An Elluminate Center of Excellence

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An Elluminate Center of Excellence
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University of Alberta

• The University of Alberta is located in Edmonton,
  Albertas capital city.
• With over one million people Edmonton is dynamic
  and vibrant and best known as the Festival
  City.
• Edmontonians have learned to take advantage of
  both their long, warm summer and cold, crisp
  winter days.

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Edmonton Alberta
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The University

• With 37,000 undergraduate students, 4,000
  graduate students and 1,500 full-time academic
  staff, the University of Alberta is one of
  Canadas prominent research-intensive
  universities.
• The university offers over 200 undergraduate
  programs and 170 graduate programs, including
  over 60 doctoral programs.

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Dare to
The vision for the University of Alberta has been
articulated by our president Dr. Indira V.
Samarasekera in two volumes Dare to Discover
and Dare to Deliver. The former provides our
vision for the future while the latter delineates
how to make that vision a reality.
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Our Cornerstones

• Talented people
• Learning, discovery, and citizenship
• Connecting communities
• Transformative organization and support

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Our Strategies

• Enriching the undergraduate and graduate student
  experience
• Integrating teaching, research, scholarship and
  creative activities
• Fostering interdisciplinary collaboration
• Northern, aboriginal, rural and international
  engagement

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Our implementations of Elluminate across the
disciplines support these strategic initiatives
by providing a mechanism through which we can
enrich, integrate, and engage our students and
faculty as we create collaborative learning
environments at the University of Alberta. The
On-Line Program Support Group submits this
presentation as our application to become an
Elluminate Center of Excellence.
Elluminate Implementation
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OPSG (Online Program Support Group) is a grass
roots Community of Practice (CoP) started at the
university in 2004. The group is
interdisciplinary and consists of Instructional
Technology practitioners from Faculties and
Schools across campus. The primary purpose of
the group is to provide a forum for interaction
and collaboration and the sharing of information
and expertise. Its about connecting
people. Members of OPSG have been instrumental
in advancing the use of learning technologies
within individual faculties and across the
university as a whole.
OPSG
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Theory Behind Practice

• Three key elements in building effective
• learning environments
• Community building
• Social presence
• Teaching presence

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The Sense of Community
Integral to developing community is the ability
to provide the sense of social and teaching
presence. By increasing social and teaching
presence and building on-line communities we
increase our ability to make authentic
connections between and with our learners.
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Social Presence

• Affective communication
• Open communication
• Cohesive communication

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Teaching Presence

• Design and organization
• Facilitating discourse
• Direct instruction

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Elluminate provides us with an array of tools
that facilitate both social and teaching
presence. This leads to a greater sense of
community within the learning environment and
ultimately provides us with a way to make
authentic connections with our learners.
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Overview of Elluminate across Campus

• Elluminate Live! Licensed campus-wide in August,
  2006
• Over 500 Elluminate Live! meetings held during
  the past year
• Used in 15 different areas

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Overview of Elluminate Uses Across Campus

• Support online learning
• Online programs and courses
• Blended learning
• Virtual office hours
• Professional development
• Guest speakers in F2F classes
• Research, meetings collaboration

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Elluminate Users Across Campus

• Faculty of Nursing
• Faculty of Education
• Centre for Health Promotion Studies
• Health Sciences Council
• AICT E-Learning Services
• Faculty of Pharmacy
• Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
• School of Business
• Faculty of Engineering
• Faculty of Extension
• Faculty of Arts
• Campus Saint-Jean
• Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Home
  Economics
• Augustana Faculty
• Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine Faculty of
  Science

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Professional Development - Pharmacy

• Description
• 12 week, professional development course for
  pharmacists to explore the use of laboratory
  values in their practice.
• Two-day workshop
• Three distance sessions - case study, group
  discussion (WebCT), Elluminate session
• Practice-based assignment
• Benefits of using Elluminate
• Fostered connection and interaction
• Reduced barriers to access and participation
• Convenient

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Guest Speakers - Education

• A well-known researcher joined the class via
  Elluminate Live! to discuss a research project
  students had read about in a journal article.

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Research Groups - Nursing

• Elluminate is being adopted by a growing number
  of principle researchers as a venue in which they
  can collaborate with their national and
  international research partners. We currently
  have 13 research groups in the FON working in
  Elluminate.
• It provides them with a meeting place for sharing
  information and results, discussing their
  findings and connecting with their research
  partners at a distance.
• It is cost effective, intuitive and has provided
  many of our research groups opportunities to meet
  frequently and throughout the duration of their
  projects.

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Community Groups

• Community building - Health Promotion Studies,
  Medicine

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Engagement

• Office hours - Science, Education, Continuing
  Education
• Recruiting - Science
• Clerkship and Practicums - Medicine

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Online Courses - MES

• Designed for educators who want to complete their
  masters degree without taking time off work. It
  is a cohort program that requires Fall and Winter
  courses to be taken online.
• Adult students have multiple demands in their
  lives and therefore require communication
  technology that is flexible and convenient.
• The MES program adopted Elluminate as a tool
  that, among other things, enabled us to maintain
  our community with each cohort.
• Students are geographically located across Canada
  and one in the United Arab Emirates.

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• Students have positive perceptions of courses
• Technology did not get in the way - easy, fast,
  cost effective, classroom without walls
• Improvement over other forms of teleconferencing
  and collaboration
• Increased engagement, understanding and
  confidence
• Effects of distance reduced greatly
• Initial apprehension about technology has been
  overcome through ease of use
• Students initiating meetings

Elluminates Impact
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Future Plans

• Admission and recruitment
• Reach out to the best and the brightest
• Enrich the Undergraduate experience
• Increased flexibility in delivery modes and media
• Provide access to more experts
• Enrich the Graduate experience
• Greater range of research opportunities
• Greater ability to collaborate
• Achieving out Academic Plan
• Engage local, regional and international
  communities

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