Cascadia eLearning

Cascadia's eLearning Mentor Program

2011-03-02T16:10:00.000-08:00

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.

More on Closed Captioning and YouTube

2011-01-24T19:49:00.000-08:00

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!

Got Videos - Need subtitles?

2010-12-14T20:19:00.000-08:00

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!

Practice using Elluminate

2010-11-30T21:34:00.000-08:00

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

YouTube Videos and Tegrity

2010-11-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

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:

Here is a link to a third-party application for Windows: http://www.actualsolution.com/
Here is a freeware solution from another vendor: http://www.topshareware.com/free-windows-sound-mixer/downloads/1.htm
And here is information on the built-in functionality in Windows Vista: http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Windows-Vista-Volume-Mixer-41882.shtml

For Mac Users:

Download the software called SoundFlower http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower

Devices (Mixers):

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/421979-REG/Behringer_502_XENYX_502_Compact.html
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/294026-REG/Samson_SASMIX.html
This one is the most computer friendly as it has a USB output for the computer. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/678867-REG/Pyle_Pro_PAD10_PAD10MXU_2_Channel_Mixer_and.html

Top 100 Tools for Learning (Presentation)

2010-11-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

Top100 Tools for Learning 2010

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

Course/Instructor Evaluations

2010-11-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

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!

Doom and gloom

2010-11-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

The final presentation is from Jean Floten, president of Bellevue College. This is the doom and gloom presentation that is graphically explaining the new normal:

dramatically reduced funding
what funding there is is earmarked so colleges have less flexibility in meeting locally identified
no new buildings anywhere for 10 - 15 years
foundations setting priorities and driving agendas through funding
concern about freezing out poor people from higher education
Universities took big hits in the last round and they may be arguing that it is the community college's turn
new legislature will make it harder to meet CC priorities
transfer agreements with UW may result in a reduction of the students being able to transfer in.

She recommended that, even in these grim times, we look to the future and engage in systems thinking.

The musings of a futurist

2010-11-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

The next speaker, Dan Rasmus, is a futurist and a fellow at Bellevue College. He started by asking people to step away from the assumption of completion. He argues that, in a knowledge economy, completion is not what students are hiring us for (noting that he does not reject the idea of students as customer). This is interesting since the last speaker said that we should't fool ourselves into thinking that many students come to college not seeking completion and if they don't complete we are failing them.

I'm not sure what the takeaway is from this presentation. Isn't that often the case with presentations like this? He asked several interesting questions, but I didn't really hear any answers. There certainly wasn't anything I can take back to my office and improve the way I do things.

Analytics

2010-11-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Dr. Baer is still talking about stuff. She's now onto trends to watch. One that is particularly interesting to me is the use of analytics to improve student success. Analytics is what sites like Amazon use to figure out what book you'd like to buy. This idea is fascinating to me and one that I plan to watch closely in the future. The cool thing is that there is stuff we could be doing now - ANGEL collects an amazing amount of data that we could be using to track and predict and help students to succeed.

Competition for grants is the new normal

2010-11-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Listening to another presentation on the "New Normal". The presenter, Dr. Linda Baer from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, started with a reference to Shift Happens, a You Tube video that talks about the rapid pace of change.

she notes that even with the high unemployment, millions of jobs are going unfilled because there are not enough trained workers. This is a big opportunity for us, but also shows that we aren't really doing our jobs. Lots of students who are coming through the door are not completing, those who are completing are not the diverse people we need in our workforce. Employers are having to do a lot of training for entry level workers.

Skills for America's Future is a program with $2 billion in grants for community colleges to compete for. Also lots of money from the Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation, etc. Sounds like grant writing is something we need to be really good at!

Dr. Baer noted that Washington is innovative and has continued to be innovative and that we need to really hang on to innovation to be successful in the future.

So, what I'm taking away from this is that there are giant problems, we will continue to have reduced resources (that is the new normal - we're not going back to the way things used to be) and we will need to compete vigorously to survive.

The New Normal

2010-11-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Today I am at the Association conference, listening to a variety of presentations on the "new normal". Charlie Earle, the head of the SBCTC, is speaking now. He's noted that our colleges are mobile and agile, but have to realize that constant change is the path of the future and the key to staying in the good graces of the legislature. It is also making our system a model nationally.

On budgets, Earle expects to be cut for the next 3 years, but thinks that, relative to other organizations, it won't be as bad, based on our good reputation with the legislature and our ability to be responsive to change and the needs of our constituents.

Keynote - Online Learning in a Networked Age

2010-10-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

Alec Couros is speaking on a variety of topics, as keynotes do. He just showed an interesting slide about personal learning networks versus the course management system. Personal learning networks continue to grow throughout a students career, while activity on the CMS progresses through the quarter then ends, progresses through the quarter and then ends. What, he asked, if we shut down Facebook every 4 months and erased everyone's data, in the same way that we close a class? Interesting thought.

He emphasized the importance of networks in pulling together resources and facilitating the ability for students to pull information together to learn.

What makes things engaging? How do we get students to do the work needed for independent learning. And what is collaboration versus what is cheating? How do we design for interaction? Are we putting interaction first and letting the content emerge? Or are we putting the content first and hoping for interaction?

PLENK 2010 - a massive online class where you can learn about Personal Learning Networks and connected learning. You can join this now.

Tagging and aggregation and other information literacies are essential to learning.

As he prepares to wrap up, I'm feeling a bit skeptical. I think the key is that students (and faculty) need a sound grounding in critical thinking and social networking and how to use the internet to engage in deep learning. It is totally possible, but I don't know that it comes naturally. Who is teaching this? If we move forward just thinking its going to happen, I don't know that we'll get to the place he is talking about. we need to work so much more closely with librarians and then completely and radically rework the way we teach. Frankly, I'm not sure that most people believe that their teaching needs to be radically reworked and thus are unlikely to engage in such mindaltering work.

His slideshow is here - http://couros.wikispaces.com/nwelearn Definitely worth a look, if for no other reason but to watch the fun commercials that he has created for his courses.

ANGEL Courses Open to Students TOMORROW!

2010-09-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

This is just a reminder that your ANGEL courses open to students tomorrow.

Classrooms Opening: Your ANGEL classrooms will open to students on Friday, September 24.
Important: Please do not turn off your course. If you do so and a student contacts my office to complain, I will turn the course back on. If you are not ready for students to access your course on 9/24, just hide the content. Contact my office if you need help with that.

Here a couple of tips to save you time in the coming days –
• Re-upload File – if you have files already in ANGEL, it is easy to edit and re-upload them.
• Get rid of your old classes from your Courses nugget
• Add “How To” ANGEL instructions to your classrooms
• Set all of your assignment dates at once using the Date Manager (instructions attached)

As always, Stephanie Carlson and I are at your disposal if you need help. I am out of the office tomorrow, but will check email throughout the weekend to respond to any last minute emergencies.

Teaching in ANGEL training for Summer

2010-06-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

We have a new session of ANGEL training beginning June 30. The course is entirely online. There are two sections.

The Full Section (159F) is
• for people who are new to teaching using course management systems.
• 6 weeks long (June 30 – Aug 10)
• Based on designing a course from scratch
• Covers basic online pedagogical theory

The Express Section (160F) is
• for people who are experienced using Blackboard or other course management systems
• 4 weeks long (June 30 – July 27)
• Based on converting an existing course
• Explores more advanced online pedagogy
• This is the last time I am offering the express session

Both Sections
• Have weekly graded work (the work is graded pass/fail)
• Take 4 – 6 hours a week to complete
• Have flexible time schedules – if you fall behind, it’s ok. You can continue on whenever it works for you
• Will have you ready to use ANGEL for Fall Quarter
• Are free and open to anyone in the community college system

To register, visit the WAOL instructor training page at http://www.waol.org/info/training/instTrainingRegistration.aspx. Please note that this is the only session that I will run online Summer quarter. I will offer a hybrid session (4 hour face to face session + 6 weeks online) before the quarter starts in September.

If you started the training previously and would like to begin again, please email Stephanie Delaney and we’ll get you going so you can start where you left off.

Let me know if you have any questions.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #47 - Re-Uploading Files

2010-06-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a handy ANGEL tip. I’m sending this to the whole ANGEL list. If you have not gotten ANGEL tips from me and would like to, just reply to this email.

Re-Uploading a File

I imagine it’s happened to you – you’ve uploaded a file to ANGEL and then needed to edit it. You delete the file and have to try and get it uploaded again. ANGEL has a handy link to avoid the deleting part of the scenario.

Directions: Rest your cursor on the file in question and click on the Utilities link. The first option is Re-upload File. Just upload your updated file and it will replace the old one. Pretty nifty!

