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Archives for January 2016

eLion to LionPATH – Notes for Students

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LionPATH AnnouncementPenn State University is rolling out a new integrated management system called LionPATH. This new product will eventually replace eLion, and eLion’s back-end known as the Integrated Student Information System. Students will begin using LionPATH for all registration and financial functions in Fall 2016. Admissions for Fall 2016 and beyond are already being managed by LionPATH.

There will be much documentation about LionPATH distributed to students. Anyone curious for a sneak peek can visit the Project LionPATH Online Library for tutorials and help documentation.

We ask that students review the messages and publications that are shared with them as we approach the full LionPATH rollout date. As the LDT program learns details that are of particular interest to our students, we will share them, starting with the items below:

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Welcome to the Spring 2016 Semester!

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Nittany Lion Shrine statue covered with snow.

The new year, winter season, and spring semester have arrived! Welcome to Penn State’s Spring 2016 semester. We are happy to have you join us. Happy New Year, and we wish you the best in health, happiness, and education.

We are happy that our Learning, Design, and Technology online programs are growing. Our online courses are filled to capacity, and we will increase our offerings to accommodate the upcoming waves of new students. The growth is due in great part to the support and recommendations that we have received from our current students. The increased enrollments will allow us to develop new courses and tracks, improve the student experience, and enhance the technologies infused into our courses.

In the upcoming months we will remind our students about their responsibility to register for courses as soon as they are eligible to register. We are committed to serving our degree and certificate students first, and we do this by offering tiers of priority registration. Students should remember that they do not need to pay for courses at the time that they register—billing occurs after registration, so students should register for their desired courses during the timeframe when they first become eligible.

We are excited to bring two new courses online:

  • LDT 581 – Theoretical Foundations of Learning, Design, and Technology
  • LDT 550 – Design Studio

We have already rolled out a substantial revision to EDTEC 566 – Computers as Learning Tools. And we look forward to rolling out two major course revisions in the Summer 2016 semester:

  • EDTEC/LDT 561 – Measuring the Impact of Technology on Learning
  • EDTEC 440 – Educational Technology Integration

This will be a great year, a great season, a great semester, and a great experience for our students and faculty. Thank you for your continued support of our program.

To read all of the LDT Online Programs Newsletter Items for January 2016, click here.

Enhancing LDT Online Program Communications

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Over the past year the LDT program has explored methods to better support and communicate with the students of our online programs. Our L-EDTEC mailing list continues to be a primary outlet for pushing information to our community. But there are so many other channels that are more fun, rich, and conversational. We have posted and discussed a number of LDT program details on our Twitter feed (@psuldt). We have videos of interviews with our faculty and students (with more videos forthcoming) on our YouTube channel. And now, at the center of it all, we have this blog, LDT Online FAQs and Figures, as the landing page and eventual go-to source for news and updates.

We will still use our L-EDTEC mailing list to push information to our students, but the e-mailed newsletters will serve as summaries of ongoing communications on this blog.

Summary of Spring 2016 Course Registration

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As of the date of this posting, the LDT program’s World Campus courses for Spring 2016 are filled to capacity.

Here are the World Campus courses that we’re ultimately offering for the Spring 2016 semester:

  • LDT (EDTEC) 467
  • LDT 505
  • LDT (INSYS) 527
  • LDT 550
  • LDT 566
  • LDT 581

Notes about Spring 2016 registration:

  • Priority registration for students with 20+ credits in our program started October 13, 2015.
  • Priority registration for students with 9+ credits in our program started October 20, 2015.
  • Registration for students accepted into our certificate or degree program, but who had 8 or fewer credits began October 27, 2015.
  • Registration for students outside of our program and for the general public (not admitted to a program) began November 17, 2015.
  • LDT total course availability was 95% filled before Thanksgiving 2015.
  • There were only 3 total seats remaining by Christmas 2015. They filled by January 4, 2016 at 9:00 AM.
  • Two courses were canceled due to low enrollment after November 4 (after the timeframe when our current students were eligible to register).

Registration lessons for our students:

  • Register as soon as you are eligible. Plan ahead.
  • Once our courses become available to the general public, they usually fill to capacity.
    • If the students admitted into our programs register early and a course fills before being open to the general public we will explore options to add additional seats to support our enrolled students.

Study Recruitment: Mothers from Rural PA Studying Online

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Posted on behalf of a Penn State doctoral student conducting a research study of interest to the LDT program:

Hello!

My name is Michelle Covert and I am a PhD candidate in the Adult Education program at The Pennsylvania State University.  I would like to invite you to participate in my study called Towards an Understanding of the Experiences of Rural Student-Mothers Pursuing Higher Education Online.  If you live in rural Western or Central Pennsylvania, and are a student and a mother in a 100% online undergraduate or graduate program at Penn State, you may be eligible to participate.

You will be asked to take part in two to three aspects of the study. All participants will be asked to complete up to three interviews, via telephone or in person, lasting a minimum of one hour each.  All participants will also be asked to write in a journal documenting your schedule and thoughts about your work/life balance.  The journal will require a minimum of ten to fifteen minutes each day and will be completed over at least one week.  Additionally, some participants may be asked to be observed in your homes while studying or working on assignments for your online  programs.  The observations will last from one hour to five hours, depending on your schedule and what is most comfortable for you.

The data collected in this study will be used in a dissertation but may also be used at professional conferences or symposia, and may be published in professional publications.  All participants will remain anonymous.

If you are interested in participating, please contact me via email at your earliest convenience at mlf164@psu.edu.

Thank you for your time!

 

Michelle Covert, PhD Candidate

Adult Education program

The Pennsylvania State University