Online Learning Communities with a Dominican Flair

Online Learning Communities with a Dominican Flair: Arguing for applying the Dominican ethos to online higher education CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Claire Noonan (Dominican University) Introduction It seems that everywhere one looks in the world of contemporary higher education, someone is making an argument for the elimination of faculty in favor of technology as the […]

Online Learning Communities with a Catholic Flair

For a year now, I have been working through some ideas on how to ensure that a Catholic higher education institution, such as my own, maintains its Catholic identity when offering more online courses and programs. In particular, I wanted to work through how to ensure that the focus on communities and relationship-centered teaching and […]

Online Learning Communities Polls

For awhile now I have been preoccupied with thoughts about the future of education, and the extent to which we want to rely on online education; over this past year, this train of thought has been traveling through areas of higher education and Catholic universities for how to better create online learning communities. Ideas from […]

Catholic Identity and Online Education

Originally posted on Daily Theology:
What is it that makes an education Catholic? Can one get a Catholic education online? Would a degree from an online program be any more or less Catholic than one from a “traditional” college or university? As I was thinking about this post for today, I wanted in particular to…

Relating Sacramentally in Online Teaching

Originally posted on Daily Theology:
By Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, Ph.D. What does sacramentality look like in an online classroom? Stephen Okey’s recent reflection on “Catholic Identity and Online Education” is a timely conversation starter, and I appreciate his framework of focusing especially on five key areas of concern around Catholic identity. Of these five, the third…

On Online Education and Catholic Social Teaching

Earlier this fall, I attended the annual EDUCAUSE convention in Orlando, Florida. I have written about my experience at the convention as it relates to my ongoing project investigating the relationship between online learning communities and Catholic social teaching as an approach to designing higher education. As part of my attendance at the convention, I […]

Community in Online Learning: Thoughts from EDUCAUSE

Every year, there is a special gathering of individuals interested in improving the technologies of higher education. Faculty, IT administrators, inventors, entrepreneurs, the Big Dogs (i.e. Google, Microsoft, Dell, etc) convene for several days of talks, presentations, pitches, sales, and ideas. This get annual, international together is sponsored by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit dedicated to improving […]

Creating Classrooms for Social Justice | Edutopia

The author, Dr. Dell’Angelo, makes some great points about how to use the idea of social justice to structure course content and course design. Her work also aligns with what I have been looking at in terms of applying Catholic social teaching and approaches to higher education to online learning communities. I am glad to […]

Affordances & Constraints Communication Model

At my university, we are moving towards more technologically enhanced teaching and learning. Along with my colleague from the School of Education, I am helping to oversee the faculty development of online and blended instruction. We are working on ways to better improve our courses’ universal design, such as through multimedia presentations. The goal is […]