MCO Conference Tuesday

MCO stands for Massachusetts Colleges Online, a consortium of all the community colleges and state colleges in Massachusetts to share resources and promote best practices related to online teaching. Today I attended the first day of a statewide conference. Last year a course I teach online received a COD (Course of Distinction) award from them. This year Candace Sshulenburg from CCCC received one for her developmental psychology class. I also attended a presentation by Susan Goldstein from Mount Wachusett Community College, who is receiving an award for her online journalism class. I was pleasantly surprised to see that she uses the textbook I wrote in her class!



The keynote speaker, Dr. Gerard L. Hanley, spoke about MERLOT, a Web site that indexes and organizes thousands of resources available for free that can be useful for online teaching. It looks fascinating. Check it out: www.merlot.org

I learned a lot about online teaching, but, after driving to Lowell and back in the morning and evening rush hours, I am too tired to explain it all here!