Speaking of Wikis: Lee LeFever's Short Wiki Video

Lee Lefever of Common Craft has done it again by creating a three minute something video on using wikis. It's available in more than one format from more than one video source, and he has included a captioned version and a transcript.



Text Transcript: http://www.commoncraft.com/transcript-wikis-plain-english-video

Captioned Version: http://dotsub.com/films/wikisinplainenglish/

I thought we'd have the captioned version here since I copied the code from his site so people could view it from this blog, but that is not the case.

His best screens are examples of the simplicity needed for the small screens of portable media players.

Another exciting note from Jessy -- wiki's in class

Hi Everyone-

Jessy Devasia also experimented with using a wiki in her class last semester. Here is her note on that experience:

I would like to give you a brief note on my experience with using Wiki this spring semester. I used it for BI0 201, 202, and 204 with moderate success. Initially there was no response from the students. But offering a few extra credits for using wiki did the trick. Some of the students started posting interesting web ites, news items, answers to some of the questions etc. in wiki.

The biggest success was with BIO 204-Microbiology in which we were doing a group project. Students were divided into 12 groups. Many of these groups used to edit their projects in the wiki. They were happy that they need not have to email back and forth all the time.

I plan to use it again this semester right from the beginning of the class. It is easy to introduce new things in the beginning of the semester before the students get too busy with assignments and tests. I would suggest the use of wiki for classes which have group projects, tough lab exercises etc.

Everyone is welcome to have space on the wiki if you are interested in teaching with it also.

best,
Lisa

Turning a Student Around

Hi Everyone-

I wanted to post this email from one of your fellow instructors, Jessy Devasia. Last semester Jessy had a student who was really primed to have a terrible learning experience in her course. Jessy managed to help that student have instead one of those positive, turning-point experiences that I am sure the student will remember for her entire life.

From Jessy:

I am a Health Sciences faculty and my teaching techniques are very traditional demanding hard work, discipline, order, mutual respect, and truthfulness. But I have learned over a period of time that patience, compassion, forgiveness, keeping my pride and ego aside, and being a little flexible can turn around even very difficult students in a very positive way. I had a gratifying teaching experience with a student whom I taught this spring, which I would like to share with you.

Profile of the student: She is taking this particular course for the third or fourth time with CCConline. She was not able to go beyond the third week of the semester each time she has taken the class due to various reasons, which appeared silly and funny to me! This student is in her fifties, working 3 jobs (60-65 hours), neck deep in debt, with weight and health problems, ailing spouse, and a very intelligent perfectionist who tries to relive her excellent teen years and early twenties as a top student. She has been admitted to the BSN program at a reputed University in Texas for fall, 2007. She wanted a commitment from me that I would not let her go this time. I promised her that I would work with her as long as she tries her best and keeps in touch with me.

Though whatever I did was not a big thing for me that turned out to be a life changing experience for this student. . I know that all of us do to these things for our students every semester we teach. When our kind Head of the Department, Alison Jacobs asked me to write about how our little acts of timely kindness and help may turn into a forward moving experience for our students, I looked back and found a few things, which may have helped this student to complete this course and chase her dream of joining a prestigious nursing program in a reputed university.

1. Listen to our students carefully especially during the first 1 or 2 weeks of the semester and look for direct/indirect hints which some of our students give expecting our leadership, help, understanding, reassurance, and guidance as they undertake this journey with us. Make a note of the back grounds of these students (age, type of employment, number of jobs, number of working hours, sexuality, marriage status, single parent, health problems, getting back to school after many years, care givers of sick spouse and parents, financial problems, got admitted to programs which start soon, taking 3-4 online classes, need a B or C…) and keep a special eye on these students all through out the semester.

2. Always reply to the student emails as early as possible. Never reply to an email when you are tired, angry, and disturbed about something. When we are in a hurry to write a well thought out reply let the students know that we have their message and get back to them soon.

3. When a student openly says that the instructor is bad, hate the way we run the class, and find fault with everything we do, it is really hard not to take it to heart. But my experience with these kinds of students tells me that it is a cry for help and they are not able to move forward. These students are like our children who say that they hate the parents and home when they need us to reach out to them. This is when we can keep our pride aside and ask the student what we can do to help her succeed.


4. Please always try to contact an enthusiastic student who suddenly disappears from the class. You may reach them when they are very miserable and able to offer a helping hand. I believe that there is nothing wrong in being flexible with our test and assignment schedules (with penalties for late submission applied) to help our non-traditional students who come to the class with bagful of problems on their back.

