animations, simulations using virtual worlds such as Second Life, and learning management system-hosted interactive quizzes and assessments have become mainstays of many training programs, college courses, and professional development experiences. Animations and simulations are clearly effective in technical training, but

Image by Jim Bumgardner CC-BY-NC-SA. The Center is brought to you by +@ONE Supporting Online Community College Faculty Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19th3:00pm PacificLIVE - Google+ Hangout on Air!Click for Google EventView on YouTube --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9FRP9fAUfE&feature=shareJoin The Center's Community for follow-up discussions --> tiny.cc/TheCenter Join us for a #CCCLEARN Twitter Chat on the topic --> Thurs, 3/27 3-4pm PDTCalifornia’s Community Colleges are leaders in distance education. In 2011-12, distance education courses comprised roughly 27% of the state’s total student headcount and each of the 112 community colleges in the state offered an average of 10 online degrees (CCC Chancellor’s Office, Distance Education Report, 2013). Supporting faculty with training and resources to teach online is foundational to ensure students have successful learning experiences and persist in their online classes. In this Hangout, Katie Datko, will share an overview of the growth and development of the resources Pasadena City College has created to support the training and development of their online faculty.  Using the screenshare feature, Katie will provide a tour of some of these resources and discuss the challenges and opportunities the college has experienced along the way.The Q&A feature will be enabled during the live Hangout on Air to allow viewers with a Google+ account to submit questions through a web browser. The Hangout on Air will also be archived and and shared with a Creative Commons license on The Center Hangout Archive playlist at: http://tiny.cc/CenterArchivesThis Hangout on Air will feature:Katie Datko - Instructional Designer for Online Learning, Pasadena City CollegeMichelle Pacansky-Brock - Community Coordinator of The Center; Associate Faculty, Mt. San Jacinto College; Instructional Technologist, CSU Channel Islands, Author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies 

New ways to share knowledge take advantage of innovative social networking. Welcome to an interview with Josh Little, CEO of Bloomfire. 1. What is your name and affiliation. What is your relation to e-learning?My name is Josh Little and I'm the CEO of Bloomfire. Bloomfire is the third online learning company I've started. The first is Maestro eLearning, a creative agency focused on building

High-quality animations and immersive experience captured from virtual worlds that can be accessed on all forms of mobile devices, ranging from smartphones, tablets, laptops, as well as desktop systems, are vital education, training, and professional development on emerging science, technology, and equipment. An example of a high-quality multimedia developer is PetroEd. E-Learning Queen is

Inclusive Learning: Lightbulb Moments from 2 Online Faculty Thursday, April 3rd4:00-5:00pm PacificLIVE - Google+ Hangout on Air!Click for Google EventView on YouTube --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJkREZ-eYqo&feature=shareJoin The Center's Community for follow-up discussions --> tiny.cc/TheCenter Follow The Center on Twitter --> @Center_EdJoin me, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and +Deborah Lemon  as we engage in a reflective conversation about their growth and development as online educators. Deborah and I will share how we have come to value the rich, community-oriented learning environment in our online classes that supports our students' learning differences and encourages them to make relevant connections with the curriculum. We will share tips and strategies, show examples of our own VoiceThread and Facebook learning activities, and take questions from the live audience. The Q&A feature will be enabled during the live Hangout on Air to allow viewers with a Google+ account to submit questions through a web browser. The Hangout on Air will also be archived and and shared with a Creative Commons license on The Center Hangout Archive playlist at: http://tiny.cc/CenterArchivesThis Hangout on Air will feature:Michelle Pacansky-Brock - Community Coordinator of The Center; Associate Faculty, Mt. San Jacinto College; Instructional Technologist, CSU Channel Islands, Author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread+Deborah Lemon  - Professor at Ohlone College, Instructor of Building Online Community with Social Media at @ONEAll Center events are brought to you by @ONE.

With tablets, smartphones, and "go everywhere" laptops, interactivity and situated learning opportunities are transforming courses and curricula. For degree programs in social and behaviorial health and courses dealing with personal and community health, it's now more feasible than ever to take a "personal trainer" approach, thanks to robust m-learning. This incorporates situated and