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!
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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!
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!
Monday, September 15, 2008
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:
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
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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
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
Monday, August 25, 2008
August 25th, 2008
Good Morning!
As a reminder the 25% completion deadline is fast approaching. It is Monday, September 1st which is only one week away! Offices are closed on Monday, September 1st so I will begin to go into your courses on Tuesday, September 2nd. If you have any concerns about meeting that deadline please let me know.
I want to remind all of you that here at Globe Education Network all of our employees can subscribe to Online Classroom for free. Online Classroom provides practical advice and examples of proven, research-based pedagogical techniques to help instructors and course developers create and teach outstanding courses. 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. Enter the following Voucher Code and PIN number where prompted:
As a reminder the 25% completion deadline is fast approaching. It is Monday, September 1st which is only one week away! Offices are closed on Monday, September 1st so I will begin to go into your courses on Tuesday, September 2nd. If you have any concerns about meeting that deadline please let me know.
I want to remind all of you that here at Globe Education Network all of our employees can subscribe to Online Classroom for free. Online Classroom provides practical advice and examples of proven, research-based pedagogical techniques to help instructors and course developers create and teach outstanding courses. 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. Enter the following Voucher Code and PIN number where prompted:
- Voucher Code: MSB
- PIN: 1010
There is a new issue that just came out today and it contains an article about synchronous learning. Here at Globe Education Network we typically design our courses as being asynchronous, but try to work in synchronous learning through instructor office hours. However, a great way to work in a simulated version of synchronous learning is to provide students with audio lectures. Please let me know if you have an interest in adding audio lectures to your course and I would be happy to help you with that process! We have gotten great feedback from students about the benefits that audio lectures provide them. They enjoy listening to the content to get the material in a different fashion.
Have a great week!
Amy
Monday, August 18, 2008
August 18, 2008
Good Morning!
I would like to take a little time this morning to talk about rubrics. I believe I have mentioned them in the past, but this topic is important enough to talk about again. Rubrics are a simple way to set up a grading criteria for assignments. This tool is useful for both students and instructors so that everyone knows what is expected of a student to receive a certain grade on an assignment.
When you are creating your assignments please remember to clearly write out what the expectations are. Rather than simply asking students to "answer a question" identify what you are looking for from their answers. Because these students are taking online courses, they may not feel as comfortable asking questions because the personal relationship with the instructor is a little bit more difficult to form. Therefore it is very important to give them all of the needed information up front.
There is a lot of information on the web about rubrics. Here are a few web sites that can give you a little bit more information on this topic:
www.uen.org/rubric/html/know.html
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/teaching-methods-and-management/rubrics/4521.html
Have a great week!
Amy
I would like to take a little time this morning to talk about rubrics. I believe I have mentioned them in the past, but this topic is important enough to talk about again. Rubrics are a simple way to set up a grading criteria for assignments. This tool is useful for both students and instructors so that everyone knows what is expected of a student to receive a certain grade on an assignment.
When you are creating your assignments please remember to clearly write out what the expectations are. Rather than simply asking students to "answer a question" identify what you are looking for from their answers. Because these students are taking online courses, they may not feel as comfortable asking questions because the personal relationship with the instructor is a little bit more difficult to form. Therefore it is very important to give them all of the needed information up front.
There is a lot of information on the web about rubrics. Here are a few web sites that can give you a little bit more information on this topic:
www.uen.org/rubric/html/know.html
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/teaching-methods-and-management/rubrics/4521.html
Have a great week!
Amy
Monday, August 11, 2008
August 11, 2008
We have now started the new round of development! Welcome to you if you are a new developer and you are new to the process - we are happy to have you aboard :-) Please take some time to look back on past posts in this blog to get ideas for your development. Even if you aren't new to online development it is always good to look back to use ideas from the past!
Company News:
Starting this fall quarter we will be offering online programs to students out in Utah! In the past Utah students have taken GU/MSB courses online through a consortium agreement, but now the courses are being developed for Utah Career College students as well! What does this mean for development? Mainly, please stay away from referring to Globe University or Minnesota School of Business in your verbiage. Additionally, as always, as you are creating your courses, please remember that students all over the country will be taking them. This means that if you mention something local or Minnesota specific, students may not understand what you are referring to.
General Updates:
The 25% completion date will be upon us before we know it - September 1st is the date. If you are having trouble getting your textbook or getting started please let me know ASAP. As you are starting your development please take a look at what items might be good as an audio lecture. You can send them to me right away so I can get started working on them to have them up and running for you. All I need is a power point presentation and a script! Also, if you would like to have a "review quiz" in the middle of the presentation or as a stand alone this is also possible. The review quizzes could test a student's knowledge without counting in the grade book. This is a wonderful way to test reading/listening comprehension.
Have fun with starting your new developments!
Amy
Company News:
Starting this fall quarter we will be offering online programs to students out in Utah! In the past Utah students have taken GU/MSB courses online through a consortium agreement, but now the courses are being developed for Utah Career College students as well! What does this mean for development? Mainly, please stay away from referring to Globe University or Minnesota School of Business in your verbiage. Additionally, as always, as you are creating your courses, please remember that students all over the country will be taking them. This means that if you mention something local or Minnesota specific, students may not understand what you are referring to.
General Updates:
The 25% completion date will be upon us before we know it - September 1st is the date. If you are having trouble getting your textbook or getting started please let me know ASAP. As you are starting your development please take a look at what items might be good as an audio lecture. You can send them to me right away so I can get started working on them to have them up and running for you. All I need is a power point presentation and a script! Also, if you would like to have a "review quiz" in the middle of the presentation or as a stand alone this is also possible. The review quizzes could test a student's knowledge without counting in the grade book. This is a wonderful way to test reading/listening comprehension.
Have fun with starting your new developments!
Amy
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