Hybrid and Online Learning at UC Davis
E-textbooks. Hybrid and online courses. Using learner analytics to assess experiments that involve academic technology. The future of SmartSite.
These are a few of the areas that David Levin intends to discuss, and address, as director of Academic Technology Services for Information and Educational Technology. Below, you’ll find an excerpt from an interview with Levin. You can also read the full text.
Let’s talk about hybrid and online classes.
These are the questions as I see them: What are we doing now with online learning at UC Davis? What’s the state of online learning within California and higher education more broadly? And, where are we going with it?
UC Davis is heavily involved. We have a good number of experiments and programs. I’ve already mentioned the UC Online Education Initiative. We have faculty members who have been developing courses for the systemwide online program. More than a dozen courses have been fully developed UC-wide.
Right now, they’re offered largely to the home campus that originates the course, but eventually they will be marketed to non-UC students and to students across the UC campuses. For example, a student at UC Irvine could take a UC Davis online course for Irvine credit.
That experiment is quite successful.
We also have the Provost Hybrid Course Award here at UC Davis. Four faculty developing courses within that in 2012, funded by the Provost’s Office. Participants for the second round of this will be named soon. These courses use online technology, but are not fully online. Typically, they would meet half the time on campus, half the time online.
A number of other faculty have been offering hybrid or online courses in various ways, just because they have an interest, or their department wants to push it. So there are other experiments. One over the summer was with Nutrition 10.
Liz Applegate’s course.
She used lecture-capture. Of the 250 to 300 students who were taking the course, 70 signed up for the online version. The lectures were streamed, so they could watch them in real time from anywhere, and send a chat message with their questions to a TA who would read them out loud in class. Or, they could watch the recorded lecture. That’s the hy-flex model.
In addition to these experiments I have just mentioned, UC Davis Extension has professional programs and courses offered online, mostly certificate programs. The Medical School has a rich history of telemedicine, using technology to offer instruction and professional development at a distance.
I imagine you welcome faculty who want to talk with you about all this?
Absolutely.
What’s the best way for them to contact you?
Send me an email (dslevin@ucdavis.edu) or call me (530-752-2133). Even better, as much as I live in the virtual world, I want to get together and talk with you. So, set up an appointment. Drop by.