| << Go Back |
College of Education Home Page |
 |
||
 |
Dear Education Faculty and Staff, I am sure you have noticed the redesigned college and department web sites. This was a major undertaking and the IT Group invested extraordinary effort. While we are still updating content and improving the design, we have received many very positive comments about the new website. Another major accomplishment this year is the creation of new online programs and an infrastructure to support course development and delivery. Online courses for the Middle Grades Endorsement (C&I, EPS, EPSY) were offered this spring and the demand for these courses has exceeded our expectations. The eLearning program (HRE), offered in partnership with the Global Campus, will admit two new cohorts in May and surpass the projected first year enrollment goal. We will also begin three new online Ed.M. programs in July;
The Diversity and Equity program is especially innovative because it will be a college-wide degree rather than housed in a single department. The Learning Design Lab is supporting the development and delivery of these new programs and is now staffed with a team of graduate students who are working with faculty to create new online courses. Check out the online student and faculty orientations that were recently developed by LDL staff (www.ed.uiuc.edu/online). The Online Programs Steering Committee, chaired by Vanna Pianfetti, worked to develop college policies that will promote high quality and consistency across all of our online efforts. We have been very careful to ensure that our reorganization and the creation of online delivery models are financially sound. Our existing online programs (CCTL, CTER, Global HRD, GSE) are now officially self-supporting and are no longer subsidized by the college or departments. We have created a financial model that will collect revenue from externally funded projects and self-supporting programs. Revenue from these programs will be put into a College Investment Fund, which will be used to fund future initiatives and innovative ideas as well as provide a solid foundation for our core business activities. Improved Infrastructure and Process Efficiencies Among many other behind-the-scenes enhancements, much work has been conducted in collaboration with campus to improve our network infrastructure with upgrades in our Education building, Colonel Wolfe, and the Armory. Rooms 25 and 28 have also been upgraded as media-ready classrooms and conference room spaces. We continue to work closely with college units, grants, and initiatives to help improve efficiencies and build solutions that meet their specific needs. We continue to explore ways in which student performance is increased through the meaningful integration of technology. Our efforts in this include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, obtaining funding from the Illinois Informatics Initiative to support the design of a new undergraduate course in learning and technologies, the renewal of the I-LLINI Partnership Grant ($311K), and support of electronic portfolios. Through our Learning Technologies Unit, we are leading the campus effort for iTunes U, which will allow students to search, download, and play course content from the Internet. Exploration of the best ways in which to easily podcast information will offer new opportunities for faculty to deliver course content and reflect on new ways of teaching and learning. Finally, I am very pleased to announce that the college will be establishing a new Communications Group that will have overall responsibility for the creation and implementation of a comprehensive communications strategy for all academic and service units in the college. This group will coordinate and support all internal and external communication efforts; manage creative service functions for print, web, and multimedia communications; and provide quality control for the production of all published materials. A strong Communications Group will enable us to gain greater visibility on campus, nationally and internationally as we promote the diverse and transformative research, activities, and initiatives of our College. As you can see, there has been a lot of activity this year that will benefit all of us in the future. If you have any questions about what is happening or have innovative ideas that we might want to consider for next year, please let us know.
Have a great summer. Scott D. Johnson | Professor Chief Information Officer & Head, Dept. of Human Resource Education |
|
|
| ||