5. A second attempt on reaching a missing student from the class also will not hurt.

6. Help the students to be practical, to make compromises, fix up priorities, set achievable goals, and plan the work-time schedules. It is also right to be tough at this point and use an iron hand. Suggest the students using their time wisely. Remind our adult learners that we cannot be always perfectionists and we are not the teenagers who made straight As and went several extra miles doing schoolwork 35-40 years ago. No body learns everything about a subject in 15 weeks and gave them suggestions on how to do well in tests. We can always read and learn many things later on.

7. After all these advise do not help in turning in class work, we can resort to the technique of giving ultimatums. Give the final chance and express your final decision without any ambiguity. We have done everything possible within our limits.

I would like to add an email, which I received from this student at the end of the semester:

"My deepest gratitude for your kindness and above all your fair treatment to me as student. With mixed emotion, I now move forward from the warmth and intellectual nurturing of Arapahoe CC to the fast-tracked arena of the University of Texas @ Austin.

I have learned more than just academic content from you -- I depart with the memory of compassion and understanding without judgments, which now are my responsibility to share with those lives, which will now cross mine."

I think that these are some of the most gratifying moments in my teaching career.

Jessy Devasia

Welcome to Summer: First Week Ideas

Greetings to Each of You,

As you create community this first week, here’s your chance to not only let people know that they belong, but also provide activities that help them know HOW to belong.

Various Strategies

Let your welcome email let people know what you find exciting about the course, and express your wish for their success. Outline practices that will help learners be successful, and name resources that can help them (Smarthinking, student helpdesk, rubrics, self-quizzes, interactivities).

Provide a phone number. Let people know when good times are to call and what info to leave w/ messages (name, course, phone number, reason, good days and times to return call).

Let students know they can request a phone conference from you via email.

Let them know best uses for external email.

Post a picture of yourself in the course. Invite people to provide pictures in the course room either of themselves or something they like to do.

Ask people to review the course competencies and ask how these line up or are different from their own goals

Have an icebreaker topic (like provide a link about your hometown, where would you like to be if you could be on vacation right now…)

You could create a brief “what to expect from this class” letter or sound file.

Write down your ideas (script)
Go to gapcast.com, create a free account.
Pick up the phone and call in your remarks.
Either download the mp3 or get the code right at gapcast to put a player on your home page.

Have the plagiarism discussion. We now have the links to the student handbooks at the home college. They'll soon be up at the Student Wiki, but your chair also has a copy.

Invite people to ask any questions about the course or tools—you can make this one anonymous.

Here’s wishing you a great term, and thank you for all you do for CCCOnline learners!

Best, Alice

Student Email Addresses

Hi Everyone-

We should have email addresses of students out to you later this afternoon. Once you have those a welcome email to students is a great practice.

Thanks,
Lisa

Enrollment Statistics

Hi Everyone-

We are still down overall, but much less down than we expected to be this summer.

Executive Summary
200810 - Summer 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Comparison	Total
Total enrollments this date last year	7,143
Total enrollments this date this year	7,002
Percent difference	-1.97%
Total credit hours this date last year	24,355
Total credit hours this date this year	23,586
Percent difference	-3.16%
Total Unduplicated Headcount this date last year	4,801
Total Unduplicated Headcount this date this year	4,552
Percent difference	-5.19%

Students still have a few hours to register - we close at 5:00 this afternoon.

best,
Lisa

Additional June Training Opportunities

Want to start your summer off with a bang? How about learning something new to help you with your online teaching? CCCOnline is offering several sessions in June to teach you new skills:

Creating Grading Rubrics: June 4-18
Creating Virtual Teams in Vista: June 18-29
Creating Tests with Respondus: June 18-22
Creating Intereactivities with StudyMate: June 25-29

For Training Session Descriptions: http://www.facultywiki.ccconline.org/index.php?

To Register: http://cccs-lms.ccconline.org/RegistrationForm/

Additional Questions? Contact Phyllis Dobson at Training@ccconline.org.

Getting Ready for Summer

Best Wishes as You Prepare Courses for Summer! Quality Checks are May 31st.

