ADEC National Award for Excellence in Distance Education
WISE has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 American Distance
Education Consortium (ADEC) National Award for Excellence in Distance
Education. The award, established in 2000, represents one of
ADEC’s most esteemed honors and helps fulfill the consortium’s mission
of increasing international awareness of the critical role of distance
delivery in higher education.
ADEC is dedicated to “Creating and providing access to
learner-centered distance education; anywhere, anytime, to virtually
anyone who seeks it.” The National Award for Excellence in
Distance Education rewards dedication to innovation, collaboration, and
professional development, as well as demonstrated positive impact in the
field of higher education. After a competitive multi-stage review
process, the ADEC awards selection committee deemed WISE deserving of
this prestigious honor.
On Tuesday, April 22, WISE Director Kathleen Schisa and WISE+
Coordinator of Instructional Design Anne McKinney joined Associate Dean
Ken Spelke (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School
of Library and Information Science) at the 2008 All-ADEC Annual Meeting
in Minneapolis, Minn., to accept the award and the accompanying $5,000
cash prize.
Schisa and McKinney also presented an overview of
WISE quality standards, the consortium’s course sharing model, and the
WISE+ pedagogical training initiative at the meeting. Audience
members included the ADEC awards selection committee, ADEC Board of
Directors, and representatives of the membership at large. The
presentation also featured comments from WISE co-founders Bruce Kingma
and Linda Smith. The ADEC award is the second national recognition WISE
has received since fall 2006, when the consortium was recognized by the
Sloan Consortium for effective practices in online education.
WISE+ Students present at SALALM LIII
Several students from the WISE+ sponsored course, Librarianship for
Latin American Studies, Iberian Studies, and Latina/o Studies,
participated in a roundtable discussion focused on the course at SALALM
LIII, the fifty-third annual conference of the Seminar on the
Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials. The course was taught
by Anne Barnhart, Librarian for Latin American & Iberian Studies,
Spanish and Portuguese, Chicana/o Studies, and Religious Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, as a LEEP course at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
The roundtable discussion, "LEEPin' Latinamericanistas!
Instructor-Student Reflections on the Online Latin Americanist
Librarianship Course," featured reflections from students on aspects of
the course. One student presented a tour of the course interface and
various features of the Moodle courseware. Other students answered
audience questions regarding the experience of taking the course online
in a synchronous format. Another student spoke about her experiences in
the course as someone who is hearing impaired.
Several participants remarked on the practical course exercises such
as an indexing assignment, institutional profile, and reference
consultation. Another student discussed the attitude of solidarity and
collaboration fostered among the students and the potential for that to
carry over into their professional lives.
The participants agreed that the course provided a holistic view of
librarianship, and that the opportunity to learn from and engage with a
variety of practitioners at different types of institutions was
invaluable.
WISE Pedagogy Workshops
In the course of a year WISE has offered seven sections of its
Introduction to Online Pedagogy workshop, with a total enrollment of 104
participants from WISE member schools and other LIS professionals from
around the world. Since its inception in July 2007, interest and
participation in this workshop has steadily increased and the format of
the course has been expanded to a three-week workshop to allow
participants more time to explore pedagogical principles and put them
into practice in their own courses.
This workshop will be offered again during the Fall 2008 semester,
September 22 – October 10. LIS doctoral students and instructors
with little or no previous online teaching experience are especially
encouraged to participate;
please
visit the WISE Pedagogy website for registration information.
Beginning in the Spring 2009, WISE will pilot a series of short,
topical workshops for instructors who already have some prior experience
teaching online and who would like to build upon their knowledge by
learning more about effective practices and new technological
innovations in online pedagogy. More information about these workshops
will be available during the Fall 2008 semester.
Also slated for Spring 2009 is the WISE Pedagogy Workshop to be held
at the 2009 ALISE conference in Denver, Colorado. WISE plans to follow
the pattern of past successful pedagogy workshops held at ALISE by
sponsoring a morning face-to-face workshop on Tuesday, January 20,
2009
that addresses issues related to fostering communities and effective
communication in online learning.
WISE Pedagogy is still growing as a resource for LIS educators and
students, and we hope to continue to offer a wider array of pedagogical
outreach in the future. We are in the process of developing and adding
to our WISE Pedagogy website to make it a more useful resource for
effective practices in online teaching. Another resource which will
become available this fall will be a WISE Pedagogy blog, offering
reviews on new technologies available to online instructors and weekly
meditations on effective pedagogy.
WISE at ALA
On Friday June 27, 2008, the administrators of the WISE member
schools hosted representatives from several of the WISE+ partner
associations?for a reception at the Catal Restaurant during the 2008
American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.
Following the reception, the administrators met to recap the past
year and to discuss the future of WISE. The participants enjoyed a
successful planning session.
