Alan Levine, Maricopa Community Colleges
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/show/stories.html

part of the "learning objects lounge" at...
EDUCAUSE / NLII Focus Session on Learning Objects
October 10, 2003

Watch our DVD of real-world experiences of faculty
who have contributed and/or re-used content from the
Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX)
[screen shot of DVD menu].

Charlene Thiessen directs and teaches the Medical Transcription program at GateWay Community College. This program is taught completely online. In Charlene's interview, she first describes how she has adopted the use of an MLX package on grammar created by English faculty Alisa Cooper (South Mountain Community College) as a review for her students, since perfect grammar is desired for medical transcriptions.

Keebook Grammar Book
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=946

Charlene also describes the concept behind one of the MLX packages she has created, a powerpoint file she uses to help students review word parts. A medical word is presented, then the suffix is given, prefix (if appropriate) and then the word root. This is used as both a class review exercise and class supplement.

HCC145AA Analyze and Define
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=379

All of Charlene's MLX Packages
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=00250

Marylyn Bradley is an adjunct faculty who teaches economics at Estrella Mountain Community College. As a part-time instructor, she was pleased to find a resource to find existing course materials in the MLX.

In her video, Marylyn describes how show has adopted the MLX package "A Market for Human Organs? (Webquest)" created by Mary McGlasson and Nancy Short (Chandler-Gilbert Community College). This activity was designed for students to learn the economic principles of supply and demand by using a rather non-traditional commodity- human kidneys. "This exercise leads the students through a series of data sites to examine these questions, and asks the student to do some cost/benefit analysis of his/her own" and also address issues of cost/benefits, ethics, and social implications of our current policy on the sale of human organs.

Marylyn shares she created a two activity based on this MLX package, and added a component of policy implications by having her students write letters to congressional representatives after they have analyzed the issue.

A Market for Human Organs? (Webquest)
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=451

Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo is in her second year as an English faculty member at Mesa Community College. In her interview, she describes a number of MLX packages she has created, large and small, and her extra efforts to help "contextualize" her items. This includes providing all of the web content someone else would need to re-purpose them, along with selections of meaningful examples, and tips students and faculty might need to use her items.

In her MLX package on "Classical & Contemporary Arrangement", Shelley provides a resource rich overview of different models for arrangement of information in both written and oral form. It is a "large" item she does not expect her students to use or anyone else in its entirety, but hopes people can pick and choose relevant portions.

She also describes "Using Outside Sources", a reference and guide for any subject that would require written works, making use of external resources along with her own developed suggestions and checklists for writers.

Classical & Contemporary Arrangement
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=952

Using Outside Sources
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=954

Among her "smaller" MLX packages are a number of "discussion prompts" that Shelley has deployed in her online English courses. These are structured activities designed to engage students in online dialogue, and in the interview, she not only describes its success, but how some of the activities developed for her online classes have been strengthened by suggestions from students in her face to face ones.

Pathos: Emotional Arguments
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=980

Descriptive Details: Characters
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=916

All of Shelley's MLX Packages
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=00410

Patricia Cardenas-Adame is a 2003-2004 Faculty In Progress Program (FIPP) intern at Mesa Community College, and as part of this internship is teaching English for the first time. After participating in a demonstration of the MLX she quickly started reviewing content for teaching ideas. First looking at just the MLX items tagged with "English" in the discipline field, she eventually expanded her scope, and read in detail more than 350 MLX packing slips.

Among the MLX packages she has already used is an ice breaker activity, the "Circle of Friends" as well as a number of grouping activities she uses to assign students to different collaborative groups, using a modified version of Melinda Rudibaugh's "Red Pen".

Class-Building = Circle of Names
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=575

Red Pen
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=597

In her interview, Patricia describes how she uses parts of some of the larger MLX English 102 activities created by Miguel Fernandez (Phoenix College) as well as a number of the PowerPoint and related activities added to the MLX by Alisa Cooper (South Mountain Community College). She shares too how she found useful materials from other disciplines (e.g. Biology, Geology).

Miguel's Fernandez's MLX Packages
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=00287

Alisa Cooper's MLX Packages
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=00315

"Lora" and "Boris" are not real faculty but personas we set up as a scenario for describing how faculty members from different disciplines (Lora is a geologist and Boris teaches literature) might us RSS technology to discover the same "object" in the MLX, use their weblogs to provide context on how they might use it, and then connect their use of it back to the MLX using Trackback.

Lora and Boris made their premiere August 2003 in a presentation at the MERLOT 2003 conference and appear also at the New Media Consortium online conference on Learning Objects (Oct 14-17, 2003). For the latter, they have voices to tell their story as well, using the new technology "Breeze" from Macromedia (to be made available here after the conference).

• Syndicating Learning Objects with RSS and Trackback
  Merlot 2003 International Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, Aug 5-8, 2003
  http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/merlot03/
• Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs
  New Media Consortium Online Conferece on Learning Objects
  October 14-17, 2003
• Geology Objects
  Lora's blog
  http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lora/
• Object Human
  Boris' blog
  http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/boris/