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Monday, February 4, 2008

February 4th, 2008

We have reached our 100% completion date for the Spring, 2008 development cycle, congratulations! Today I will be opening up your courses to the team of peer advisors and will be providing you with their feedback by this time next week.
  • You still have access to your course so if there are items that you would like to adjust please feel free to do so.
  • If there is something that you would like me to tell the team of peer advisors please let me know and I will make sure to get the information to them.

I will be submitting payroll for the new developments for the February 15th paycheck. If you do not see your development payment on that paycheck please let me know ASAP.

Last week I visited another Higher Education Institution in Texas and acted as the ACICS evaluator for their Distance Education program. It was an enjoyable experience and a wonderful learning opportunity. I learned that what we are currently doing in our courses matches what other institutions are also doing, so we are competitive in our industry. I also got ideas from looking through their courses that I would like to suggest for our course developments here at GU/MSB.

  • It was a requirement in their courses to have a discussion board for every week. This ensured that there was a high level of student interaction

  • Many of their tests were essay rather then multiple choice. Although it may be a bit more time consuming for the instructors to grade, it requires the students to really know the material in order to answer the questions. Essentially every online test is an "open book" test, so therefore essay questions allow for a true synthesis of the material.

Please post an opinion to the above suggestions if you have one. I am looking for feedback to the above ideas.

2 comments:

Bruce Bisbee said...

I agree with the desirability of a discussion question each week, including units 6 and 12. I have been trying this out but in Unit 12 I made the student replies optional (ungraded) but the original student post was still required and graded for posting by Thursday (end of the course).

Amy Ode said...

I am glad you have incorporated this into your courses, I think it adds great value!