Keynote on the future of eLearning

2010-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Keynote speaker Bobbe Baggio is presenting on the future of eLearning, a meta analysis of meta analyses.
She's looking at a lot of reports, including the Horizon Report and Online Nation.

Her key points - here's where we're going

mobile (see San Franscisco Art Museum Online, North Carolina State Library, University of Utah Human Anatomy course)
globalization
It's not about the technology - whatever you love today will be gone tomorrow.
learner participation is extremely important
ubiquitous learning - lines between work and life are blurring
intelligent searching will eclipse tagging and metadata

Her slides and resources are on her website - http://www.bobbebaggio.com/

She is using Google Wave to teach a class - have to find out more about that. . .

This is a very good keynote - we should get her for something in WA.

Mentions Wikitude as example of augmented reality - http://www.wikitude.org/

Conference Observations

2010-06-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

The conference is coming to a close. There will be a luncheon and keynote and then we'll be done. It has been an excellent conference. A great location, generally very good presentations and very interesting people.

Most of the people here are instructional designers. When I saw the name "Distance Learning Administration" I was thinking other administrators like myself. The other "back office" creators of elearning did not come to mind. There have been some administrators - deans, other directors. It was great to be somewhere that did not focus primarily on faculty and that did not focus on foundational eLearning - everyone here is assumed to be an elearning professional, so the level of content was high.

I'd love to come again and hope to be able to manage it. The other alternative is finding something similar on the west coast. The fabulous location would certainly be an important part of the success.

Its all about Me: Adding Digital Personality to Online Courses

2010-06-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

This workshop is talking about letting the instructor personality shine through in a course to increase student satisfaction. They are presenting this in the context of the requirement that all of their courses have to pass a checklist based on Quality Matters before it can be taught. So, they are saying that a quality course is not enough for a quality student experience, the instructor personality needs to shine through.

Informal text based approach

quotes
jokes (humor)
news flash

Audio, video (keep at 1 - 3 minutes) and avatars.

SitePal - makes avatars, but pretty expensive at $9.95 a month or $2500 for a site license.

Voki - animated avatar (I looked at this tool recently, after seeing it recommended on Jane's elearning pick of the day - very, very cool. I'm hoping to use it in my class this summer, but as I write, the site is not coming up, hmmm.)

Green Screen video - looks cool - I wonder if we have this technology already. Not sure how, pedagogically, it is any different from using a webcam in ones office.

Suggestions from the audience:

Panopto - similar to Jing - capture and publish every element of a presentation
Tokbox - Free Video Chat - includes a video about how teachers use the tool

Effect of Quality Matters Training on Faculty Online Self Efficacy

2010-06-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

This presentation is the report of the presenter's dissertation findings, similar to my own presentation. He did some action research on whether faculty would feel better about designing and teaching an online class if they had been trained with QM.

Attendees went to a training over 3 days and they felt significantly better about designing and teaching an online class after they attended the training. Note that the audience was self selected and they self reported a relatively high level of skill (natural early adopters). However, he noted that this audience could be harnessed as the change agents for the institution.

His institution is experiencing attrition in online teaching as well - people do it for a while and then stop.

I think the implications for Washington is that we should actively use QM training as a way to encourage people to teach online.

Research findings and presentation are at - http://bcoe.kennesaw.edu/qm/

Who Done It? Practices for Engaging Students in Online Groups

2010-06-09T05:47:00.000-07:00

This workshop has started out with a poll that users respond to by sending a text message response, a la American Idol. The service is called Poll Everywhere. Seems like a fun tool to use in the classroom and let students make useful use of that annoying phone. Also a good substitute for clickers in the classroom. You can show live screen results coming in - cool!

She talked about WetPaint and Blogger as tools for collaborative work. She noted that their research found that students participated more using tools outside of the Course Management System (they are using Blackboard8). She also saw that students used more of the tools available (inserting YouTube videos, using color, using widgets), even though Blackboard had many of the same tools.

On a wiki project that she described, she had students that were in their late 20's to 50's and it was the first course in their curriculum. Many complained about the technology (even though they were specifically trained on how to use it) and having to use different things.

Now they are talking about VoiceThread, a technology I learned more about at a conference earlier this year. It is like PowerPoint combined with discussion boards combined with voice. It is really, really cool and if you are not familiar with it, you should have a look. Here is a blog that the presenter shared that has some research on the efficacy of VoiceThread - VoiceThread of Inclusivity.

I liked this presentation. Although they did not present any tools that I was unfamiliar with, as my summer quarter class rapidly approaches, it gave me some ideas of ways that I might use these familiar tools to build community in my class.

End of day 2

2010-06-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

This has really been a great conference so far. I don't imagine I'll get out here again, so I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm getting used to the contrasts of steamy heat and frigid air conditioned cold. I've figured out how to drink sweet tea (lots of lemon). I'm heading off on a conference organized dolphin tour soon. I hope to hit the turtle museum tomorrow before heading to the airport. In the words of the Jekyll Island motto, it's all good.

Motivating the Online Student

2010-06-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

This presentation is in a fishbowl setting - I'll be interested to see how that plays out beyond the circular arrangement of the chairs. The presentation is being given by online instructional analysts who investigate classes to insure that quality instruction is happening. What an interesting idea!

Environment - be warm and welcoming
classroom organization - make it easy for students to find what they need to to know

Incentives:

bonus points
recognition
guest speakers (something that gets students excited about course content)

In the end, there wasn't anything new and I'm not sure what made the presentation "fishbowl" like, but it was interesting.

My presentation

2010-06-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

My presentation was right after lunch after a busy morning. I was worried that no one would come, since it is directed at a community college audience and everyone here seems to be from universities. But there were about 6 people and we had a lively discussion. I only got through about half of my slides, but I have all of the information online, so everyone seemed happy.

There's a Teacher in your Pocket

2010-06-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

This session is on mobile learning. George Babb, the presenter, is from Georgia Perimeter college, who is launching a pilot for this idea. They are giving their faculty iPod Touches to experiment with mobile learning.

The focus is not the mobile device, but is the mobile learner. The instructor notes that there are lots of devices, but he is really focusing on the smart phone. Also it is not about the device, but what you are doing with the device. The main hopes:

engagement/inclusion
collaboration
instant responses
personalization
fun

Some suggestions:

data collection and facilitate sharing content
give options - if the students want to use it, they can, but don't have to. Students often teach each other the technology.

There are lots of great resources at the end of his presentation - http://gpc.edu/~onlineis/ Click on the Conferences link.

Social Media and Academic Space

2010-06-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

There were two sessions on social media during this hour. The other one talked about what kinds of limits we needed to set on students, so I decided to select this one. The presenter, Jeff Miller, is from the Univ. of British Columbia, the only other person I've seen from the west coast.

The presentation is really talking about the digital divide between students and faculty, with faculty seeing learning as linear and solitary.

The presenter is talking about the variety of spaces he uses in classes. His ideas seem good for graduate classes, but I'm not sure how well this would apply for entry level community college courses.

He makes useful comments on balancing out experimenting with new stuff without torturing your students. He encourages discussions about private vs. public exposure of the information.

References

Why professor johnny can't read: Understanding the net generations's texts
Mr. Picasso head (a la Mr. Potato Head)
Buddy Press - a social networking layer that plugs into WordPress

It's not our fault: Debating faculty complicity in Textbook Costs

2010-06-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Most people reading this know that I am into affordable textbooks and open educational resources. Interestingly, this is the least populated session that I've been to. There are only about 4 or 5 participants and most sessions have had at least 20. I hope this is not a foreshadowing of my session this afternoon.

The session is in a formal debate format with argument, rebuttal, etc. I didn't learn anything new, but was highly entertained. The debaters were very clever and fun.

Although the debate didn't present anything new, I did get to meet Pete Shapiro who is part of the Sirius Education project. They are doing something very similar to the Open Course Library. We had a lively talk and look forward to additional discussion later in the day.

Using Text Expanders to improve feedback and Save Time

2010-06-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

As I start this session, I don't know what text expanders are, but I'm all about improving feedback and saving time, so this session seemed like a good choice. It is being presented by Jan Flegle of Kaplan University, a fully online institution.

She recommends a program called "Texter" which seems to be similar to using a macro. Texter can support coding which she describes as "slicker than snot" (yes, I am in the South). She notes that there are dozens of free text expanders out there, but that this is the one that works for her.

It works in all Windows programs. It allows you to type a keyword or keyboard combination and, as long as Texter is running, it expands to your pre-written feedback. I'm seeing this as being really useful for email as well. I currently use signatures for this purpose, but this seems more flexible, since it works in all programs.

