Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Vista Faculty Guides on the Wiki

Hi Everyone-

Phyllis Dobson and Sharon Taylor have created a series of fabulous faculty guides to Vista. These guides can help you with common problems and issues within Vista or just let you know what is available.

The guides are located on the faculty wiki at www.facultywiki.ccconline.org. Follow the link to WebCT Vista and then to FAQ. If you sign in on the wiki you will be able to comment directly on the guides by using the discussion tab. Please do comment if you see an error or have a better way to accomplish a task or just have a general comment on the tool/software. If you have a topic you think should be included, feel free to add a page.

I'm also taking comments on the wiki, how we should use it, what information should be included, how it should be organized, etc.

best,
Lisa

Browser Updates -- How to Uninstall IE 7 and Firefox 2

For anyone who installed the latest browser updater -- IE 7 and Firefox 2: Neither of these updates are supported by Vista and Banner. If you want to uninstall them, FRCC staff have set up a website with directions at http://www.frontrange.edu/FRCCTemplates/FRCC1.aspx?id=5343.

best,
Lisa

Monday, October 30, 2006

3pm Monday--Vista Back to Speed

Hi All,

Vista has fixed the slow-down--I've already gotten feedback here, that it's back and running.

Best,

Alice

Monday Afternoon Oct. 30 --Vista's Slow

Hello All,

We are aware that Vista has been slow off and on since 1:30 and have a ticket them into them again. We are now waiting for a response and will continue to communicate as needed.

Regards,

Alice

Common Grading Symbols

Below are the definitions the Educational Services Council members are voting on. Everything was approved a year ago with the exception of the two new "place holders" to handle the requirements of Banner.

INVENTORY OF COMMON GRADING SYMBOLS

(Implementation of the Common Grade Symbols to be effective Fall 2006.)

A

-

Excellent or Superior

B

-

Good

C

-

Average

D

-

Deficient

F

-

Failure

I


Incomplete

S

-

Satisfactory

U

-

Unsatisfactory

S/A

-

Satisfactory (A-level) work in a developmental course

S/B

-

Satisfactory (B-level) work in a developmental course

S/C

-

Satisfactory (C-level) work in a developmental course

U/D

-

Unsatisfactory (D-level) work in a developmental course

U/F

-

Unsatisfactory (F-level) work in a developmental course

W

-

Withdrawal

AW

-

Administrative Withdrawal (available as an individual college option)

AU

-

Audit

Place Holders

SP

-

Satisfactory Progress

Z

-

Grade not yet reported

R

-

Repeat Field

CPL

CNG

-

-

Prior Learning Credit

Conversion – No Grade



AU- Audit

By auditing a course, a student may participate in course activities, but does not receive a formal transcript grade. Students must indicate intent to audit a course at registration or by the deadline listed in the course schedule. Audited courses are not eligible for the College Opportunity Fund stipend. Students will be responsible for the full in-state or out-of-state tuition. Audited courses do not meet the credit hour requirements for financial aid or veteran benefits and may not be applied to certificates or degrees.

I- Incomplete

The "Incomplete" grade is a temporary grade and is designed for students who because of documented illness or circumstances beyond their control are unable to complete their course work within the semester, but have completed a majority of the course work (defined as at least 75% of all course assignments and tests) in a satisfactory manner (grade C or better).

If circumstances beyond the student's control prevent the student from completing a test or assignments at the end of the term, then it is the student's responsibility to initiate the request for an "Incomplete" grade from the instructor. The instructor will determine whether the student has a reasonable chance of satisfactorily completing the remaining course activities in a timely manner.

In requesting an "Incomplete" grade the student must present to the instructor the documentation of circumstances justifying an "Incomplete" grade.

The instructor will complete and sign an "Incomplete Grade Contract” and will submit it to Student Services with final grades for the semester. Student Services will send a copy of the "Incomplete Grade Contract" to the student. Instructor must assign an Incomplete Grade on the regular grade roster in a timely fashion.

