May 19, 2010

Hello Developers!

This week marks the start of our new course development cycle; all of you are beginning the development of courses for Fall Quarter, 2010.

Speaking of new….allow me to introduce myself to those of you who may not know me: I am Kelly Schmidt, and I’ll be taking over as Manager of Online Course Development as Heather transitions back into teaching and technology training. While I am taking the lead on this new development cycle, Heather will continue working in development through the end of June, so please feel free to contact either of us if you have any questions or concerns.

I want to thank all of you for your willingness to work on these new courses and for the effort you put into your developments. As course developers, great online courses start with you! The course you design will be used by any instructor who teaches the class online...in fact, most online faculty take the master course content and run with it as is – making minimal, if any, additions or enhancements of their own. Therefore, we rely on you – our developers – to create courses that are engaging, organized, and rigorous to ensure our instructors have a good foundation for teaching the content and, more importantly, to ensure our students have a quality online learning experience. (All this pressure, I know…and it’s only the first week of the cycle – some of you may not have even cracked the course textbook yet!)

That being said, my job is to offer assistance, support, and motivation as you develop your courses. As the cycle progresses, I will be blogging more about various resources and enhancements that you might find useful in your developments. A big focus of mine during this development cycle will be on helping you create a strong connection in your courses with the GEN Online Library – both with Elaine Settergren, our stellar Online Librarian, and with the numerous resources the online library website offers for students and faculty. Look for more on that in the weeks to come…

A few final notes as you get started:

• Your 12-unit shells have been created and you should have access to them in Blackboard.
• If you have developed courses for GEN in the past, you are likely familiar with the Online Course Development Checklist as well as the Peer Advising survey. If you are a first-timer, please take a look at these documents, as they will help guide your development from the perspective of what we want to see as the final course development.
• The 25% completion date is June 7, 2010. I look forward to seeing the start of your developments at that time! However, in the meantime, please feel free to keep me updated on any progress you make or contact me with any questions that arise.

I look forward to working with all of you on these new developments. Have a great week everyone!

Kelly

November 9, 2009

Hello Everyone,



For those of you that are completing your developments, the peer review process starts today. Here is a link to the questions that the peer advisors answer when they go through your courses. If there is something that you would like to have them look at specifically in your course please let me know and I will pass the information onto them! Thank you to all of you for your hard work this quarter!

There are also those of you that are just beginning your developments for the Spring 2010 roll out (crazy that we are thinking of spring when it is only November!). Please go through the blog and familiarize yourself with all of the great resources that are available here for you.


Additionally, for both groups of developers I wanted to give you a few resources today that would be helpful to you no matter where you are at in the development process:


Here is a training on how a GEN course looks when it is completed This is a 5 minute "walk through" example of an introduction level course and how the announcements, readings, assignments, discussion boards, external links and exams are identified.

Here is a training on how to determine if the course calendar matches up with the grade center I often give the feedback that the course calendar doesn't exactly match the total in the grade center. If you are unsure of what I mean by this feedback please see this 2 minute "walk through" example.

Here is a link to the Top 100 Tools for Learning in 2009. This list is compiled by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies and is well worth the look!


Have a great week!


Amy

Peer Advising Survey

1. Do you feel that the content in the course is written at the appropriate level?
2. Is the course split into manageable segments?
3. Are visual and auditory stimuli used to motivate students?
4. Are appropriate supplementary resources made available as part of the course content?
5. Does the use of technology enable critical reflection and analysis of content?
6. Do the assignments/activities that require the use of technology clearly explain how technology is to be used by the students
7. Do you believe the instructional strategies employed in the course cause students to be effectively engaged with course content
8. Do you believe that the expectations defining or explaining required levels of student participation are clear
9. Do you believe there is a deliberate attempt to create a learning community through the following methods: Discussions, E-mail, Chat Rooms, Videoconferencing, Group Projects, or other collaborative activities
10. Do you believe the assessments/assignments in the course are aligned with the stated objectives/learning outcomes

August 10, 2009

Hello Developers,

Today is the 100% completion date for all Fall Quarter, 2009 developments.


Today the peer advisors will be going into the courses and completing a feedback sheet. This feedback sheet will give you the information you need to complete your development. Once you have worked in the necessary feedback I will copy your 12 week master course into a 10 week master course and you can complete your development by converting your course to the 10 unit lay out (some of you have done the 10 week conversion already, and if this is the case then please work feedback into both master shells).

Thank you for all of your hard work this quarter, the courses are of high quality and I look forward to getting the feedback from the peer advisers!

I wanted to leave you with a wonderful website on educational blogging. The Support Blogging wiki has been set up to provide an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging.

There is a list of hundreds of educational blogs, a list of great web resources on educational blogging, and a community of people to contact with any questions you have about blogging.

Even if you don’t want to start your own blog, there is a wealth of information on this site for how to encourage blogging in your classrooms or even just hundreds of blogs that give you information and resources on education as a trade.

Have fun playing with this wiki!