One person in the audience recommended that one be careful that the text expander keywords are something that you would not normally type. Since Texter runs in the background, it might put in language that you don't intend. The presenter noted that Texter can be set to make a sound when it inserts text and that she highly recommends that setting.

Here is a Lifehacker article explaining how it works, including handy videos and linking to the download.

This seems very handy. I'm all over it.

From Consumer to Innovator: Defining the Next 20 Years of DL

2010-06-07T08:54:00.001-07:00

I'm really interested in future thinking about DL and how we can position ourselves to be prepared for the inevitable changes, rather than constantly running to keep up.

The presenter, Bucky Dodd from the U of Central Oklahoma, has created a Distance Learning Innovation (DLI) model.

Semantic Structure: finding a way to categorize and use information.
* include internet services in the LMS
* incorporate data sources in the LMS (ie Wolfram Alpha)
* students continue to have access to inactive courses - continue to make use of the rich conversations students had in the class, student added content, etc.
* distance educators have to

Redistribution: how do we share this information?
* he mentions open software, open resources, creative commons, but does not delve into any depth. Asked questions, but no answers.

Learner Interaction
* Mobile learning
  * the "learning" phone? phones are more for instant interaction whereas instruction is meant to be more in depth, reflective interaction. Is mobile learning eroding the time expectations of students (makes me think that I need to add a section to my orientation about anywhere/anytime learning).
  * Augmented Reality -
  * Adaptive learning - we should take lessons from Amazon - you've bought this book, maybe you should get this book too. ie. Other students who missed this question found these resources helpful. . . This is the kind of intelligence in the programs advocated by Candice Thille at Carnegie Mellon.

Move beyond consumer-driven decisions to innovation-driven perspectives.

This seemed to me more like a keynote than a regular conference presentation. It tossed out a lot of things to think about, but didn't have any actual information to take away.

How Strategic Planning Keeps you Sane when Delivering DL Programs

2010-06-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm at a session on strategic planning, as it is something that I need to tackle this summer. It is being presented by 3 administrators from the University of Alabama's College of Continuing Studies.

The scope of what they are talking about are completely different than what I'm accustomed to. They are an administrative support organization at their college. This standard plan is adjusted for each of their department clients. It seems like a great plan, but I don't think the information that they are presenting will apply to my program at Cascadia or other community colleges.

3 part strategic plan
1. Program Plan - research based
2. Marketing Plan - includes a SWOT analysis
3. Financial Plan

Visual Instructional Design

2010-06-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

I'm at a presentation by the company ThinkingCap. I have not heard of ThinkingCap, but the description said it allows users "to produce content consistently". Since we are thinking about buying some licenses to SoftChalk, which has a similar goal, I thought this would be good.

However, a mere 5 minutes into the presentation, I can tell this is no threat to SoftChalk. What I'm seeing would be wonderful for folks who are comfortable with code. Although no knowledge of code is needed, just seeing the code (which this does) would freak people out.

Ah - he has just revealed that this is not intended for faculty, but for instructional designers. Their theory is (reasonably) on cannot expect eLearning to be created in a quality manner by a single person, but should be a team effort. However, since this isn't our model I'm not sure how helpful this will be. And I am at the far end of a tightly packed room and can't escape to another presentation. Oh well.

Post Script - I'm glad I stayed. Although this isn't something that works with our Cascadia model, it could be pretty cool for the Open Course Library. Actually, it could work for Cascadia as well - I wonder how much it costs. . . .

Pecha Kucha for classroom presentation

2010-06-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

My first workshop (after a tasty buffet breakfast) is introducing a presentation style that is supposed to be fun and fast paced called Pecha Kucha (pronounced Pe-cha-cha by the presenter, Wikipedia notes the pronunciation is peh-cha koo-cha). It means chit-chat in Japanese.

Started in Japan, now a way for creative people to interact all over the world. Pecha Kucha Nights are found in many cities

Based on showing presentation slides (like PowerPOint) and moving through them quickly. Very visual, using photographs and images.

Rules - 20x20 - Allowed exactly 20 slides and exactly 20 seconds per slide for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds

More of a graphical presentation - no bullet points
Can be used in the face to face environment - use as a model for presenting - no one needs know it is being used.

This seems like a great structure for presenting PowerPoint. The presenter is in the process of showing a full one of his narrated PowerPoints. It seems relatively mundane, but is moving at a nice pace. Although 20 seconds sounds fast, seeing it, it did not seem rushed and, indeed, 6:40 seemed rather long and I was wondering why he didn't just show a clip.

This seems like a perfect match for Jing, but one would not be able to stick to the classic Pecha Kucha

Microsoft Photostory 3 - this is what the presenter used to create his presentaion - I've never heard of this. It allows for the creation of slideshows using photographs with narration. The program makes all files in Windows Media Player format, but these files can be converted using other software into MP4 software. It allows for recording slide by slide, so if you mess up on one slide, you don't have to start all over again (sweet!)

He recommends Keynote for Mac users.

Creative Uses - he has seen it at conferences, Trainings (uses it as a model for his own training). He also allows students to use it for submitting assignments. During the question times

Presenter: Richard Schilke from Florida State College at Jacksonville. rshcilke@fscj.edu.

Resources:
Pecha-kucha.org
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha

DLA 2010

2010-06-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

I'm in Jekyll Island Georgia at the Distance Learning Administration conference. I'm going to blog the workshops that I attend in hopes of sharing what I learn.

ANGEL Learning Community-Agent and Tokens, Templates, 7.4 Grade book

2010-05-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

On 05.27.2010
ANGEL Learning Community (ALC) in Elluminate @ 11am.

An agent, an increment or decrement, a token, and an action-hmmmmmm?- Scott
Available System Templates- Lesley
7.4 Grade book-turning it on!- Eric and Vicki
All questions are welcome!

Everyone with an interest in Angel should join!

How do I join the THURSDAY sessions hosted by BTC and PC?
To access this section click here.

If you are unable to make it or would like to see any archived sessions please access the following link: Archive Sessions

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Prevention Resources

2010-04-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the newly formatted and revised Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Prevention Resources library subject page, located online at http://libguides.uwb.edu/ai.

It has resources for students and faculty.

Enjoy!

Practicing Elluminate Session

2010-04-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

Practicing Elluminate Session

2-3pm, Wednesday, April 7

Practice using Elluminate, a live web conferencing tool, with your community and technical college colleagues in a casual setting.

Go to this Elluminate room: http://tinyurl.com/qualitymattersflc .

Then, just type in your name; you don’t need a password to participate.

Takes place 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month from 2-3pm.

Ever wondered what ANGEL stands for?

2010-04-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Look no further... ANGEL stands for:

A New Global Environment for Learning

ANGEL Tip of the Day - Blasts from the Past

2010-04-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

For today’s ANGEL tip, I thought I would remind you of some handy tips we sent out previously

ATOD #10 on Adding Instructional Videos from the Cascadia Learning Object Repository – These videos are super handy for showing students how to use ANGEL.

ATOD # 41 – Speaking of video, don’t forget how easy it is to pull video into your course with One Click Video Embedding.

ATOD #26 - Cascadia’s eLearning Faculty Community – a great spot for faculty related How Tos

ATOD #18 – Reorganizing Assignments in the Gradebook – You’ve just copied that class over, but things are not quite how you want them. Use this ATOD to get it right.

ATOD # 37 – Worried about cheating in discussions? Try using the Post First feature in the Discussion forums.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #47 - Private Announcements

2010-03-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring everyone! At the beginning of the quarter, one often finds students with bad email addresses. In an online class, especially, it can be challenging to figure out how to reach the student. You can post a private announcement for a specific person or a team.

When posting an announcement, the box just above the Save button says User> Everyone (circled below in red). If you click on that downward arrow, you’ll see your teams and then the individual students in your class. Just choose the appropriate recipient and you’ll be good to go.

FYI – students can update their email address in the SMS system at the Student Address Information page and they can update it in ANGEL using the profile button in ANGEL (circled below in orange)

Keep in mind that you will not, by default, see this announcement in your Announcements list under the Announcement Editor. This is because the default view is announcements that are visible to everyone. If you change the User to the specific person or team, you’ll then see that announcement.

ANGEL Training for Spring Quarter

2010-03-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

We have a new session of ANGEL training beginning April 14. The course is entirely online. There are two sections.

The Full Section is

· for people who are new to teaching using course management systems.

