January 18, 2010

Good Evening Developers!

Today is the 75% check point for most of the brand new developments. I will be going into your courses this week and will e-mail you with feedback. If you have any questions on my feedback, please let me know. Please remember you will need to have your 10-week shell conversions completed before the 100% deadline too, so as soon as you feel you are at the 100% point please let me know and I will make a copy of your course so that you can convert it to a 10-week version.

This week I'd like to introduce you to an excellent study technique for your students: Online Flashcards. Online flashcards allow students to interact with the course material in various ways that are most beneficial to them personally. Students can print the cards out for a physical study tool, students can download them to their PDA or MP3 player to study on the go, and students can rely on the technical tools to keep track of their progress.

You could incorporate the use of flashcards into your course developments a few different ways:

1. Are you looking for a great way for your students to collaborate and learn from one another? Have your students make a set of online flashcards and then share their flashcards with other students in the course! Each student can take a chapter or concept and make a set of 15 – 20 flashcards. They can then share their flashcards with other students in the course and they suddenly have great studying resources that they can all use!
2. Implement flashcards into an actual assignment where students create the cards and submit them to you for review. This promotes studying while studying!
3. Or you could create flashcards of the key terms from the unit lecture that are then shared with the students.

Whatever the approach, this is another great memory tool to help students integrate the course material more completely. Below you will find links to some excellent online flashcard creation sites. I encourage you to check these out and try to incorporate one of these resources into your course development, possibly in preparation for a final exam even.

Cramberry.net
Study Stack
Quizlet
Knowtes

As always, please let me know if you have any questions on any of your developments. I'm here to help in any way I can. And I'm anxious to take a peek at your courses to see how they are coming along. I'll be in touch individually on your progress.

Have a great week!
Heather