Public Relations is also being showcased as a CDL “Featured Course” this month. According to Chukhlomin, “Effective public relations is part of every business’s long term success. The last time you turned an unhappy customer into a loyal patron – that was public relations. The last time your company sponsored a charitable event or a local sports team – that was public relations. The last time your favorite donut shop gave you thirteen donuts when you only paid for twelve, that was public relations. Not following a proper public relations process can quickly ruin a career – just ask Tony Hayward, the ex-CEO of British Petroleum.”

The new Public Relations course will familiarize students with best practices to establishing and maintaining clear, precise, and ethical communications. “People from all types of industries and from all areas of study can learn life-changing lessons from a course in public relations,” said Chukhlomin.

The data each student enters on the Google Doc serves as an abbreviated research paper thesis, and because other students can view the entries of their peers, they not only learn a bit about other CEOs they may not have chosen themselves, but they also learn to recognize a growing number of influential businesswomen in today’s market.

The Google doc provides a real-time save/edit feature that provides students with the most current, up-to-date information recently added to the form by their peers or the instructor.  It is important to note that students do not need gmail accounts to participate; the document is set up to allow anyone with the link to view and add data.

Because the Google Suite (Apps, Docs, Mail) doesn’t yet communicate with certain screen reader technology, students with visual impairments have the  option to contact the instructor and receive a downloaded version of the document that they can add their data to and resubmit.

In Dr. John Beckham’s section of the Diversity in the Workplace course, we are piloting the use of Facebook in student discussions. Using their course email, students are asked to “friend” other students taking the course. Providing a live stream in the course via Facebook (below) allows students to communicate with each other while also seamlessly participating in class discussions. Their discussion posts are also sent to their Facebook wall, which effectively acts as an electronic portfolio of their discussion posts.

Integrating the Facebook live stream with course discussion offers several unexpected advantages. Because of its popularity, most students are familiar with the Facebook interface. Students can readily and easily harness the powerful interactivity of the Facebook platform and effortlessly create a virtual e-portfolio of their own discussion participation throughout the course. Another benefit is the mobile accessibility of Facebook accounts, which make it easy for students to access their own profile, and thus, the activity taking place in the course discussions, via their cell phones and/or other mobile devices.

The Global Workplace: Its Impact on Employers, Workers, and Their Organizations

The Global Workplace course examines recent global trends, especially the transformative effects of information technology and the increasing importance of service work on the economy.

Students participate in several class discussions to establish an informed position on some of the issues of the global workplace. Using posts from every discussion, the course instructor creates an image using Wordle, a free wordcloud generator, and posts the link to the wordcloud for students to see each week.

Before the end of each learning module, students are able to visualize those thoughts, ideas, concepts and themes generated through their discussion participation. The word collages therefore become evocative of the most pressing and controversial issues in the global economy today.

Through the use of interactive maps, students gain a better understanding of the Francophone world as part of their work in the foreign language course,  French 2.  This highly interactive learning activity provides a geographic and demographic view of French language and culture throughout the world.

Students select to explore various regions that are highlighted on the map in order to identify historically and culturally significant events, places and people, and examine how they influence and represent the evolution and use of the French language.

Additionally, VoiceThread hosts group conversations, allowing students to practice their Spanish by sharing their thoughts on their media collections – in this case, their most loved and most hated foods.

Students taking this course also use VoiceThread to market a product of their choice, in Spanish. The product can be food, computer software, services, a store, etc.  Students write their own advertisement and present it to the class, while the instructor and other students will record and share their own comments, in Spanish.

New to the retreat this year, members of the Technology in Action Committee took the initiative to demonstrate the flexibility and unique capabilties of the Angel Learning Management System (LMS) currently being used at CDL.  Members of the CID group were called upon to present alternative content design approaches using the Angel LMS.

Highlights included presentations on the following content design approaches in Angel:

The Easter Egg

The Graphic Organizer

The Taskbar

The Humanities Desktop

Dr. Nicola Martinez, then Director of Curriculum and Instructional Design at CDL, also gave a brief overview of processes related to the infusion of creative design elements in courses, and encouraged faculty from all areas of study to continue collaboration with the CID group and promote ongoing innovation in courses offered by CDL.