Minutes for April 21, 2005 -     4 P.M. - 6:00 P.M. AS192

In attendance at the DLMG meeting :    Keri Sanders, Bob Klassen, Sandra Woien, Marcia Graber, Julia West, Danene Richardson, Richard Felnagle, and Peggy Johnson.

Richard Felnagle has created a two-semester online Western Civilization and Culture class that incorporates videos that are delivered by streaming. Streaming the videos makes them download faster. It also prevents students from making a copy of the video since the entire video is never available to the student at once (it is streamed in pieces).

GUEST ACCESS

Richard advises faculty to begin designing their online course by asking what objectives you have for your students. Then ask how you can achieve your objective online. Take advantage of resources you can put online. This is preferable to saying how can I take what I do on campus and transfer it online. Be more concerned with what the student will learn rather than how you will teach it and you will design a better course.

Richard has been teaching his online course for three years now. He wanted to get away from using a textbook and has now succeeded. He has created enough lessons with sufficient links that students do not need to purchase a textbook any longer. If the student wants to purchase a textbook, Richard will recommend one.

Richard has 13 study units in his full-semester course. There are two weeks in the course devoted to writing long essays. Richard sends frequent emails to students, especially early in the semester, to establish his presence in the course.

The videos Richard created of himself giving a lecture to start each unit incorporate a lot of rich graphics, including movie clips the campus owns (movie clips are usually 1 to 5 minutes). Richard feels the videos are important for establishing human connections with his online students - making the instructor a real personality and letting his enthusiasm for his subject motivate the students. 

Using Real software to deliver the videos, Richard offers the student a smaller size version (low resolution) if they are on a dial-up modem. For students on high-speed internet (DSL), Richard uses Real software to develop a high-resolution version of his video. Richard's students all seem to have high-speed internet and he believes he will discontinue use fo the low resolution version in the near future.  

Richard writes the script he uses in his videos. He has the text available online also so students can access it instead of or along with the video, depending on their preferences.

Each week students begin by viewing Richard's video, which is approximately 20 minutes in length. This is followed by readings (Study Guide), most of which are web links. Students take a multiple choice quiz online (using WebCT) to provide evidence they have completed the assigned readings. Deeper knowledge is assessed on the long papers they write.

They also post to the bulletin board. Richard gives students five points for their posting if is is adequate. It be long enough and must include references to material in the course. If it does not, the student earns zero points for the posting.

The art work in Richard's course is fantastic. Using Firewords software, Richard has created a very attractive banner that appears at the top of his pages.  He uses Ulead Video Editing software is used to edit the videos, including adding animated letters that fly in/out, swirl, etc. He uses Dream Weaver software to edit the text.

Richard has written a tutorial for how to edit video using Ulead Movie Studio. It is in a white three-ring binder at the production computer in the CTL.

When Richard records his audio files for the videos, he records directly into the computer (this approach saves time). To do this, you need a video capture card in your computer.  You can edit these audio files with Audacity (free software that Ken Costello showed us at a previous DLMG meeting).

Richard uses lots of links from National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org). The NPR site includes its own search engine so you can easily locate clips of interest for your course.

Richard has an online tutorial for creating videos that can be accessed at: 

 http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~rfelnagle/editing_with_ulead/editing_01.htm 

COMING ATTRACTIONS

On April 28, Lorna and Marcia will show us their online courses. On May 5, Julia will show us her online course.