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Quarterly Newsletter from LACOL
Volume 1, Issue 4
Autumn 2016
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Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning

Welcome to the Liberal Arts Consortium for Online Learning (LACOL) newsletter. Founded in 2014, the Consortium is a partnership of Amherst, Carleton, Haverford, Pomona, Swarthmore, Vassar and Williams colleges. Through collaboration, we are experimenting to enhance teaching and learning for the liberal arts with shared technology.

Table of Contents:
Multi-campus project launch:

Exploration of Blended Course Offerings for Upper Level Mathematics  


This September, a team of faculty, technologists and instructional designers from six LACOL institutions kicked off a collaboration to explore blended course sharing for topics in advanced mathematics. The goal of the project is to experiment with models for shared course delivery which can supplement residential classroom learning and expand curricular offerings for math majors.

Inspired initially by the pioneering work of Assoc. Professor Steven Miller at Williams College (pictured above), the multi-campus team has begun a series of interactive digital teaching experiments in the first 'proof of concept' phase of the project. In the second phase, results will be applied to a pilot course offering. Along with exploration of new pedagogies to support learning for local and remote students, this project raises the opportunity for faculty and campus leaders to consider related issues of policy and process for how best to integrate new online/blended course models into the curriculum.  

To learn more, see: http://lacol.net/upper-level-math 

Coming Up Online:

 Webinar on Carleton's CUBE pilot for QS:

On October 19, join Prof. Melissa Eblen-Zayas (pictured below) and Dr. Janet Russell from Carleton College for a one-hour chat about the Carleton Undergraduate Bridge Experience or CUBE, a new online/blended summer bridge program to support incoming students with quantitative skills (QS) and reasoning (QR).  

Having completed the first round of programming with students this past summer, Melissa and Janet will share a debrief of their experiences and lessons learned, with plenty of opportunity for Q&A.  

To register, see: 
http://lacol.net/cube-debrief

Image Credit: kristinhoppe, some rights reserved

Hack 4 Quantitative Skills

This winter, LACOL's Quantitative Skills working group is holding a 'Hack-a-thon Toward a Collaborative Quantitative Skills Support Framework'. This three-day event will bring together a multi-campus, multi-disciplinary team to prototype the group's ideas for collaboration. Experimenting within a common bridge/refresher framework is expected to bring a collaborative benefit that helps faculty align and compare data and outcomes from their investigations into online / blended tools and techniques for supporting students with QS/QR. 

 See:  http://lacol.net/qs-hackathon
Image Credit: kristinhoppe, some rights reserved

Hack 4 Language Instruction

The Language Instruction working group is planning a hack-a-thon to develop shared resources and workflows for language diagnostic and refresher modules. Focusing initially on French, a team of faculty and instructional designers will gather in early 2017 for four days of hands-on work to explore a framework for diagnostics with the flexibility to serve faculty and students across participating campuses. A parallel goal is to link the diagnostics with relevant online / blended support resources that help students close gaps.  

 See: http://lacol.net/language-hackathon
LACOL's Active and Engaged Reading (AER) working group is gearing up for two new collaborative ventures this year. Inspired by the liberal arts model, our faculty work to meet students where they are and develop their reading skills in various ways. AER is also exploring how technology may enable new reading pedagogies by means such as text mining, group annotation or collaborative reading techniques. Following lively discussions at the June workshop, AER members (including Professor Susan Zlotnick from Vassar College pictured above) are busy planning the projects noted below. Input from interested faculty and staff at all LACOL schools is welcome!

Multi-campus Survey and Thought Piece. To shed light on ways that teaching and learning of reading practice are embedded in the liberal arts curriculum, AER is launching a survey of faculty and staff at member campuses; results from the survey will inform a joint thought piece from the group on reading for the liberal arts in a digital age.

For more details, see: http://lacol.net/aer-projects
LACOL2017 Workshop ...
SAVE THE DATE! LACOL will hold its third consortium-wide workshop June 15-16, 2017 on the campus of Vassar College. Watch this space: #LACOL2017 workshop webpage
... and remember LACOL2016!?  
Did you miss last June's workshop at Haverford College?  Read about it in the summer newsletter. And, watch video highlights at: http://lacol.net/lacol2016
Working Groups
LACOL working groups meet regularly around four themes:  

• Active Reading
Teaching & Learning
• Language Instruction
• Quantitative Skills


Groups are currently exploring collaborative projects. New ideas are welcome! If you're not already connected, reach out to the group leads or your local faculty advisory council members for more information.
Read more ...
On the Blog
LACOL.net is a place to share highlights of creative digital teaching and learning happening on your campus. If you have an idea for a story, please post to the blog.

Recent stories:
Faux Epistolary Novels, a student's summer with END
Teaching Italian on the edX platform
Read more ...
Get Involved
Faculty and staff at member institutions interested in learning more, please visit the Information for LACOL Members page and explore more resources on our internal collaboration site.
Read More ...
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