The Distance Education and Instructional Support (DEIS) Instructional Development Group at USC is hosting a series of audio conferences beginning in April. All conferences will be held at DEIS, Law Center, Sublevel 1 Conference Room.

The conference schedule is:

• April 8, “Combating Plagiarism in Distance Learning,” Genny Yarne, head of reference, Kirkwood Community College, 4–5 p.m. A discussion about the opportunities students have to use the Web to plagiarize papers and assignments, services faculty can use or purchase to identify plagiarists and plagiarized materials, models faculty can use to develop assignments that minimize plagiarism possibilities, and considerations for students from cultures that have little or no notion of intellectual property.
  
• April 15, “A Practical Implementation of Reusable Learning Objects,” Michael Anderson, technology manager, University of Texas System-Telecampus, 4–5 p.m. A discussion about reusable learning objects (RLOs). The University of Texas System-TeleCampus recently created and tested its RLO strategy when it migrated its courses from VCampus to Prometheus, two externally-hosted learning management systems.
  
• May 20, “Streaming Media,” Douglas Dixon, technologist and author, Sarnoff Corporation, 11 a.m.–noon. The first half of the presentation will describe the current state of the industry, business and technology, and the three major streaming formats. The second half will review a variety of desktop tools for converting and producing your own streaming media files, from format-specific tools, to export from video editors, to dedicated compression tools.
  
• May 20 “Distance Faculty Compensation and Incentives Models,” Catherine Schifter, Temple University, 4–5 p.m.
  
• June 10, “Emerging Issues and Technologies for Distance Learning,” Dan Jones, Coastline Community College, 4–5 p.m.
  

04/03