Moodle Student Tutorials

Found a couple different tutorials geared towards students. If they seem useful we could update/modify them and make them relevant to our situation. We could also create our own from scratch, it might be a good idea to do a survey of some sort and find out which components of Moodle students struggled with most. Even just asking the TA's would probably get us that information.

http://moodle.tougaloo.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=1191

http://www.bakeru.edu/images/pdf/Res_workingadult/student_moodle_tutorial.pdf

Found these for teachers.

http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/learning-to-moodle-basics-for-teachers-an-open-moodle-training-course/

http://www.moodlenews.com

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Couple more - 2010.12.14

--What is the right Moodle tool for what you are trying to do?

http://www.cats-pyjamas.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/MoodleToolGuideforTeachers_May2010_JS.pdf [pdf]

--Avoiding the 'Scroll of death', interesting idea to keep students from having to scroll too far.

http://www.moodleblog.org/?p=319

Calibrated Peer Review for Writing Assignments

Do you believe it is essential for your students to be able to think critically and convey their opinions clearly to others because students understand more deeply when they write about what they are learning?

Do you think writing assignments would help prepare students for their future careers because many jobs incorporate peer review to evaluate proposals and reports?

Do you refrain from assigning as many writing assignments as are needed because it would greatly increase your grading workload?

Assigning writing tasks in courses seems intimidating to instructors. Having to read all the writings could take a lot of time, that on top of course content creation. Also, instructors in scientific fields often feel that they have not received training in writing and editing themselves and therefore are not confident that they could assess the writings (and so the cycle continues).

One of the ways writing assignments can be made more interesting to students, and hopefully not unduly burden the instructor, is by designing the assignment in such a way that students have to give each other feedback. This can be done in many CMS systems by requiring students to post their essay and then having student critique their writing. The obvious disadvantage is, of course, that this would not always be anonymous and it does not have the incentive that students may need to be very honest and critically (but nicely) critique their peers’ writing.

There is an innovative free Web-based program (developed by a Chemistry professor at UCLA with NSF funding) that can be of some help. This program can be used across many different disciplines.

(A two-page review of the program can be downloaded at: http://www.educause.edu/ELI/ELIInnovationsImplementationsC/156773)

Calibrated Peer Review (http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/) manages the entire peer review process, which consists of:
1. Assignment creation (CPR also hosts a vast library of assignments used previously).
2. Electronic paper submission
3. Student training in reviewing (this tutorial must be completed before students can proceed to the reviewing exercises)
4. Student input analysis (Students evaluate work of their peers after which students review their own work). Students thus graded in three ways:

• a. Evaluations from their peers.
• b. The degree to which each student’s assessment of other students’ writings conform to the rubric and peer consensus.
• c. Self assessment of their own writing.

5. Final performance report preparation

CPR's approach to peer review is thus:
• “double blind”: students do not know who authored the essay they reviewed. And the author does not know the identity of the reviewer. However, neither author nor reviewer is anonymous to the instructor.
• By using “calibration” techniques the feedback that a student receives is reliable and meaningful.
• CPR encourages student autonomy (probably appreciated by online students), however, there will be continual feedback from the instructor, peers, and a final report from the CPR system.

Best-use scenarios for using CPR.
• Assignments should require relatively short essays (1 to 3 pages)
• Works well in very large introductory classes, class should have at least 15 students.
• Instructors will have to spend time on creating a grading rubric and the settings for student assessment – meaning there may be quite a lot of work up front for the instructor to ensure the assignment’s success.
• The software is very good for improving formulaic writing (such as lab reports).

For more information on how to incorporate CPR into your course visit the CPR webs site. At the University of Illinois the staff at CITES’s Ed Tech office will be able to help you incorporate CPR. At one of their brown-bag seminars Prof Hurst from Geology gave a presentation on how CPR worked in his course. This link has links to his powerpoint presentation and a video.
http://www.cites.illinois.edu/events/learningtech/brown_bag/2006/hurst.html

Below is the response I received from my ION instructor on the topic:

Thanks for your description of this product and for going the extra step of linking us to link to the review of this program. I have had some instructors in EC in past terms who have used it and liked it. I think it's especially interesting that this tool for peer review of writing was developed by a science instructor! So many instructors that I know avoid (like the proverbial plague) having students do any writing assignments. I appreciate "another student in this EC course" sharing her experience in regard to working with instructors across the disciplines in this regard. I like that the use the tool allows for promoting writing across the disciplines.

I think your concern about the initial work in using the tool is on target. Instructors I know who have used the tool have mentioned that there is quite a bit of upfront work for them. However, once the instructor does the upfront work for a class, that will carry over to future classes and -- ultimately -- reduce work. So, when instructors have large classes (and if the instructors want to require writing assignments), a peer review tool such as this may actually foster efficiency!

In any case, CPR was written under a grant and is free for anyone at any institution and their students to use. Below, I'll put a link to one school's upfront instructions to their students about what CPR is and how to use it. I think they've done a great job of clarifying and communicating the tool to their learners! So, if anyone here might want to give it a try for any of your disciplines, you may want to adapt the student handout at the following link to ease some of the front end instructor work.

http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/cprhelp.pdf

Moodle2 - New features (Part 1)

You can find the official release notes for Moodle 2 here, but I figured I would write up some features that look interesting.

Moodle 2 has overhauled it's message system. Before it was not robust enough to really be useful.

The system now communicates using three different methods: email, IM, and an in-site system. The nice thing is these all work together. If a student sends you a message you can receive it using any combination of the methods above. You can also set different methods for contact for different activities and features, ie get emails when students submit quizzes, but use the in-site system for personal messages.

The different options are:

• Assignment notifications
• Confirmation of your own quiz submissions
• Personal messages between users
• Subscribed forum posts
• Feedback notifications
• Notification of quiz submissions

Moodle2 also keeps a log of your conversations so you can go back and see what was said.

How I picture this being used is setting up the IM client (very easy) on your various computers. Then when a student sends you a message you do not need to worry about having Moodle open to receive it.

If using the in-site system they will then see a little pop-up in the lower right of your message reply.

For office hour type situations or quiz or assignments with set start/end time it would allow you to be available without having to watch the webpage.

Using 'myUdutu' for directed learning modules

I am sure by now you have noticed the term 'SCORM' showing up in various places around Moodle.

