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Category: CAT & Mouse: E-Learning

Published on Leave a comment on Ensuring Student Success in Online Courses

by Janice Florent

students putting together puzzle pieces leading toward success as a goal

Many students enroll in online classes because of the convenience and flexibility. Some students mistakenly believe taking an online course is going to be easier than a face-to-face class. It is important that students understand online courses require greater responsibility/ownership for their own learning.

In a recent Faculty Focus article, Poonam Kumar, EdD and Marilyn Skrocki, listed a few simple strategies and techniques instructors can do at the course level to support students’ success in online classes. Those strategies and techniques are:

  • Clearly communicate expectations
  • Prepare students
  • Course organization and layout
  • Chunk the content and scaffold instruction
  • Humanize the course

Following these strategies and techniques can help students to succeed in online courses. If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in the Ensuring Student Success in Online Courses article.

Published on Leave a comment on Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day!

by Karen Nichols

Just a quick note about Global Accessibility Awareness Day.  CAT + has posted often on the topic of accessibility and the importance of design features in our courses that benefit ALL learners.  But I think this organization has really good intentions--"The purpose of GAAD is to get people talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) accessibility and users with different disabilities" so I thought I would share the web address with you.

In 2011 blogger John Devon posted on accessibility issues, especially in technology, and his blog sparked enough interest to create GAAD.

Take a look at their site, join in some of the activities and like them on Facebook if you appreciate their efforts.  Thank you, merci, gracias (their site is not only accessible, but is multi-lingual!).

various accessibility icons

Published on Leave a comment on Engaging Students in eLearning

by Janice Florent

engaging students in eLearning infographic

Engaging students in eLearning can be more challenging than in a face-to-face class. Follow the 5 do's presented in the Engaging Students in eLearning Infographic to create an engaging online course for your students.

5 Tips To Engage Your Students in eLearning

  1. Stay Relevant - All content, heading, and subheading should be relevant to the course.
  2. Stay Organized - Keep the screen neat and clutter-free. You never want to distract the student from your content.
  3. Keep it Interesting - Both your content and your design should be interesting to the student.
  4. Remain Up-To-Date - Update your course often to ensure your content is always accurate.
  5. Add Interactions - Only add interactions that are necessary, such as links, videos, or file downloads.

Published on Leave a comment on Great STEM resource (and other disciplines too)!

by Karen Nichols

At last month's OLC Innovate Conference here in New Orleans, I attended many interesting sessions. I found the one on Brainfacts.org particularly useful and would like to share it with you.

The Brainfacts site is the brainchild of the Society for Neuroscience.  According to the presenter, Alissa Ortman, the original intent was to publish correct information in easy to understand language and dispel myths about their field.  The site, which now has numerous partners and contributors, is a safe, reliable resource for you to recommend to your students.  The contributors are all vetted and the information is presented using a variety of tools and platforms and written at about a tenth-grade level.  You can also sign up for their blog, or follow them on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Information for Educators, the Press and Policymakers may be accessed from the top right of the homepage.  The information has been curated into 6 categories in a dropdown format which can be accessed from several different webpages.  They are:  About Neuroscience, Brain Basics, Sensing, Thinking & Behaving, Diseases & Disorders, Across the Lifespan, and In Society.

Here are a few links to give you a sample of the information and formats:

Video:  Why Does Food Make Your Mouth Water?

Podcast: Patient HM and His Missing Memories

Blog:  Zika:  10 Things to Know

I'm following Brainfacts.org on both Facebook and Twitter and I hope you'll find the information interesting and useful too.

coNeCte|BlogdaSociedadeBrasileiradeNeurociênciase

Published on Leave a comment on Going from Face-to-face to Online Teaching

by Janice Florent

woman sitting at a table looking at mobile device with a laptop computer nearby

Successfully moving courses online involves more than simply transferring what you are currently doing in your face-to-face class to the online class. If your aim is to create a meaningful online learning experience with long-lasting effects, you will have to rethink the way you teach.

In a recent Faculty Focus article, Rob Kelly quoted Professor Paul Caron who said,

If you simply take your face-to-face class and put it online and teach it electronically, you will fail miserably.

Rob goes on to list some challenges with moving your course online and ways you can overcome them. They are,

Communicate frequently. The online learning environment lacks the visual and auditory cues that instructors and students often take for granted in the face-to-face classroom. This lack of visual and auditory cues can hinder the ability to develop rapport, motivate, and engage students.

Use multimedia. Multimedia can stimulate more than one sense at a time, and in doing so, may be more attention-getting and attention-holding than just using text alone. You can build a community with audio and increase your presence with video.

Monitor “attendance.” Online courses require students to be self-directed learners. If students are not accessing the course regularly and keeping up with their course work they are less likely to be successful in the course.

Make the subject relevant. One of the challenges of teaching a core course is that students aren’t automatically interested in the subject. When students see how the course is relevant to them, they stay interested. Invite guest speakers to provide career specific examples or include “real world” examples to illustrate course content. Design assignments to be flexible and allow students to pursue interests.

Rather than trying to replicate the face-to-face classroom, online, you want to design an experience that engages students in learning in a way that fosters their interest and curiosity, and ultimately facilitates deep-level learning that comes to them by way of technology. (Parker, 2013).

