Dr. Michelle Lamberson – head of the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology – wears many hats at UBC. Her most recent accoutrement is a new group called LCIN, the Leading Campuses International Network. The group just held its first online seminar entitled “Creating Kick Butt Quality Online Courses”, featuring educators from Utah State University. (If you’d like to take part in future sessions, register here)…Q: LCIN is a great name for an information network. Who came up with the acronym? Did you just like the way it rolled off the tongue or does it have some special meaning?
The LCIN stands for “Leading Campuses International Network”. A group of long time members of the WebCT Institutes Program brainstormed together to come up with the name. The LCIN (“listen”) part is kind of meant to be fun…this is a group that has some good ideas to share and wants to hear more from other practitioners. When we thought about the name, we wanted to capture the qualities of the institutions represented in the program.
Q: Such as?…
They’ve led the pack in terms of implementing course management systems in support of their academic mission…they represent an international group…and perhaps most importantly, they want to network with one another to support effective educational practices.
Q: Who are the universities participating in LCIN?
At the July Blackboard conference many of the former institute members met and approved LCIN’s direction. To kickstart the group, we decided to put together a small Steering Committee with people from Cal State Chico, Georgia State University, University of Alberta, University of Central Florida, University of Georgia, University of Maryland, University of Northern Iowa, University of Western Ontario and of course, UBC. We’re expecting that list to grow.
Blackboard is providing us with a communication infrastructure (access to teleconference facilities, helping with marketing, etc.) and Wimba is sponsoring our Online Seminar Series.
Q: How were they picked?
LCIN’s roots are in the WebCT Institute Program. That program was conceived as a way to recognize Institutions that were promulgating best practice in terms of their use of WebCT. The program first focused on recognizing regional training expertise. But “training” people to use a course management system is not classic “Computer Based Training” (click here, follow these steps, etc.). A CMS supports a wide range of learning and teaching functions, so helping someone learn to use a CMS (selecting appropriate tools for particular learning situations) is fundamentally entwined with good pedagogy. On the technical side, making sure that the system is reliable is all about good IT practice. Very rapidly the Institute program evolved to recognize and connect institutions that were looking at implementation as a system of effective practices.
The Program was governed by a formal memorandum between the Institution and WebCT. With Blackboard buying WebCT, the group was somewhat at a crossroads. We enjoyed connecting with each other, but how were we to continue and advance the work of the group in this newer context? What was the value? Ultimately, I think we decided the value was in each other — in fact many of these relationships started prior to the Institute Program. I still remember meeting some of the people from these institutions at the first WebCT conference in 1999!
After a number of telephone based meetings last Spring, we proposed that we re-constitute ourselves as a more independent entity focused on showcasing good practice and organizing professional development events. Hence our first effort is the online seminar series!
Q: What are you hoping to achieve by setting up LCIN and connecting all those Leading Campuses?
We really want to connect people with good ideas and learn from one another! Our initial focus is on professional development opportunities that involve information sharing. If you take a look at the list of topics of the online seminar series, they are meant to represent common issues that people face, loosely formulated around the CMS – though we will likely stray from that a bit. The Fall series focuses on course design, whereas the Spring focuses on teaching practices.
Q: How does LCIN differ from Educause and other existing educational networks? Was there an information gap that had to be filled?
We’re not Educause… that’s a very large organization with a wide ranging mandate and we’re not looking to re-create that. We’re building on existing connections between institutions that have shared the experience of “going enterprise” with a course management system. Many of us are members of Educause, as well as other organizations. What’s nice about that is that we can get together at Educause and other meetings, making those events seem smaller! I don’t think it’s an information gap that needed to be filled as much as creating an opportunity to share amongst people with common interests, issues and history.
Q: We notice you’ve avoided using the term ‘Webinars’ for your online seminars. Is that by design?
Not really…. We never even thought of calling them that…
Q: Where do LCIN organizers want to go next? Where do they want to be a year from now?
Next? Wow.. we’re just really happy to have done what we have done so far – just putting this together was actually a major milestone for us. As Institutes, we’ve been discussing doing something together like this for a few years, but something (like our professional lives) seemed to prevent that from getting off the ground. Perhaps by re-focusing on the group as a whole, and the value of the network, we created the momentum we needed to get going.
Our next steps are about strengthening the network, engaging with all of the former institutes and see who else might be interested in contributing. But first we have to get our website and such together so there is somewhere to go to find more information! Our goal is to have resources linked to each of the talks – allowing people to link their campus based resources to the LCIN website. We’re likely going to use some variant of social bookmarking for that…. Hmm… lots to think about and do!
Q: Where can people go to learn more about LCIN or offer suggestions to help the organization grow?
We’ve established a weblog based website that is pretty rudimentary at this point. That site will grow over the next month or so. It does have the seminar listings now…
Needless to say – we’re a work in progress but we think we’ll have a wonderful time and we know we’ll help people along the way. Our goal is simple – to advance the effective use of course technologies by connecting people with good ideas!
Article published in the September 2007 issue of e-Strategy Update