September 28, 2009

Hello Developers,

I hope you all had a good weekend - I think autumn has finally hit Minnesota! The wind is really blowing the leaves off the trees and it is starting to feel like apple crisp weather.

Today finds us at the 50% completion mark for winter 2010 developments. I will be going into your courses this week to check for your progress, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

I would like to spend some time today talking about discussion boards. It is a requirement at GU/MSB that every unit has a discussion board. The reason we do this is because it is important in the online environment that the students feel as though they are part of a community of learners. It has been proven to increase retention and student satisfaction.

As a whole I think we have done a great job of creating engaging and thought provoking discussion questions. However, I would like to challenge your discussion board writing just a bit further. I came across an article from the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) titled Developing Online Discussion Forums As Student Centered Peer E-Learning Environments. This article proposes the idea of student lead discussion boards. It is an article that I think is well worth the read!

The idea is that the traditional discussion boards involve an instructor proposing a question and then facilitating the responses. This article asks the question, “What if the students propose the discussion board questions and facilitate the responses?” In the traditional approach the responsibility is on the faculty member to be exclusively involved in the discussion question. If the students propose the discussion board questions and facilitate the responses the students will be taking a more active role in their learning process.

This is not to say that the instructor can’t be involved in the discussion (and definitely should be) but if it is the responsibility of the students to facilitate the discussion boards then the students need to become an advanced expert on a particular topic and can become engrossed in the learning environment on a whole different level.

I view this approach working particularly well in upper level courses (300 and 400 level) and encourage you to give it a try if you are developing an upper level course. Keep in mind that if you are concerned about giving this a try you could propose it as a group project or could add an additional discussion board to each unit using this format. Then there would be one traditional discussion board and one additional discussion board that is student led.

If you have experience in this type of discussion board facilitation please feel free to leave a comment and let us know how it went for you!

Have a great week!

Amy

September 21, 2009

Good Morning,

So often we expect students to search for things on the Internet that will assist them in their education. My belief is that many students think that they are effective at searching on the Internet, but are not as effective as they could be. Please see some of the resources listed below to increase Internet search effectiveness. Giving students access to these tools will make them much more effective at their research:

Google Search Shortcuts: Here are the top Google Shortcuts that any savvy Googler should have under his or her belt.

Alexa.com: Free web traffic metrics, top sites lists, site demographics, hot urls, and more

Power Search Tool: The Power Search Tool enables you to search the Internet more effectively and easily. It will help you find websites, different types of files, beautiful images, all sorts of videos, documents and pretty much anything you want.

Teaching Search In The Classroom Webinar: Earlier this month Google hosted a webinar on teaching web search techniques. If you weren't able to participate in the webinar, you can now watch the whole webinar in this video of the event. It is 54 minutes in length.

Web Search Strategies In Plain English: 3 minute video from Common Craft

Please remember that the 50% completion mark is one week away. Let me know if you have any concerns with meeting this completion point.

Have a great week!

Amy

September 14, 2009

Good Morning Developers,

Today I would like to introduce you to a website titled Teacher Training Videos.com

This site contains many video tutorials on how to use various pieces of technology. Some of the videos include:

• Twitter in Depth
• Wikis with PB Works
• Easy Podcasting
• How to User Blogger
• Text to Speech Tools
• Any Many More!!

Please go to this site and check out all of the fantastic tools and resources available. You may find that you lose track of time searching around all of the videos on this web site. Enjoy!

September 8, 2009

Hello Developers,

I hope everyone had a nice relaxing Labor Day weekend! This is the week where your courses are to be at 25% completion. I will be going into your courses this week and providing you with feedback. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about meeting this deadline.

This week I would like to spend some time on Copyright. Many people understand copyright regulations in the residential classroom but become confused when considering copyright regulations in the online classroom. I would like to direct you to Know Your Copyrights. This is a website that was put together for librarians so they would have more information about copyright regulations. Part Two of the document that is posted to this site discusses Uses in the Online Classroom.

I will not go over this document exactly because I believe the information in this document stands for itself, however after reading this document you might still have a few questions:

In this document it is mentioned that many copyrighted works are accessed through a campus license that overrides copyright rules.

As a developer you may use power points, tests, and study sheets that are given to you from the publisher of a book when the book is to be used for the course. Because students purchase the book when they use it for GU/MSB courses we can use all resources that are developed to be used in accordance with the textbook. If the book is changed we must remove the old materials and replace them with new materials. We cannot continue to use materials from a textbook that is no longer being used by our institution.

Additionally, we have a large online library for your use as developers. Please note that we would rather have students access these library articles through the library rather than having you copy and paste the articles into the course itself. You may post the instructions on how to access the article, but please do not post the article itself within the course.

This also applies for Skillsoft readings that students need to complete. Students should access the readings through the Skillsoft site. Students can learn how to access the Skillsoft site through the FAQ portion of the student GU/MSB web page.

When developing courses for GU/MSB the term External Links is used a lot - isn't this a copyright violation?

In every unit we like to have what we call an "external link" posted. An external link is a web link where students can go in order to look up more information on a topic that is being discussed that week. In order to make sure we follow copyright rules we need to make sure the external link opens in a new window and is labeled appropriately. We cannot have the external link open up within Blackboard because then the web address is not displayed. If a web page opens up within Blackboard it can appear that we as an institution are taking credit for what appears on that web page. Please see the "how to" document on how to create an external link to learn how to have these links open in a new window.

I like to post student example of work in the course so that students know what I am expecting from an assignment - is this ok?

Yes, this is a great idea! However, remember that you must obtain permission from the student before doing so. It is a good idea to post underneath the assignment that you have obtained permission from the student in order to post the students work.

Have a great week!