In attendance at the DLMG meeting : Keri Sanders, Bob Klassen, Sandra Woien, Lorna Peralta, and Peggy Johnson.

Lorna showed the online LBT101 course she has developed. She did an amazing job of finding the files she had created, given that all her work was on a USB drive (flash drive) that became corrupted. Library technology staff was able to retrieve most of it for her, but only an hour before we met!

Lorna recommends Restorer Professional software if you are ever in such a bind yourself. It was able to recover the data from the bad sector on her USB drive.

Lorna has a link to information about her online course on the automated MCC webpage that is created for each faculty member. If you want to see if you have an automated homepage already or add a link to your automated homepage, go to the ctl resource at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/ctl/_ctl_SD/resources/helpdocs/how_to/index.html

Scroll down to the heading "Web Pages". Then click on the directions for "Create an automated Homepage". This document gives step-by-step directions on how to see if you have a homepage, add one if you don't, and add links to your homepage. This is a great location for putting information on your online course for prospective students.

Lorna's course will be 16 weeks in length. Each week's lesson begins with a sentence explaining the objective of the week's lesson. Students then read the Instructor's Notes, complete Readings (which may be in the textbook, online links, or using library data bases), and do an Assignment (e.g. analyze a library specific trade journal, scavenger hunt on the web, find specific information in various library resources, identify what key words a student would use for a library search, or visit two different libraries).

Lorna is debating whether to have students take a proctored final exam or do an E-portfolio.

Lorna has included some very rich, engaging photographs in it. In order to make the pages load quicker, she will divide lessons that are heavy with photographs into several separate pages. This is a great help to students who are on dial-up modems.

Students will have a self-test that does not count for part of their grade each week. They will also have an online quiz that will count for their grade each week.

Lorna's course homepage contains icons for Start Here, Syllabus, Calendar, Modules, My Grades, WebCT Discussion Board, WebCT Mail, and Dropbox.

The first students will email the instructor, upload a photograph of themselves, post an introduction about themselves to their classmates, and submit an assignment to the dropbox.

Lorna has a "Help" discussion board. Students are to post any questions they have in this board. Then other students have a chance to answer the question. If Lorna answers the question, other students can also see the answer.

Lorna is using the WebCT discussion board. She has already input the questions she will use on the bulletin board. The first bulletin board is open but the rest are "locked", so students can't see them yet. Lorna will unlock each bulletin board as the time arrives for students to see it and do their postings.

It is a good idea to view your course with different size monitors and different browsers (e.g. Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mozilla) so you can see all the possible variations students may see.

Lorna plans to use the WebDAV feature to upload lots of files at once into her WebCT course. Directions for using this feature can be found at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/ctl/_ctl_SD/resources/helpdocs/how_to/index.html

Lorna is considering including a student survey in her course. In WebCT, you can set up an anonymous survey just like you set up a quiz. In this case though, student responses are not identified by the student. The student can get credit for taking the survey (it can be automatically posted in the gradebook). The instructor sees the comments in an aggregate fashion and is unable to track back statements to an individual student. This is a useful too for getting feedback at the end of your course and several times during the course.

Next week is our last DLMG meeting. We hope that Julia and Marcia can show us what they have developed for their online courses so far. I'm also soliciting feedback on what worked well in DLMG and what would improve DLMG for next semester.