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OLG Meeting Notes Oct 4, 2002 ...

Ocotillo Online Learning Group
Meeting Oct 4, 2002

GateWay Community College
2:00 - 4:00 PM in the Learning Center (Room 144 in the Instructional Building)
map of campus
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Welcome and Introductions
Anna Rosa Lampis (GateWay Community College) and Sandra Wells (Phoenix College)

What's New in Online Learning at Your Campus
all participants
We will spend some time sharing with each other what is new in instructional technology for on-line learning across all the different campuses of the Maricopa district.

• GateWay The college is moving towards creating a CTL. They are working out who it will be for and what kind of personnel will be needed. The college has many faculty teaching online with little support to help them.
• Mesa - They have added several more online courses, including foreign language courses.
• Paradise Valley - Using Blackboard for online courses, beginning to see high use the Respondus tool as well.
• Phoenix College They have created a new online course to teach their faculty how to teach online, to give them online facilitation skills, to use the online environment effectively, and the nuts and bolts of navigation. Although taught via WebCT, the content is general enough that it can be used in all of the platforms.
• Rio Salado - They are moving towards adopting a new platform for their online instruction.
• South Mountain - With a round of intense summer training sessions, over half of their 93 full-time and part-time faculty are using Blackboard in their courses.
• District Office - At the EDUCAUSE conference in Atlanta, the new buzzword was "Electronic Portfolios." October 18th is our own ePortfolio Dialogue Day, Estrella Mountain Community College, 11:00 AM to 3:40 PM featuring Ali Jafari and John Ittelson. This event has been pre approved for 4 clock hours of Faculty Professional Growth Non-Academic Advancement Credit. If anyone is interested in a WebEx demonstration of Blackboard 6, please let Alan know. There is a software package that helps put math formulas online. Concord 's Digital Content Server that shares and manages media (for your online courses) on another server.

E for exploration - the E-cartridge
Margi Schultz (GateWay Community College)
Margi Schultz, a former GateWay student and now a full-time faculty member (as well as a PhD student in an online program), started the Practical Nursing program at Gateway. When she asked a Prentice-Hall representative about book adoptions, she found out that the publisher offered a Blackboard "course- cartridge" (A cartridge is a way to incorporate publisher materials, like a textbook, into a Blackboard course).

The cartridge is based on the text book, Fundamentals of Nursing. When the cartridge was made available for her to review, she was surprised to see what was more or less, "the whole book" - a great volume of content. Margi spent several months over the summer reviewing "every word" to select the appropriate portions for her course. She strongly suggests getting the cartridge in plenty of time to completely review what you've received. Each student purchases the book from the bookstore and it includes their own individual cartridge access number.

A problem she faced was that many of her students were new to this environment, and ranged in age from 17 to 52. she did not want to overwhelm them with the amount of information in the cartridge. For the first class, she scheduled a four hour session in the Learning Center computer lab to orient her students to the Blackboard features and the syllabus for her course.

Margi's goal was to create a learning community using Blackboard's communication tools, and to emphasize to her students her role as a facilitator. She also wanted them to have fun with the format. Her students were nervous at first, but all were able to get started without too much trouble.

Under the "Course Documents" button, she gives her students a chapter outline and course work (there is information for every chapter in the textbook), along with chapter objectives and "Nursing Web Destinations" that have web links, a glossary, and even a study break. Margi found that having these embedded learning objects saves class time; that they were used in addition to learning. Margi did provide regular assignments for "points" (credit). For each chapter, her students had to pick one course objective and at the end of the chapter, send to Margi by email a message explaining how they met that objective.

The students found the Glossary particularly useful, and many reported that they "would not have gotten by without the glossary" (though Margi notes their text book always had a glossary!). Margi also provided for each chapter a "study Break", something fun, such as a joke, or informative such as study tips.

She did find that many external links needed to be tested, but were extremely useful, such as the Tulane School of Medicine's Acid-Base tutorial.

