December 15, 2008

Hello Developers,


Please note that next week I will be going into your courses to check for 50% completion next. I will be out of the office Wednesday, December 24th and Thursday, December 25th, but will be back in the office on Friday, December 26th.

Blackboard 8.0:

On December 24th we will be converting to Blackboard 8.0. This version includes a "Grade Center" instead of the Grade book. The new Grade Center is more robust and contains more features. I have e-mailed out the "how to" document on the new Grade Center so be sure to read through it so that you are familiar with it for the remainder of your development.


**Please refrain from doing any of your development work on December 24th and December 25th. Because the conversion will be during this time we would like to keep Blackboard usage to a minimum to help ensure that the rollover is a success.


Ten Week Summers:

Starting with Summer Quarter 2009 Globe Education Network will offer summer quarters on a 10 week schedule instead of a 12 week schedule. We have done this to improve summer retention and offer our students a more desirable summer break. This means that for every master course we create, we need to have a 12 week shell and a 10 week shell.

When you complete your development I will copy your course into a new master labeled .10wkmaster.09SUM. You will then need to go into the 10 week master and combine the information to be delivered into 10 units instead of 12 units. Two folders will be deleted from the Unit Content Page.

When combining the curriculum you will want to think of the course as a whole to keep the "flow" of the curriculum while fitting into 10 weeks. You may want to consider:

• Is there a midterm/final?



• Is there a group project?



• Are there assignments that build on each other?



• Keep the course objectives in mind, what assignments might be eliminated, added, enhanced, or combined to make the 10 unit course as cohesive as the 12 unit course

Whether you keep all 12 discussion boards depends on the content of the discussion boards and if the content can be combined. Some courses will work better to double up on discussion boards in a unit (Discussion Board A & Discussion Board B) and some courses will be able to combine the content of two discussion boards into one discussion board while still reaching the same outcome.

Be sure to look at all areas of the course: Announcements, tests, assignments, discussion boards, unit introductions, and external links all mention unit names. Be sure to rename items so that they fit into your 10 week structure. The course calendar will also need to be converted to a 10 unit format.

HTML codes for the dates are currently in the unit folders so that they can be updated every quarter. When you have completed your 10 week/unit conversion you will need to go through each unit folder and make sure the HTML code is correct. The "how to" document on this will be coming in the next couple of weeks.

Although it creates an extra step we are very excited to be offering 10 week quarters in the summer with the expectation that more of our students will enjoy the three week break, and then persist through the summer quarter, rather than taking the quarter off. On the annual survey there was an overwhelming support from our students to offer the 10 week summer quarter.

Thanks everyone! As always please let me know if you have any questions.

Have a great week!

December 8, 2008

Good Morning Developers!

I would like to spend some time talking about interactivity and why it is necessary in online courses. Interactivity serves to minimize students' feelings of isolation and to promote critical thinking skills, learning, and retention. There are four types of interactivity:

Student to Instructor (SI): e-mail, discussion boards, graded papers and assignments, live lectures, and office hours

Student to Student (SS): e-mail, discussion boards, peer review activities, collaborative writing, group projects, chat areas, blogs, wikis, peer mentoring, debate

Student to Resource (SR): Textbook, publisher's online extras, webquests, URL exchange, guest lectures

Student to Content (SC): Reading, drill-and-practice, multimedia, Flash activities, summaries, outlines, practice quizzes

It is important to have sufficient activites that cover all four of these areas of interactions in your online course development. Many activities cross over into two or more areas of interactivity. Please use the list below to give you ideas for interaction in the courses you are developing.

• Lecture Notes: SC


• FAQ Lists: SR


• Flashcards: SC


• Drill and Practice: SC


• Webquests: SC, SR


• Virtual Field Trips: SC, SR


• Presentations/Slide Shows: SC, SS


• Workbooks: SC


• Blog Activities: SC, SI, SS


• Graded or peer-reviewed literature: SI, SS


• Graded or peer-reviewed reading summaries: SC, SI, SS


• Panel discussions: SI, SS, SR


• Simulations: SC


• Interactive games: SC


• Collaborative writing: SS


• Graded Research Projects: SC, SI, SR


• Graded Case Studies: SC, SI, SR


• Group role play activities: SS


• Debate: SS, SR


• Graded learning logs: SC


• Online portfolio work: SC, SR


• Peer mentoring activities: SC, SS


• Graded critiques activities: SC, SI, SR


• Self assessment activities: SC


• Online office hours: SI


• Email: SI, SS


• Live chats: SI, SS


• Newspaper/journal activities: SR

Additionally, here is a link to the Journal of Interactive Online Learning that contains all of their current and past editions. Check this journal out for some great ideas

Have a great week!