SCORM is a set of standards for how to manage e-learning resources. Wikipedia : SCORM

With SCORM we can create robust online content. You are able to incorporate websites, videos, quizzes, discussion topics, objectives, presentations, audio,... into one directed learning activity. This incorporates nicely into Moodle, allowing you to grade SCORM quizzes and see how long time was spent on the activity (like other Moodle reports you have seen).

There are a fair number of SCORM content generating software options available. I looked at most of the free tools listed on Moodle's site, and in my opinion myUdutu's online tool is the best. I also liked eXe, but it lacked some functionality (incorporating ppt's) that makes it hard to recommend.

myUdutu is a completely free online tool, from a company that sells hosting for the content you generate in myUdutu. Just create a free account and you are off. The Getting Started Guide does a great job of introducing you to the software, and once you login there is also a link for 'how to use myUdutu', (which is a myUdutu generated project) which is also helpful.

One shortcoming seems to be the inability to have short answer assessments. I think you could however mix Moodle tools in (wiki, quiz, forum) to get them a place to give a short answer to a question.

Using Wikis in Science Classes

iaw "What I learned in my ION class this week".

I am not sure how well our own courses lend themselves to wiki development, but I think we should definitely make teachers aware of how wikis can help them teach science in a more collaborative and inquiry based way to their own students.

This article has some great examples of the strengths of wikis (working with other schools all over the world to collect data, for instance).  It also explains the ways you can control access.
http://www.suite101.com/content/using-wikis-in-science-classes-for-collaboration-a67853

Many educators now use Bernie Dodge’s building blocks for a successful WebQuest:

• The Introduction orients students and captures their interest.
• The Task describes the activity's end product.
• The Process explains strategies students should use to complete the task.
• The Resources are the Web sites students will use to complete the task.
• The Evaluation measures the results of the activity.
• The Conclusion sums up the activity and encourages students to reflect on its process and results.

Bernie Dodge’s webpage: http://webquest.org/index.php
This seems an excellent model to follow if you want to assign a webquest task in an online course.

An example of a wiki created by a K-12 class using these building blocks:
http://scook.cuip.net/~speretz/wikiwebquest/webquest.htm

Jim Witte's Tips for Effective Online Discussion (Nov 10 -2010)

This afternoon I attended the "Teaching Excellence" workshop presented by Jim Witte entitled: Online Discussion Strategies.  Jim basically went over all the tips for good online discussions that he has assembled over years.  A link to the pdf explaining all the tips can be found at:

http://jimwitte.com/workshops/11-10-2010-online-discussion#attachments 
(I highly recommend you download the pdf jwitte-online-discussion.pdf for future reference since it has some great suggestions.  Below I list the tips (the pdf has far more details).

1. Create discussions that have a purpose
2. Develop comfortable discussion questions focused on specific problems rather than broad, opinion-type questions.
3. Separate procedural communication from learning discussions.
4. Classic 1-week online discussion activity structure:  Initial posting (close and only then start) / 2 response postings.
5. Develop a rubric that lays out expectations, but is easy to apply.  Include # postings, required replies, deadlines. (pdf has examples)
6. Develop some guidelines for posting, general "rules of engagement".  This is a general extension to the grading rubric, applies to all postings. (pdf has examples)
7. Provide explicit instructions for each discussion activity.
8. Teach your students how to participate in an online discussion.
9. Practice "guide on the side".  Work hard at keeping moderators from becoming the locus of discussion.
10. Connect online discussion to F2F lectures (if applicable).
11. In large enrollment courses, use online discussion activities to break down the large into smaller.
12. Provide resources (readings, websites, media, etc.) for discussion activities.  keep the focus on the issues/topics, rather than the search form information.  It's good to give students a choice in materials (protects you from linkrot, accommodates student interests and abilities).
13. Consider using a variety of online discusson activities.  Choose discussion types that fit the goals for your course.  Activites that provide students with a choice can provide students with a way to make the course more relevant to their own interests, goals.
• reflective posting - write a reflective posting. Typical topics: asking students to write about their goals/interests in the course, or a summary of what the student thinks has
  been the most important or relevant points, or to relate the topics in the course to their own circumstances, job, studies, etc.
• jigsaw posting - students investigate multiple perspectives/aspects of an issue, bring back to the group as a whole. For example, instructor may develop 20 questions on a topic, and assign students to specific questions. Instructor should provide a few resources for each question. It's also possible to assign multiple students to the same question, and ask them to work together.
• critique posting - students create an artifact (a powerpoint, an outline, an analysis, a diagram, etc) and fellow students provide constructive feedback to make suggestions
  for improvement.
• pre/post lecture questions - in conjunction with a guest speaker (delivered f2f or via synchronous online videoconferencing), students can post questions in advance which could help inform the content of the guest lecture, or post followup questions for the guest speaker afterwards. In large courses, the function of the moderators might be to distill postings down to a smaller, more manageable set of questions.
• problem set postings - in some math/science/engineering disciplines, problem sets are common. General discussion space for problem sets, or individual discussion spaces for each problem make it possible for students to help each other.
• role play - students post in the voice/from the perspective of someone else, and post responses in that voice. The summary/wrapup might ask participants to look for extensions/elaborations to the perspectives presented, consider what perspectives might be missing, or identify common ground/differences.
• discussion jobs - In addressing a discussion topic, some students are assigned discussion jobs, like "idea generator", "skeptic", "wrapper", or "moderator".
• student-contributed readings - students can take turns posting websites, news articles, or articles from the library that pertain to the topics of the course.
• connect to informants - students connect to informants (perhaps students in other countries, in industry, in the field, etc) in order to gain information to be used in a report, presentation, web site, etc.
14. Ask about course discussion (online or f2f) in your informal mid-semester feedback, or use a poll/survey to get quick informal feedback.

This pdf file also goes into the positive aspects of online discussion compared to F2F discussion.  In addition Jim suggests some things on what things you can do with "discussion forums" other than discuss. 

One main point that kept coming up: STRUCTURE IS GOOD!

Other pdf files that are at the link are a short activity ( that may help you think of appropriate discussions for your course. (discussion-tps.pdf)
Ask yourself these questions:

1. What topics will your learners discuss? How will learners benefit from the discussion(s).
2. How might the activity be structured? Who will be discussing? (learners-instructor, learners learners, or perhaps someone outside the course?) How long might the discussion activity last? How many postings will learners make, and when? Do any of the formats listed in Tip 13 look promising?
3. How will learner postings be assessed? How will you judge the success of your online activity? What sort of information do you expect to need in order to improve your online activity the next time it's offered?

