I am designing the first online masters level curriculum that will serve as the foundation for future online courses. The University has chosen Servant Leadership & Global Sustainability. My research of current and past online curricula for this University indicates that, for the most part, professors use a limited set of tools found on Blackboard. They upload written material. Post multiple-choice questions quizzes, and utilize simple PowerPoint presentations. One professor has used an audio version of his lectures. The use of video is often in-house productions that are embedded into the written material with little concern of updating the material or the videos. There are some attempts to use group pages to form learning teams, but this is not a requirement. I have included a ning website in my curriculum ( http://slviterbo.ning.com/ )

To date, my critical friends, the professors of the Theology / Philosophy Department, who hired me to write the curriculum have not responded to my invitation. I am also building a Servant-Leader Wiki ( http://servant-leader.wikispaces.com/ ). It will take a series of email invitations and a few face to face meetings to achieve an educational alignment, if not agreement, with by fellow educational partners. Why Ning? I need to form strong online learning cohorts. My students are teachers, business professionals, health care professionals, and nonprofit executive directors. The target audience is made up of fifteen students broken into thee learning cohorts. Each learning cohort needs to work as a unit and also work with the other two cohorts. Each individual student needs to create a personal-professional e-portfolio visible to all. I have decided to use Google’ e portfolio. Dr. Helen C. Barret’s Professional Portfolio at A Glance presents a great template. ( http://eportfolios.googlepages.com/portfolio-at-a-glance )

I need to create a fluency of learning. I think Del.icio.us will be a great help in this allowing everyone to share their research bookmarks.

TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/geoff_mulgan_post_crash_investing_in_a_better_world_1.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/olafur_eliasson_playing_with_space_and_light.html