October 20, 2008

Hello Developers,

With the 100% completion date 2 weeks away I would like to spend this blog reviewing a few reminders to make sure you double check before the peer advisers go in to take a look at your course:

• You will want to make sure your course includes student to student interaction, engages the students, motivates the students, uses student centered techniques, and is free of errors (typos/spelling, etc.).
• It is important that students use their critical thinking skills in every course. They should have an opportunity to tell others their opinions and then discuss them, rather than always just stating facts and figures.
• Assignments should be creative - they shouldn't always be question and answer from the book. Encourage students to do activities and report back on what they learned. These types of assignments will help them learn more than simply learning everything from a book.
• Double check to make sure the total points in your course calendar matches the total points in the grade book.
• Add in some additional learning tools such as Books 24 X 7 or online journals. If you are not sure what online journals are available for your course topic please don't hesitate to contact Elaine, the online librarian. If you need her contact information just let me know!
• Remember that students should work in the course approximately 1 hour/credit/week as well as work outside of the course approximately 1 - 3 hours/credit/week. Also, as the course increases in number (100 level vs. 400 level) you should expect that students taking the higher level course have become more proficient in the material offered due to an increase in the amount of pre-requisite courses that are required. Therefore, upper division courses should contain readings, assignments, discussions, and exams that require a deeper evaluation of the course material.
• Make sure every unit has a reading assignment, discussion board, external link, and assignment at a minimum.

Thank you for all of your hard work this quarter! Only 2 more weeks left and one more blog for this development cycle. Please make sure to let me know if you have any questions or concerns at all!!

Amy

October 13, 2008

Hello Developers!

This week I will be going into your courses to check for 75% completion. The 100% completion date is November 3rd and at that time there will be peer advisers that will be going into your courses to give you feedback on your development. Please let me know if you have questions about the peer advising process. If you finish your course before the 100% completion deadline please let me know!

Globe Education Network made it into the Star Tribune today! Here is a link to the most recent article posted today about our new campus opening up in the IDS center in Downtown Minneapolis: http://www.startribune.com/business/30706574.html?elr=KArksUUUU

The students that enroll at the new IDS center campus will be technically residential students, but we know that many of our residential students very much enjoy to take some (or a lot!) of their courses online. The type of student that will be attracted to this location will likely be the working professional so we can definitely expect to see these busy students in our online courses. I hope you enjoy reading the article!

Amy

October 6, 2008

Hello Developers,

Just a reminder that the 75% completion date is on Monday. If you have concerns about meeting this deadline please contact me ASAP. Additionally, please be sure to look over your online course development users guide to make sure that you didn't miss anything in the course of your developments.

In this months edition of Online Classroom there is an article that discusses how to develop interaction activities for distance education. Students often have a tendency to feel isolated and alone in online classrooms. As a course developer it is important that you develop the course in such a way to foster a sense of community in the classroom. There are a number of interactions that need to take place in order for a sense of community to be present:

• instructor to learner
• learner to instructor
• learner to learner
• learner to content
• learner to medium
• learner to context

This article will discuss how to incorporate all of these types of interactions throughout your development. To check out this months edition of Online Classroom follow the instructions below:

To access Online Classroom simply go to www.magnapubs.com/licenses/suscribe.html. Enter your individual email address and password as well as the other required information. You will need to enter a Voucher Code and PIN number where prompted - I have e-mailed this information to you.

September 29, 2008

Hello Developers,

Back even 15 years ago, many of our students didn't know how to use e-mail. Papers were allowed to be turned in when they were written by hand and people had no idea what "Google" was. I remember when I would send letters through the US Mail to my friends who lived across the country because it was too expensive to call and I didn't have a computer in my house. Wow, how times have certainly changed! And you are a big part of the change!

