New Virtual U - Training

Virtual Update Newsletter

A community of professors lead by UPenn's Institute for Research on Higher Education has formed a peer community and newsletter located at:

www.virtualupdate.org.

This community offers feature articles and discussions with leading higher-ed administration educators who are using Virtual U in their programs.

As use of Virtual U has grown we have begun to collect a number of useful reports, papers, and sample syllabus materials from professors and institutions using Virtual U. We are working to make as many of these available on our Web site as we can. If you would like to post materials of your own including sample assignments, saved games, papers on results, and more please email the materials and your permission requirements to bsawyer@virtual-u.org

We have the following materials and papers available thus far:

Dr. Massy Seminar Notes
The Powerpoint materials developed by William Massy which were used at our previous Virtual U seminars and other speaking engagements. These materials provide further background information into the development and use of Virtual U for both practitioners, students, professors and trainers.

To veiw these you must have Powerpoint. You can download a free viewer for Microsoft PowerPoint here.

Indiana State University: VU Class Syllabus
Our first comprehensive classroom syllabus is now available! Thanks to Joshua Powers of Indiana State University for making this available to the community. Please contact Joshua for more information and permission to utilize this in your classroom.

Indiana State University: VU Scavenager Hunt Assignment
Joshua Powers of Indiana State University has created a novel assignment for helping students initially learn the layout of the Virtual U software.

University of Pennsylvannia: Higher Ed class and undergrad competition use
Doug Toma from the University of Pennsylvania's Insititute for Research in Higher Education (IRHE) sent us this interesting report: The Ware College House Virtual U. Competition: Introducing Virtual U. to Penn Undergraduates for all to read and learn from. It details use of VU in a student competition on campus and using Virtual U. in Graduate Level Teaching at Penn: Case Studies in Higher Education Management (Spring, 2001)

Very Useful Hints for Using Virtual U
Joshua Powers of Indiana State includes this information with his student syllabus. It details a few key issues students should know about VU.

Using Virtual U in Consultant and Training Situations
Virtual U is not only an ideal classroom tool for a full semester, it is also useful for one-day workshops or several-day retreats. It can be a positive tool for consulting with any group of university operation stakeholders such as faculty, administrative personnel, collegiate-oriented sales forces, etc. The Virtual U project team has organized several one- and two-day workshops and presentations based on Virtual U and the results have been quite positive. This article uses our experiences to illustrate how you can use Virtual U in educational settings such as these. Ben Sawyer of the Virtual U Project Team offers tips and advice on creating 1-2 day workshops or seminars using Virtual U.