If this blog post has piqued your interest, you can read more in the Faculty Focus article, From F2F to Online: Getting It Right as well as the following blog posts:

Image Credit: African American Browsing by rawpixel from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Yes, you can add service learning to online courses!

by Karen Nichols with contributions by Jeremy Tuman

Jeremy Tuman, our faculty-in-residence for service learning, recently collaborated with me on a presentation about adding service learning to online courses. I'd like to share our presentation with you and invite you to provide any feedback you may have. Thank you!

Published on Leave a comment on Conversation #43: Robert Crow on Distance Education

Download Conversation #43

Robert CrowA conversation with Dr. Robert Crow of Western Carolina University (WCU) on teaching, learning, and distance education.

Robert Crow, Ph. D., is an assistant professor of educational research. Before joining the faculty in the College of Education and Allied Professions, Dr. Crow served as Coordinator of Instructional Development & Assessment for WCU's Coulter Faculty Commons, working primarily in faculty professional development. Dr. Crow's expertise in assessment and evaluation has led to collaborations with other 4-year institutions, community colleges, PK-12 schools, and institutional accreditation agencies such as SACS-COC. Dr. Crow's research interests include assessment and evaluation of student learning and of learning environments.

Links for this episode:

...continue reading "Conversation #43: Robert Crow on Distance Education"

Published on Leave a comment on Dr. Amanda Helm’s Self-Graded Checklists

checklist

Our Educational Technology Community (ETC) had a special guest presentation this past Friday. Dr. Amanda Helm, Assistant Professor in the Division of Business, demonstrated to our virtual participants how she uses Self-Graded Checklists in Blackboard, along with the adaptive release feature, to help students "grade" their work before they submit it.

Dr. Helm posts a quiz she has developed based on the instructions and rubrics she gives to students for each assignment.  The students must complete this quiz before they are able to officially submit their assignment.  When the student answers the quiz questions, they receive automatic feedback in order to improve their work before submitting, as well as an estimation of the letter grade they can expect to receive.

A variety of quiz questions are asked, depending on the project.  They may be as simple as "How long is your single-spaced typed paper?" and "How many sources did you cite?" or more complex in nature, asking content questions which are dependent on the assignment.

To learn more, here is the guest link to the virtual presentation.  It's recommended that you choose to watch the mp4 version:

https://blackboard.xula.edu/webapps/bb-collaborate-BBLEARN/recording/launchGuest?uid=9769e94d-9f6c-4c37-a3a2-ada950fbbcdb

Dr. Helm reports that her students are submitting better quality work by taking this 5 minute assessment before they can officially post their assignments.  She also says that the students have told her that they make adjustments to their work after receiving the quiz results and that her students don't mind taking the 5 minute quiz before being able to submit their work.

Thank you Dr. Helm for sharing this great idea with us!

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Published on 1 Comment on Digital Copyrights

by Janice Florent

Finding quality images, audio, video, etc. to use in your Blackboard course is one of the most important and potentially daunting aspects of developing your course. There are certain legal rights for digital content. You cannot, for example, just pull an image off of a Google image search and use it. There are some important things you should understand about digital copyrights before you use an image or other digital content that you did not create on your own.

copyright vs copyleft vs creative commons

Copyright is all about balancing the rights of authors with the rights of the public to use the work without seeking permission or paying royalties. Under copyright, authors have the right to control the use of their work subject to exceptions permitted under the law. If the use exceeds such exceptions, then infringing on someone's copyright can result in the infringer paying money damages (civil liability) and/or going to prison (criminal liability).

Copyleft (a play on the word copyright) is the practice of offering people the right to freely distribute copies and modified versions of a work with the stipulation that the same rights be preserved in derivative works down the line.

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work.

Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable.

A Creative Commons (CC) license is a public copyright license that enables the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.

The image below describes how Creative Commons licenses relates to traditional copyright and the public domain.

copyright spectrum

Here are a few links to resources to help you better understand Creative Commons licenses and copyrights:

Image credits:
copyright, copyleft, and creative commons icons found in public domain
"the spectrum of rights" by Michelle Pacansky-Brock is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Published on Leave a comment on After the deep breath, then what? Creating a virtual presence

by Karen Nichols

In my previous blogpost, I presented the benefits of vertically centering oneself by taking a long deep breath. This brief exercise can be used for face to face scenarios but also as one is preparing for a virtual meeting or even to record/video oneself for students. So, the deep breath has been taken and we're ready for ... what exactly?  How do we go about creating a virtual presence?

I like this definition of virtual presence:

Ariel Group at Pearson CITE

This definition by the Ariel Group (referenced in the previous blogpost as well) sets the stage for showing how they have adapted their PRES (being present) model to the virtual world. The vPRES (virtual presence) model is outlined in their presentation at Pearson's CITE 2015 conference.  Here's a quick overview from their presentation:

•virtually--Choose technology that supports your goals.

•PRESENT--Focus on the now. Be aware of what’s happening in the virtual space; be flexible and adaptable.

•REACHING OUT--Ask questions, use polling to obtain opinions.  Reaching out is a great relationship builder.

•EXPRESSIVE--Alignment of message and physical appearance. Communicate with energy & passion.

•SELF-KNOWING--Be self-confident. Be prepared & ready for virtual interactions. Be specific in your communication.  Use concise and clear language in spoken or written communications.

Can you see how keeping these suggestions in mind will help you during video conferences, webinars, virtual office hours and classes with your students and even when recording yourself for your students?