Vivian+Johnson

Low Residency Program

Migrating the required courses for a Master's of Arts in Education (MAEd) program to a low residency format. General format for a 4-credit course. First and last class are face-2-face (9:00 - 3:30 pm). 12 weekly sessions in Elluminate Live (6:00 - 8:30 pm).

Why bother? - increase access of our program - assumption was that graduate students 30 minutes or more from the campus would find this an attractive option -assumption: want a hybird program that uses multiple effective learning environments (face-2-face, real-time, etc).

Surprise - majority of students enrolled were < 30 minutes from campus, 2 <10 min. from campus - enrolled because it supported family circumstances (young children), easier logistics - several wanted to learn more about technology, even though that was not the focus of this program, i.e. not a Master's in Educational Technology - on high school teacher sees program as a way to prepare her to teach in district's hybird courses some face-2-face, but majority of class online)

Why bother? - increase reach of university programs - changes in learning environments at post-secondary level impacting K-12 - different type of learning environment - is it more effective - open question

Why bother? - as a teacher it is causing me to re-think rationale for curriculum, different ways of engaging the learner, re-thinking learner-teacher relationship

Issue - pacing in a real time environment on a weekly bases, things take longer, I need to be OK with "quiet" - be patient - technology is frustrating - learning the hard way how much memory is required & getting the memory up grade - tools to differentiate by learning background & needs but figuring out how to do that takes time - doing this in isolation, team teaching would be helpful