Another file shows you with figures the difference between course and activity discussions (Tip 3) and the chronological structure of a discussion (Tip 4). (discussion-figures.pdf).

I think the tip sheet will be a great resource to use when making sure that my discussions will be useful and varied.  I also like the idea of first having initial postings be open and then close, only after the close will the response postings be allowed.  That is different from ION courses.

Greetings, M.

Notes from CITES's Innovative Approaches to Blended Learning

Hi all,

I just got back from the CITES discussion that was entitled, "Innovative Approaches to Blended Learning."

This was a very catchy title as we all seek to be innovative or at least should be en route in our search. The problem with this talk was that the title was not what the talk was about at all.

Blended learning was defined by the audience as a way to get us all involved in the discussion, however that was the last time the term was used.

Instead, E.T. Hansen showed us his idea for a new way to teach our students, a web-page using, Square-space.

Building his argument for this, he used the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan's remarks at a recent meeting of the state of educational technology director's association forum. He is correct that with this next generation of college student that there will be even more things to grab their attention and education must compete.

Hansen is open to a community approach to his learning community. In this case, the University of Illinois and the University of Syracuse, where he is also employed.

His site, ShiftLearning.com, is an unique approach but, it does exactly what Moodle, Compass, etc. does.

Security is an issue as authentification is not needed. The course page is a public site that anyone can join and become a member of the learning community. In this case, of course, their work will not be graded with others.

The most interesting I gained was that we could revisit the idea of using Google docs as his students that give him feedback love it.

This was not as advertised so actual notes on innovation in blended learning does not apply here.

Parkland Online Science Teaching Workshop

This past Saturday I attended a one-day workshop at Parkland College entitled “Designing and Improving an Effective Online Science Course”.  Organized by Heidi Leuszler and Dave Wilson (I am sure with help from many others). 

I had a very good time.  I learned a few things, probably not as much as those participants who had never taken an ION course or never taught online, but I felt it was still worth my while.  And it felt great to share some of our experiences and things we are considering to implement in our courses.

Below are a few blog entries on larger topics we discussed at the workshop.  And here are a few points I that do not fit anywhere but that I wanted to share:

• when giving students resource material it turns out that using too many might overwhelm students and they do not look at any of them.  Using just a few of the very best sources will make it more likely that they will read the papers or open the links.
• when answering student questions about how to use or find something on the web it is often easier to use Jing (instant screenshots and screencasts) than actually writing out the instructions via text.
• to avoid virus transmission encourage students not to use attachments.  Maybe they can link to documents in google docs? 
• When asking for proof that students did a laboratory exercise or a fieldtrip ask them to upload pictures to shutterfly or flickr, that way the moodle server will not get overloaded.
• According to Heidi it is actually possible to give an Oral exam in an online course.  She gives students 5 questions at the beginning of the class.  They work on answering those questions and then during the 30 min Oral exam via Skype or phone they will be asked to answer two of them (the two are decided by the instructor).
• Give students "Two Mulligans" during the course.  They may run into a computer problem so they cannot submit an assignment or for some reason their work does not show up in moodle.  This can happen.  Just not more than twice to the same student in one course.

Hope you can join me next year for the workshop.

Kitchen Labs and Simulations

One of the perceived drawbacks of online science courses is that there is usually no lab component.  But it does not have to be that way.  There are now many ways you can still incorporate hands-on science into an online course.

There are companies that sell kits that will have all the equipment (except what one can buy in a grocery store) and instructions for doing labs.  Including fetal pigs!!!  A kit for a course usually runs around $180 dollars - which is pretty reasonable considering that students do not have to drive to a campus to take a Saturday lab and the lab fees that one has to pay as on on-campus student.

The company that had a rep at the Parkland workshop was:
Labpaq

And the company that folks at Parkland actually use is:
eScience labs

At the workshop people also shared web sources for simulations and animations that they use for their science courses (incl. chemistry and physics).  I am listing some here because I think there are probably quite a few that we could use for our courses.

Molecular workbench - This is a free, open-source tool that creates and delivers visual, interactive simulations for teaching and learning science and engineering.

Chem Collective - from their website: "a collection of virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, and concepts tests which can be incorporated into a variety of teaching approaches as pre-labs, alternatives to textbook homework, and in-class activities for individuals or teams. It is organized by a group of faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon University for college and high school teachers who are interested in using, assessing, and/or creating engaging online activities for chemistry education"

PhET Interactive Science Simulations - a fellow workshop participant shared this with us.  It is super easy to use and there are some really interesting simulations here. 

learn.genetics.utah.edu - a resource with lots of animations, but also some experiments that can be done at home.

ExploreLearning - when you sign up you get access to vitual manipulatives (a.k.a. gizmos) - there is a 30 day free trial.  These gizmos are geared towards K-12 education.  To see how that would work check out one of the videos.

Citations

When students submit work they often use many different types of citation formats.  To keep citations consistent they could use an online tool such as Son of Citation Machine.

The reason it came up as a topic during the Parkland Workshop is because it could be a tool to also teach student to get all the information for the sources they use and then actually learn that some sources are better than others.

This is a link to an article that discusses how to use the Machine.

http://www.helium.com/items/1133047-how-to-use-son-of-citation-machine

Scientific Knowledge Survey

The keynote speaker at the Parkland Workshop was Dr. Ed Nuhfer who is the Director of Faculty Development and a Geology Professor at Cal State University - Channel Islands.  Dr. Nuhfer gave a talk entitled “Conceptual Approaches to Informed Design of Successful Science Courses”.  It was pretty eye-opening – not just for those teaching online!  I have his powerpoint presentation if you wish to learn more about the surveys he and his colleagues have come up with to measure science knowledge.

For a great case study of the Knowledge Survey check out this link.

http://elixr.merlot.org/assessment-evaluation/knowledge-surveys/knowledge-surveys2

And here is a link to the slides of his section on Designing a Science Literacy Concept Inventory (last slide shows only preliminary results, but I think it is disheartening to see that freshmen do as well as seniors).


Some important points that I do not want to forget:

•  course outcomes (as presented in the Knowledge Survey) needs to be organized in the order of course presentation - this is especially important in online courses.
• Students often view courses as hoops that they have to jump through.  Our goal needs to be to to offer courses that together form a framework for reasoning. 

Power of Reflection

In an earlier post we discussed how to make sure that students actually did the reading, presumably because we as instructors think the reading is important.

