Message
hi
everybody, this is a note to figure out what folks would like to be doing with
the few more weeks we have left now at the end of the semester. so, there are
two basic questions:
-- do you
want to keep meeting? I have the impression that people would like to keep on
meeting even though we are getting to the end-of-semester crunch. is that
right?
-- what
topics would people most like to cover?
here are
some possible topics that people have suggested (I've put the name next to the
item if I remember who had suggested it, but I'm not very good at remembering
all these things, so please remind me if you had thought of a good topic for us
to cover that I've simply left out here) - are there some of these topics that
are of general interest?
1) overview
of online course "best practices" (Larry) - I've looked at some very nice
"self-assessment" inventories for online course design that might give us a good
basis for that discussion. here's one such inventory that is very useful and
would perhaps be very useful to talk through together:
2) designing
online forms using Dreamweaver (Kerry) - some people have asked about
online forms. this is something you CAN do without special server
technology: the results of the forms are sent to you via email (in order to
collect the data and record it directl in a database requires special server
technology that we don't have acccess to). if people already know the basics of
Dreamweaver, and would like a workshop in creating such forms, I would be glad
to do that.
3) what you
need to know to have students publish on the web (Larry) - I do not know if
Netscape is installed on the machines in the computer lab that is available to
us, but if people are interested in learning how to use Netscape Composer as a
tool for web publishing (a free tool that students can use), we could have a
workshop on how to teach students to publish on the web
3) general
IT procedures, back-ups, coping with problems (Lynn) - several times we have
talked about what to do when things don't work - it might be useful to
brainstorm together about how to prepare in advance for technology glitches so
that they aren't an insurmountable problem if they do occur. I've got a
"computer help" page for my course that covers at least some of these issues
from the students' perspective, but not from the faculty perspective
exactly:
4) writing
assignments in online courses (Laura) - Marielle's great CPR presentation showed
how you can run an anonymous, randomized peer-review process using CPR software.
there are also other kinds of online writing assignments that lend themselves to
peer input, plus the whole formal writing versus informal writing assignments
issue. what are the best assignments that can help students improve their
writing without gobbling up teacher time?
5) building
quality online quizzes/exams (Nevine) - given the kinds of online quizzes and
exams we can create using Blackboard, what are the best kind of questions for
testing student knowledge of the material? (this is not so much just about
online course, but about constructing good tests or quizzes in general, but with
the limitations of what can be done in Blackboard, and the special "honor code"
situations that come up in an online
environment)