Online Course Peer Review

Jody Ondich and Susan Brashaw will show participants the results of their Faculty Award for Excellence Project — a Lake Superior College D2L Best Practices course shell.  The course contains contributions of teaching activities from more than 20 LSC online faculty members in addition to examples of how to utilize various technologies in the online classroom.  This course shell will be available for all LSC online faculty to access (much like the online faculty lounge) in the next few weeks.

We hope to see you at this duty day session for the sneak peek!

When:  1:00 – 2:00 Friday, May 15

Where:  S2942

The Learn from Each Other session that’s back by popular demand!  Learn how to easily jazz up your D2L homepage (not to mention the discussion and content areas) with widgets, quicklinks, graphics, and video.

WHEN:  Wednesday, April 29  10:00-11:00

WHERE:  E2024

I hope to see you there!

The LSC online faculty lounge used to be a hopping place!  Faculty frequently posted questions and helped each other solve problems, frustrations and successes were shared, and resources were routinely accessed.  For some reason, activity at this site has dramatically decreased.  I’m here to say — let’s start it up again!

You may be wondering where the lounge went!  In order to find it, click on the stu_AllowPassChange (I have no idea what that stands for) tab on your D2L entry page.  Once there, click on Discussions to access a variety of forums online faculty can use to share ideas, vent, ask questions, etc.

DON’T FORGET to click CONTENT from time to time to see what’s there!  You’ll find a Jing screencast Barry made about how to embed YouTube video into D2L, links to outstanding articles and resources, D2L how-to videos, etc, etc, etc.  This is a great place to visit if you’re interested in getting new ideas!

So, please — let’s make the lounge THE place for LSC online faculty to be again!

I’m teaching two late-start courses this semester and decided to test out the ToonDoo/iMeem introduction idea on them.  I made the creative introduction idea optional, as I didn’t want to have to provide step-by-step instructions to those students who were freaked out by the idea of trying something new.  The results:  76% of my students chose to create a toon or a playlist of songs as part of their introduction.  I call that a success AND it was fun!

It’s no secret that Barry loves fun web tools.  If you haven’t already checked out this blog of his recently, you should:  http://desire2blog.blogspot.com/  He shows examples of how to make online class introductions more fun.  I decided to give it a shot using ToonDoo.  It’s easy to use.  Click on the cartoon in order to see the whole thing…I don’t know why a scroll bar doesn’t show.

While at the RSP/ITeach conference this weekend, I attended a session by Jeannette Brewer of Desire2Learn.  She provided some fun tidbits of information that most of there had not been aware of.  Here’s one of them:

By inserting {firstname} into any HTML spot in your courses (news, content, release conditions, etc), D2L automatically places your students’ first names into your message.  This just adds an element of personalization to your class.  This also works if you’d like a student’s last name or username inserted — {lastname} or {username}.

I also learned a good deal about using release conditions to provide feedback.  I’ll present a “Learn from Each Other” session about that topic soon.

I’m attending the Instructional Technology Council eLearning conference this week in Portland, OR. One of the most useful presentations I attended was titled Web 2.0 for You by Maria Andersen of Muskegon Community College in Michigan. Instead of using PowerPoint, she used something called Mindomo (available for free use at http://www.Mindomo.com). The presentation is mapped out instead of linear, so that the presenter can easily take the direction of a presentation the way the audience wants to go.  This may change the way I organize my presentations!  Check out her Web 2.0 for You! session here: http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=bd27a95a430dd9821e9544b0fc99bc25

She’s a math instructor and has a wealth of resources on her website as well: http://www.teachingcollegemath.com

Jody Ondich and I are currently working on a pretty exciting Faculty Award for Excellence project — creating a D2L course shell filled with examples of best practices in online learning.  All of the content of this “course” will come from you — LSC online faculty!

Specifically, we’re looking for great examples of course activities that engage students in the learning process, unique ways of using the various D2L features (checklist, links, FAQs, survey, etc), and the effective use of technology in your online classroom. 

All examples used in the course shell will clearly state the name of the faculty contributor.

When all is said and done, this course shell will be available for all LSC online faculty to access at any time, right in the LSC online faculty lounge.  It will serve as a great resource for us all.

Questions?  Please contact Jody or Susan.

If you’re not on the MnSCU technology list, you may have missed this.  It’s an article about excellence in web-based teaching that is worth the read.  An absolutely riveting online course: Nine principles for excellence in web-based teaching:  http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/179/177