· 6 weeks long (April 14 – May 25)

· Based on designing a course from scratch

· Covers basic online pedagogical theory

The Express Section is

· for people who are experienced using Blackboard or other course management systems

· 4 weeks long (April 14 – May 11)

· Based on converting an existing course

· Explores more advanced online pedagogy

Both Sections

· Have weekly graded work (the work is graded pass/fail)

· Take 4 – 6 hours a week to complete

· Have flexible time schedules – if you fall behind, it’s ok. You can continue on whenever it works for you

· Will have you ready to use ANGEL for Summer or Fall Quarter

· Are free and open to anyone in the community college system

To register, visit the WAOL instructor training page at http://www.waol.org/info/training/instTrainingRegistration.aspx . Please note that this is the only session that I will run online Spring quarter.

If you started the training previously and would like to begin again, please email Stephanie Delaney directly and we’ll get you going so you can start where you left off.

Important Information on Copying Courses in ANGEL

2010-03-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

1. Back up your classrooms frequently. Restoring data that has been accidentally deleted is pretty easy if you backup your classroom. Otherwise, it is difficult and costly-- or maybe impossible.

You can find instructions on how to backup your content click here.

2. Copy from your Master Classroom so you do not include existing students and their work in your new classroom. When copying content into a new classroom, copy from your Master classroom.

This will link you to the instructions click here.

Note! If instead of copying from another course or master course you are importing a backup file, it will contain student records, grades, e-mail, submissions, discussion forum postings, and more. Uncheck the User Data column so that they will not be imported into the new course. All assignments remain, but do not contain any student submissions. You might also want to uncheck Calendar Items and Announcements if you do not want them in the new course.

These two steps can save you a lot of stress!

Copying Grading Scales

2010-03-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

I just got a question about copying grading scales from one class to another. If you have that question too, here is a PowerPoint presentation that explains how to do it, starting on Slide 10 - http://www.abington.psu.edu/content/intranet/instructional_design/docs/The%20ANGEL%20Grade%20Book.pdf

New Info on the ANGEL Logon Page

2010-03-08T10:37:00.001-08:00

Next time you log on to ANGEL, have a look in the upper left of your screen. You’ll see a new up time indicator. If you click on it, you’ll be able to see the ANGEL up time for the week. Now, next time your student says “ANGEL was down” you have a way to double check.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #46 - Setting Dates in ANGEL

2010-02-25T15:03:00.000-08:00

ANGEL allows a ton of flexibility with date setting. Unfortunately, such flexibility can lead to confusion for all involved. Here is a quick primer on setting dates in ANGEL. All of the info below is based on the Advanced setting in the various areas.

There are 3 areas that you can set dates in ANGEL: the Access tab, the Assignment tab and the Interaction tab in Assessments.

Access: When you set dates under the Access tab, this controls when an item is visible to students. Both dates are optional and it is ok to set one and not the other.

Assignment: Under the Assignment tab, you can set dates in the Milestone settings. Milestone dates list the activity in the student milestones and automatically puts the activity in the Calendar. Many students use the milestones to see how they are progressing through their work, so it can be quite helpful to them.

Milestone dates allow you to set assign and due dates (both are optional and you need not set both). Milestones are completely unrelated to access dates and thus, milestone dates need not match Interaction or Access dates (for example, I have quizzes close at 12:05 AM on the day after something is due, but set the milestone for the actual due date).

Interaction: In an assessment, you can also set dates using the Interaction tab (note, the ability to set dates under this tab is not available in other areas like the drop box or discussion). This controls when a student can actually take an assessment.

For example, you may have a quiz that closes on Tuesday, but you want students to be able to review results through Sunday. You would end the Interaction on Tuesday (so students could still see the quiz link but could not actually take the quiz) and end the Access (thus making the item invisible) on Sunday.

Be careful! If your Access and Interaction dates conflict, mayhem can ensue.

Hopefully this adds a bit of clarity to your date setting activities in ANGEL. As always, feel free to email me with questions.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #45 - rearranging assignments in the gradebook

2010-02-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

It is not intuitive how to rearrange the order of assignment in the ANGEL gradebook, but it’s not hard once you know how. Thanks to my work study student Stephanie Carlson for these great instructions.

************************

You can change the order of the categories of the Gradebook and then within the categories you can change the order of the assignments.

To start be under the Manage Tab at the top

Select Gradebook

Then under Gradebook Management on the right hand side select Categories

- Your screen should now look something like this:

-Next click the box that belongs to a category you want to correct or change(I suggest only doing one at a time)

-Once you do that the other buttons next to add new will become available. At that time you can then Select Show Tasks

-Once you select Show tasks you will have the following options available to you…

-If it’s simply the category that is out of order by choosing up or down that will adjust where the category lands amongst the other categories.

-If you are needing to also adjust the assignments select Reorder Assignments in this area which will pull up an additional screen:

-In this screen simply select the assignment you wish to reorder and use the buttons on the right to change the order according to your preference.

-Once all of these changes are complete select save and you should have your gradebook set up the way you want it to be!

ANGEL Tip of the Day #44 - Why empty the Cache?

2010-02-22T10:24:00.001-08:00

When you call Presidium for help, the first thing they do is ask you to clear your cache. How annoying! Especially when you just want to solve the problem. Today, I got an explanation of why they do this. If you are curious, read on. If you are not curious, emptying your cache at the first sign of a problem really is a good idea.

See ATOD #33 on How to Clear your Cache

ANGEL uses something called load balancing. When you log into ANGEL, you access one server and then you get sent to the server with the lowest use (load) at that time (WAOL ANGEL has 40 servers averaging about 150 users each, they have a capacity of about 250 users). A cookie is then set and whenever you access ANGEL after that, you get sent to that same server.

Let’s say something goes wrong with that server. You’re stuck going to that same server until you delete that cookie and start off fresh. So, from a trouble shooting perspective, Presidium wants to be sure that you are going to a good server. Thus, they ask you to clear your cache.

So, before calling Presidium, to do a bit of your own troubleshooting, clear your cache and try changing browsers (if you are in IE, try Firefox and visa versa). For me, most of the time these two steps solve the problem. If it does not, then you have some good information for the Presidium folks to get started in getting to a resolution.

Changes to What’s New/Tasks

2010-02-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

Changes to What’s New/Tasks
The Task/What’s New functionality exist in several areas within the system. On the Home page it exists in the Courses nugget, Group nugget and Repository nugget. In a Section (Course, Group or Repository) it exists in the Guide. The following are the changes you will in this feature.

Home page

Courses nugget

The design for the Courses nugget includes an additional link to allow users to populate or refresh the tasks list for all courses in the list.
Load Tasks – This link displays in the top of the nugget, just below the title bar. It displays each time you login to ANGEL. When clicked the What’s New/Tasks are added to each course in the list. These are cached for the duration of the user’s login or until refreshed.

Refresh Tasks – This link displays in the top of the nugget, just below the title bar. It displays after you have click Load Tasks and is used to refresh the Task list. When clicked the What’s New/Tasks are refreshed for each course in the list. These are cached for the duration of the user’s login or until refreshed.

Course Guide
The functionality in the guide is basically the same. To view What’s new in the course, click the What’s new tab. To view outstanding Tasks in the course, click the Tasks tab. The change made to this feature is to always default to the Map tab. This improves your user experience since you won’t have to wait for the Tasks or What’s new to load when you don’t need them.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #43: Try a Different Browser

2010-02-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

You’ve probably had the experience of trying to do something on ANGEL and had it not work. I thought I’d share my personal strategy for this – try a different browser.

I’d love to say that, if you always use Firefox or always use Internet Explorer 8, everything in ANGEL will work. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case and personally I have not found there is any one browser that works all the time. I will say that Firefox works far better more often than any version of Internet Explorer. Safari and Chrome also work most of the time, but neither is supported by ANGEL and thus have some serious drawbacks (for example, it is hard to upload a document to a dropbox from Safari).

So, my tip of the day – if it does not work in Firefox, try Internet Explorer. If it does not work in Internet Explorer, try it in Firefox. 80% of the time, changing browsers will fix the problem. If that doesn’t fix the problem, clear your cache – that fixes another 15% of the problems. The last 5% are real problems that require a call or email to Presidium.

Please share this strategy with your students. Also, use this strategy in the lab computers (Firefox is installed on all lab computers on campus).

Reminder - students need to log in at Cascadia's ANGEL

2010-01-21T14:12:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

If you are getting complaints about students unable to log into ANGEL, please remind them that they need to go to http://angel.cascadia.edu.

They will get an error message if they try to log in at angel.waol.org. There is an announcement on all system ANGEL homepages, but you know how carefully students read. . .

Large Announcements Can Slow ANGEL Performance

2010-01-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Audience: ANGEL administrators and faculty

Problem: Announcements in ANGEL classes and groups load frequently, which means that large announcements can slow the performance of ANGEL for all users on the system.

