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OLG Meeting Notes Apr 11, 2003 ...

Ocotillo Online Learning Group
Meeting Apr 11, 2003

Mesa Community College (MCC)
2:00 - 4:00 PM in Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)
See campus map (32k PDF)

Welcome and Introductions
Anna Rosa Lampis (GateWay Community College) and Sandra Wells (Phoenix College)
Review of this past year's Online Learning Group topics. Notes and presentations from all past OLG meetings, can be found at:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/olg/notes.php?yr=0203

Next year, Anna Rosa and Sandra will continue to co-chair the group. They are looking for some feedback in the form of a survey. Here's the survey:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/olg/survey/

What's New in Online Learning at Your Campus (2:00 - 2:20)
all participants
Campus introductions and brief reports

• Mesa - A Psychology 101 instructor mentioned she will be teaching online for the first time in the fall.
• District - Renewed MIDAS contract for 3 years and handed out latest newsletter.
• Scottsdale - Primary concern is how to convince other campuses to go to upgraded version of BlackBoard. Also using simulation labs online for psychology - trying to convert to more automated format.
• Phoenix - Working with how to provide information/training for online instructors - will be doing Summer Institute (one week long) and offer a couple of times.
• GateWay - 3700 students online this semester, an increase of 300% over last year.

Mesa's Automatic Homepage Tool (2:20 - 2:40)
(Paul Hietter, Distance Learning Coordinator, Mesa Community College)
How do you support faculty who want homepages but may not have the time or the skills to create one? The real need is for students to have access to information about their instructors and have that information be consistent.Ê

See Paul Hietter's demo page:
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~pthietter/

At MCC, the creation of an email account prompts the creation of an automatic homepage which has:

• Name
• Department
• Phone Number
• Email Address
• Office Location
• Office Hours
• Information on Courses Being Taught
• Customizable Links
• Optional Picture

The instructor can modify the information if they want. Class related information is all automatically generated. Instructors can include syllabus information for each course. There is an optional link for professional information - work history - biography, etc. Instructors do not need to know HTML to create the pages. This is available to all employees - anyone on the MCC online directory can have this autopage.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/techconnect/news03_feb2002.htm

Statistics Lab Online (2:40 - 3:00)
(Maria Chavira, Psychology)
The psychology department at MCC has research methods and statistics online. Maria Chavira teaches a Hybrid course that meets M,W,F in class for lecture and M,W for the lab.

Students develop their own homepages as part of these courses, both for the online and in-class courses. The labs try to give the students a real world experience on how to use statistics as a tool - it has links to databases on different topics (fast food, educational statistics, etc.)

Question/Answer which includes Joe and Katie, who are students of Maria's.

• (Katie) - This is her first statistics class, the lab really helps and helps her to follow along well with class work. It also fits well into her schedule because the labs are online.
• (Joe) - He works for a small business that can get very busy. He was initially wary about an online lab, but found it to be working very well. It allows him to work at his own pace and he can balance work and school.
• (Audience) - Do you work alone or collaborate in the lab?
• (Joe) - Both, you can go to the labs in person and ask questions of other students or the instructor.
• (Audience) - How would you feel about labs being totally online?
• (Katie) - Not a big deal because of the M,W,F in class. It would be more difficult if the class were totally online.
• (Maria) - Complete online students usually have many more questions about SPSS.
• (Audience) - Do students drop when they find out about the Internet labs?
• (Maria) - Lost 2 this semester. All the labs are graded by hand - 10 points each - and are a separate grade from the exams.
• (Audience) - Can all online students come to the lab?
• (Maria) - Yes, but not during class times for the in-person class. Teaching the in-person course helps me adjust the online course and improve it.

Break! (3:00 - 3:10)

Online Games for Biology Courses (3:10 - 3:30)
(Peggy Johnson, Biology Faculty, Mesa Community College)
Peggy will show how to use Hot Potatoes software to create quick and easy crossword puzzles for your students that foster learning of basic concepts and vocabulary in a fun way.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~johnson/cross.htm

Hands-on with Hot Potatoes (3:30 - 4:00)
(Melanie Kroening, Mesa Community College)
This hands-on session will allow participants to access the Hot Potatoes suite that includes six applications enabling creation of: online interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises. Hot Potatoes is free of charge for non-profit educational users who make their pages available on the web.
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/

Next Meeting
This is our last scheduled meeting for this year...