Helpful Resources
https://ccconline.org/FacultySC/TeachingResources/BeginningVista.htm

Vista Course Readiness Checklist
http://www.facultywiki.ccconline.org/~www66/index.php?title=Course_Readiness_Checklist

Note the other VISTA FAQ’s for various Vista Features in the Wiki
http://www.facultywiki.ccconline.org/~www66/index.php?title=Vista_faq

Prof Help is also available if the FAQ’s aren’t doing it: profhelp@cccs.edu

Other Tools or Activities
A picture of yourself, an invite to students to submit a picture as part of the intros.
Group Tool (under instructor tools in the course menu).
Blogs or Journals
The Webliography Tool
Virtual Guests: http://ccconline.org/FacultySC/TeachingResources/vsb.htm
A Week 1 discussion about plagiarism and how to avoid it
Writing and Research Projects: https://ccconline.org/FacultySC/TeachingResources/WritingResearch.htmCreation of Voice Content by You or Students:
See http://gabcast.com
Or create a soundfile on your desktop using software called
Audacity.

Student Survey's Available

Hi Everyone-

Student surveys are now available for your viewing pleasure. They can be accessed at t https://at.ccconline.org/cgi-bin/fac-eval-07S.pl. You will need to login with your old CCCO username and password, i.e. janedoe/jdoe1225. As I type this I realize I don't know how the folks without an old ID get in, so I will have to get back to you with that information.

If you have problems getting in email Frank.Vazquez@cccs.edu. (Two z's in his name and no s's).

Thanks for the great semester!

Lisa

SecondLife Webinar

Mark your May calendars for this great upcoming Webinar to be held at the NROC Network Commons (www.nrocnetwork.org). A limited number of seats are available, so register today!

Thursday, May 17 - 2:00 p.m. Eastern time (11:00 a.m. Pacific) -Virtual Environments for Online Education: A Look at Second Life, moderated by Cheryl Comstock and Lisa Cheney-Steen, CCCOnline. RSVP by Tuesday, May 15.

To register, please send an email to info@montereyinstitute.org and we will send you a confirmation with the details for accessing the webinar. Seats will be confirmed on a first-come, first-served basis.

To fully participate, you will need a speaker and a microphone. If you do not have a microphone, you are still welcome to listen. The session will be recorded for members to access at the Network after the live event.

We have tentative plans to follow this webinar with a meeting in SecondLife on May 31st. So set up your avatar and get ready to visit some islands!

We will also try to re-schedule this webinar and the meeting in SecondLife for second dates in July or August.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Webinar on SecondLife

Hi Everyone-

On Thursday, May 17th, Cheryl Comstock and I (mostly Cheryl) are presenting a webinar for NROC on SecondLife, the online 3-D digital world. Any of you are welcome to attend. I will send out directions next week.

Cheryl sent me some information for first time SecondLife users so any of you interested in that webinar could get started in SecondLife before the webinar. If you don't want to set up your avatar don't worry about it, but if you do, these directions will get you started.

Cheryl, for those of you who don't know her, is the Director of Instructional Design for Colorado Community Colleges Online. As part of a graduate program she has been taking classes and teaching in Second Life for the past year. From Cheryl:

Here are some basics for you and others to get started - let me know what else you need.

1. Go to www.SecondLife.com. Create an account and name your avatar. You pick your own first name, but need to use one of their provided lastnames

Note:Right away under the "View" menu select Camera controls and Movement controls, this will help you navigate more easily!

If it is dark selecting "World" Force Sun Noon will give you 4 hours of daylight

2. Here are some spots you can go to get started and see what educators are doing:

Inside SL Click on the Map link at the bottom of your window:

type in the numeric coordinates in the location fields, and click teleport

• NCI/New Citizens Plaza -- Kuula 53, 169, 28
• Ivory Tower Library of Primitive, Natoma (208, 165, 27)
• Managing in the Innovation Age, Ohio University (70, 200, 26)

(Side note from Lisa -- this is really important. It's easy to get stuck on the welcome island.)

For more sites search Education or whatever you like.

Try sitting (most chairs and couches let you sit, but also may have a "sit ball". This is scripted to make your avatar sit a certain way.

To stand again click "stand up" button.

Here some information you can share from my Getting connected poster.

Getting Connected in SL - Navigation

This is a simple navigation and features tour that you will want to keep handy when arriving to EdTech Island (or other place in SL). (This list has been limited to the most frequently used features by most beginners. As you spend more time inworld you will learn extended features and new ways to navigate more quickly. Always remember to use the HELP menu included at the top of your screen.)