At the Parkland workshop I came across the following method of reflection and the data that came out of the study:

Reading Reflection

(Karl Wirth, 2008)

After completing the reading assignment, write brief responses (i.e., at least several sentences) to 2 out of 3 questions:

1. What is the main point of this reading?

2. What information did you find surprising? Why?

3. What did you find confusing? Why?

            If appropriate, it is helpful to me if you respond to #3.

The relationship between reflection and final grades:

So make the students reflect...its good for them!

Merlot and Merlot Elixr

 You may all have heard about MERLOT which is  a great repository for online learning and teaching materials.  This is always a good place to start looking for open-source materials you maybe able to use or alter for your own purposes. 

http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

 I recently also came across MERLOT ELIXR which actually is a repository for digital case stories from many different areas of study.  This is where faculty post real-life experiences for using teaching strategies and how they were implemented. 

This is where I found the best link for sharing the Nuhfer talk from the Parkland workshop.  Maybe someday we can create our own case study on how to best teach Biology courses online?

Another resource that can serve as a source for educator support (and recommended by Dr. Nuhfer is the The Science Education Resource Center (SERC). There is a particular emphasis on undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education.  This website shares special expertise in effective pedagogies, education, community organization, workshop leadership, digital libraries, website development and program and website evaluation.

Web quest creation

Hi all,

thought I would post upon the blog.

I was looking through my ION course on e-assessment and ran into this nugget on creating a web-quest.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech011.shtml

Learning

Via Beth:

Group Work

This afternoon Ed, Van and I attended a workshop on Group Work (Let’s Collaborate! Create a User-Friendly Online Group) organized by Tanja Hodges from ATLAS.  It was actually a fun hour - I think we met some great people who we will probably run into again either on campus or online during our SIB Online Learning Endeavors.  Here are my notes from the workshop:

A. Why do learners dislike group work? (the following points were generated by attendees)

• Social loafing
• Activity is not appropriate for group work
• Loners
• Coordination takes time
• Instructor intimidated
• Instruction not clear
• Biased because of previous bad experience
• Aversion to group grading
• Do not have the right social skills
• Do not possess the right technology skills

B. Why assign group work? (the following points were generated by attendees)

• Peer teaching/learning, access to more perspectives, increases diverse learning experience
• Deeper level of thinking, engagement.
• More reflective of real-life/professional experience/environment
• Accountability
• Minimize grading? (those with experience in group work did not think it would be less work on the instructor's part)

Our goal is to balance the concerns listed in A, while reaping the benefits listed in B.

Provide context of why students need to do an assignment.  Why you think it is important that they learn this content in a collaborative fashion!!

How to make group work successful…

1. Develop a firm foundation

• Build a learning community (connection, trust, honest communication, explicitly stating expectations)

2. Provide clear instructions

• State your learning objectives (provide direction for both facilitators and the learners) – give meaning – communicate expectations – help motivate learners – provide a path toward evaluation.
• Meticulously compose project guidelines and activities.  Not just on end product, but also about the group process.  How often will the group members need to log in?  What roles will learners need to assume?  Will learners be able to ‘fire’ a group member who is under-performing?  Provide access to exemplary examples.

3. Enact effective communication procedures

•  In online environment communication is perhaps the largest challenge.
• Asynchronous: examples are discussion boards – email – wiki – blogs – google docs – twitter
• Synchronous : examples are Elluminate – skype – telephone – chats -

4. Offer frequent feedback

• Provide detailed project rubrics
• Long-term group effort is composed of several smaller group efforts along the way.
• Guide-post activities (formative feedback)
• Use assessments to:
• Address group accountability
• Address Individual accountability - CMS is your friend!  Journaling Activities (How did I contribute to my group this week? Personal between instructor and student or open?)

Something to think about: is it important that you be able to monitor most of your student’s communication?

By the way, Tanja mentioned that ATLAS will be organizing a 4 week Group Work course during the Spring semester.  I took a course like that from ION, might be good for somebody from our team to take the online version.

M

Prezi in the (online) classroom

I went to a prezi workshop that is part of UofI Library "Savy Researcher Workshops".   Since I have already created some prezi's I did not learn that many new things about how to use Prezi but I was again reminded of some interesting ideas.

1. Powerpoint was created to be used using a static projector - yet we now use the internet which is not static at all.  Check out this prezi for an explanation of this concept.
2. Prezis allow you to show how an idea is developed.  You hardly ever think of an idea in a linear fashion so why should you necessarily always be limited by this linearity in your presentations?
3. In an online course presenting information to students in a linear fashion may limit the students.  If you use a prezi (together with a "hand-out") the student is free to explore the content in a way that is mot meaningful to them.  Skipping over things that are clear to them while spending more time on things they are not too familiar with.  Of course, you can do that with any online content, but a Prezi is build around this concept, it lends itself to individual experience building.  The student feels more in charge of her own learning.
4. Prezi's are a great tool for collaborative work.  Even for young learners.  (This last link to a video also points out why using background music on a video that includes people talking is hardly ever a good idea!).
5. So on the one hand Prezi is great for free-flowing creative thought, but on the other hand Prezi is also absolutely awesome when you make it fit inside of an overarching concept.  The best way to show you what I mean by that is for you to check out these two Prezis.
Playing to learn or Future proof your education.

SIB-online Team members: when signing up for a prezi account make sure you sign up for an Education account (still free but more storage space).  And let me know if you want a lesson on how to use Prezi, no need to attend a workshop, the tool is pretty intuitive, but there are a few things I have learned that will make your life easier.  The help features on prezi are also very good.

Happy Zooming!

M

EPals

Epals.com

Through Epals a classroom can connect with another classroom (anywhere in the world) in order to participate in joint projects, and share emails, photos and videos.  Epals can bring a topic to life for students and is specifically built for primary and secondary education.  It is is a safe way to explore the world outside of your community and make connections with others that can be half a world away.       

A review of a Geography project using Epals:
http://cnx.org/content/m32249/latest

This is a link to some of the projects that EPals does with National Geographic:
http://epals.us/projects/info.aspx?DivID=index

Hybrid Courses - Advantages and Challenges

http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/hybrid/faculty_resources/advantages.cfm

This link lists some advantages of hybrid courses:

Advantages

• New teaching opportunities
• Student engagement
• Increased student learning
• New pedagogical approaches
• Documenting the process as well as the product of learning

But there are also some Challenges

• Rethinking Course Design
• Adopting a New Approach to Teaching
• Managing the Dual Learning Environment
• Preparing Students

I welcome the addition of any other advantages and challenges you have encountered in your hybrid courses - feel free to add them to the list if you have blog-edit-super-powers.