There is an Assessment Manager portion of the cartridge that helps with creating quizzes, etc. For practice, you can also create case studies that pull answers from the cartridge. You can also compile questions (cut and paste) from previous quizzes for later tests. A very useful feature in the cartridge assessment items was that the feedback to students often included references top specific pages in the textbook.

Margi didn't receive any negative evaluations of her course. She asked them via the discussion board for feedback on the use of the course cartridge. But she should have asked for feedback during the semester. She also wished she had brought her students back in mid-semester for another hands-on session.

There was no difference in price of the cost of the book (for this specific course), but students need to purchase a new cartridge number each semester. Some publishers build the cost of the cartridge into the book, others charge a subscription fee. So check with your publishers on their policies. You can contact the course management web sites to find out which publishers provide digital content:

• Blackboard's Course Cartridge Repository
  "Course Cartridges are pre-packaged course materials, ready to use in Blackboard 5. They contain a variety of materials that can include slides, documents, multimedia files, links to related websites, test banks, and quizzes, all of professional editorial quality. The cartridge materials often correlate to a textbook or eBook, although some cartridges are meant to be used stand-alone. All Cartridge materials can be customized once they've been downloaded to your specific course site. "
  http://cartridges.blackboard.com
  
  
• WebCT ePacks
  "e-Packs are course content that are developed by our content partners and designed for use with WebCT. WebCT offers over 1,500 e-Packs in more than 50 subject areas."
  http://www.webct.com/content

How did you access this cartridge? An access key was provided from the publisher. The information was then uploaded to the Blackboard site by Anna Rosa Lampis, our tech guru at GateWay, and then it was available inside my Blackboard Control panel.

Hybrid Courses in Digital Medical Imaging (15-20 min)
Jeanne Dial and John Lampignano (GateWay Community College)
Jeanne Dial, another former student and a new faculty member, attended the GateWay Faculty Summer Institute and decided to put her course (DMI 100) online. Diagnostic Medical Imaging (DMI 100), part of the Nuclear Medicine Technology program (the only such program in Arizona) is a course that helps the student determine if this is what they would like to do as a career. It includes extensive information about medical imaging and a "shadow experience," that helps students with the process and a directory of clinics for observe the imaging process with a working practitioner. This course is only offered at GateWay, so via Blackboard it is now available to students anywhere. The online format works great for working students.

First offered as a Summer II Open Entry / Open Exit (OE/OE) course, she has 19 students for Fall 2002. Jeanne sent each student a welcome letter (regular postal mail) that also included instructions on how to access the course.

In her Course Documents (mostly created in Word and converted to PDF) is a comprehensive review of the types of medical images (using many photos) and specific information on what is involved in earning certification. Her course used two quizzes as a review. For the student shadowing experience, she provided:

• Information on the process
• Frequently Asked Questions
• A directory of clinical sites in Arizona
• A form for their clinical site to sign off on
• A post-experience survey

At the end of the OE/OE course, she gave out surveys on how the students thought the course went and received back positive responses. All of the students who took the summer course, decided to continue in the program base d on their experience in the course.

Any changes? Jeanne would change the introduction letter to make it a little easier to go online and she would also add a computer needs option to her survey.

Prior to his recent sabbatical, John Lampignano (yet another former GateWay student, teaching there for 20+ years) had no interest in teaching Medical Imaging online, but his sabbatical experience completely changed his view. He observed programs in texas and Oklahoma where more than 80% of the content was made available online.

John decided to move his course, Radiation Safety (DMI 101) to a hybrid format. This 2 credit course, "for students right off the street", offers the knowledge of how to protect yourself and others while using radiology. It shows how dangerous radiology can be. It also offers an enrichment activity that explores the history of radiology. The course has 2 in-person sessions over an 8 week span.