Incomplete Grade Contract must include the following information:

1. Student Name (F, MI, L):

2. Student ID #:

3. Course Number and Section:

4. Reason for assigning a grade of incomplete (statement of extenuating circumstances):

5. Work to be completed for removal of incomplete grade (instructor should be very specific including the work to be done and how the final grade is to be calculated):

6. Evidence of completion of 75% of the semester course work:

7. Completion of a work plan that includes the following:

· What, when and how assignments and tests will be submitted to complete the course,

· The time period in which the work must be completed.

8. Instructor Signature and Date:

9. Student Signature and Date:

Students are encouraged to let instructors know, as soon as possible, if they are having difficulties with any part of the course. In the event that a student and instructor cannot reach resolution concerning an Incomplete, then the student should contact the Instructional Officer of the college.

Military personnel and emergency management officials who are required to go TDY in the middle of a term should contact their instructor for special consideration. Documentation of official TDY assignment is required and must be approved by the Chief Instructional Officer.

Incomplete grades which are not converted to a letter grade by the instructor after one subsequent semester (not including summer semester) will revert to an F grade. If the student would have earned a letter grade higher than an F without completing the work, faculty may submit that higher grade before the automatic conversion to F.

S- Satisfactory

The satisfactory grade is equivalent to a grade of “C or better”. The course will count in attempted and earned credits, but will not carry quality points.

U- Unsatisfactory

The unsatisfactory grade is equivalent to a “D” or “F” grade. The course will count in attempted credits, but will not carry earned credits or quality points.

S/A, S/B, S/C

These are satisfactory grades awarded only for developmental courses. The A, B, and C indicate the level of satisfactory performance. These grades are not included in the GPA calculation. The course will count for attempted and earned credits.

U/D, U/F

These are unsatisfactory grades awarded only for developmental courses. The D and F indicate the level of unsatisfactory performance. These grades are not included in the GPA calculation. The course will count in attempted credits, but will not carry earned credits.

W- Withdrawal

The “Withdrawal” grade is assigned when a student officially withdraws from a course. A withdrawal can only be processed during the first 80 percent of the course. No academic credit is awarded. The course will count in attempted hours.

AW- Administrative Withdrawal

This “withdrawal” grade is assigned by the college when a student has been withdrawn administratively for administrative reasons. No academic credit is awarded. The course will count in attempted hours.

Place Holders

SP- Satisfactory Progress

This symbol is limited to certain approved courses that extend beyond the end of a normal semester. No academic credit is awarded until the course is completed.

Z- No Grade Submitted

The symbol of “Z” is a temporary grade entered by the Registrar when a grade is not received from the course instructor. This “Z” grade is replaced and credit is awarded upon the Registrar’s receipt of the grade.

CPL-Prior Learning Credit

Within Banner there must be a symbol in the Grade column. A symbol of “CPL” indicates that the course and credits to which it is attached were awarded according to BP 9-42, Credit for Prior Learning.

CNG – Conversion No Grade

In the Legacy System, courses could exist on a transcript with no grade posted. These courses have been migrated to Banner with a symbol of “CNG”, defined as Converted No Grade.

Repeat Field

The Repeat Field on the transcript will be marked I – Include in hours and GPA calculation, A – Exclude from earned hours and GPA calculation, or A Exclude from earned hours but count in GPA calculation.

best,

Lisa

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Dear Faculty:
Below is an analysis from Blackboard on our server capacity and upgrade. They will be adding two additional nodes to our configuration at no additional cost to our current contract. David will be sending more information on the next available upgrade opportunity when Blackboard determines the root cause of the upgrade failure. Thanks for your continuing patience.

