Our Journey Through OMDE-610

What five adjectives do you feel best describe your participation in this course?

·        Enlightening – new concepts and perspectives

·        Thankful – facilitators and classmates

·        Fulfilling – personally and professionally

·        Relevant – authentic learning experiences

·        Reflective – learning using a range of Bloom’s taxonomy.

What strength(s) do you feel that you brought to this course?  How/when was that strength exhibited?

My greatest strengths I brought to this course were a genuine interest in the subject, a desire to apply what I learned into my professional workplace, and a willingness to share my professional work experience with others.  My classmates would have experienced these contributions most significantly during the conference discussions while the facilitators would have also seen this in all four assignments.

What area(s) of weakness, if any, did you discover in your own learning?

My writing style is sometimes not in alignment with academic expectations.  Changing this style after so many years of practice will continue to be a challenge.

Describe one thing that you learned about yourself as an online learner through your participation?

For this particular class perhaps the greatest thing I learned were new areas of interest I would like to further explore.  While recognizing that improving one’s writing skill is a continual process, I am also interested in exploring the historical context of operations research from a management science perspective and to also deepen my knowledge of descriptive statistics, particularly as it relates to program evaluation.

A Case Study: Online Learning at Hagerstown Community College

Hagerstown Community College is located in western Maryland and offers over 100 programs of study leading to an associate’s degree, specialized certifications, and much more.  Over 61 percent of its 4,714 students attend part-time, a clear indicator that many students must balance the demands of work with their continued education in an online environment. Starting in the fall of 2011 the community college began to transition its online learning platform to Moodlerooms.  This platform offers an end-to-end learning management system adaptable to a growing institution such as Hagerstown Community College.  This scalable solution also provides for ease of transfer of existing course content; an important feature for this community college since it currently has a robust suite of courses already online through the Blackboard system. 

After performing an initial review of the new Hagerstown LMS site, it is apparent that the program has been configured to meet the branding requirements of the institution and also offers the flexibility to address the unique needs of individual offices and divisions.  Extensive student and instructor guides and videos are provided to ease the transition to the new LMS.  The Joule feature provides for automated enrollments and portals for 360 degree views of student progress.  Risk mitigation is ensured through a disaster recovery component and a particularly impressive “zero boundaries” feature offering support for up to 78 different languages, an important feature for a community college with a significant number of military students.

The advantages of Moodlerooms for college instructors is significant.  Features include:  automated grading, online access 24/7, Q&A capabilities including polling and surveying, instant feedback, individual course design opportunities, and Web 2.0 options. 

Hagerstown Community College was the first college of its type established in the State of Maryland.  Its transition to a new learning management system portends its continued recognition as a leading institution of higher education in western Maryland.  For further information about Moodlerooms and its capabilities, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MoodleroomsVideo#p/c/2/OMYzsAurxHY

Perry’s Top Ten



Inspired by Robert S. Donovan’s article, 21 Things that will be Obsolete by 2020, this author is going to create his own list of changes for the American classroom.  So here we go, the top ten items or practices that will disappear by the year 2020:

Routine Classroom Arrangements – gone will be the days of routinized columns of desks in the classroom.

Social Promotion – students will progress for their educational prowess based on competency attainment from pre-established proficiency levels.

Report Cards – good bye to the As, Bs, and Cs; instead graphical interfaces will identify proficiency levels for multiple content areas.

Endless Lectures – instead, students even at the elementary level will have greater and greater input to what is learned.

Structured School Day – far more creative, external learning opportunities will be provided to students.

Theory without Application – theory, models, and concepts will be taught, but immediately reinforced with practical applications.

Lack of Practitioners – the huge number of retired baby boomers will be actively engaged to support the public school student.

Restrictions on Mobile Devices – instead of being viewed as a threat, mobile devices will be used as a tool to engage students.

Hall Monitors – who needs them when students are empowered with greater governance.

Neuro-science – it is time to recognize the stages of development for all learners and engage them at the stage that they are at!