Minutes for April 19, 2007, 4 P.M - 5:3 0 P.M. AS 192
In attendance at the DLMG meeting: Aileen Ormiston, Allie Marino, Erica Morley, Gretchen Berning, Janell Pierce, Ray Gless, Keith Anderson, Thom Schuett, Greg Hocutt, Kim Hohol, Elizabeth Atencia-Oliden, Karen Blevins, and Peggy Johnson.
Allie, Aileen, Greg, and Keith showed the online courses they have developed.
Allie's Introduction to Interpreting course is rich in visuals, which Allie values. Students will begin with an Introductory learning module the first week of class. They will do each type activity they will do during the semester (post to discussion board, create a journal entry, take a quiz etc.) . Allie plans to create the class schedule by making a table using FrontPage software.
One suggestion was made to be as consistent as possible from week to week on due dates. For example, if the discussion posting is due on Monday the first week, have other course discussions due on Monday. Students like to have the weekend to finish their assignments, but this creates a problem if the instructor does not want to read email over the weekend. If the student has questions on the assignment that is due on Sunday evening, he/she may not be able to contact the instructor. So you may want to consider having assignments due Monday night at midnight. Then students have all day Monday to email you and they can still do the bulk of the work on the weekend.
Most of Allie's learning modules contain an introduction, activities the students must do (such as readings), a checksheet showing what the student is responsible for that week, and a journal or discussion posting. Allie is working on making her course a bit more consistent in terms of format (so students know what is expected each week).
Allie is including Powerpoint files she uses with her on-campus classes as an optional resource for her online students.
Aileen's Accounting Concepts course includes the instructor's photograph on the course home page. Aileen has created a very detailed syllabus describing the course.
Module 1 activities include taking the MCC Distance Learning Survey (http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/distance/dlsurvey.html) to see if the student is a good candidate for an online course, a discussion posting, and a quiz on the syllabus.
Students will be doing some activities in groups in Aileen's course and sometimes individually (such as problem sets) using the Assignments tool in WebCT. Students will need to download a copy of Acrobat reader.
Aileen was able to import questions from the publisher into Respondus for delivery as WebCT quizzes.
Erica suggested that Aileen might want to look at the spreadsheet feature in Google documents (http://www.google.com/google-d-s/b1.html). Aileen uses Comic Sans font (that is the font being used in this document).
Greg's General Genetics course is rich in resources as the textbook publisher had an E-pack. There are many online animations that accompany the textbook. Students will focus on reading the book and working genetic problem sets which they will fax to Greg.
Greg's students will take online quizzes and come to campus for a midterm and final exam (or identify a suitable proctor).
The course will run 16 weeks, with students completing approximately 1.5 chapters for 14 weeks (plus first week introduction and last week final exam). There are 69 competencies in this course, which is designed primarily for biotech students. Students will attend lab classes on campus. The lecture will be online.
Each week students access an introduction Greg has created, complete the reading assignment, take a quiz, work the problem set and fax it to Greg, and discuss the problem set on the discussion board as a group.
Greg may use the grading forms to have students evaluate each other's answers to essay questions.
Greg may use the Ebrary links for population genetics concepts and pedigree analysis.
Student grades will reflect their performance on quizzes, problem sets, and exams (mid-term and final).
Keith's World Literature after the Renaissance course is also 16 weeks in length. In addition to readings, students view Breeze presentations that Keith has created using Powerpoint and Breeze software. These are rich in visuals (art work, photography) and Keith has recorded audio to accompany the slides. Keith has found Stock Xchng to be a useful site for locating high-quality, royalty-free photographs for his course (http://www.sxc.hu/)
Students read some background information on the readings (such as in Wikipedia) and do short writing assignments. There is no textbook but rather students read a compilation of paperbacks and online resources. They will also write cumulative papers on several readings.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Next week Ray, Thom, Janell, and Elizabeth will show the online course they have developed to the group.
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