Rhonda

Dear David Chatham:
The following note has been added to Case ID 422935 Case Summary:Upgrade Software {Note Created Date: 10/26/2006 11:29AMNote Summary:

David, The following report has come from the HostingTeam:---There are currently 108,230 accounts that are enrolled in at least onecourse across all institutions. The breakdown by institution is asfollows:
Arapahoe Community College 8218
CCCOnline 8697
Colorado NW Community College 1314
Community College of Aurora 5626
Community College of Denver 10327
Front Range Community College 40304
Lamar Community College 1029
Morgan Community College 1896
Northeastern Junior College 2302
Otero Junior College 1594
Pikes Peak Community College 11965
Red Rocks Community College 7325
Pueblo Community College 5860
Trinidad State Junior College 1773
-------Total 108230
Understanding that many courses with enrollments are not currently being taught, the data was reduced to only those accounts that have logged induring the past 30 days. This number is the best approximation to what Blackboard terms "active users". The total active users = 19,645.

Based on further investigation, usage by these users indicates a veryhigh level of activity (probably close to 10% concurrency) which placesthe current deployment at full capacity. As such, we recommend addingtwo additional application nodes to the cluster to alleviate congestionon the application tier and to provide a buffer if one node has to betaken out of commission for any reason.

Further details on the analysis are included at the end of this document in the Appendix. This will be provided to CCCS at no charge for the remainder of thecurrent contract due to the immediacy of the need. Blackboard is moving hardware into place immediately to perform this addition and needs to schedule a period of downtime with CCCS to complete the work. The investigation into why the product upgrade was taking an extended period of time is still under investigation with Product Development. We fully intend to schedule the upgrade with CCCS as data on the rootcause becomes available.

----Once the team has some windows to provide me with I will communicate those back to you.
Best regards, Larry DonnellTeam Lead / Client Support ASP Blackboard

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Tuesday--Nothing New from WebCT Vista

Greetings All,

Just to let you know, Blackboard/WebCT is still investigating our recent issues. So at this end, it is business as usual.

If VISTA issues show up, please report them to your Vista Volunteers as you have been doing.

Thanks again,

Alice

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Vista is up, but upgrade abandoned

Dear Faculty,
The upgrade to App Pack and Svc Pack 1 was not progressing as planned, so the Blackboard engineering team rolled-back to our existing version of Vista. Service was restored about 10:30 p.m. Saturday evening. Below is an explanation from David Chatham. More information will be available during Monday's Elluminate meeting. Many thanks again for your patience.
--Rhonda

Update: 11:11 p.m. Saturday, Oct 21
The roll-back version is in place. We have BB's attention if there are any issues tomorrow. I had a concluding talk with our technical support manager a few minutes ago. He pointed out that we fixed a couple of situations with the upload schedule and the over-sized section, which he believes has been a contributing factor. All said, we will get to see whether things work better or not. We don't have the bug fixes for now, so there is no way not to be disappointed in this weekend's activitiy.
On Monday, we start talks with support, hosting and development to see what our options are. We still may be able to add more nodes in the next few days, if that is warranted. We are due a hardware analysis. That could help performance. So, I ask you to test your courses when you can and let me know how your instructors are doing. Remember to use the information that Rhonda resent on Friday so that we can get both the replication of the error and the node information.
David

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Vista Update 5 O'clock Saturday

Dear Faculty,
Thanks to each of you for your persistence.
Regards, Alice

Here is the most recent update from David Chatham:

The Upgrade Process has slowed and is not making reasonable progress. Within the last hour, a roll-back procedure was started also on another server, so that one way or another we can get students and faculty back into their courses by tomorrow morning. Probably, the roll-back will occur before that, but estimating so far has been off the mark.

Since both the planned update and the emergency roll-back will be proceeding at the same time, there is a small chance that the Update will still succeed, but if not, the roll-back will allow users to re-enter their courses. The roll-back will not have the benefits that we were looking to have with the update.

David

Update on Vista Upgrade

Dear Faculty - I am sorry for this inconvience and frustration.
12:10 PM: Update. The revised estimate is 8 - 10 hours. We expect another review at around 4 PM.
From David:
The update is progressing with out problems but it is just really slower then anticipated. Frank Vazquez will be monitoring the situation from 12 noon until about 3 pm today. He will send out updates during that time. I suspect that this has interrupted plans for many. Our scheduled testing will now not likely happen until this evening. You may want to communicate with your faculty, students, etc. We have a page up on the login site at BlackBoard.