Amy

December 1, 2008

Hello Developers,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday! I know many of you used the days off to do some of your developing to be ready for the 25% deadline today - I will be going into your courses this week and providing you with feedback :-)

This past week the latest issue of Online Classroom became available so be sure to check out the latest information in this great newsletter! The article that I found the most interesting was titled "Document Sharing Can Help Students Collaborate". This particular article discusses using google docs to document share however we have a document sharing feature within Blackboard and students can share documents by using the "team function". I have been talking about interaction between students for quite some time now, so I was happy to see an article in this newsletter that backed up the idea of collaboration in the online environment.

If you have questions about how to access this newsletter just let me know! Have a great week - stay warm!

Amy

November 24, 2008

Good Morning Developers!

I came across an interesting article this week titled "Seven skills students desperately need" http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56127

The seven skills mentioned in the article are:

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
5. Effective written and oral communication;
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination.

As you read through the article and read through the list, think about how you are incorporating the learning of these skills in your online class. It is easy to "teach to the test" and tell students to answer end of chapter questions and answer multiple choice quiz questions when the answers are in the book. But it is a bit more challenging to teach students how to analyze information and generate curiosity and imagination. I know that all of you are up to the challenge! It is not only our job to teach our students the textbook information, but we need to be teaching them how to be successful in the workforce. If you are interested in bouncing ideas off of me I would be more than happy to discuss these with you!

As a reminder, for most of you the 25% completion deadline is on Monday. If you have questions about this or any concerns about reaching this deadline please let me know ASAP.

Have a great Thanksgiving week!

Amy

November 17, 2008

Good Morning Developers,

Some very interesting news articles came out over the past week and they contain information that will help you to keep current with where online education is in the spectrum of higher education.

Here are the links to the articles:
College life in wireless age: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/education/story/756174.html
As economy wavers, online enrollments climb: http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/13/sloan

The first article about college life in the wireless age doesn't specifically relate to taking courses in the online environment, but it is important because it helps us to understand the lives of our students and what our competition is doing in terms of everyday campus life. Web based social networks are changing the face of our interactions with each other and these types of changes will inevitably carry over into online education. These types of changes tell us that when we design online courses it is important to keep up with the changing face of communication. Students are used to interacting over the web and our assignments, discussion boards, and group projects are just a few ways that we can guide them toward that type of interaction in our courses.

The second article confirms that online education isn't going anywhere and is in fact growing at an unpredicted pace! Every year we have double-digit growth in online education and this growth might continue due to the stagnating economy. When people don't have jobs, they go back to school. Keep this in mind as you are creating your courses. It is likely that your courses will be seen by hundreds or thousands of students. The responsibility to give these students a high level of education rests in your hands and in your course design. Have fun with it! Keep your course design fresh and interesting to keep the students engaged. Remember, when people interact with each other they are likely to view their experience as a more positive one.

Have a great week!

November 10, 2008

Hello Developers,

I would like to use the blog this week to talk more about learning objects. Learning objects are a new way of thinking about learning content. Traditionally, content comes in a several hour chunk. Learning objects are much smaller units of learning, typically ranging from 2 minutes to 15 minutes. They are self contained and reusable. When you are developing your courses please try to incorporate learning objects into the content as much as you can. Online learners need to practice what they are learning and learning objects are a great way to do that.

By visiting this website from the University of Wisconsin you will find links to learning object collections and great information about how learning objects can be used in your courses:

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CIE/AOP/learningobjects.html

You can work learning objects into your courses thorough additional learning resources or by working the learning object into an assignment, discussion board, or project. There are a lot of fun ways to incorporate learning objects into your courses and I am excited to see the creative ways you all find to use them in your courses!

Stay warm!

Amy

November 3, 2008

Hello Developers!

To those of you who are new to online development I would like to welcome you and to encourage you to read this blog weekly. I use it to update everyone with announcements and up to date online development news and current information. I try to give new and fresh ideas and encourage you to try things with your development that you have never tried before. Please feel free to post comments to this blog or to e-mail me personally with any questions at aode@msbcollege.edu!

Here are a few announcements:

• By this time you all should have returned your signed contracts to me, if you haven't done so yet, please do so ASAP. Additionally, please take a couple of minutes to read through the User's Guide that I sent to you. There is a lot of information in there and even if you have read it in the past, it is always good to refresh your memory by looking through it again.
• I have ordered textbooks for all of you so if you don't receive them shortly please let me know ASAP.
• The 25% completion date is December 1st. If that deadline starts nearing and you don't believe that you will be able to make it, please drop me an e-mail and we can chat about the best way to move forward.

The following link was sent to me from Brian James and I wanted to pass it along to all of you: http://blog.lsc.edu/onlinepeerreview/

I think this blog is very interesting and is full of great information. If you have a couple minutes I would encourage you to look through it to spark some ideas for your new developments! Try to be creative with your developments - it is fun to try new assignments and projects. Not only will you be more interested in the development, but the future students of the course will be able to tell that you put in the extra effort and time to make it interesting and fun and they are likely to learn a lot more from the course. Have fun with it!

Have a great week and remember to vote!

Amy