Author
Leading Lines
Jul. 29, 2016—July 29, 2016 Greetings! This Monday, August 1st, will mark the launch of a new podcast – Leading Lines – that will deal with educational technology in higher education. The podcast will be made up of one-on-one interviews with leaders in the field of educational technology and will cover a broad range of topics. The...
Revisiting MOOCs
May. 16, 2016—May 16, 2016 Greetings! While scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day, I saw that one of my friends was making an observation about MOOCs that is not uncommon: “Remember when,” he said, “we were told [that] MOOCs were going to change the entire university system? Turns out that they’ve done nothing and disappeared.”...
Friction Free
Mar. 30, 2016—March 30, 2016 Greetings! In the months before I took on the role as Associate Provost for Digital Learning, I spent some time thinking about the roadblocks that faculty face in attempting to change their research and teaching by integrating the wide variety of digital technologies at their disposal. Let’s face it: it might be...
Innovation Grants
Feb. 25, 2016—February 25, 2016 Greetings! When the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning (VIDL) was established in 2013, one of the ways in which we hoped to encourage inventive digital work on campus was to offer a number of macrogrants to faculty with innovative ideas and large-scale projects. While we were successful with this model, we have...
The Big Picture
Jan. 18, 2016—January 18, 2016 Greetings! On a day-to-day basis in any job, it is easy to get so tied up in the tasks of the everyday that one often forgets to pause, sit back, and focus on the larger picture and on developing strategies to meet a greater vision. Just this week, I called together a...
Platforms
Dec. 17, 2015—December 17, 2015 Greetings! A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference at George Washington University that focused on the use of OpenEdX as a platform for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). Like all such conferences, there was an interesting mix of vendors, MOOC instructors, online educators, and administrators from a wide variety of...
Connections and Collaborations
Oct. 8, 2015—October 8, 2015 Greetings! I want to begin this month with a story that illustrates how Vanderbilt’s transinstitutional orientation and emphasis on digital technologies can make for fruitful—and often unexpected—outcomes. Awhile back, Richard Willis, Catherine Lee, and Michael Stuart from the Owen School of Management were beginning to work on a project that, roughly, investigates...
Digital Learning
Aug. 28, 2015—August 28, 2015 Greetings! In what I intend to make into a monthly open letter, I wanted to take a little time this month to introduce myself and my role at Vanderbilt. The position of Associate Provost for Digital Learning was designed to head up initiatives under the “Educational Technology” leg of Vanderbilt’s Academic Strategic...