Vista Upgrade taking longer than expected

From David Chatham:
As of 6:30 a.m. the estimate is that the Vista upgrade will take another four or five hours. The upgrade is progressing with few errors so far. When there is an error, the engineer has to stop the upgrade and fix the error then start it again. So far, he hasn't seen any errors, but they underestimated the time to process this size installation.
One other thing I need to mention. If the upgrade bombs and they get a fatal error, then they have to abandon the upgrade and restore to the original instance. This could take eight hours. Originally, I was given an estimate of 8 hours, including a potential roll-back if necessary. I am keeping my proverbial fingers crossed that we don't have that rare situation.
I plan to monitor this and will provide an update when I have one or when the process is done.
David

Friday, October 20, 2006

Vista down tonight

Hello Everyone-

The WebCT Vista server will be down this evening, Friday, October 20th, from 11:00 pm until 7:00 am, Saturday, October 21st, for maintenance.

Due to performance issues, a special maintenance window has been provided to the Vista hosting group to upgrade the software in order to fix many of the performance problems all users have experienced in the last week. This maintenance does not affect courses on the Campus Edition server. All faculty have been informed about this downtime.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Students have been emailed a similar message, the website reflects this information, and a pop-up announcement regarding it shows up wen anyone logs into Vista.

best,
Lisa

Thursday, October 19, 2006

November Featured Faculty: Dr. Peter Jeschofnig

Greetings All,

In the tradition of prior Faculty Features in the Teaching Tips Newsletters, I asked Peter if he would like to update his bio. Here it is :).



Dr. Peter Jeschofnig

I am a professor of science at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs, where I teach mainly chemistry and physics. Prior to starting my teaching career in 1988, I spent many years as an international exploration geologist in Africa and the Middle East. I have been teaching physics for CCCOnline since 2002, and during 2003-04 I taught my CCCOnline classes from Windhoek, Namibia while on sabbatical as a Fulbright professor at the University of Namibia.

As a strong believer in hands-on education, every summer I take students on rainforest ecology or marine biology field courses to Central or South America. In the past we have studied rainforest ecology in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Honduras plus marine biology in Belize, Honduras, and the Galapagos Islands.

My degrees include a B.S. and M.A in geology/anthropology, an M.A. in science education and a Ph.D. from Colorado State University. In 1995, I was named CMC's professor of the year, and in 2000 TELECOOP's distance educator of the year. I spent my 1995/96 sabbatical as a Fulbright professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

My wife, Linda, was a CPA, and taught marketing and management courses as an adjunct professor at Colorado Mountain College for 17 years before recently retiring. She now runs a successful e-commerce business.

Vista Application pack 1

Since it looks like we are going to Application Pack 1 just a little ahead of schedule, here's a link so you can check out what you get out of it:

http://library.blackboard.com/docs/AS/Bb%20Learning%20System%20-%20Brochure%20-%20App%20Pack%201%20for%20Learning%20System.pdf

A couple of you had wanted the ability to manage "Who's Online" on an individual basis -- it's in here.

best,

Lisa

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

We have an update for you after our meeting with Vista Hosting, BB Support and others. In general, BB has been looking at our server performance and what may be contributing to the erratic issues and general slowness that we have seen recently. I will list them here and the actions for each. This is not in the order of importance, as it is hard to quantify how intensive something degrades performance but the order that BB addressed them:

1. One section in one college had 10's of thousands of enrollments in a general purpose student orientation course. When the students in this section would get particularly active, it was tying up the threads. Hosting was seeing page requests in this section logging 15 - 30 seconds and at an extreme 15 minutes. As more and more users were trying to access course tools, the software was getting further and further behind in processing these requests. They had to restart the node to get it cleared out. The normal range for section enrollment that Vista has seen work is up to 2000. This is not a hard and fast rule, but CCCOnline experienced some issues on Campus Edition in the past when we had 5,000 enrollments in our Student Orientation class. We had to do our orientation outside of WebCT and created web pages for that.