Upper Navigation
SL features a navigation bar at the top of the page and at the bottom of the page.
The Main Menu is a common Windows styled pull down menu containing commands and helpful shortcuts.

File
- The most common files that you will use as a beginner are the Take Snapshot and Snapshot to disk. You will need Linden dollars to upload a snapshot from inworld to your Inventory/Snapshot Folder. You can also download a Snapshot to Disk (this is free, unless you want to upload it later to your Inventory/Snapshot Folder. Each snapshot costs L$10

- You can also find the Upload selection under the File menu – this is for images sounds and animations. Bulk uploads are the most economical way to upload.

Edit
- The Edit menu in SL is similar to other Windows based software, Search and Preferences will be your most frequented items. You will find that working with properties such as your profile, appearance and gestures are easily navigable from when right clicking on your avatar’s body.

- Preferences deal with your computer setup. Leave these set to the default settings unless a more experienced user wants to assist you with this process or you are having issues with your computer

View
- There are many items listed here that deal with you “see” featured properties in SL. Try learning the keyboard short cuts for these when possible to save time. Mouse look is the most used; enables you to see “through your avatars eyes”. Simply use the “M” key on your keyboard to activate, use the ESC key to disable.

World
- The most commonly used under world with be to start a gesture, chat or more importantly Force Sun. There are four basic lighting settings; Sunrise, Noon, Sunset and Midnight. Each will last 4 hours and since time tends to pass quickly in SL, you will find yourself frequently changing the light back to something different from what it has just changed to.

Tools
- Tools are used later when you’re more acclimated to being inworld. You will have plenty of time to play with these.

Help
- You will find this selection to be of some use, don’t be afraid to ask others inworld, most people are friendly and will respond to your questions.

Main Lower Navigation

IM – once you have requested friendship with another user you can utilize the IM feature to have private conversations with that one person.

Chat – Allows you to have discussions with multiple users or users that you have not accepted friendship with yet.

Friends – Is a list of users that you have accepted friendship with and will be able to access quickly for IM, Teleporting, reading their profiles, paying, adding or removing friends.

Fly – Something you will do a lot here, mostly because you can…and because it is really the fastest way to travel in SL too.

Snapshot – An easy way to access all the photo properties and options

Search – Search inworld for people places and things

Build – Used to build and edit Prims inworld.

Mini-Map – Exactly that, a mini map of the area that you are currently visiting

Map – is a large scale map of the SL world; allowing you to access points all over the SL globe.

Inventory – This is where all your “stuff” is located for your avatar, building, a place to store all your items inworld. See the Inventory Note card for a more in-depth description.

Communication

This is a simple navigation and features tour that you will want to keep handy when arriving to EdTech Island (or other place in SL).

Chat or IM –
If you find that who you want to contact is not online, you can send them information in an email; they will receive a notification at their preferred email destination.

Note Cards – Just as you have received this note card from this display, you can type information directly on to a note card or copy and paste text to a new card and store it in your inventory

Money

To start out even with a free membership it is good to have a couple of Linden dollars in the Bank. Just for simple things like uploading the snapshot of your avatar on the free Jet Ski that you found while touring Inworld. You can contribute money by using the L$ Icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen. Right next to that is the amount of money that you have in your Linden Bank account. You can also make contributions to the various educational efforts that are going on inworld.

Current Exchange rate is $1 US dollar = L$270 Linden dollars.

Passing L$ Money to purchase items or make contributions: Right click on you’re the item that you would like to contribute and a Pay window will appear. You can then select the denomination that you’re contributing.

Becoming Connected in SL

Simple Navigation and features that you will want to interact with when arriving to EdTech Island (or other places inworld). These are limited to the most frequently used by a beginner. As you spend more time inworld you will learn other features and learn how to use the HELP menu more extensively.

Inventory Basics

When you come into SL you receive an inventory folder. Here you will find clothes, textures, note cards, landmarks, snapshots etc. and then any other Prims that you create or purchase while inworld.

Just for Starters

- Everyone starts out with both an Inventory folder and a Library folder. You can retrieve items from the library, but you cannot use this area for storage. That is why you have an Inventory folder.

Stay organized: You want to organize your inventory on a regular basis so it does not get out of control (this can easily happen when you first start building and buying “stuff”). Try to work on it at least every other visit.

Don’t Buy It - Build it! The items you build can be copied or modified and you can allow others to share in this feature if you set the Prims properties to do so.

The No Copy Rule
- The items you buy, most of the time cannot be copied or modified, because they have been created for commerce purposes and the original creator wants L$ for the item.

