Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Cascadia's eLearning Mentor Program

Cascadia has launched an eLearning mentor program to support "at risk" students in online classes. We identified "at risk" in talks with key stakeholders including advising. We identify students through a two pronged approach. First, we look at specific groups of students including:

  • first time taking an online class
  • taking multiple online classes in a single quarter
  • academic probation in the previous quarter
  • older or younger student
  • Returning after missing a few quarters
We also look at students in courses that traditionally have high drop outs. We are currently focusing on Phlebotomy, though Math 95 and English 101 will hopefully be included soon.  

We had our institutional researcher create a Data Express report to pull this list of students. The more indicators the student has, the higher priority they have on our list.

The program itself is 4 weeks long, beginning 2 weeks before the quarter begins.

  • Week 1 - mentors contact students, confirm that the student knows they are in an online/hybrid class and encourages them to complete Week Zero.
  • Week 2 - mentors follow up with students to confirm completion of Week Zero and to address any questions.  They also prepare the student for expectations of the first week of the quarter.
  • Week 3 (first week of quarter) - mentors run ANGEL reports to confirm that student is participating in classes, follows up with non participants.
  • Week 4 - wrap up - mentors confirm that student is doing ok and concludes support. Students who need additional support are routed to other campus resources.

The program just got started Winter 2011. When the student workers return for Spring Quarter, they will follow up with the folks they contacted in January to see how things went.  We'll use that data to see what the impact of the mentors was.

To fund this program, eLearinng applied for and won an internal Advancing Cascadia grant for $4,000 to pay for two student workers for 2 quarters.  We assisted approximately 80 students in the Winter and I hope to double that in the Spring.

Monday, January 24, 2011

More on Closed Captioning and YouTube

Ever wondered the best way to make Closed Captioning appear in a YouTube Video and have it come out almost completely right?

Here's How! Click here!

See the result!

Courtesy of Jerry Lewis, Director of eLearning and Web Services at Columbia Basin College. Thanks Jerry!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Got Videos - Need subtitles?

As more instructors add video recordings to their online component the issue of Accessibility will become more pronounced. While adding closed captioning is a cumbersome activity there are several tools to help.

Western Kentucky University has a tool that can be used. At the bottom of the page they have a tool free tool and instructions on how to use it.

MAGpie (Media Access Generator) is the original free caption- and audio-description authoring tool for making multimedia accessible to persons with sensory disabilities.

Universal Subtitles Add a subtitling widget to your video (or your site) and click the "subtitle me" button. The rest is simple! Totally free, and no software to download.

This information was given to us from Kyla Bates the eLearning/Continuing Ed Manager at SFCC. Thank you Kyla!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Practice using Elluminate

Elluminate is a live web conferencing tool available to all faculty and staff members within the community and technical college system. Come practice with colleagues in a casual setting. These sessions, led by Ann Garnsey-Harter and Larry Cheng of Shoreline Community College and Scott Dennis of the State Board, are open to all interested parties.

Connect from your computer, contact Cascadia's eLearning Department for the link!

Then all you will have to do is enter your name - you do not need a password to participate.

Tuesday, Dec 1st, Noon- 1 PM
Tuesday, Dec 7th, 2-3 PM
Thursday Dec 16th, 11:30-12:30 PM
Monday, Dec 20th, Noon-1 PM

Monday, November 22, 2010

YouTube Videos and Tegrity

YouTube Videos and Tegrity

Scenario: While recording in Tegrity you play a YouTube Video, MP3 file or other audio output but the sound isn’t recorded on the Tegrity recording.
Problem: Tegrity can only record from one audio source at a time and the source that it is usually recording is your microphone. So, it does not record the internal audio of your video.
Solution: The easy solution is to hold your microphone to your speakers to capture the audio. However, you might find this awkward. Alternately, there are software and device options that will help convert this output audio into the input for the recording.

For PC Users:

For Mac Users:

Devices (Mixers):

Top 100 Tools for Learning (Presentation)

Course/Instructor Evaluations

Course/Instructor Evaluations (CIEs) start this Monday, November 22 and are open until Friday December 10, 2010. Please post this link for your students on your Angel site so they have the opportunity to fill out the CIE. The software has been updated and the link inside looks a bit different but once inside the questions and statements are all the same. There is a Thank you page at the end if you should need the students to send you that page.

Instructions for Students:

Course/Instructor Evaluations
Dates: November 22, 2010 thru December 10, 2010

Assessment is an integral part of your learning experience and growth, assessment is an equally important part of my growth as a teacher. Please take the time to provide me with an honest assessment of your experience in this class. The process will take 5 minutes or so.

To assess my teaching, please follow these steps:

1. Open Internet Explorer (Do not use any other browser)
2. Go to: http://assessment.cascadia.edu
3. *Enter your SID and Pin #
4. Select the class from the drop down menu
5. Click on the Start Evaluation button
6. Fill out and submit the survey

*Your SID # is only used to verify what classes you are taking this quarter, it does not tie you to the assessment in any way—your confidentiality is ensured.
*Your SID # is your student identification number and the Pin # is your birthdate.
(month-day-year) example: 081182

Thank you for taking your time to fill out this assessment!