©2010 Learning Technology Center, Hybrid Courses. All rights reserved.

Food for thought

"The most beautifully designed course -- complete with audio, video, and other graphic and multimedia tools -- can fail dismally if the instructor is not a skilled online facilitator working to build a learning community among the learners (Lessons From The Cyberspace Classroom, Pallof & Pratt)."

Meaningful interactions among all participants in a course does not happen magically, however, it involves careful and informed instructional design and good class management.

Free & Open Source Books & Moodle Plugins

With the move to make education more affordable and accessible, free and open textbooks could be a great way to keep costs down and quality up.

• Top ten sources for open and free books
• Open text book
• WikiBooks : Science
• Textbook Revolution : Biology

---

Moodle.org has a great database of several hundred plugins.

• Moodle.org : Downloads

A couple interesting looking ones.

• My Videos Block
• Molecular Toolkit (Screenshots here)

Another initiative

College Choices for Adults

suggestion from 105 TAs

One of the TAs in 105 thought it would be better to do half online and half f2f each week. Or another suggestion was half the semester students are f2f and the other half online. What do you guys think?

Inquiry Based Learning - after Reading assignment

The team is considering Inquiry Based Learning assignments that would make the readings students have to do more meaningful.

Instructors could assign discussion questions based on specific readings but that would mean that some modules have two discussion question forums (one for specific readings, one for broader overall module topics).  One thing that was suggested was to have as set of students come up with what they considered the most important points of a reading (as well as lingering questions) and share those with the rest of the class.  Another exercise is called "jigsaw"- where each group researches a topic, learns it, then teaches their peers. 

While not all of the entries are inquiry-based, several of the activities on ION's Online Teaching Activity Index (OTAI) are.  http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/otai/
It is a great resource for ideas and inspiration.  "Fishbowl", for example, might be particularly applicable to the MST program -- where a student submits, say, a video of them teaching a certain
biology topic, then the peers evaluate how well the initial student did.

Student Generated Content

Wanted to share this wonderful Prezi from Jason's MoxBox blog:

http://bit.ly/cIWrrt

Strategies for Designing and Supporting Student-Generated Content on Prezi

Finding originals for YouTube videos

(Based on email and meetings between Marianne and Jason)

Marianne:

I found this video that I would like to use for my "Biology and Tech Innovation Course".

The video features Prof Martijn Poliakoff introducing the topic of Green Chemistry.

I love his videos. I like his office, I like his hair, I love his sense of
humor (maybe not always intentional big grin), I like his examples, and
his British accent. Again, I think this makes a great opening video and
brings some humor to the students - students who may be nervous entering a
chemistry module.

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

The video is from nottinghamscience. They post a lot of great science
videos on YouTube - I wish I could find if they had a website somewhere
else so that I do not have to expose my students to the weird comments
that often come with YouTube. I spent another 15 minutes trying to find
other sources for the same video.

The benefit of using YouTube is that it does not require students to sign up for a service or obtain special software to view it.

So my question is: where is the original NottinghamScience site with these
videos?

Jason:
So, a couple of thoughts. First, it looks as though nottinghamscience uses YouTube
as their delivery mechanism. Even if you go to their website
(http://www.test-tube.org.uk/index.htm), the videos there are "powered" by YouTube.
It isn't too uncommon for an organization to choose YouTube (or Vimeo, or others
like these) as their delivery mechanism--they make it so easy to distribute videos
online without technical knowledge.

The Green Chemistry video can be found on their site
(http://www.test-tube.org.uk/videos/pages_poliakoff_green_chemistry.htm). This
helps avoid the exposure to YouTube garbage comments, though YouTube's embedded
player is programmed such that if you click on the video (not the player controls),
it'll take you to the YouTube page (with its comments). What I would suggest is
embedding the YouTube video into your course. Students can still get to the
comments by clicking on the video, but at least while the video is within your
"space", the comments are hidden.

From other meetings:
At least every year, and definitely before a course is offered, OCE will go through the course website to determine if all the videos (that you may have downloaded) are still available on YouTube. The agreement is that when YouTube takes down a video, all copies that came from that link can no longer be used. An effort will be made to find alternative sites that host the video (legally) - or find  another subsitute.

New York Times wants to know how Teachers use Technology.

http://nyti.ms/9gUIYh

Online Collaboration Tools

How to communicate and share work when working in a group online?

e-mail - that is pretty straight forward, but can get quite cumbersome very fast.

googledocs - the gold standard at the moment - very convenient.  Need to have a google account before you can start, but who does not have a google account these days?

dropbox - a tool you can use that creates similar folders on different computers (even smart phones) - it also keeps on online copy.  Need to download the application before you can start.

Survey

I created a Survey at Survey Monkey using questions that I am gathering through my ION Group Work course.

I found the tool easy to use - but I initially created my first few questions without scrolling all the way down to see all the options available to me (like being able to add comment boxes). So make sure to scroll down.

I designed the questions to find out how well a group worked together on a project. Some questions are trying to find out the same thing but from different angles. There are maybe one or two more questions I would have liked to have asked, but I would have needed the pro version.

The link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VNBCJQC

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Secure Testing - Remote

Some institutions (or individual instructors) require online students to drive to secure testing sites for assessment.

Pros:

1. added security. The instructor/proctor can be assured that the student, who presents ID, taking the test is the student that is enrolled in the course.
2. Satisfies federal laws stated in the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which requires schools to be able to validate student identities when they are being assessed.
3. Test sites usually have at a minimum broadband, which means that quite sophisticated methods can be used for an assessment – something that can maybe not be done if students were to use technology at home.

Cons:

1. Loss of convenience (travel and time).
2. Expensive for institution (and therefore probably for the student)

I really do not care for the travel requirement. We are trying to bring top quality education to those who are unable to attend courses as traditional college students. Taking away one of the benefits of online courses would be counter productive. However, student identity is a big deal and will be more so in the future when the HEO Act goes into full effect. But technology is keeping pace, there are various ways that cheating online can be decreased (remote proctoring*). And we have to live with the fact that, just as in F2F classes, there will be cheaters. It is the institutions responsibility, not the individual instructors, to prevent cheaters and deal with consequences when rules are broken – but that is a whole other issue.

*For a companies that sells remote proctoring services check out http://www.kryteriononline.com/
or http://proctoru.com/.
(I am pretty sure that this method will probably also be expensive for institutions)

Some options for creating content yourself

(From course website)

1. Video (Use whatever camera you have that can record video, which may include cellphones. Share the video file or upload to a service like youtube.