Store your Stuff
- Once you own land you can store a certain amount of your prims on your land. Here the size of the prim isn’t as important as how many you have left out on the land space.

“Your mother doesn’t work here”
- Just like when you go to another’s home in your first life, you need to clean up after yourself in SL. Always be courteous and retrieve all of your personal items and assist other users in storing shared items for projects.

The SL Five Golden Rules for Inventory Management

1. Organize Inventory contents before you leave from one Landmark to the next. Try not to keep two copies of the same item.
2. Subfolders are your friends. They can be named and moved to any other folder. Try to avoid having loose items floating around in main folders.
3. Try to avoid hanging on to stuff that you are not going to be using in the near future especially if it is something that you got for free. You can resale your used non-replicable and purchased items. Fill your piggy bank for the next shopping spree by having a Prim Sale.
4. Make a back-up copy of your inventory when possible. You can lose files and folders just as easily as you can in your first life.
5. Make a point of emptying the trash before you leave. This way you will have more room for all the new cool stuff that you can get the next time you come inworld.
   

If you ever need help just ask. Enjoy your time in Second Life and on EdTech Island!

Cheryl Comstock (a.k.a. Ize Mesmer)

C-IDeisgn.com

This was a long post, but it should help your initial visit to Second Life more exciting!

Lisa Cheney-Steen

CCCOnline

Update on Vista Issue

Hi Everyone-

If you or your students are having difficulties with the quiz tool or adding attachments to email the best solution is to logout of Vista, close your browser, re-open everything, and log back in. Most of the time this will move you to a new node. The issue appears to be primarily related to a single node (of 6). Here's what I have from BB:

Hi David,

Larry has been working on this issue with our Operations team.
Currently, this may be isolated to a particular App/node server. We are
in process of moving the users on this particular node to anther node.
We will then be taking it out of circulation for more testing. As soon
as there is a further update please expect to hear from either me or
Larry.

Thank You,

Alex

More updates when I have them. Grades are due Thursday. Let us know if giving students extra time is going to cause you to be late. best, Lisa

Possible Testing Issues

Hi Everyone-

We have had some reports of students having problems starting and completing exams this weekend. So..... if you hear from a student that they had difficulties this weekend and weren't able to complete the final exam before the course ended we'd appreciate it if you would give them an extra day.

Thanks-
Lisa

Entering Spring Grades

Dear Faculty;

It’s that time of year again, the end of the semester and time to enter grades. Please follow the directions below to enter grades for your courses. If you have any questions regarding grades, please contact me (john.schmahl@cccs.edu)

All grades are due no later than Thursday, March 10, 2007.

Once you have submitted your grades, we will pull a daily report listing the grades and they will be manually entered into Banner for the students. Grades will not be viewable by the students until after March 10.

If you have any students needing their grades earlier, please contact me.

To submit final grades:

go to the online Grade Book here, https://www.cccodevelopment.cccs.edu/gradebook/input/login.php

Login using your Blackboard CE/Vista login credentials

Select the appropriate section

**If you are missing any section(s) or have extra section(s) listed, please contact Frank Vazquez, frank.vazquez@cccs.edu

Enter the appropriate grade for each student, accepted grades are listed below

**Remember, developmental courses (those with course numbers under 100) must use the developmental grades, see below

**All students must be given a grade, even if they have not participated in the section

Enter a Last Date of Attendance for any students receiving a grade of “F” or “W”

Click “Update” and return to the menu to select the next section if needed

Approved grades

Non-developmental courses (course numbers 100 and above, e.g., PSY 101)
A
B
C
D
F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Developmental courses (course number less than 100, e.g., MAT 060)
S/A
S/B
S/C
U/D
U/F (must include last day of attendance)
I (must include incomplete contract)
W (must include last day of attendance)

Want a Vista Refresher Before Summer?

If you already successfully completed Vista training at an earlier time this year but would like to freshen up before you begin teaching this summer, you can sign up for the training and just do the portions you need at this time.

The session will run May 14th - May 25th.

To do so, register by Thursday, May 10th at http://cccs-lms.ccconline.org/RegistrationForm/

Registration reminder sent to students

The following reminder was sent to all spring students.

Thanks!
John


Don’t stop now! You can get some more classes crossed off your list during CCCOnline’s 10-week summer session that starts June 4. Check out the list of classes for summer session at http://www.ccconline.org/courses/session_su.htm -- everything from Accounting to Women’s Studies, and most of the general education core classes you need for your associate’s degree.