Solution -- This issue is currently being addressed by the college.

2. The scaling of our hardware to the user level needs to be reviewed. We do upload all users from Banner for the term for each college. Not all of these are active users and would affect the performance of our servers, but we really don't know whether our five node system is scaled for the level of users we actually have. We do know that we are increasing our users much more quickly than originally planned.

Solution -- Hosting will be doing some analysis in the next week to see whether there is a capacity issue. The analysis would be based on who has actually accessed a section in the last 30 days. If extra nodes are needed, these will be deployed by BB hosting immediately.

3. Erratic Vista performance, various tool and access issues for the last week.

Solution -- Application Pak 1, Software Pak 1 upgrade recommended for stability and bug fixes. This application pack came out this summer and Hosting recommended we wait until their was a bug fix for this, as they were aware of potential issues. The fix has now been incorporated into the Application Pac, which also upgrades several tools and such. The only known bug in this upgrade is the inability for faculty to upload a grade book or .CSV file into Vista. The application pak has been used for other large institutions both Vista hosted and large self-hosted configurations. Vista Hosting has scheduled many such deployments for the next several weeks. They have not seen any adverse affects and believe the risks are minimal. That said, we are making arrangements to check the application once it is deployed early Saturday morning. With an 8 hour window, we have time to fall back to our original setup, if need be. I will send out further details for those of you that would be willing to check your institution early Saturday morning for any issues.

4. Our enrollments and user files were running past a deadline we had set to not cross. We have not been able to monitor this because the imports have been emailed directly to the college vista administrator and not to us at CCCOnline. Because of the extensive missing users issues we had from Banner for most of September and into October, we were sending full enrollment imports at 10 AM and 11 PM each day, but we were trying to avoid mid-day through the evening when most users were in Vista.

Solution -- We have a new improved script starting in the next day and our imports to Vista beginning last night and today are only differentials or changes in enrollments, rather then full for each college, which cuts dramatically the processing time for Vista. This takes some of the load off of the server.

Finally, we want to be more proactive on maintenance. We would like to schedule a maintenance window for each weekend during which time BB hosting can check the servers and do a re-start. The re-start will help to clear out threads and clean things up each week. We will contact each of the colleges next week to talk about a time to do this each weekend. Vista (BB) Hosting has also indicated that they will help us clean up the various databases and eliminate the extraneous users that are currently included in those databases due to course migration from BlackBoard, WebCT and Vista4 Hosting services.

In summary -- we are working on a three pronged approach to the problems we have been having recently: changing a few business practices, adding hardware, applying software fixes. By Saturday morning we hope you will all see significant improvements.

David Chatham
CCCOnline

VistaVision Conference Evaluations

Thanks to so many of you who took the time to fill out the VistaVision 2006 Conference Evaluation (87 out of 137 Attendees).

Session Descriptions and Available Handouts can be found at
http://www.ccconline.org/FacultySC/Training/ccco_conf/2006/

Positive Remarks:
Facility
Many positive remarks about peer presentations
Like the opportunity to meet with colleagues for the day

To Improve Upon for Next Year:
Multiple Sessions for High Demand Topics
More Water
More Time for More Table Topics
More Space between Tables for Table Topics

Thanks Again!

Alice

Vista still slow...

We wanted to let you know that we have a conference call today at 1:00 with Blackboard hosting. We also wanted to let you know that we have escalated the problems we are having to executive levels of Blackboard, and the president of Bb North America (Peter Segall) has assigned a VP of Client Support to be our point of escalation. He will be on our call today as well. We will update you again after the call -- but basically wanted you to know that we have escalated our situation beyond the Bb ticketing system. David's team and the hosting team are working very hard to solve the problems we are having with Vista.

