Coming Soon to an Online Course Near You: Essay-Grading Software?

Times are a-changin'… or are they? I have written about my peers in the CBT (Computer-Based Training) realm in the late '80s and early '90s who were afraid our work would someday push them out of a job. It took me a while to realize what was most likely driving that fear for a lot of them: the way they were building their CBT courses. We have all experienced the snoozefest that is the "Next & Previous" navigation buttons. Used in a limited basis, they are great, but if that's all your CBT or eLearning course is… well, a monkey could complete that with flying colors.

When we entered the age of machine-graded quiz questions, that fear ramped up a notch or two… and then settled down when people realized there really is no loss of quality student contact time; actually, there is usually more, when the instructor makes use of their LMS's tools to handle more of the mundane tasks.

But I digress (I know, that's not like me). Check out this interesting read about essay grading software, let it simmer in your brain for a while, then share your impressions here.

Personailized Learning Designer

I am hearing a lot of instructor buzz about the Personalized Learning Designer in the upcoming Moodle upgrade!

A Use for (the Other) Google Drive!

I received an email from one of my favorite instructors, Dr. Stefan Seiter:

 

 "Is there a way to load a document from the web (e.g. a pdf file) directly to a particular folder in my Google drive or is it always a 2 step process: download to the computer and then transfer it to the Google Drive?" 

 

Leave it to Dr. Seiter to stretch my thinking! I had been of the impression there is little use for the Google Drive software you can install on your computer to put a copy of all of the files in your Google Drive on your hard drive, to sync with your Google Drive in the cloud, but that would do exactly what he was asking about. My reply:

 

"If you install Google Drive on your computer, Stefan, you could right-click on any link on a web page representing a file, and send that file right into your Google Drive. Make sense?"

 

There is Google Drive, and there is the "other" Google Drive. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to determine for yourself the value of each, and USE IT!