• Six Steps to Creating High Quality Video Training: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/185/six-steps-to-creating-high-quality-video-training

2. Audio/Podcast (Free audio recorder/editor at Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ You might also want to sign up for a free hosting account at a service such as http://www.podbean.com. Tip: use LAME to export it as a MP3 file.

• How to Create a Podcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hrBbczS9I0

3. Jing (free download at http://www.jingproject.com) We recommend also signing up for a free hosting account at http://www.screencast.com/.

• How to Use Jing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx0N_dTbzJk
  

4. Prezi (free account available at http://prezi.com/).

Advice from fellow students:
When recording video, or audio or a jing presentation write a script first. Or if that then sounds too rehearsed use some keywords. But do not do it "cold".

RSS -feed. What is it and how to use it in education

http://www.slideshare.net/leonardstern/rss-in-education

Potential roles of students in content creation?

We have all realized at some point in our teaching career that only when we taught a topic did we really understand the material (glycolysis!). For this very reason it makes pedagogical sense to design your course in such a way that it included student construction of content, as well as management of activities, within the course. Students who create content will have the opportunity to use new skills learned in the course and also broaden their knowledge base. All while actually decreasing the workload of the instructor who can then focus on developing other aspects of the course.

The products created by the students, which are often learning objects, such as presentations, video, podcasts, etc, can be reused in the course and by the students themselves to teach other (current and future) students.

If the task is done as a group project then not only will it stimulate individual learning but also collaborative learning by building a knowledge base collaboratively.

This type of inquiry-based learning will involve the integration of informational (background research on the topic) and technological (using video camera) skills. Ultimately we will be educating a workforce with skills that employers value. The disadvantage is that some of these skills are not necessarily your responsibility to teach within the scope of the course. It is therefore important that student have access to support from their institution to be able to obtain the skills (use of camera, how to do library research, etc.) to help create content (I guess just as the instructor will need access to these resources).

1. Student Content Creators: Convergence of Literacies (2007) Educause Review V 42 (6): 16-17 Joan K. Lippincott http://bit.ly/cpAy1c
2. Talk the talk: Learner-generated podcasts as catalysts for knowledge creation. British Journal of Educational Technology V39 (3): 501-521 M. J. W. Lee, C. McLoughlin, A. Chan

Self-produced Content - Fun!!!

I created a video - which was shot at the butterfly pavilion in Colorado by my 6-year old son and myself using a Zip. I downloaded the zip files to iMovie for the Mac and then to YouTube: http://youtu.be/a80NlTVqZ64 (I tried to add audio but it is taking a while to have that published).



This video is part of a presentation on structural color in butterflies that I created using Prezi. I found the prezi very intuitive. I was sometimes frustrated by the limited tools (there are far fewer tools than in powerpoint - there is not even a tool to draw a straight line!). But in the end I am happy with the product. I think I will try it again using a different topic and learn from the lessons learned: first plan out where the presentation is going, then fill out the content...much like the lady suggested in the introductory video, which I watched at least 5 times and still did not learn from apparently



https://prezi.com/secure/e2e5de92a9ed7468c10355f68adae80a5b98d8c2/

This was fun!

Some advice from fellow Tech Tools Students: Consider file size!!
I must say it didn't run smoothly on my notebook computer over wireless G, but ran fine on my desktop with wired connection. I don't know if it is the image sizes or my small processor. I suspect the processor. My desktop is a gaming rig I built about a year ago, and if anything runs slow on that I'll be surprised.

Sharing already made content (podcasts)

I am an avid consumer of podcasts - I have my weekly NPR shows - but also my podcasts from Science Magazine, Nature Magazine, NYT Science, etc. But the science podcasts would not be suitable for my class. They are too broad, but I would hope that I could encourage my students to download some of them and listen even outside of class.

This week I had lunch with a student who is very interested in the course I am developing "Biology and Tech Innovation". He mentioned that he was a member of a group called the Bioneers. I decided to look up if this group had a podcast, and it turns out that they actually do.

iTunes; Bioneers: " Bioneers brings bold innovators with bold breakthrough solution to the airwaves with their eight annual radio series. Bioneers: revolution from the Heart of Nature airs in more than 250 cities in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland and is free to all stations, distributed by WFMT radio networks".

You can download the podcast via iTunes and or Yahoo. Apparently the podcast were only started in July 2010 and it looks like they post 4 new episodes per month.

I will not require my students to all the podcasts (it looks like they are all about 30 minutes long - which is probably about 15 minutes too long). But some of the topics would fit well in some of my modules. For instance, there is a "Planting Buildings" episodes which fits with my architecture module and I could use it as one of the content resources. I may let the students know what they can skip - I found the first 3.5 minutes a little too preachy, so I would suggest the student skip to a certain minute mark.

Sharing already made content (video)

One of the modules that I am proposing for my new online course "Biology and Tech Innovation" is on Green Chemistry. It is a topic that I actually do not know that much about.

I found many videos on Green Chemistry but I think I like this one the best as an introductory/opening video for the module. (It took me 5 minutes to find, thanks to catchy search words)

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

The video is from nottinghamscience. They post a lot of great science videos on YouTube - I wish I could find if they had a website somewhere else so that I do not have to expose my students to the weird comments that often come with YouTube. I spent another 15 minutes trying to find other sources for the same video. With no luck.

The benefit of using YouTube is that it does not require students to sign up for a service or obtain special software to view it.

In this particular video, which does not have the greatest production value, Prof Martijn Poliakoff introduces the topic of Green Chemistry. I love his videos. I like his office, I like his hair, I love his sense of humor (maybe not always intentional ), I like his examples, and his British accent. Again, I think this makes a great opening video and brings some humor to the students - students who may be nervous entering a chemistry module.

Open Course Ware

Open courses are online courses that are usually created by institutions (universities) and shared online for free. Donors, such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, often fund these initiatives. The university to that was the first to offer many of their courses through Open Course Ware was MIT, but now other institutions, such as Yale, have joined too. The courses offered are often introductory courses. Content can be downloaded as files or even as audio or video (to, for instance, iTunes U)

The reason why institutions might want to do this is to advertise the fact that they are educational leaders. It is in the institution’s best interest to get their stamp on course content that is available online. MIT or Yale courses would probably have a higher proportion required textbooks written by MIT faculty or published by Yale. The courses probably also focus on the research done at the institution, so that again it reinforces the idea that the institution is at the forefront of new developments in education, science, etc.