Fix: Type announcements directly into the announcement editor in the course, rather than copying and pasting text from Microsoft Word or other programs that generate a lot of extra formatting information that, while invisible to the viewer, generates a lot of extra characters in the HTML coding. HTML formatting is allowed but for best results it is recommended not to use formatting that drastically changes the size, color, etc of text. Also, instead of making course announcements overly long, create shorter announcements with links to longer documents in the lesson content or elsewhere in the course. For assistance with this, please email jsims@lcc.ctc.edu.

What does this mean? Fewer large announcements = Faster WAOL ANGEL

Additional Information: If you want to see how many characters there are in a given course announcement, click on the “Source” button to view the HTML formatting and then copy the code to a program like Microsoft Word that will let you do a character count.

Understanding Course Announcements in ANGEL(pdf)

ANGEL Tip of the Day #42 – Announcements

2010-01-14T16:18:00.001-08:00

Lots of folks have experienced slowness on ANGEL this week and they are working on it at the system level. However, if you’ve noticed the Courses page of a particular course is loading slowly, the culprit might be old announcements.

When ANGEL loads your Courses page, it loads all of your announcements, even the ones not showing. So, if you have lots of old announcements, delete them and you’ll have faster performance.

Also note that if you copy and paste your announcement content from Word, underlying Word tags bog the system down even more. So, I’d discourage you from copying and pasting announcements from Word. If you must, be sure to use the “Paste from Word” button.

ANGEL tip of the Day #41: One click video embedding

2010-01-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

A new feature of ANGEL 7.4 allows for easy searching using Google Video and one click embedding.

In any editing screen you’ll see the following toolbar. Click on the “G”.
Type in a search term and click “Go”. When you find something you like, just click on the Embed button. What could be easier?
Note: I’ve been sending ANGEL tips to everyone using ANGEL this quarter for just this week. If you are not already on the ANGEL Tip of the Day list and if you would like to continue to get the ANGEL tips, reply to this email and I’ll add you to the list.

ANGEL Training for Winter Quarter

2010-01-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

We have a new session of ANGEL training beginning January 13. The course is entirely online, though there will be some optional synchronous sessions. There are two sections.

The Full Section is
• for people who are new to teaching using course management systems.
• 6 weeks long (January 13 – February 23)
• Based on designing a course from scratch
• Covers basic online pedagogical theory

The Express Section is
• for people who are experienced using Blackboard or other course management systems
• 4 weeks long (January 13 – February 9)
• Based on converting an existing course
• Explores more advanced online pedagogy

Both Sections
• Have weekly graded work (the work is graded pass/fail)
• Take 4 – 6 hours a week to complete
• Have flexible time schedules – if you fall behind, it’s ok. You can continue on whenever it works for you
• Will have you ready to use ANGEL for Spring Quarter
• Are free and open to anyone in the community college system

To register, simply email Stephanie Delaney and indicate which session you want to be in (Full or Express) and I’ll get you signed up. Late starts are ok – we’ll accept sign ups through January 19. Please note that this is the only session that I will run online Winter quarter.

FREE: Two ePortfolio webinars

2010-01-11T10:26:00.000-08:00

Webcast: Work-Based Folios in the UK and USA
Date and Time: Wednesday, January 13th at 8-9:30 a.m. PT/11-12:30 p.m.
ET/4-5:30 p.m. GMT

Description: This unique transatlantic webinar will feature presenters from both the UK and USA who will deliver 4 short presentations on the growing use of web based eportfolios for use in "work based learning.” JISC Regional Support Center East and West Midlands have teamed up with EPAC to exchange experiences of how eportfolios are being used in this growing area of higher education. Attendees will be given the opportunity to interact with presenters and networking with colleagues via the use of voting and chat features in this live session.

AAEEBL is still finalizing our presenters from the U.S. and have confirmed Jill Lumsden, Career Development Coordinator of the Florida State University Career Portfolio. Presenters from the UK will include Mick Gilroy is e-learning manager at Lincoln Academy (trading
as Isis training), a work-based training provider that delivers earning and assessment programmes for over 400 apprentices across rural Lincolnshire in the east of England.

Webcast: Virginia Tech University
Date and Time: Thursday, January 14th at 10-11 a.m. PT/1-2 p.m. ET

Program description:
Title: Telling the learning story: Students' authentic experiences used to assess learning

Description: For the past several years, Virginia Tech has been engaged in a campus-wide effort to explore and adopt ePortfolio technology in appropriate places in its curriculum. From a handful of interested faculty in 2007, the ePortfolio Initiatives Office has grown to be working with more than 60 different projects across seven colleges. A large part of our success, we think, is not to focus too much on the technology for ePortfolio deployment, but to focus instead on using the technology to encourage student learning and assessment of that learning. Though we have a variety of ePortfolio projects, we find that our most successful and vibrant projects are those that engage with authentic activities that use the students' creative voices to analyze experiences from their perspectives. In this way, assessment of that learning, by the student, the instructor, and the institution, is enhanced by including qualitative, individual pictures
of each student's different experiences with the curriculum. In this webcast, several examples of these projects will be reviewed, including our next big focus: our first-year experiences. As part of its regional re-accreditation efforts, Virginia Tech is planning to focus on first-year experiences in order to enhance overall institutional quality and effectiveness by improving student learning. In order to facilitate synthetic, reflective learning across a variety of experiences, ePortfolios will be one among other tools used. In this session, we will discuss how and why we chose to use ePortfolios, and how they will assist us in assessing the elements of the AAC&U VALUE Rubrics. Our presenters will be Marc Zaldivar, Director of the ePortfolio Initiatives, an office of the Learning Technologies Department at Virginia Tech, and his Assistant Director, Teggin Summers, both of whom will discuss some of the student-centered activities used in our ePortfolio projects. Also from Learning Technologies is C. Edward Watson, Director of Professional Development and Strategic initiatives, who will provide information about the history and future potentials of the ePortfolio Initiatives. Finally, from the Office of Academic Assessment, Kate McConnell will talk about our adoption of the AACU VALUE Metarubrics and our plans for assessment of the First-Year Experiences.

EPAC webcasts are free to attend and are open to anyone interested in ePortfolios. Space may be limited for some of the events and pre-registration may be required. More information on where and how to join the webcasts will be posted shortly on the EPAC blog and wiki at
http://epaccop.blogspot.com/ and http://epac.pbworks.com/.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #40: Check your Profile

2010-01-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

With the demise of the “.ctc” email addresses, you should take a moment to check your Profile in ANGEL to be sure your email address is current. Also, add your picture and bio. You can also change how your name appears (so can your students, so ask them to do so if they use a nick name)

While you are in the Preferences area, be sure to change your password if you still have it set at the default – remember your password formula is the same as the students, so it would be really easy for them to log in as you if you stick with the default.

To access the Preferences area, click on the head on the left navigation pane.
• Click on Personal Information to change your email address.
• Click on Change Password to change your password.
• Finally, you can set the email handling for all of your classes from one place when you click on the System Settings. You can also default to the “advanced” button setting from there.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #39: Grading in ANGEL 7.4

2010-01-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hopefully you are all finding ANGEL 7.4 to be a whole lot like ANGEL 7.3. One big difference is how you grade student work. You no longer use the Utilities link to grade. Instead, next to it is a new “Submissions” link. Under that, you will find the various options to grade submissions.

Bonus: Looking to clear your fall courses out of your courses nugget? Follow these steps from ATOD #4 – Organizing Your Courses. When in the courses nugget, you can uncheck the courses that you don’t want to see.

ANGEL 7.4 What's New - Elluminate Live! Recording

2009-12-12T17:53:00.000-08:00

Scott Dennis, the eLearning Professional Development Manager for the State Board, recently had a brief 40 minute session about the new ANGEL 7.4 updates.

He provides a high overview regarding the new updates that we will be seeing in ANGEL 7.4. To listen to Scott click here.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #38 – Finding Incomplete Exams

2009-12-12T17:33:00.001-08:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #38 – Finding Incomplete Exams

What happens when someone is unable to submit an exam properly? How can you see those? They are available under Utilities> Pending Items (see the image below).

End of the Quarter Grading Reminders

2009-12-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

As we hit the crunch time of the quarter, you might find yourself hitting a snag in ANGEL’s gradebook. Please – if you have trouble, email me right away. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to solve ANGEL gradebook problems when you are in a hurry (trust me – I know!)

I can see into all of your classrooms and if you tell me which class and which assignment is the problem, I can probably answer most of your questions in a few minutes. The folks at Presidium are not terribly good at trouble shooting, so you might find frustration there as well.

So – email me right away with questions. Don’t feel like you are bothering me – helping you is my job. I’ll be checking email evenings and weekends through the end of the quarter.

As a help, here are a few grade related ANGEL tips from past months.

