Faculty Highlights: Dave Dawson
The concept of a place common to everyone for the storage and retrieval of information is hardly a radical one. From Ptolemy's Royal Library at Alexandria to Tim Berners-Lee's Internet, we have been working on this. The Orange Grove, Florida's Digital Repository is another dimension of this concept.
One way to think about the Orange Grove Repository is as a type of free library of learning resources packaged carefully packaged with very rich descriptive data, including ERIC terms and Florida's common course numbering system, to enable users to find, evaluate and integrate these "Learning Objects" into their own instruction. Perhaps the most important feature of the Orange Grove, however is that users can create their own content, submit it for entry, and share it with their colleagues and others.
The Orange Grove's features reflect a trend toward cloud computing, in which digital resources are like a service or utility that is ubiquitous, pervasive and device agnostic, yet highly customizable to the unique needs of the user.
An exciting new feature of the Orange Grove is its partnership with the University Press of Florida, called Orange Grove Text Plus, which delivers a wide range of online, open access textbooks to learners at no cost in digital format, but are also available in custom printed formats for a fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks. This development radically evolves what it means to "publish" a work.
I have been involved with research and implementations of learning object technologies since 1996 through which I became aware very early of the Orange Grove and the Technology that supports it. I have served as an Orange Grove Scholar for the past year and have worked on the UWF campus to raise awareness among faculty and administrators of the Orange Grove and the solutions it offers for many common issues in the use of digital resources for instruction. For instance, objects can be stored in the Orange Grove and linked directly into content pages in our eLearning system without making multiple copies or having to worry about the effect of system upgrades or the migration to another LMS on the accessibility of the resources. The same objects can be employed in multiple delivery modes, like web-based or mobile instruction, and only need to be updated one time for the changes to appear in both places. Objects can be shared among colleagues to avoid duplication of common learning objectives.
I have created a small collection of lightweight Flash animations addressing common skills that is used as reference materials for several classes, and is also available for use by other Orange Grove participants. Choices for how to share objects can be as restrictive or as open as one requires.
The Orange Grove, Florida's Digital Repository is funded through a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) Grant and is affiliated with the Florida Distance Learning Consortium.
Orange Grove Digital Learning Repository, with Dave Dawson (Elluminate@Lunch Archive)
Other Informational Sessions
The Elluminate environment provides limitless possibilites for innovative instructors like Dr. Dave Dawson. In this first video, Dr. Dawson describes his method for advising students in the Engineering and Computer Technology programs at a distance. Through the share desktop feature in Elluminate, he is able to walk students through the process of the SASS audit and set up a trial schedule for successful completion of their degree plan.
In this second video, Dr. Dawson talks about how he engages his students through various sessions in Elluminate to deliver content, clarify questions or issues about required assignments and review for exams.