I am not quite as certain about the benefit to the faculty who developed these courses (it is their intellectual property?). Of course, if they wrote the textbook it would have a financial pay off, but otherwise they might miss some financial gain now that the university is not charging money. Then again, what would a faculty member do with the content? Start their own University?

The benefits for me as I develop my own online courses are:

1. serve as source of ideas on what topics should be included in a course, what readings to include (syllabus) or even what to present in a lecture (video).
2. The courses often have videos of lectures that I could link to from my own course website. I may not use all the videos but there is a lecture by a famous scientist that would fit well.
3. No registration ($) required.

Some disadvantages:

1. Courses are not rated - so how to tell if the syllabus and course are any good?
2. It puts the source institution in the spot light - not my home institution.
3. There is no certificate or degree associated with completing these courses.
   

I explored the Open Yale courses and did not find anything that was similar to the courses I am developing. There were actually not that many classes available, but that may change in the future. MITOpenCourseWare has far more courses available but most of them just include syllabus, calendar, readings, lecture synopses and assignments – no video or audio, this may be because this initiative is older. This would suffice for getting ideas about what to put into a course but could not provide actual course content.

Responses from fellow TechTools students:

"I would like to share another advantage especially for non-US students. Students from abroad are new to the US educational system. Of course, preparing for exams like TOEFL and GRE gives them a glimpse. Still, it can be a completely different educational experience.

If these students get to see open courses and have a rough idea how to look up calenders and then decide how many courses they can manage in a trimester/semester, how the grading system works (of course, every course and every instructor has their own way of assessments) and most important that participation in the in-class as well other group activities is very important. I think open course ware can be a prototype of what they are going to experience." (NMV).

"I connected with your concern over the intellectual property issues and like the way you phrased the argument distinguishing between issues in media and print.

It seems so clear, at least to me that there is no difference, why does a delivery method present a challenge to IP. I am not sure I understand why the lines become so blurred in digital media. As faculty we copyright our print lectures, class materials and publications, why are digital presentations treated differently? The only reason I can come up with is monetizing for the institution. There must be a higher value placed on the digital copy because it can be replicated and/or shared via so many delivery methods" (HL)

Other links:

http://www.academicearth.org/ (Cal courses)
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/courses/ocwsites

(this site even links to non-English courses).

A source for K-12 syllabi/lesson plans:

http://www.oercommons.org/ (requires free registration).
Jason: it might be interesting to have students explore this repository for lessons that they think would work well in their schools and/or adapt the lesson based upon what they learn in class.

Sources for Learning Objects

Merlot http://www.merlot.org/Home.po

National Science Digital Library http://nsdl.org/

Wisc-Online http://www.wisc-online.com (You have to sign up for an account, but it is painless and they have over 2000 objects.)

On the wisc-online I found two learning objects that would fit my module on nanostructures in the "Nature as Inspiration for Innovation" course. It took me only 5 minutes to find them because I got there through Holly's link, so I did not even have to sign up for an account.

The first LO is called "Nano Introduction to Nanotechnology" and the other "Why Nano?". They would serve well as introductions to what nanotechnology is and its history and its future. Both LO are from 2005 and may already be somewhat outdated. But that is OK, since the activity I require my students to do is to create a learning object like these on nanostructures that were based on structures in nature. My students will be high school biology teachers and the LO they create will be used in their classroom.

Twitter. How would that work?

I used to have a personal twitter account, but the only thing I ever did on it was follow Lance Armstrong while he was participating in the Tour de France. That guy has really embraced modern technology tools and used twitter to update his fans about how he was feeling after another grueling day on the bike. It was extremely interesting to see when he had good days and bad ones, when he missed his family, when he had to report to yet another doping test, when he felt let down by his team mates. But he was at his best when he would throw in the occasional reminder that life was short, and that some people go through tremendous suffering every day. Live strong. Here twitter added to my life, and raised awareness (and money) for a good cause. But there are really no other people I wanted to tweet with. Not many people are that interesting it seems. The people that are interesting to me (friends and family) deserve more than 140 characters. I am definitely not the tweeting type.

I tried again for this exercise. I can see the value of Twitter as a way to send out announcements and reminders, but do we really need another mode to keep students on track? I am currently teaching a blended portion of a class. I see the students for the first official face-2-face class this Tuesday, but they had an online assignment due at midnight Friday. I emailed the students multiple times, even went to the class itself to introduce myself and to remind them that it would be a good idea to at least log in to the moodle site a few days before the first assignment was due since tech support on a Friday night is hard to find. Even my smiling face didn't prevent at least 2 students from emailing me in a panic just prior to the due time. Seems to me that there are always a few students that are not paying attention – I gave them every opportunity – still they did not take the opportunity that was given to them to succeed. Is Twitter just going to cause confusion, give me more work (reading all the chatter, making sure everyone has an account), or is it going to wake up those last 2 students who otherwise could not bother following the directions? Encouraging students to use Twitter to voluntarily share links and info they come across with each other might be an idea, but wouldn't that be better as a water-cooler forum on the course website?

So basically, I am not convinced that twitter will add much to the class. Am I too skeptical, too old-fashioned?

My twitter account: MAlleyne10

Can't see the forest for the trees?

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the number of tools that can be used in an online learning environment. The websites explaining these tools are one top of all the content I come across when working background for my research. How to keep track of it all.

For the last few months I have been using Diigo to help me keep track of it all. You can become a user for free and it helps you annotate, archive and organize all the websites that are of use to you. In that way it kind of serves as a fancy bookmarking tool (if you were really good about sub-categorizing bookmarks - my bookmarks tab had 50 entries in random order - not very useful). But Diigo asks you for tags to the website (some are already suggested by the article itself) and later you can quickly search interesting sites by tag.

During my Tech Tools course I learned to also become a member of a Diigo group. In this group setting all the bookmarks from members in a group come together. This could be very helpful for class activity. Sometimes, as an instructor or a student, you read something that you want to share with your class - putting it in this group will enable others to see what you were so excited about (you can even include comments) without bothering them with yet another e-mail or twitter. After the course is over the bookmarks can still be a great resource to refer back to.

It takes a little while to remember to use the Diigo tool, however, it is very easy to use and the toolbar I installed makes things even easier.

When to use a wiki or a blog - and what is the difference?

Answering the second question is much easier. The first one I am still trying to figure out.

A blog can be viewed as an online journal of a particular owner/author. It is updated whenever the author has something to share (weekly, daily, hourly). Blogs do have spaces for opinions of readers to be posted, but readers do not alter the initial post.

