Online Student Experience

This video portrays what we DO NOT want to be delivering in our eLearning courses.

Your thoughts?

Connecting With Online Students and Assessing the Connection

Teaching online courses presents many of the same conundrums as teaching face-to-face classes. Participation in class, whether online or face-to-face, is traditionally difficult to encourage and to assess. Does just showing up or logging in count? What if a student is present, yet silent? What if a student raises a hand or makes a posting simply to gain the incremental peg count toward full participation points?

Read more here.

10 Google Forms for the Classroom

We're excited about Google Forms, and are always looking for new ways to deploy them to make our work easier and/or more effective. Here is a great article on Google Forms for the Classroom.

Create Your Syllabus With a Spreadsheet and a Calendar App

By George H. Williams

"I'm going to show you how to use GoogleDocs and Google Calendar to create a dynamic calendar for a course. This calendar can be displayed as a web page or embedded in a course web site. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you're happy with using a printed syllabus only—which is perfectly fine, of course—then there's no reason for you to try this. However, the method I explain below is useful if you'd like a little added flexibility and efficiency when updating a course syllabus from semester to semester. Plus it's kind of nice to have an online syllabus that will always show the immediately upcoming events and assignments for your course."

Read more here.

YouTube Adds Unlisted Video Option

Today, YouTube announced a feature I have been wanting for years: the ability to designate a video as "unlisted." Before today, we had two choices for video access: public (viewable - and searchable by anyone, and private - up to 25 other YouTube account holders. Recognizing the need for a third option, YouTube delivered the new "Unlisted" option.

"With this feature, you can mark your videos as "unlisted." This means only people who have the link to the video will be able to watch it. It won’t appear in any of YouTube’s public pages, in search results, on your personal channel or on the browse page. It’s a private video, except you don’t need a YouTube account to watch it and there is no limit to the number of people who can view it. You’ll get a link when you upload the video and then it’s up to you to decide who to share it with."

Read more here.

Oregon Offers Google Programs to Schools

3 Stories:

Oregon became the first state in the nation to sign up for Google Apps for Education, which is free, in kindergarten though 12th grade classrooms across its 197 school districts. Read more here.

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Oregon will be the first state to offer Google's free Internet communication and collaboration service to its public schools. Read more here.

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Oregon educators hope a free Web-based software application will help students become digitally literate while saving money for struggling school districts. The Oregon Department of Education began offering Google Apps for Education to public school districts on Wednesday. Read more here.

Moodle Testing Security Options

From time to time, I am asked "How can I make my Moodle tests more secure and prevent cheating?"

I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but in reality, securing an online quiz is somewhat difficult, as is that of a traditional quiz. Although the methods used to secure an online quiz will differ from that of a traditional quiz, one needs to look at the whole process and find a solution that works.

One can never totally prevent someone from cheating on a test, but only make it less fruitful to cheat.

Take a look at the Quiz Settings page in Moodle. There are many options there that can assist. This link can help explain some of the settings for quizzes.

I would offer the following as potential "options" you may want to use for general quiz security:

1. Change the "Browser security" drop-down to "Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security" from "None"
2. On the "Display" section, select "1" for "Questions per page" (this help to negate printing out the entire quiz).
3. Set a time-limit for the quiz (this helps to negate the use of textbooks or other materials).
4. Hide any of your course content on the day of the quiz (except the quiz) so students don't have access to any notes or other content while the quiz is open.
5. Only allow the quiz to be open for a certain time period and make yourself available during that time for technical assistance.
6. Randomize questions from a large question pool.
7. Set a time limit for taking the test.
   

There are other settings and practices that you may want to consider as well.

Moodle Gradebook Scoring Issue

Hi everyone;

There’s a characteristic of Moodle’s grade book we all need to be aware of. If we do not follow this procedure, the grades could be seriously skewed across campus.

When we enter a student’s score on the grid after a test or assignment, that number will indicate not only the student’s performance on that item, but in some cases also indicate her overall performance on the course, based on that item alone.

If a student is missing an assignment, we must manually enter the appropriate cell on the grade book and enter a “0”.

The hyphen that is already in the cells by default simply takes the cell(s) out of the total calculation.

What This Means

If you have ten assignments for the course, each graded out of 10 points, for a course total for 100 points, and a student hands in only one assignment on which he scored 9, then his course grade will read as 90% or A- even though he did only 10% of the course work.

You must open the other cells and enter a “0”.

Onward!

Terrance Millet M.A., M.F.A.

Not Everyone Can Successfully Learn Through Online Courses

Distance learning allows the learner to overcome traditional barriers to learning such as location, disabilities, time constraints and familial obligations. However, not every learner will be successful in a distance learning environment.

The success of distance learning is dependent on communication among the learner, his or her peers and the instructor.

Read more here.

New Media Player module for Moodle

The Media Player module includes options that have quite a high degree of interactivity such as Snapshot and Searchbar. As you’ll see while you read this article and try out the demos, it’s much more than a video player and will continue to support more features as they become available.

Moodle Mobile for iPhone

Check out the Moodle.org forum on the progress being made on Moodle Mobile for iPhone.

Why Contrast is an Essential Part of eLearning Design

Contrast allows you to distinguish the content on the screen. It helps the learner navigate what’s there, discern relationships, and determine what’s most important. There are a lot of ways to create contrast.

Read more here.

Characteristics of a Master eLearning Leader

An eLearning leader must have a firm understanding of the vague term ‘eLearning’. They must understand that in the word ‘eLearning’, the ‘e’ only describes the method in which a course is transmitted (i.e. electronically). It is merely the prefix to the key word…Learning. Although we teach in a business setting, the failure of students to learn will ultimately cause the business to fail. This person must be willing to fight for the sake of their students’ learning environment as it is one of the key components to any company’s success and growth.

Read more here.