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OLG Meeting Notes Apr 6, 2001 ...

Ocotillo Online Learning Group
Meeting Apr 6, 2001

Mesa Community College (MCC)
2:00 - 4:00 PM in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)
campus maps for MCC
map of campus showing CTL

2:00 - 2:10 Welcome and Intros

(Tom Foster, CGCC & Alan Levine, MCLI)
Tom and Alan present the newly evolved "Online Learning Group" and welcome the broadening of its focus to learning online, regardless of platform.

Demo Sessions

Steve Budge, Mesa Community College
Steve has implemented his Spanish courses in both Blackboard and WebCT platforms. He uses Eudora's free PureVoice and QuickTime files to provide audio practice for his students. Small QuickTime sound clips allow students to hear examples of Spanish pronunciation. The PureVoice application enables the student to record their own voice as exercise answers that can be emailed back to the instructor-- PureVoice compression reduces the file save of a comparable WAVE file by a factor of 10. The instructor can then insert recorded corrections into these voice files and return them to the student.

Steve also has a "floating" toolbar (using DHTML) off to the left of each lesson; it enables you to jump around easily in the lesson.

Access to his course at Mesa using WebCT is restricted to students, but you can view the sample lesson he installed on the Chandler-Gilbert Blackboard site:

1. Go to http://blackboard.cgc.maricopa.edu/
2. Click the Course Catalog button.
3. From the welcome screen, click the Preview button to enter as guest.
4. From the course catalog, type "SPA" in the search field and click the Go button
5. This should bring up the three courses Steve experimented with here. the only one with content is "Elementary Spanish I (CGC_SPA_101_Budge)"
6. When the Course loads (it has a welcome banner, "Hola Amigos", click the Course Material button to access the sample lesson.

Eudora PureVoice
    http://www.eudora.com/purevoice/

Angela Ambrosia, Rio Salado College
Angela demonstrated Rio's new courseware system, IntraKal. One of its key features is that it is completely integrated with the SIS system, and is a replacement for the old gradebook application INFORM. This means instructors can get "real time" updates on their course rosters and the grades go directly from the gradebook to transcripts. During development this new system was coined "Maricopa Gradebook" but will soon be known as Maricopa Instructional Delivery and Assessment System MIDAS. Because Anlon is developing this new system to meet Maricopa's needs, they are taking a lot of the beta test team's suggestions for features.

The system gives the students a unique log-in and email. On each course roster it shows the students start and end dates along with an activity report that shows how much time they've spent logged in and what the student worked on and accomplished. Data can be exported to Excel.

In regards to the Assessments, the instructor sees HTML code, but also offers a WYSIWYG (drag and drop) editor for those less technologically inclined. IntraKal also provides features for a text file to be imported that contains data to create a quiz; however it currently lacks a tool for creating test banks (Angela is lobbying for this feature). He/she can set the date available and duration of the test. You can also set a special security code that makes the student stay in test mode. IntraKal automatically records the students grade in the gradebook and shows them the correct answers. The instructor can randomize the questions and edit them at anytime.

Sometime into next year, IntraKal will be available to the colleges as Maricopa has a site license

Greg Pratt, Mesa Community College
Greg presented the HorizonLive Streaming Audio and Audience Polling system. Instructors/presenters have access to a palette of pre-made slides (PowerPoint or HTML content) that can be "pushed" as visuals to the audience. They also can send out a multiple choice poll where the results can be displayed in graphed format in real (or near real) time. The other feature is a chat window where the audience can engage in discussions or ask questions.

This technology will be used Monday April 9, when Greg, Naomi Story, and Peggy Johnson will present the efforts of the Mesa CTL and Peggy's award winning WebCT Biology course to an audience Asia-Pacific WebCT conference in Adelaide, Australia. You can tune in to the presentation (or return later to view as an archived event):

1. Go to http://webct.horizonlive.com/
2. Follow Launch Horizon Live
3. Enter a WebCT user name (any name to identify yourself
4. When the Lobby loads, look for a link to Maricopa Community College System

Maureen Zimmerman, Naomi Story, Mesa Community College
Greg, on behalf of Maureen and Naomi, passed out a copy of the benchmarks published by the Institute for Higher Education Policy-- a checklist for distance education planning, development, and implementation. It provides a rating system for where you think your institution currently stands in regards to the quality of internet-based distance education.

Discussion

(Tom Foster, CGCC and Alan Levine, MCLI)
We had a lively discussion that defied note taking! Do we want to convene a content provided roundtable? Do we want to have a conversation within MCCD on which tool works best? Is that realistic? We can't we just leverage free open source solutions? Can students adapt between platforms? They have different log-ins and course calendars at each college that provides a different online tool. The bottom line should be to serve our students in the best way we can. To give them the best education with the best tool.

Donna Rebadow, Paradise Valley Community College, reported that PV was conducting a comparative evaluation of courseware systems to choose from Blackboard (currently in use), eCollege, IntraKal, and WebCT. Based on the criteria developed on a courseware comparison site developed by Bruce Landon at the University of British Columbia, er team created a series of features and asked the software companies to respond to how their products met those needs. She might have results at the next meeting.

The group wants more demos; perhaps a publisher demo the fall on "cartridge content"

Next Meeting

May 4, 2001
2:00 - 4:00 PM
District Office