Registration has already started! Visit http://www.ccconline.org/register/ to get enrolled.

CCCOnline
Student Services
1.800.801.5040

Vista Volunteer Thank You

As we wrap up our transition to the new learning management system I'd like to extend a huge thank you to the Vista Volunteers. They did a fabulous job of supporting all of you, trouble-shooting Vista issues, and keeping everyone as calm and productive as possible.

A heart-felt thank you to:

Al Turner
Jose Garcia-Paine
Sharon Taylor
Carol Ohle
Stan Kuchel
Dan Branan
Chris Levesque
Jessy Devasia
Louis Sass
Aarthi Ramesh

And many thanks to Phyllis Dobson for coming up with the VV concept and organizing team! We never would have made it without you!

Lisa

Vista Next Steps Training Opportunities

Do you want to learn what more is available to help you facilitate your Vista courses? There’s a whole ‘nuther world of Vista tools out there accessible through the Build tab and many additional functions to learn in the Teach tab. You can enhance your knowledge and skills by taking Next Steps with Vista!

Workshop Topics:

• Gradebook

• Discussions tool

• Assessments tool

• Assignments tool

• File Manager, file editing

• Learning modules

• Web links

• Selective release options

• Tech Talk and Teaching Tips

• And, more!

If you have a specific problem area, bring your questions for class discussion, as we all learn from the experiences of others! This course is specifically designed for those instructors who have been teaching in Vista for one or two semesters.

What You Will Get:

• Instructions on using Vista Discussion Tools.

• User Guides on the tools

• A forum for discussing Vista tool problems.

Sign up Today for May, August, or September Offerings!

What: Vista Next Steps -- CCCOnline training workshop

Format: Facilitated and self-paced. Be expected to spend at least an hour a day or more in this workshop. You will be expected to complete a series of tasks within the session time frame.

Where: All Online

When: May 14-25; August 13-24; September 10-21

How: Register at http://cccs-lms.ccconline.org/RegistrationForm/

For more information: Training@ccconline.org

3.5 Minute Video on RSS Feeds

I saw a link to this video about RSS Feeds today by Lee Lefever of The Common Craft Show Blog. What do you think of it info-wise and as instructional video? Let us know below :). Best, Alice

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

In honor summer that isn't

Maybe it's the weather -- summer one day, then snowing today -- but I thought today was a good day to let you know about some long term projects we are working on.

24/7 help desk

This project belongs to the Learning Technology Council, rather than just CCCOnline alone. We've looked into hiring a vendor to help us provide 24/7 help desk services to students having technical difficulties in their online, hybrid, or web-enhanced courses. As a part of this project Rebecca Woulfe of Red Rocks Coommunity College recently surveyed all 8,000 students who dropped a course this semester. Approximately 8% of them said they dropped the course due to technical difficulties.

I have to admit that number was a surprise to me. I expected it to be much larger. It is still large enough to support our desire to provide a 24/7 help desk, but I wanted to solve a bigger problem. :^)

Application Pack 2 Beta test

CCCOnline, ACC, and FRCC are participating directly in the beta test of Application Pack 2 for Vista. This application pack is planned for an early summer release although in all probability we won't be able to install it until the Christmas Break. Since we are heavily involved in the testing of the ap pack we will feel more confident that it will solve some of our problems with Vista and not create too many new ones.

Unfortunately the ap pack does not have fixes to all of the issues we have with Vista (the calendar tool for example and who's online).

System-wide Conferenceing software license

As many of you know FRCC has a license for Elluminate, a web-based conferencing tool. Several of you have asked if CCCOnline will ever have a license of our own to use. The Learning Technology Council is also interested in a system-wide license for a tool like this, so we are going forward looking at the options available. Meanwhile Elluminate's free Vroom is a great alternative for small groups.

Grade Export Program

This program would grab the final grades you enter in Vista and automatically move them to Banner. You would no longer need to do dual entry. The scripts are almost written, but the project has slowed down due to limitations on programmer time.