ANGEL Tip of the day # 20 – Grades Not Showing Up
As we near the end of summer quarter and prime grading time, I thought I would focus on the top complaints that I get about the gradebook in ANGEL.
Problem: I entered the grades but they are not appearing in the gradebook.

Issue: No gradebook connection or Manual Grading

Solution: Connect the Assignment or Choose a different kind of grading

99% of the time, if someone cannot see their grades they either neglected to connect the assignment to the gradebook or they made the connection and chose manual grading. Let’s look at both of these.

Connecting the Assignment: In order for grades to appear in the gradebook, you need to connect the assignment to the gradebook. You do this under the Settings for the assignment and the Assignment tab. If it says “None” under “gradebook” then that is your problem. Choose New Assignment from the dropdown menu to begin making the connection.

Manual Grading: One of the choices in setting the assignment is Calculation Type. If you choose “manual” your grades entered at the assignment will not appear in the gradebook. You almost never want to choose manual grading as your calculation type. Just choose something else and your grades will magically appear.

ANGEL Tip of the Week #21: My students can't see my comments
We continue with our theme of common gradebook related complaints.

Problem: My students can’t see my gradebook comments.

Issue: Students probably are not running a grade report.

Most of the time when students say they can’t see your comments, it is because they are just looking at the grades nugget on the home page. Alternately, they look at the assignment itself and see your grade, but don’t click on the link to see the comments.

The best solution is to remind students periodically on how to run a grade report. An instructional video is posted in the Cascadia Learning Object Repository (LOR) which you can easily copy into your course (see ATOD # 10 for details on how to do that).

ANGEL Tip of the Day #22 – Don’t delete categories
Continuing with our grading theme, you may be tempted to try and re-order your gradebook by deleting categories. If you have not reassigned the assignments to a new category and you delete the category that they are in, you could lose all of your grades.

To avoid this, just don’t delete categories after you have started entering grades in your gradebook. You can add some, but don’t delete them.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #30 – Reset an Exam
If you are using Assessments in ANGEL for your quizzes and exams, you may find yourself needing to reset one for a student. It is very easy to do.

At the exam under the Lessons tab, click on the “Utilities” link. Then click on “View, Grade or Delete Submission”. Find the student and delete the submission. That will reset the exam.

Webinar: WA Faculty Open Textbooks

2009-11-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you who were unable to make the “WA Faculty Open Textbooks” webinar on 11-18 … Here is the link to the recording and slide decks.

Everything is also online at the bottom of this web page.

Enjoy!

Winter Quarter in ANGEL

2009-11-23T09:55:00.001-08:00

· What do I need to do to get ANGEL spaces for my winter classes? Nothing. If you are reading this, we will create a space for every class you are scheduled to teach. Winter ANGEL course shells will be created on November 30.

· What’s this I hear about a new version of ANGEL? We will upgrade to ANGEL 7.4 on December 16. This is largely an administrative upgrade. From a teaching perspective , you will barely notice it. I taught in ANGEL 7.4 last summer and it has some cool bells and whistles, but the basics are all the same.

· What do I need to do for the upgrade? Nothing. Your courses will be copied over for you.

· How can I learn more about the upgrade? Attend one of the overview sessions being provided by the SBCTC. The dates and times are below. I was not planning to offer any local training in 7.4 before winter quarter, but I can if you want me to. Send an email to Stephanie Delaney if you would like me to do some training on ANGEL 7.4 before the end of the quarter or during the break.

· Don’t I remember you saying something about archiving Spring class shells? Yes, Spring 09 course shells will be deleted in the next couple of days. I will have a backup, but you should have that content copied into a master course, your learning object repository or backed up onto your computer. Let me know ASAP if you need some help with this.

· Will Stephanie be around to help me with ANGEL and other technology stuff during the break? Maybe. I have jury duty beginning Dec 16. There is no telling how long that will be. I will also be taking a few days off between Christmas and New Years.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #37 - Post first in Discussions

2009-11-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

’ll bet you’ve seen it – the person who obviously read everyone else’s posts in the discussion and just copied the answers that seemed the most right. Well, you can put a halt to that with the Post First mode in ANGEL. When you set it, students can’t see the discussion board posts until they have made their own post.

To set a discussion in Post First mode, go to the Interaction tab in the Settings of your discussion. The first box there allows you to set the Mode. Choose “Post First” from the drop down menu. Note: This has to be done when you set up the discussion. Once a student posts to the discussion board, you cannot change the mode.

Now that you’ve seen all of those modes, you are probably wondering what the other ones are.

o Normal: All students may access and participate fully in discussion.

o Private user journal: Student posts and instructor replies are only visible to the student and the instructor.

o Private team journal: Posts by team members and instructor replies are only visible to team members and instructors

o Post first: Users must first post a topic before they‘re allowed to view or reply to other student‘s posted topics.

o Fishbowl: Select students or teams to participate in discussion while other selected students or teams may only view discussion.

o Hot seat: Students or teams “in” the hot seat read and reply to topics posted by other students or teams, but may not post new topics themselves.

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #36 - Default to advanced fields

2009-11-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

When you are using ANGEL, many options remain hidden unless you select the Advanced option. Did you know you could set ANGEL to choose Advanced by default?

In ANGEL, click on the Preferences button (the little head on the left). From there, choose System Settings. Then, for User Level, choose Advanced. Then clickSave.

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #35 - Guest Login

2009-11-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

If you have guest speakers or people evaluating your courses, you may want to give them access using a guest log in.

Every course has a guest login created automatically. Here is the formula for a guest to access.

* Guest username = guestCASC_1234 ('guestCASC_' + course item number)
* Guest password = 1234 (item number only)

ANGEL Tip of the day #34 - A quick fix to a slow loading ANGEL

2009-11-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

If you find the main pages of ANGEL load slowly for you, try deleting your Theme Selector nugget. ANGEL is trying to load every theme in the planet every time you load the page. Deleting the nugget removes the problem.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #33 - Clearing your Cache

2009-11-10T12:11:00.001-08:00

If you ever need to call the Presidium Help Desk, the first thing they will ask you to do is clear your cache. Frustrating as that response is, it often works, so I encourage you to do it before making a call to Presidium.

Here’s how - For IE 7 and Firefox the following link also provided by Cleartechinfo.com - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljSntUi7Wtw

IE 8 Video from Youtube provided by Cleartechinfo.com - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsHrC9adzks&feature=player_embedded

Article - Copyright Law: A Guide for The New Millennium

2009-10-31T18:39:00.000-07:00

"Copyright law affects faculty members, researchers, librarians, administrators and anyone interested in higher education. Emerging new technology has created new legal issues in this respect. The age of information has given rise to greater concerns about copyright legalities." (Dr. Robert N. Diotalevi) This article provides detail on Copyright laws and policies provided by some institutions. There is a specific list of twelve (12) colleges and universities that have websites addressing and policies directly relate to copyright policies. There is also a special look at one of the policies provided by the University of Georgia back in 1999. While policies may have changed seeing a list of different schools who emphasize copyright policies may still be helpful.

Articles on Distance Learning

2009-10-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

Articles on Distance Learning

For the next couple of weeks or so we will be posting a summary of articles found on the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration (OJDLA) Website. These articles span a series of Issues. If you are interested in more than what we list here please feel free to click on the following link (click here).

Enjoy the articles!

Your eLearning Department

Article - Copyrighting Cyberspace: Unweaving A Tangled Web

2009-10-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

Copyrighting Cyberspace: Unweaving A Tangled Web - Click here for the article

Here we have an article written about the uses of copyrighted material specifically focused towards information found on the internet. It gives us step by step detail explaining what copyright is, the law behind it, fair use and how technology plays a role. This is a great, simple explanation that helps the average reader to understand a little more about what a copyright is and confusions that occur.

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #32 - Setting Dates in ANGEL

2009-10-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip Of the Day #32 – Setting dates in ANGEL.

There are several different ways to set dates on an assignment or quiz in ANGEL. If you use them incorrectly or make them conflict, they could get you into trouble. Today’s ANGEL tip reviews the different ways of setting dates in Access, Interactions and Milestones.

Access Tab: This tab will allow the student access to this particular folder under the Lessons Content. You need to have the Advanced Setting selected to see these dates.

Start Date

Selecting a Start Date prevents the item from being displayed until the specified date. This can be useful if you want to enter items ahead of time, but you do not want them displayed until a specific date. You might use this setting in conjunction with the End Date setting to restrict access to a test to a specific date.

End Date

Selecting an End Date prevents the item from being displayed after the specified date. You might use this setting in conjunction with the Start Date setting to restrict access to a test to a specific date.

