Faculty-Staff-Student Partnerships Support Production of Learning Objects

Author Information
Author(s): 
Michael Kolitsky
Institution(s) or Organization(s) Where EP Occurred: 
Atlantic Cape Community College
Effective Practice Abstract/Summary
Abstract/Summary of Effective Practice: 
Atlantic Cape Community College trains Digital Media Assistants to produce reusable and shareable learning objects for online courses.
Description of the Effective Practice
Description of the Effective Practice: 

Digital Media Assistants produce reusable and shareable learning objects for online courses.

Supporting Information for this Effective Practice
Evidence of Effectiveness: 
One sign that the program is working is that 20 faculty stepped forward to work as consultants. Faculty are very busy people but they feel like they can fit in one-hour per week to oversee the development of their own creative visions. The program also respects their time commitments by paying them $30.00 per hour of consultation. The number of learning objects produced will be another parameter of success.
How this practice improves pillar(s):
Time is the most critical resource for a faculty member and students are our most renewable resource. By bringing together faculty and students for a brief period of time per week (one hour), the students can be trained to be Digital Media Assistants who can work up to 25 hours per week.
Multimedia learning objects can be produced. The students work closely with the instructional technology staff and extend the expertise of the full-time professional staff so that more faculty can be served and more learning objects can be produced than if only the instructional technology staff worked on these projects. Multimedia learning objects are composed of learning assets such as digitized images, 2D and 3D graphics, animations, audio and video clips, and text chunks which can support learning concepts. The "holy grail" of instructional technology is to have an artificial intelligent (AI) interface that can deliver learning objects to the learner in a way that matches an individual's style of learning. Since these AI interfaces are beginning to appear, there is a need for the production of learning objects and storage in repositories using agreed upon metadatabase standards that is being developed by the library community.
Intellectual property concerns have been alleviated by paying the faculty consultants for their time working with the students and the instructional technology staff. The goal is to create a library of learning objects that can be exchanged with other institutions who are also producing their own assets thereby expanding access to learning objects for the faculty of all institutions partnered in this effort.
Estimate the probable costs associated with this practice: 

 

Four students working 20 - 25 hours per week throughout the academic year cost about $25,000 (minus, of course, vacation and holiday periods and finals time when students are encouraged to study). Each student can work on six faculty projects per week and spend about four hours on each project per week. Four students can be working on as many as 24-25 faculty projects each week.
Faculty members were paid $30.00 per hour for their one-hour time commitment per week which amounts to $450.00 per semester or $900.00 per year per faculty member. Twenty faculty members worked with us throughout the 2002-2003 academic year at a cost of $9000.00 per semester.
The eMedia Place which houses the workstations and software that the students use cost approximately $28,000 to set up in the first year.
Useful Links: 
Learning objects examples - must register
Contact(s) for this Effective Practice
Effective Practice Contact: 
Michael Kolitsky
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