Minutes for  February  16 , 200 5 -  4 P.M. - 5: 3 0 P.M.  AS 192

In attendance at the DLMG meeting :    Marcia Graber, Lorna Peralta, Bob Klassen , Sandra Woien,  Julia West, Danene Richardson, and Peg gy Johnson .

WebCT BASICS WORKSHOP

The CTL's Melanie Kroening conducted a workshop on WebCT's Basics. She discussed the advantages and limitations of various WebCT tools as well as leading faculty in getting their WebCT development courses underway. Melanie explained the advantages of using WebCT Mail for your class communications (rather than your MCC email account):    

1. There is no size limit right now to the WebCT mailbox students get. But they have a relatively small storage space in their MCC email account. The MCC email account gets full fairly quickly and then messages are not received. Putting the WebCT mail icon on your course homepage and having students use it solves this problem.

2. When you back up your WebCT course at the end of the semester (for archival purposes), it saves copies of the emails you sent/received for the semester in case you want to retrieve them later.

Melanie recommended that students save text documents they create in RTF format to send to you in the Dropbox. Then you can open these files using Microsoft Word (or pretty much any other text-editing software). Otherwise, if students are creating the documents in Word Perfect and various other software programs, you may have difficulty opening them. If you have questions/problems as you work with WebCT, you can make an appointment to work with Melanie (phone 480-461-7799, mkroening@mail.mc.maricopa.edu ), Donna Gaudet ( donna.gaudet@mcmail.maricopa.edu , phone 480-461-7929), or Peggy ( johnson@mail.mc.maricopa.edu , phone 480-461-7703).

NEW CTL HOMEPAGE

If you haven't checked it out yet, take a look at the new CTL webpage. http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/ctl/ It's awesome! You'll find it much easier to navigate and a rich resource.  Scroll down on the homepage and look at the left-hand side of the screen. You'll find links to "All how-to documents" and "All workshop documents". These step-by-step guides may be extremely useful to you in the days ahead.

RESPONDUS WORKSHOP

Next week Melanie will conduct a workshop in Respondus. This software makes it quicker and easier to create quizzes for uploading into WebCT. So bring a few questions you'd like to use for online quizzes/tests. Then you can input some real questions you want to use later. Peg Johnson Faculty Development Consultant Center for Teaching and Learning Mesa Community College 1833 W. Southern Avenue Mesa, Arizona 85202 johnson@mail.mc.maricopa.edu phone: (480) 461-7703 fax: (480) 461-7857