Interactions Tab: This tab includes dates as to when a student can actually take the quiz.

Milestones:

Students can track their course progress by viewing a list of pending, completed, or past due milestones. Course editors and course assistants can view milestone achievements for each individual student. The number of milestones is indicated in parentheses. Milestones also appear in the calendar which help students gauge their course load for the class. You can access the Milestones under the Assignment Tab.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #31 - Tokens in Email

2009-10-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

If you are using ANGEL tokens in email, you should know they only work in the ANGEL system. So, if you send messages to external email or if a student has their messages forwarded, the token will not work.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #30 – Reset an Exam

2009-10-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

If you are using Assessments in ANGEL for your quizzes and exams, you may find yourself needing to reset one for a student. It is very easy to do.

At the exam under the Lessons tab, click on the “Utilities” link. Then click on “View, Grade or Delete Submission”. Find the student and delete the submission. That will reset the exam.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #29 – Mark All Read

2009-10-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

You can mark all conversations as read in an ANGEL discussion board, but it is not intuitive. Watch this 1 minute video to learn the secret.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU14EVjd3Ms

ANGEL Tip of the Day #28 – WhoDunIt?

2009-10-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a video on how to use the WhoDunIt report feature in ANGEL. If you only learn to use one kind of reporting tool in ANGEL, this is the one. It’s easy, powerful and enlightening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um0d41gtD5c

ANGEL Tip of the Day #27 - Using the Date Manager

2009-09-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

**Bonus ANGEL Tip for experienced users**

Did you know that you could set all of your assignment dates from one place? Use the Date Manager under the Manage tab. This works best if you already have all of your assignments posted, so it is ideal for classes that you have taught in ANGEL before.

Please refer to page 765 on the ANGEL Instructor Reference Manual.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #26 – Cascadia eLearning Faculty Community

2009-09-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

If you look under your courses nugget in ANGEL, you’ll see the Cascadia eLearning Faculty Community Space. There, you will find a plethora of helpful instructions on how to do dozens of things in ANGEL (thanks to my fabulous new work study student, Stephanie Carlson). It is organized by category and includes resources from all over the system.

Newly trained ANGEL faculty might not see it – email me if you don’t.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #25 - Send all ANGEL mail to Internet Email Address

2009-09-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

When you send an email through ANGEL, it does not go to the recipient’s internet email address unless you specifically check the “Send a copy to each recipient’s to Internet e-mail”.

Thanks to Greg Jackson, I discovered a way that box will be checked by default. Go to the Manage tab and click on Mail Settings. At the bottom of that window, you can check “Send a copy to each recipient’s to Internet e-mail” and make it the default.

FREE WEBINAR: Next-Generation Education for Next-Generation Students

2009-09-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

Next-Generation Education for Next-Generation Students

Wednesday, October 28th, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific, 2:00 p.m. Eastern

This one-hour FREE webinar, Next-Generation Education for Next-Generation Students, will be presented by Bill Pepicello, President of University of Phoenix, and is hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The program will discuss the place of Millennial students in the evolving American higher education landscape. Millennials are not defined by the admissions requirements of traditional institutions, but now comprise the majority of undergraduates in America. This wide-ranging discussion will touch on basic issues necessary to ensure access—and success—for this core student constituency.

This is a must-attend event for executives and professionals in:

Enrollment
Admissions
Faculty
University Administration
Government Agency
NGO Leadership

Registration is required to attend this event. Please register now.

To see a list of presenters, register and for more information please see the link below!

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=161521&sessionid=1&key=3B2CC1D14933967C75974CCE093BD11F&sourcepage=register

Angel Tip of the Day # 24 – Instructions for Students (and Faculty)

2009-09-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

If you are using ANGEL, it is helpful to provide instructions for students on how to do stuff. But, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Here is a round up of some resources you can use.

eLearning Papers – here is a list of printable handouts with instructions for students and faculty on how to do various tasks in ANGEL. If you have requests for additional eLearning Papers, let us know.

ANGEL Instructions for Students – Cascadia’s public website has a list of videos with basic

ANGEL instructions - www.cascadia.edu/programs/elearning/angel_instructions.aspx. Students can access this from the right Resources Menu on all of the eLearning pages.

Videos in your ANGEL classroom – ANGEL tip of the day #10 explained how to easily add some instructional videos to your ANGEL classroom from Cascadia’e Learning object Repository.

Videos for Faculty – WAOL has a nice collection of ANGEL resources for faculty. Just click on the down arrows to reveal the topics.

ANGEL Tip of the day # 23 – Jazz up your Icons

2009-09-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

An effective online classroom is important, but we also want it to look nice. Today, I’ll show you how to rearrange and change the icons on your ANGEL lessons page.

Click on this link for a quick demo - http://screencast.com/t/uicADEihneP

ANGEL Tip of the Day #22 – Don’t delete categories

2009-09-15T15:58:00.002-07:00

Continuing with our grading theme, you may be tempted to try and re-order your gradebook by deleting categories. If you have not reassigned the assignments to a new category and you delete the category that they are in, you could lose all of your grades.

To avoid this, just don’t delete categories after you have started entering grades in your gradebook. You can add some, but don’t delete them.

ANGEL Tip of the Week #21: My students can't see my comments

2009-09-15T15:58:00.001-07:00

We continue with our theme of common gradebook related complaints.

Problem: My students can’t see my gradebook comments.

Issue: Students probably are not running a grade report.

Most of the time when students say they can’t see your comments, it is because they are just looking at the grades nugget on the home page. Alternately, they look at the assignment itself and see your grade, but don’t click on the link to see the comments.

The best solution is to remind students periodically on how to run a grade report. An instructional video is posted in the Cascadia Learning Object Repository (LOR) which you can easily copy into your course (see ATOD # 10 for details on how to do that).

ANGEL Tip of the day # 20 – Grades Not Showing Up

2009-09-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

As we near the end of summer quarter and prime grading time, I thought I would focus on the top complaints that I get about the gradebook in ANGEL.
Problem: I entered the grades but they are not appearing in the gradebook.

Issue: No gradebook connection or Manual Grading

Solution: Connect the Assignment or Choose a different kind of grading

99% of the time, if someone cannot see their grades they either neglected to connect the assignment to the gradebook or they made the connection and chose manual grading. Let’s look at both of these.

Connecting the Assignment: In order for grades to appear in the gradebook, you need to connect the assignment to the gradebook. You do this under the Settings for the assignment and the Assignment tab. If it says “None” under “gradebook” then that is your problem. Choose New Assignment from the dropdown menu to begin making the connection.

Manual Grading: One of the choices in setting the assignment is Calculation Type. If you choose “manual” your grades entered at the assignment will not appear in the gradebook. You almost never want to choose manual grading as your calculation type. Just choose something else and your grades will magically appear.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #19 - Change your Course Title

2009-09-15T15:47:00.001-07:00

You can change the title of your course. This can be especially helpful when you are teaching multiple sections of the same class.

Click on the Manage Tab and then click on General Course Settings in the center of the page. On your Course Settings page, you’ll see the title of your course and you can edit it as you wish.

ANGEL Tip of the Day # 18 - reorganizing assignments in the gradebook

2009-07-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day # 18 - reorganizing assignments in the gradebook

Sometimes your assignments don’t show up in the gradebook in the order you prefer. Here is how to rearrange them. Thanks to Colene White for this great tip!
• Go to your gradebook and click on the Categories link on the right.
• Select the category with the assignments that you want to reorder then click on the “Show Tasks” button on the lower part of your screen.
• The task list will appear at the bottom of your screen. Click on “Reorder Assignments” from the task list.
• Now you can move the assignments around.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #17 - Log Off

2009-07-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #17 - Log Off

If you like to use any of ANGEL’s tracking tools – how many unread discussion posts you have or how many ungraded papers, etc – you may find them often inaccurate. This is because you need to Log Off at the end of a session for ANGEL to track properly. Just use the Log Off button in the left navigation bar.

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #14: The Grading Scale in the ANGEL Gradebook

2009-07-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #14: The Grading Scale in the ANGEL Gradebook

#14 – Grading Scale
We don’t generally use letter grades, but if you have items that are marked as completed or not completed or if your course or assignments are pass/no pass, here is the place you can set that up.

When you look in the Gradebook section under the Mange Tab, you see Grading Scale on the far right under Gradebook Management. If you have a Pass/No Pass assignment, try the following steps
• Put “P” (pass) in the first Label space. Choose your minimum percent (ie 75% of the possible points) and put that in the percent space.
• Click on Add New
• Put “NP” (no pass) in the second Label space. Choose zero for the minimum percent.
• Click Add New again and exit to the Main Menu.
• Now, you could mark an assignment with a score type of “Letter Grade” and this grading scale will be applied.