A wiki is a website that is meant for multiple people to update in real time from all around the world. Wiki entries/articles represent a consensus, but again there is an area for discussion and comments.

Wiki's can host a blog, but not vice versa.

Blogs:
- Usually a single author. Sometimes can have multiple contributors,
- Author posts, user comments,
- Opinion Sharing ,
- One-to-many content.

Wiki:
- Multiple Authors,
- Edited by a group or team,
- Contains links to other Wiki pages,
- Continuousy changing and growing rapidly,
- Many-to-many communication.

Both blogs and wikis can be used in online courses. This blog was started to serve my journal while discovering new tools to use for online learning in my Tech Tools ION course. It follows along as I learn more on the topic.

Wikis are probably more useful for group projects. I place to share material created by group members as well as a place for discussion and editing to occur.

I personally really like blogger for blogs, mainly because I familiar with the tool plus it is linked to my google account. For wikis I use pbworks, another very intuitive tool.

This article, by Bill Ferriter is a great resource to find out how to use blogs and wikis in education.

I have not really used blogs and wikis for educational purposes (except as a student, with mixed results). Some problems I see with this technology is that it takes a student away from the main course website, in addition if the group working on the wiki is large it can become quite cumbersome. I will post more on this topic later when I have more experience actually using it as an instructor.

Elluminate: Skype on Steroids

For an excellent article on asynchronous learning refer to "Taking the 'A' out of Asynchronous" by Matt Villano.

Elluminate is a very powerful tool to accomplish synchronous teaching.

• A link can be created by the moderator within the class website so that getting access to the session is straightforward.

• There is a whiteboard feature where the moderator can upload files such as powerpoint presentations.

• It is easy to polls while in Elluminate (A show of hands everyone ?!)

• Students can ask questions both by typing/chatting or by speaking through microphone.

• There is also a webcam function – but I have not yet used it in a live session.

• It is also possible to tape the session so that those who were unable to “attend” can follow along in the future.

• There is also a group function. Students can be divided into several groups and have separate, private, discussions. I am not sure how difficult it is to accomplish this by the moderator while in a session. Curious to find out.
  Using Elluminate seems pretty intuitive, especially from the student's standpoint.

• Elluminate can be used for lecture, study sessions, and office hours.

Whereas the basic Elluminate tool is free to use, the full license is very expensive and usually only available to to instructors at bigger institutions. (vRoom, the free versions, does not have recording capability and is limited to only 4 participants).

Another option would be to use Skype – but for now that synchronous tool can only be used between two computers.

You can actually record your skype sessions (both video and audio). You do this using ecamm. You can try it for free, to get the full service added to your skype costs $20. (This one is for Mac only, but there might be other services for PC). The result is a quicktime file which our tech office suggests you store/host outside of, in my case moodle, to save space. I think this would be a great feature for some activities I do in class where I ask grad students to contact physiologists they admire and ask them some questions about their career. These interviews can then be used to share in the class, and in future courses.

There is a feature on skype where you can share your screen view (the files that are open on your screen) with the person you are skyping with. So you can draw things and work on a document together. You cannot share both your video feed (your smiling face) and your desktop (documents) at the same time, but I don't think that is such a big deal - there is still the audio.

This might be a cheaper option than Elluminate for those at smaller colleges.

• Skype is inexpensive.

• Skype is easy to install and use, the video and sound are usually clear, though the webcam feature can slow down the conversation considerably if bandwidth is an issue.

• Weblinks and documents can be send via the chat box.

With both Elluminate and Skype there are going to be challenges like set up, getting used to the interface, and scheduling times when students will all be available.

Chatting and Texting

Many tools are available to help you incorporate texting and chatting.

Chat within Moodle

• Adv: tool within the course website
• Disadv: sluggish

Chat within Skype

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: only enabled when computer is on.

Chat within Elluminate

• Adv: works well – fast, more than two people can participate
• Disadv: requires access to Elluminate (see separate blog entry on Elluminate)

Chat within Facebook or other networking sites.

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: I view FB as something I do outside of work.

Chat via GoogleTalk

I do not know enough about this tool at the moment to comment on its usefulness, but since it is connected to all things Google, which I use a lot, I am sure I will soon become more familiar with it. However, my University discourages me to use Google tools for teaching – and I am not sure why – something about not being able to provide the same support in case work is lost.

Chats can be viewed as an asynchronous or synchronous tool. Sometimes you want to chat with somebody but they are not online – then your typed text basically becomes a message that can be dealt with later. If you make an appointment ahead of time to be online chatting is definitely a synchrounous tool.

Texting is handy when using a cell phone, but probably just for shorter messages. Again, this is a semisynchronous tool.

But what to use chatting and texting for? Probably not for actual content delivery. Chatting would be good for virtual office hours or for collaborative work between two students. Texting could be used to get almost instant feedback from a particular student or from the instructor.

Disadvantages of texting:

• Texting via phone would require instructor to give out his/her personal phone number.

• I don't think you can rely on texting as the only way to deliver important messages to students since some students do not have access to cell-phones. Posting messages using the text feature in conjuction with message feature in Moodle or e-mail would be a better idea. Many smart-phones now have quick access to e-mail.

• A phone plan that inludes texting may incur an additional cost to the student.

Polling

Advantages (according to my fellow TechTool students):

1. Asynchronous communication using polls or texting is an efficient and quick, low commitment method for short evaluations.
2. Response rates are usually very high because students feel valued because their opinion is considered (especially when the poll is anonymous)
3. Great way to check if the difficulty levels or expectations after an assignment or tests were not met or exceeded.

Pitfalls:

1. Technology breaks down, which lessens the student's positive experience in the course.
2. Texting involves costs.

For the TechTools course we used:

Polleverywhere.com. It was a positive experience for me. I was able to text my response to the question (which was posted with the number to text to and the numbers corresponding to the different possible answers on the course website) via my iPhone. (I also had the option of going to the website and clicking on the response there). When I visited the website I found that creating my own poll was very straight forward.

Polldaddy.com is preferred by one of my fellow students because "you can send the link directly to students in an email or embed it in BlackBoard. Its free with easy signup and poll links are not public, ensuring student privacy." (It does not involve smartphones, which some students may not have anyway - which would leave them out of the process).

Tech Tools Scrapbook

Hello,

this is the first post in my "Tech Tools Scrapbook". This is where I will be keeping track of all the great resources that are out there.

Greetings, M.