I was extremely fortunate to once again participate in what has become an annual event for me, the 8th International Open Education Conference, which this year moved back closer to its historic birthplace in Utah. This year’s conference took place up in the mountains east of Salt Lake City at Park City, a beautiful setting that in its relative remoteness also led to much concentrated… Read more »
Unscheduled Outage of Collaborative Program Sites
UPDATE (Oct 31, 2011): All Online Collaborative Program websites are now functioning. Thank you for your patience with this issue. UPDATE: (Oct 29, 2011, 2:23 pm): Some BCcampus users continue to experience intermittent login problems on the Online Collaborative Program (ACT, ICT, AECE) websites. We expect this issue to be resolved no later than the end of today for most people. For updates, please go to https://mycusthelp.ca/BCCAMPUS/_cs/FindAnswers.aspx. We… Read more »
Flexible Learning Revisited
BCcampus’s leadership in distance learning and flexible trades training has attracted international attention. Yesterday, we had a visit at BCcampus from David Scannell, Curriculum Services Manager in the Learning Innovation and Development unit from Holmsglen in Australia. Holmsglen is a TAFE. In Australia, training and further education or TAFE (pronounced /ˈteɪf/) institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational tertiary education courses, mostly qualifying courses under theNational Training System/Australian Qualifications Framework / Australian Quality Training Framework…. Read more »
10 ways to enhance online conference participation
At BCcampus we always attempt to offer some kind of experience for individuals or groups who are unable to attend meetings and events in person. Sometimes this is simply a shared recording of one or more selected presentations. Other times we live stream, but don’t plan for other ways to engage the online participants. Occasionally the engagement just happens, initiated by participants through twitter. The… Read more »
Renewing our focus on open thinking
With an inspiring speech by Sir John Daniel, CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning, the BCcampus Opening Education event kicked off on Monday, October 17 at the wonderful a Simon Fraser University Centre for the Arts. As a prelude to Open Access Week, BCcampus and partners invited higher education institutional participants to a special event exploring the ways in which Open Access and Open Educational… Read more »
ApplyBC user experience under discussion
ApplyBC is the provincial service that anyone can use to apply to BC’s public post-secondary institutions. For the previous 15 years, this service has been known as PASBC, and it was the first online provincial application service in Canada. Since 2004, BCcampus has been responsible for managing and operating the service, under guidance from a Steering Committee of institutional and affiliate representatives. During the past… Read more »
Three ways to promote a collaborative future in BC higher education
BCcampus Executive Director David Porter met with B.C. College Presidents and was asked the question: “What advice could I give to institutional Presidents to advance a more collaborative future in BC higher education?” Here were his answers: Encourage opening data as a standard practice, including asking registrars and senior administrative staff to work with BCcampus to make systemic data more accessible for mashups by students,… Read more »
Talks on Open Access, OER and Online Science Labs
Paul Stacey, BCcampus’s Director of Curriculum Development, will be doing a couple of talks over the next week. Next Tuesday (Oct 25, 2011) he’ll be giving a keynote address for UBC’s Open Access week. Then it’s on to Denver where Paul will co-present on the North American Network of Science Labs Online program at the WCET conference. On Monday October 31 Paul will be visiting… Read more »
General Shared Service Meeting November 3
BCcampus has scheduled a Fall General Shared Service Meeting for November 3, 2011 at the Kwantlen Richmond Campus. Purpose: The annual Fall general shared service meeting provides a forum for general updates, input and feedback on BCcampus shared services. In addition, it is an opportunity to bring forward and discuss requests for new shared services. Usually, the general meeting precedes the individual user group meetings (the individual… Read more »
Teaching Science Online
Teaching science online is a big need as graduates from Science, Technology, Engineering and Math continue to be high priority needs for fuelling economic growth. Last week BCcampus published a news story about our involvement in the North American Network of Science Labs Online and the workshop that was held at North Island College. See NANSLO demonstrates online labs at North Island College gathering. More… Read more »