General Support

Distance Learning classes at UAH are offered as an outreach to students around the state, country, and world. These classes are an integral part of the UAH academic environment. The Distance Learning initiative at UAH strives to provide up-to-date and service-oriented technological support for all DL faculty and classes, while maintaining a strict focus on offering high quality academic work. We serve to continuously improve our support structure. To see guiding principles and future plans for our DL program, click here to view "Features of Exceptional Programs & Courses" in Distance Learning. Also check out our new information on DL Webcasting.

Distance Learning coursework at UAH, supported by CoE, uses a number of technological tools. We use a lecture capture tool that allows us to capture live or pre-recorded lectures while our professors are teaching and to provide this content to our DL students. These classes may be viewed on-demand or live via Streaming/Webcasting, where available. Many of our faculty also supplement their DL classes with Angel, the course management system for the UAHuntsville Campus. In addition, we also offer some courses across the UA System using Videoconferencing. Up-and-coming innovative Mediasite uses and case studies are available at the Mediasite Webcasts website.

 

Attention COE DL Faculty and those using DL staff services! Lecture capture updates are coming soon. Please refer to the transitional information below for additional information. 

Please click below for additional information on the transitional process away from Mediasite, rolling out live with our new system in January 2014. 

 

WHAT DOES THIS TRANSITION ENTAIL?

We are moving from our previous lecture capture system (Mediasite) to a new lecture capture system (Panopto). This transition entails new hardware and software components in the DL classrooms. 

WHY ARE WE TRANSITIONING?

A lecture capture evaluation committee was formed some time back to determine how best to grow this initiative for capturing audio, video, and content for our students, both in a DL and a non-DL capacity. Based on the upgraded classroom designs recently put into place by the Academic Technologies group on our campus, we selected Panopto in order to support the classroom's hardware and software functionality, as well as to allow us to grow outside of a small proporation of classrooms. 

WHAT MOTIVATED THE CHANGE:

In January 2013, a new software platform from Mediasite was introduced (Mediasite Desktop Capture) that allowed faculty the much-requested capacity to record content independently, without the need to have either a live videographer or to be restricted to recording in a physical classroom on campus. This software capability is in high-demand by faculty on the UAH campus, and moving forward with the lecture capture initiative to make it more widely available across our campus, we sought to select a software solution that would allow that flexibility and also work alongside our upgraded classrooms. Panopto was the software tool among numerous evaluated that could meet all of our needs. 

CHANGE IN SERVICES PROVIDED BY COE DL STAFF:

TRANSITIONAL TIMELINE:

Training on the new lecture capture software, Panopto, will formally begin in October 2013. The College of Engineering will be transitioning from Mediasite to Panopto during the Fall 2013 term by migrating content needing to be reused in future terms onto the Panopto server. Starting January 2014 with the Spring 2014 term, the COE DL department plans to fully roll out the usage of Panopto in all of our courses and events. 

TRAINING (WHEN IT WILL OCCUR; WHAT WILL BE AVAILABLE) AND SUPPORT DOCUMENTS:

Q&A:

 

• How does the transition occur from the MS software/videos to the Panopto software/videos?: 
• Will COE provide leaders/trailers and/or presentation templates to allow faculty to standardize their presentations, as was used in the past lecture capture system?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series

Blackboard is offering a free faculty pedagogy training webinar series called the Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series. The Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS) is a training initiative to help augment (not replace) your on-campus faculty training efforts. Harnessing our community of Blackboard users, BITS will share the top strategies and pedagogy for both increasing educator efficiency and improving learning outcomes. This program will consist of monthly faculty training webinars that will be taught by faculty from higher ed institutions and supported by Blackboard experts. View the BITS schedule.

DL Faculty Support and Mentoring

To assist and support you with teaching through DL, we have created a Distance Learning group on Facebook. Select this link to join our group, and stay in touch with DL students and faculty at UAH. Further, we encourage new DL faculty to work with professors within their disciplines with experience in DL under a mentoring approach during the first and second academic terms.

Technology Skills

Need to improve your technologogical skills in areas such as email, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and other tools? Check out the UA Huntsville's Click and Learn Series. Downloadable training documents as well as Flash presentations are available for your review.

Live Viewing of Captured Events

Did you know that DL at UAHuntsville offers LIVE viewing of captured events through our Mediasite system as a Webcasting event?

In addition to our viewers ability to watch content on-demand (on your own time), content is also available via live streaming options configurable in our Mediasite system. These live streamed events, called Webcasts, allow viewers to see and hear the presenter, along with any content being presented (i.e. PowerPoint slides) as time-synched pictures alongside the presentation. These events may be configured to allow viewers to also view and respond to polls, submit questions via a text chat tool, and view linked documents for the individual presentation. If you would like to request that your class or event have live streaming Webcasting available, please include that on your reservation form, or contact the DL Program Coordinator to request this on a case-by-case or semester basis.

See the Live Stream Interaction Options handout for more information on these options. Please note that you may also view polls that have been completed, view linked documents, and submit questions when viewing videos on-demand, provided that these tools are enabled in your event.

Supporting Distance Learning Students with Disabilities

• Supporting UAHuntsville students with disabilities--What can I do as a faculty member?
• Make sure to review and incorporate the UAHuntsville Disability Statement template into your course syllabus

 

 

Faculty Daevelopment 

 Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models, and Methods builds on EDC’s extensive international and domestic experience in the field of distance education and gathers research and lessons learned from numerous programs in over 100 nations and territories to help distance education policymakers, planners and designers develop distance education systems focused on producing high-quality teachers.

Whether upgrading “un-trained” teachers’ existing skills, providing teachers with enrichment or continuing education opportunities or helping teachers gain advanced degrees or certification, nations across the globe are increasingly turning to distance education as a convenient, flexible and multimodal avenue for teacher education. Go here to read the book!