Video Transcript – Engaging Students Online: Boise State University

Video Transcript

[Patrick Lowenthal, Associate Professor, Educational Technology]: Online learning should be serving all of those people who for whatever reason can’t come to campus whether it’s physical, whether it’s emotional, psychological barriers, issues, struggles that they might be having; and so online learning has ways to serve students in ways that we haven’t been. But often we’re failing to really meet all of those students’ needs. And so it’s beyond some of the accessibility talk that just says “can someone who’s you know blind or deaf or hard-of-hearing – can they access content?”. It’s much more than that and so we really need a team of experts to be thinking about “how do we serve a greater number of students?” and this requires further thinking and expertise, but it’s really where you see everyone moving. There are a lot of students out there that we’re not serving right now; that if we do it right, online learning can start meeting their needs in a way that we’ve never before.

[Stephanice McClelland, Director of eCampus Learning and Instructional Design]: Our big focus is quality of online education and the biggest piece of that is the technology and now we have a lot more collaborative tools. So to build that engagement with the students and allow them to have that interaction rather than it just feel like they’re sitting in front of a computer.

[Palina Louangketh, Adjunct Faculty]: The design of the course and use of technology and various approaches, the students will be able to experience it in a very innovative and creative way. Lightboard technology provides the students a visual of what it is that I’m lecturing. The purpose for me in using the lightboard technology is for the students to be able to replicate it. It’s one thing when you read about concepts and strategies in literature but it’s another to be able to see it in real life and have somebody draw it out for you.