I am excited to share that I began a new journey today as Director of Academic Services at Academic Partnerships (AP).  After three years as an independent consultant, I’ve found a position that aligns with my passion for online teaching and student-centered learning!  For those of you who follow my work, this means I am no longer consulting with VoiceThread or teaching for @One — but my passion for using social media and VoiceThread to support student learning lives on.  And you can bet both will remain prevalent in my work. 🙂  And … I have a very helpful eBook that will be available in the next couple of months that is titled “How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread”… so stay tuned! Hopefully, you’ll want to pick it up for your summer professional development plans!

So, what is Academic Partnerships? AP provides assistance to public institutions of higher education to transition their traditional degree programs online.  I will be supporting faculty with their introductory online teaching experiences.  How cool is that? 

The Faculty eCommons

What’s even better about my new position is that there will continue to be plenty of opportunities for us all to learn together!  One of the most exciting parts of my new role will be the work I will do in the Faculty eCommons. The Faculty eCommons is a social learning community for faculty in online university programs.  Add it to your RSS reader today or follow @APCommons on Twitter.  And stay tuned as it will evolve into something even better in the coming months! 🙂

Micro-MOOC
Instructional Design for Mobile Learning
April 15-May 12 – register now!

AP recently began offering free Micro-MOOCs designed to scaffold 21st century educators towards becoming empowered and confident users of technology and facilitators of online learning.  What’s a Micro-MOOC, as opposed to a MOOC? AP explains the difference here.

Registration for next Micro-MOOC, Instructional Design for Mobile Learning, is in progress and more than 600 motivated online educators are already signed up.  Join us!  The online course kicks off with a webinar on Tuesday, April 16 at 11:00:00 AM PDT led by David Metcalf from the University of Central Florida.  Then you will learn along with peers in asynchronous sessions and targeted synchronous sessions led by industry experts including myself (I will be presenting a session on the VoiceThread mobile app) and Jackie Gerstein. All kinds of participation is welcome — so consider this your opportunity to jump in and explore!