These days our students are coming to Globe Education Network with an expectation of being able to take online courses. The courses you are developing are being asked for by our students and as I mentioned last week, more and more students are taking online courses. They are coming to us knowing how to use web cameras, how to put videos on YouTube, how to sync their e-mails to go directly to their cell phones, and so much more. Now, it is even becoming more common for students to be taking online or hybrid courses in high school. Here is a link to an article that discusses an entire high school that offers all of its courses in a hybrid format: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/news-by-subject/curriculum/index.cfm?i=54655

The fact that students have all of this knowledge when they come to us pushes us to do our best in the development of our online courses. It is important that we use the technology that we have available to us to meet all of the student learning styles. Students are used to being able to be a part of a community in the online world through social networking web sites. It is important that we create this type of community environment in our courses. The stage has certainly be set, now it is up to us to create courses that are going to provide our students with the best learning environment possible.

We have 50% of the development period left for this development cycle. I challenge you to push yourselves to be creative and come up with assignments that are going to both challenge and engage our students. I look forward to seeing what all of you have created when I go into check your courses at the 75% completion date!

Have a great week!

September 22, 2008

Hello Developers!

Today marks another check point. I will be going into your courses this week to look for 50% completion. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Today I would like to highlight an article titled: The School Bell Rings Online. http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080917/BUSINESS/809170364/1003

This article discusses a number of things that I feel are important to developers. First, the number of students taking online education is increasing. From 2002 to 2006 enrollment has nearly doubled to 3.5 million students! Second, there is still a very large scare about diploma mills. Diploma mills exist, but Globe Education Network is not one of them. The requirements that you follow during your development come directly from ACICS (Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools). Third, this article discusses both fully online courses as well as hybrid courses. It is important for you to know that the courses you are currently developing are being used for both purposes. Additionally, the material you develop is also becoming available to all residential instructors.

All of these factors come together to show you the importance of the courses you are developing. Students are relying on these courses for a quality education and residential and hybrid instructors are relying on the information you give them to help guide them in teaching their classes.

Thank you for your dedication to these courses and I look forward to going into your shells this week and taking a look at the material you have developed thus far!

September 15, 2008

Good Morning Developers!

I apologize for missing last week - it has been busy lately! I hope all of you are on track to meet the completion date of September 22nd - as always, please let me know if you have concerns about meeting this deadline. This week I would like to make sure that I remind you of a few things as you do your developments:

• On the Unit Content page where you write your unit introductions and objectives you will see that there are dates already included in this area. You will notice that the dates are an HTML code that is embedded within this area. Please do not change the dates or the HTML code. We have set it up so that all of the courses have the same code and instead of going into each course to change the dates every quarter, we simply have to change this copied code and it automatically updates in all of the courses. This is a HUGE time saver on our end :-) So, no need to change any dates or figure out what the dates of the next quarter is going to be, we will take care of that for you in administration!
• Please remember that if you are creating tests in your course that you will want to add the "no print" feature to your tests. I have attached the "how to" document to the e-mail I sent to all of you. If you have questions about this please let me know, but the basic theory is that we want to add this code to the tests so that students can't print them out and study the questions or give the questions to their friends. It is just an extra safeguard.
• All documents should be created using, or converted to, Office 97 - 2003. When you create any documents with the Office 2007 suite, if the person who is opening the documents does not have MS Office 2007 or the Office 2007 file converter plug-in the files will not open. If you are unsure of how to save your 2007 documents as 97 - 2003 please let me know and I will send you instructions.

Have a great week!

Amy

September 2, 2008

Good Morning,

Can you believe how fast the summer went - I hope you all enjoyed the long Labor Day weekend! With September arriving, our first 25% checkpoint is upon us. I will be going into your courses this week to check for 25% completion.

As we develop online courses it is important to stay in touch with the current research regarding online technologies. In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education there was a report on digital textbooks and whether or not students preferred the digital textbook over the printed textbook.

At Globe Education Network we use a combination of both, but for the most part have stuck with printed textbooks and supplement with online resources. It looks like we are on track for now. 75% of surveyed students prefer a printed textbook over an electronic one. And 60% said that even if a free digital copy were available, they would still pay for a low-cost print version. As you ask students to read information online, please keep this information in mind. Your students will often print out the information so that they have it in paper form. To read more from this article please visit:

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3272&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Have a great week!

Amy