The proposed solution will require some system downtime currently scheduled for Friday night beginning at 11:00 through aound 7:00 Saturday morning. We will let you know as soon as those times are confirmed.

Lisa and Rhonda

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Vista may be faster....

Hi All-

Blackboard has done a rolling reboot on our nodes (completed around 8:00 this morning) and that seems to be helping the slowness problem. If you are still experiencing extreme slowness let your Vista Volunteer know, but also try exiting and logging in again. You might end up on a different and much faster node.

I'll let you know as soon as I have additonal updates.

Good-luck!
Lisa

Monday, October 16, 2006

Vista is S...L...O...W

Access to Vista is very very very slow. We have a ticket in to Blackboard support and have escalated the ticket as high as possible. We hope BB will be able to solve the issues soon. More updates as soon as we have them....

Lisa

Friday, October 13, 2006

Time-out in Vista

Good Morning Everyone!

We currently have the time out setting in Vista set for 60 minutes. That is a very long time in terms of lab security. Consider the student working in a common lab setting -- s/he logs into his account, spends 5 or 10 minutes on classwork, then leaves without logging out. The next student sits down at the computer and discovers he can access the previous student's class. I'd like to believe there is no potential for trouble in that scenario, but have become more cynical than that.

On the other hand, we have you the instructor writing a discussion post. You get half-way finished, then are distracted by other urgent student emails. When you return you have been timed-out and your half-finished post is lost. If you haven't clicked you are timed-out, so spending a lot of time writing a post or setting up groups can cause lost work.

Given those two scenarios, what is the most appropriate amount of time before the system logs you out? I tend to think 60 minutes is too long and 15 minutes (recommended) is too short. Folks with strong opinions should comment on this blog post (so everyone else can read your opinions, as opposed to just me).

Thanks-
Lisa

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Vista Technical Difficulties

Good Morning All!
We've been experiencing some Vista technical issues this week - you might be having problems with
  • Not being able to open/close discussions.
  • Not being able to post announcements.
  • Not being able to upload/download attachments.
  • Getting Remote Access errors.
We are aware of these issues and have sent in tickets to BlackBoard for technical help. Unfortunately these seem to be intermittant problems and sometimes there is a "window of opportunity" to open/close discussions etc. If you continue to try you may find the problem goes away when you least expect it.

Please let your Vista Volunteer know if you have experienced any of these isssues, particularly if you are able to replicate the problem.
Also.........Microsoft issued an Internet Explorer update the other day. Information from David:
IE 7.0 is an unsupported browser. That means it'll probably work with most stuff but may have issues with others. They'll get the browser check message telling them so. Also, it is not supported in Banner.

best,
Lisa

What to do When Your Student Might be Dangerous

Hello Everyone-

The recent incident at Platte Valley High School and the incident in the Amish school have highlighted the need to react appropriately and quickly to potentially dangerous problems. On occasion we at CCCOnline have had students make inappropriate posts that involve physically threatening other students or their faculty. Please let Alice Bedard-Voorhees, myself, or Rhonda Epper know of any of these threats as soon as they occur. In most cases they can be dealt with by having one of us call the student, but we have asked campus security and local police to contact the student when that was necessary.

We do have the added security of physical distance between ourselves and our students, but frequently our students are also students on a campus. We would prefer not to create unnecessary difficulties for our students, but it is best to err on the side of caution.

Thank you,
Lisa

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Online Docs and Spreadsheets

Google has set up a way for anyone to create documents and spreadsheets online. This may be very useful to any of you who have students without access to spreadsheet or word processing software. From the website:

If you've ever struggled to keep track of different versions of spreadsheet or word processor files sent over email, Google Docs & Spreadsheets may be right for you. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that keeps documents current and lets the people you choose update files from their own computers. You can, for example, coordinate your student group's homework assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or collaborate with remote colleagues on a new business plan.

