Alma met crucial deadlines on a regular basis to establish and maintain an up to date and well organized website for the OCC Learning Center. She posted staff schedules and regularly updated them for holidays, and added copy for special events, new articles and media. Based on recommendations from the area Director, content was reformatted within the existing web templates to drive more use of the content.
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Learning Specialist: Media-Based Academic Support
Oakton Community College: September 2010 – December 2011
Alma supervised and scheduled tutors for all Foreign Languages, Computer Topics, Humanities and Social Sciences courses. She participated in a team with other supervisors in developing and implementing quarterly training activities for all tutors.
Alma developed and provided asynchronous in-services on technology topics for the staff and administrators of the Learning Center. She investigated and proposed an online tutoring platform and integrated other technology resources into daily operations. Alma also provided basic maintenance to the on-site computers and copy machines. She maintained the online tutoring schedule and all other contents of the Learning Center website and marketed Learning Center events.
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The Power of Legos
A capstone project for my final Educational Technology course, Computer Uses in Education, this video was supposed to illustrate an integration of technology in education. Alma created a production guide and storyboard, below, as well as a two-column video script, in advance of shooting. The video captures ways that legos can be used to illustrate concepts that may be taught, even in higher education.
Feel free to view the final video here:
Special thanks go to Katelynd, Eric, TJ and Kurt for their participation in the video.
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Digital Art 1 Curriculum
Curriculum developed for eight weeks of one-hour weekly class. Digital Art focused on the use of digital cameras, and photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop or the Gimp). As the term was split in to two 8-week sessions- the second being optional- there were two projects that students would complete by the end of the term. Continue Reading →
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Dropbox in Education
In order to keep up to date attendance statistics for Structured Learning Assistance and Supplemental Instruction tutoring sessions, student staff had previously emailed updated excel spreadsheets to both the instructor they worked with and the head of the SI/SLA programs. This became problematic after several weeks of those emails flooded inboxes and the SI/SLA courses became more commonly offered.
After becoming a Graduate Assistant with the Tutoring and SI/SLA programs, Alma make a staff-wide recommendation for the use of the cloud service: Dropbox. Student staff managed a single spreadsheet in their Dropbox, and sent a download link to the professor and the program head. This minimized the potential confusion between old and new versions of the file, lost or deleted emails, and corrupted attachments.
As a part of her position, Alma gave a series of presentations to the full staff of SI and SLA leaders (nearly 35 in total). The presentation covered a description of Dropbox, a step-by-step for the implementation and several other uses for the service.
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Using Dropbox for Communication
In the Supplemental Instruction and Structured Learning Assistance programs at Cleveland State University, student workers must share up-to-date attendance information with both professors and the SI and SLA program coordinator. In previous semesters, this involved sending excel spreadsheets multiple times per week and submitting hard-copy attendance logs.
Alma opted to harness the newer technology of cloud storage (Dropbox) coupled with an excel template. The template would show attendance and produce other metrics such as average session size, and attendance percentage by student, which is necessary for the SLA program. Continue Reading →
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SI/SLA Program Administrative Organization in Blackboard CE 8
In the highly regimented Supplemental Instruction and Structured Learning Assistance programs there is a lot of paperwork.
This communication between students, SI and SLA leaders, faculty and staff helps the program grow through suggestions and comments. In addition it also allows the program coordinator to ensure a somewhat standardized student experience across SI/SLA Leaders. In the past, Cleveland State’s program used hard-copy weekly reports, this lead to large binders and folders and confusing files as well as late submissions.
Alma designed an assessment in the the Tutoring and Academic Success Centers’ Blackboard community, it remained open for a full week so student workers could fill in their paperwork and submit it on time, from any computer. This regimentation helped the staff develop a routine and allowed the program Coordinator to do her review of these reports all at once. Staff were also able to complete the report more quickly as the original report was scaled down to fit into an electronic format and more quantitative metrics were involved.
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Technology Implementation Specialist, Tutoring and Academic Success Center
As part of my Graduate Assistant role at the Tutoring and Academic Success Center, Alma had the opportunity to provide technology in-services and implement tools for the organization of the entire tutoring staff (which ranged from 60 to 90 students).
AlmaI focused on finding technology tools that would increase efficiency and communication amongst staff and faculty while not jeopardizing the confidentiality of student records. She implemented those tools with the support of the TASC Coordinator and provided training and support for the use of the tools to the tutors and involved faculty members. Alma also organized the use of social media to increase visibility to students and edited a short promotional video on the programs, which is still in use.
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Always Productions Memorial DVD Slideshows
From 2008 to 2009, Alma worked with two local funeral homes to provide a simple photo restoration and display service for memorial services and funerals. Families who elected to use the service submitted photos in whatever form were available. She put them in to a high resolution digital format, restored photos with damage and created looping DVD slideshows. The DVDs were played on a large TV display in the back of the room. When put in to a computer, all images were available for download in their full-sized digital format.
When one of the funeral directors was celebrating a wedding anniversary, Alma coordinated with his children to make a DVD for their surprise party.
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Research Proposal: Will Film in the Classroom Increase Comprehension and Enjoyment of Non-Contemporary Novels?
In Alma’s Educational Research class, the final assignment was to write a research proposal and present it to the class. The students were given a strict time limit of five minutes for the presentation, so Alma decided to make my slide deck into a video file that would be completely pre-timed.
Alma also wanted to offer additional information and some counterpoints throughout the presentation. This was when she decided to use her knowledge of CG animation and created two co-presenters. One of them was dubbed “the researcher” who provided additional detail, and the other was “Mr Smiley” and he provided counter points and commentary. Special thanks go out to Alma’s dad who gave Mr Smiley his voice.
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