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #13: Assignments in the Gradebook

2009-07-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #13: Assignments in the Gradebook

#13 - Assignments
When you look in the Gradebook section under the Mange Tab, you see Assignments on the far right under Gradebook Management. This is a quick and easy way to see and edit all of the items in your gradebook.
• To edit, just put a checkmark next to the item and click on the Edit Selected button.
• If you teach a web enhanced or hybrid course, you might have students submitting work that does not go into ANGEL. Here is the place to add those items into the gradebook. Just click on the Add New button.

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #12: Categories in the Gradebook

2009-07-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tips of the Day - #12: Categories in the Gradebook

#12 – Categories
When you look in the Gradebook section under the Mange Tab, you see Categories on the far right under Gradebook Management. Click on that to see your categories and their respective weights. Here are two big problem causers.
• Make sure that you have either everything in a category or everything uncategorized. If you mix and match, the uncategorized items will not be included in your gradebook totals.
• Make sure that everything has a weight. Items with no weight are ignored in the gradebook totals.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #10 - Instructional Videos on the Learning Object Repository

2009-07-20T06:19:00.001-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #10 - Instructional Videos on the Learning Object Repository

Video is a great way to help students understand things. We talked in ATOD #9 about using the WAOL media server to store video files and in ATOD #10 about using the Learning Object Repository. Today, we’ll talk about another LOR option – the college Learning Object Repository.

As we mentioned, the LOR is good for posting large files or files that you share across courses. So, I have placed several ANGEL instructional videos in the college LOR. You can access them in the same way you would any other LOR content. Use the video below for instructions.

http://faculty.cascadia.edu/sdelaney/CCC%20LOR/CCC_LOR.htm

ANGEL Tip of the Day #9

2009-07-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the day #9 - Leftover Blackboard Files

This week, our tips will all be about managing your course files and course size. We have a 300 MG size limit on each course. This is more than adequate for most folks. Still, whether you have a big or little course, it is good to practice good file management. This week, I’ll teach you how.

WAOL Media Server: If you make use of big files in your course (movies, Camtasia videos, audio and video files, graphic intensive documents) you should probably get to know the WAOL media server. You can access it at MyWAOL (where you used to fill out your Intent to Teach forms) – http://www.waol.org. Anyone with a WAOL account can use it and anyone in the community college system can set up a WAOL account.

There is a video below, but just click on the Upload Media link once you log into MyWAOL and the instructions are fairly self explanatory. Once you upload your media, you get a link that you can add to ANGEL.

Video instructions: http://faculty.cascadia.edu/sdelaney/WAOL_Media_server/WAOL%20Media%20Server.htm

ANGEL Tip of the Day #7 & #8 - Two Mac Tips

2009-07-02T11:47:00.001-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #7 & #8 - Two Mac Tips

The Mac browser Safari does not play well with ANGEL. However, it can be deceiving, since most ANGEL features work just fine. Students sometimes have trouble with discussion boards and attachments. Recommend that your Mac users use the ANGEL supported browser Firefox.

If students have trouble submitting attachments, ask if they are using a Mac. Older Mac programs do not always add file extensions (i.e. “.doc” or “.ppt”). This confuses ANGEL. Not knowing what the file is, it simply rejects the file and does not tell the user. Suggest that Mac users add file extensions (they can also set programs to do this automatically).

ANGEL Tip of the Day #5 – Quiz Question Tip

2009-07-02T11:37:00.001-07:00

When you are creating quiz questions in ANGEL, there is an option at the bottom to Save and Create New. The default is for the same kind of question you just made, but you can use the drop down menu to choose any other kind of question as well. Using this feature also populates the number of points a question is worth.

This feature can really help cut down on the number of clicks needed to create each question.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #6 - Omit the Save Button in Quizzes

2009-06-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #4 - Omit the Save Button in Quizzes

By default, your quizzes have a “save” button, giving students the opportunity to save answers. This is only useful, however, if you give students multiple opportunities to take the quiz. If you only give them one chance, you should turn the save button off. Here’s how.

From the Settings link of your quiz, click on the Interaction tab. Be sure you have selected “Advanced”. Scroll down 4 sections to “Submission Settings”. From there, deselect Show Save Button.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #4 - Organizing Your Courses in ANGEL

2009-06-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #4 - Organizing Your Courses in ANGEL

Did you know you could organize your courses in the Courses nugget? (I didn’t either until Lindsay Custer told me – Thanks Lindsay!) Here’s how –

Log into ANGEL and rest your cursor over the Courses nugget to get the editing pencil. Click on that. Scroll to the very bottom of the screen and you’ll see some organizing options

• Organize by semester will group your courses by quarter. By Category will group master courses in one set and quarterly class shells in another. Use the plus/minus signs next to the organized courses to expand or compact the list.
• Do you want to see those little icons under your course telling you that you have ungraded items, mail, posts, etc? If no, you can unclick those boxes and they won’t show.
• Your quarterly classes show up as disabled and I have ANGEL set to show your disabled courses. However, you may wish to keep disabled courses hidden to reduce the clutter in your Courses tab. You can choose to do that in this space.

ANGEL Tip of the Day #3 - Pictures in the Roster

2009-06-25T11:10:00.001-07:00

ANGEL’s Roster (under the communicate tab) allows you to see pictures of anyone who has posted them. To make the pictures visible, click on the Show Pictures link under the word “People” when you are in the Course Roster.

To get your picture loaded into ANGEL, go to the Preferences area under Personal Information. In the middle of the page, you’ll see “photo URL”. Click on Add and you’ll be able to upload a picture.

Stephanie

ANGEL Tip of the Day #2 - Embedding Videos

2009-06-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

It is quick and easy to embed videos from services like YouTube into your ANGEL classroom. Watch this little video (2 1/2 minutes) for the step by step and then use it to practice your new skill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joysJccHdvQ

ANGEL Tip of the Day #1 - Linking Pages within ANGEL

2009-06-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Tip of the Day #1 - Linking Pages within ANGEL

It can be handy to link pages within your course. For example, if you might want to link from an assignment to a related discussion board. You may recall that it was fairly easy to link pages within Blackboard, but the feature is fairly hidden in ANGEL.

From any editing screen in ANGEL, click on the Add Content Link button.

A box will open. Click on the Map tab.

There you will see the contents of your class. Click on the little icon to the left of folders to open the folder up (if you click on the folder name, it will select that link).

Just for fun – the icon tab at the end has some fun icons to insert in your work.

ANGEL Tokens and Agents

2009-04-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

I am once again stepping away from the conference to attend another Elluminate seminar, this one on

Tokens can be used in any text box in ANGEL, from email messages to announcements.
* Get a list of all available tokens in the Help area (question mark). Click on the plus sign next to the Instructor Reference Guide. Scroll down to Appendix IV and you'll see the different kinds of tokens. You can copy and paste the token you want to use.

Ok - the agent part was too complex to type as I was going. Fortunately, Andy has made little videos and the link available. I will edit this post when I get that info and I will also put it in the eLearning community in ANGEL.

You can view a recording of the session here

Challenges in creating open source textbooks

2009-04-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

I decided to leave the TCC conference for a bit to attend an Elluminate session. The seminar is being delivered by a faculty member who teaches American Government.

It is important to remember that, although the session is titled Open Source Textbooks, the current term for it is "open educational resources" (OER). So he is actually talking about a collection of websites with good information, not really stuff that students are printing out and reading like a book. For example, he sends people to http://avalon.law.yale.edu to see original source material that one cannot usually get in a textbook.

Problems to overcome:
* Risk: faculty are risk averse and not particularly willing to try this type of new thing.
* Faculty come from a book reading culture and feel like sending people to websites is undermining the book culture. The presenter argues that it does not diminish the reading, but rather changes the type of reading that the student does. He thinks that the websites do a good job of the "information dispensing" task of a textbook. If folks want to keep a book reading, one should have a topical or subject matter book rather than a textbook.
* Academic Freedom - His department is moving toward an e-text and some faculty feel that a department selection impinges on their academic freedom.
* Few Incentives - he didn't get a lot of support at his college, no weight for tenure or promotion
* may be an impression of less depth and richness in the material
* students might not value the content because it is free
* lack of teachers guides and test banks

Problems from the student perspective:
* Taking away their security blanket - students worry about what material they are responsible for, it removes certainty that students have relied upon.
* Website content changes - If you rely on materials created by others, they may not be there next week or next quarter.
* active and interactive learning does not happen automatically. Students may need some instruction on how to interpret and work with digital content.

The workshop raised more questions than it answered, but was still useful. I think I would like to have a summer institute or something similar on this topic in summer quarter.