The URL is http://docs.google.com/

this should help a LOT of folks out there :)

Lisa

Monday, October 09, 2006

CCCOnline Website down Sunday

Hi Everyone-

The www.CCCOnline.org website was down from 7:00 Sunday morning through 9:00 that evening. Anyone going directly to the classes through those server URL's didn't notice that and was able to get into classes. Students who access the classes through the main website were not able to get to classes. It looks like students in Vista are tending to access through the Vista server URL (Online.CCCOnline.org), so most of them were in classes on Sunday. CE students on the other hand, seem to access classes primarily through our main website.

Going forward we will make more of an effort to let all students know the "backdoor" url.

FWIW, the reason it took so long to get it fixed is because the notification software we use was pointing to the older version of the main website instead of to the version we are transitioning to. We have now transitioned the notification software. :^(

best,
Lisa

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Monterey Institute for Technology -- Digital Content

CCCOnline has joined the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology in Education (www.montereyinstitute.org). NROC is a growing library of high-quality online course materials for students and faculty in higher education. This project, supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, facilitates collaboration among a community of content developers to reach students and teachers worldwide. What does this mean for CCCOnline faculty? There is a wide range of learning materials in a variety of subjects available for integration into your courses. For an overview of this material, see www.hippocampus.org. Stay tuned to the faculty blog for further information on how to access the faculty resources through NROC.

There will also be opportunities for CCCOnline faculty to participate in collaborative course development through the NROC "Social Authoring" initiative. Courses in the NROC library are contributed by developers from leading online-learning programs across the country, including CCCOnline. All courses are assessed to ensure they meet high standards of scholarship, instructional value, and presentational impact. NROC works with developers and contributes resources to improve course quality and to provide ongoing maintenance.

Rhonda M. Epper
Co-Executive Director, Learning Technology
Colorado Community College System

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Turnitin and Plagiarism

Hi All-

There was an interesting article and set of comments on plagiarism and services such as Turnitin in Andy Carvin's blog last week - http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/
2006/09/the_ethics_of_plagiarism_detec.html.

At CCCOnline our tack so far has been to focus on teaching learners about plagiarism and designing assignments to limit plagiarism (Alice and Phyllis have designed a great workshop and toolkit), but other system colleges have also licensed the services of companies such as Turnitin.

Lisa

Students with Technical Difficulties

Hi Everyone-

Please ask students who are having technical difficulties to either submit a help request via the support form or via the 800 number.

The URL for the support form is http://www.ccconline.org/support/form/

The phone number for support is 1-800-801-5040.

There is a link from the home page of the CCCOnline website to the student support center. The support center has a lot of good information for students with technical difficulties or other types of difficulties and misunderstandings. If they go check there first they may save themselves a lot of time and effort.

Thanks-
Lisa

Monday, October 02, 2006

Our numbers are UP!

The numbers are in for today -- Session 2 credit hours are up 31.7% over last year's first day of classes. Enrollment is up 28.7 over last year!

From John:
Here are the numbers for the first day of session 2. We are at 4,340 enrollments for session 2 with 14,260 credit hours. Last year we had 3,372 enrollments on the first day of session 2 for 10,824 credit hours.
Thanks Everyone! If you can hold onto these students we will end the semester up just a little over last year for both sessions.

Flickr Show -- Gold Medal Faculty

Check out the pictures of all of our wonderful Gold Medal Faculty!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccconline/
sets/72157594304475308/show/

Lisa

Sunday, October 01, 2006

CE - Too Many Students in C21 Sections

To those teaching a C21 section in WebCT Campus Edition:

The sectionizer didn't do exactly what is was supposed to do before the student load for fall 2 and all students showed up in the C21 sections. That's okay if there is no C22, C23, etc. section, but if you are teaching the C21 section of a fall 2 course that typically runs 8 or 9 sections it can be a little startling to see 100 plus students in your section. Try to ignore that for the rest of today. David and team are on the case and will have it straightened out very shortly.

It's probably best to not send out a welcome email to students' external email addresses until late tonight or tomorrow am.

Lisa