UK Explores 21st Century Classroom

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 3, 2010) — University of Kentucky Information Technology (UKIT) is inviting faculty members and others who are interested to a special session on innovative new technologies for teaching and learning. The session, titled "Open and Captured Content: The Twenty-first Century Classroom Experience," will take place at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 8, in the William T. Young Library Auditorium.

"UK is exploring learning environments to complement the traditional classroom," said UK CIO Vince Kellen. "Ideas like open content and course capture are two new modes of learning that studies show will play a big part in future education. National experts will discuss these concepts and UK College of Medicine faculty will explain how they are currently implemented at UK."

One of the alternatives is defined as open content. UK and other universities are also adopting course capture systems which capture lectures for reuse and allow students to replay lectures to enhance their understanding. UK will be installing 50 course capture systems in 2011 to provide faculty and students another method of improving the classroom experience. While course capture might not fundamentally alter a faculty member’s underlying pedagogy, its adoption can promote student learning and allow faculty greater flexibility both in the classroom and throughout the semester.

Studies of new trends in higher education, such as The Horizon Report, suggest that open content will become more main stream in higher education in the near future. According to The Horizon Report, open content is a growing movement that focuses on sharing and reusability and thrives on the availability of a wide range of educational content. "Offering a potential alternative to traditionally published materials such as textbooks that is highly customizable and cost-effective," the report states, "the open content movement depends on a community of contributors and users who are willing to create and release high-quality educational content in a variety of media at little to no cost."

The Horizon Report is available at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5810.pdf.

Speakers at the session include:

-- Cable Green, director of eLearning and Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. He provides leadership for the college system on strategic technology planning, opening and sharing digital content, growing and improving online and hybrid learning, and implementing enterprise learning technologies and support services. Green has a targeted interest in how educational technologies and connectivist pedagogies can be successfully combined to help learners create, manage, and contribute their work through open knowledge initiatives.

-- Chris Huff represents leading course capture technology company, Echo 360. He will introduce successful use cases of Echo 360 course capture systems.

-- Tim MacEldowney is the mid-south regional sales manager for Echo360. He has experience working with university faculty and staff in Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia in the planning and deployment of lecture/learning capture solutions. MacEldowney will provide insight into what other universities are doing with course capture in the teaching-learning experience.

Additional information is provided at www.uky.edu/UKIT. Any questions about the upcoming session can be e-mailed to ashleytabb@uky.edu.