Developing the course was a team effort, and John credits the help of the technical staff, and the Learning center which provided on-site testing. When asked about the amount of time it took to develop, John responded "I stopped counting at 400 hours." He did not just want to dump PowerPoints into Blackboard, so he created all new, original content. "I threw a lot in, so much, it is almost a textbook."

This Radiation Safety course includes 11 lessons that use very graphic images. Each lesson includes "Points to Ponder" as follow-up questions. John wanted to make sure the course was fun but at the same time that the students were learning. Performance was "good" based on Blackboard quizzes an in-person exams. He found that students truly became active learners ("not active as in awake in the classroom") because they became emotionally involved with the issues and engaged in online debate/discussions.

John learned much about his student's and their philosophy, "I learned so much that I developed an emotional/personal connection with each student - this would never have happened in a lecture hall."

Lessons Learned:

• There are no quick fixes, you have to constantly work at perfecting this type of course. You really don't know what you are going to get until you offer the course.
• You need to make sure the student enjoys the course (John received positive reviews of the course).
• This type of course can lead to emotional, engaging discussions.
• He wanted to make the course comprehensive, so he decided to make the textbook optional. Although his students told him that the online information was well rounded, he's not sure he will make the textbook optional again.
• The discussion board was used quite a bit, but only from the student to the teacher. He was concerned because of the nature of the discussions being so emotional that if they shared their thoughts with each other that the discussion would snowball. (A discussion board can be dictated by the type of course, it can be valuable, however, you need to set up ground rules for sharing. Maybe even assign groups and offer anonymous posting.)
• Of 48 students, 6 didn't know how to use a computer. He needs to add fundamental skills for the course.

John found the Blackboard grade book to be weak, so he used the Midas which made it "kind of chaotic."

In conclusion, and reluctantly paraphrasing Hillary Clinton, John claimed the type of learning is important, does not happen in isolation: "It does take a village."

Hands On- How to Create Structured Formatted Documents in MS Word
Alan Levine (MCLI)
Have you ever had the need to provide documents/template for your students where they responded to a structured set of questions? We will show you how to create a "MS Word Form", where users can enter specific information in fields, select choices from drop down menus, or indicate choices by check boxes.

Some advantages of using this approach are:

• No special software beyond Word required (but students will need access to Word)
• The information returned is consistently formatted
• You can limit the amount of text returned
• You can create formatted numerical input (Date, time, decimal)
• With some elbow grease (and patience with the quirks of Word), you can create spread-sheet like calculated fields.
• The document can have portions locked from changes by the student
• The student can save the document to their hard drive and go back at any time to finish his/her work. (PDF forms read in Acrobat Reader do not save content)

We have been using this for the past year in the application forms for Faculty Professional Growth and the mcli Learning Grants. but there are adjust as likely some creative instructional uses you may dream up.

In this hands on session we will show you how to:

• create a simple MW Word form
• how to password protect the form
• how to create a simple calculated formula

Examples
2001-2002 Learning Grants Application
Complex form with menus, checkboxes, and calculated fields (budget worksheets)
MS Word file: lg_app_demo.doc [254k]

Planet Project Report Form
The final version of the form we will create in this hands on session, with text input fields, drop-down menus, check boxes, formatted input fields, and calculated fields.
MS Word file: space_report.doc [28k]

Instructions and Materials
This contains basic instructions for creating Word Forms, and the steps we will do to create the Space Report form above.
Basic Steps for Creating Forms in Words and Instructions for this Demo
Simple example and steps for creating a word form and password protecting the file.
MS Word file: making_word_forms.doc [260k]

Planet Project Report Form (Template)
The layout of the document we will create, you will need this file open to do the steps listed in the instructions above.
MS Word file: space_report_template.doc [43k]

Next Meeting
November 1, 2002 at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. On the plate so far...

• Evaluating student essay content with TurnitIn.com
• Creating paper-based tests with Respondus
• Chandler-Gilbert faculty demos
• You tell us!