I'm sure we have other "three steps forward, two steps back" projects out there, but I think those are the ones I get the most questions on. :^)

Lisa

Bringing Closure to Spring Term - May 6th

The last day class activity for spring term is May 6th. The list of suggestions below is drawn from the CCCOnline website under the Faculty tab, with a few updates:

Ways to Bring Closure to the Term with Students

• Learners may be tired; encourage students to persist to a strong finish.
• Provide a reflective learning and suggestion discussion thread.
• Provide a “saying our good-byes” community thread.
• Have Learners Review Their Progress to Date-An end-of-Term learner-directed exercise at this time is to ask the learner to pull down the various grading requirements for the term and tally their own grade books against the assignments and categories and the syllabus and communicate with you if there are any variations.
• Post course grades in the course grade books before they are officially due, inviting learners to review and ask questions before grades are officially submitted.
• Submit grades through email link like last term: Student Services will send an email with directions to faculty.
• Submit course grades by Thursday, May 10th, 5 pm.

Early Grades for Graduates

You may have a few requests from learners for early final grades—this is due to a few campuses asking for grade submissions for graduation purposes. These can be sent to Roxanne.manske@cccs.edu.

In addition to the grade, please include the course title, number, section, your name, and the learner’s name as an attachment (FERPA).

Issuing an “Incomplete”

Faculty may agree (not required) to granting an “I” if a learner only if a learner has completed a minimum of 75% of the course work at a “C” or better. IMPORTANT: The Incomplete form located in your faculty lounge needs to be submitted to CCCOnline Registrar Roxanne.Manske@cccs.edu at the time the “I” is filed. A copy should also be sent to the learner.

While land-based schools allow up to one year to complete coursework, CCCOnline students will only have one term access to the online course. Having the learner commit to a shorter timeline can encourage finishing the course.

Alternative to the “I”

An alternative to the “I” is to tell the learner that you will assign the grade earned to date, but that would agree to accept assignments after the term, and then file a change of grade as appropriate. Once again, the specifics should be in writing, and sent to the learner. In this case, it would also be advisable to send a copy to the chair in case any questions arise. The benefit of this decision is that it brings closure to the term gradebook.

Looking Ahead to Next Semester

Making Notes, Saving Posts: How do we use what we’ve learned towards next term?Stephen Brookfield (1995) and Pratt and Paloff (1999) all note the value of using what we’ve learned to actively inform our practice, and Angelo and Cross (1993) also note that a part of assessment and evaluation is to use that feedback to improve instruction.

While the course experience is still fresh, jot down notes on what you might want to change based on student feedback as well as your own sense of how the course went. It might include screen edits (and you could save those pages), thoughts about revisions to assignments, tweaking assignment directions, revising rubrics to more clearly indicate what you assign points to and how that it observable in the learner’s submission, thoughts about how to improve content or interactivity. It might include policy changes, like allowing the learner to skip a discussion or take a late quiz or assignment of their choice, thus decreasing the negotiations that are required between you and the learner.

Others also choose to select and compile all the first discussion posts they create to announce a given discussion topic and the instructions for posting to it. Such a file is sometimes stored in the course info files in the shell for easy referral the next term.

Downloading and Saving the Gradebook
Download and save a copy of your gradebook to your desktop to answer student grade- questions that might come up at a later date.

Vista was down this morning 6:15 through 7:45

Here's what I have from Melissa Burke, Director of ASP Hosting with BB:

Lisa –

I am working with the DBA group to get specifics and the information you requested in your last email. We will certainly issue a root cause analysis (RCA) report to you and cover the topic of how we plan to avoid this type of issue in the future.

In summary, the archive logging ran out of space. While a temporary solution was put into place, some downtime will be needed to completely alleviate the situation. We are working on an estimate for that now and Larry is trying to schedule this during the normal maintenance window. The splash page did not display as the webserver component of the application was still running.

It looks like the system went down shortly after 8:15 eastern and came back at about 9:45 eastern.

Melissa

As soon as I know more I will pass it on.

Thanks-
Lisa

Analytics

Hi Everyone-

Rhonda and I had an interesting conversation last night with Steve Rheinschmidt and Gretchen Bartelson of The Iowa Community College Consortium. They have begun looking seriously at the student data they have from their LMS (eCollege) and tying the data to retention and student success. Steve indicated the best early predictor of student success seems to be the amount of time a student spends in the LMS the first week of classes -- if the student spends more than 7 hours they will be successful; less than 7 hours they tend to need help.

Iowa has very generous drop add policies the first week of classes, so the student population in the classes is not particularly stable. That of course makes it hard to really begin to dig into the course material the first week, so they are concentrating on developing/promoting community building activities that grab the students and keep them in the class.

Steve also commented that students who use the discussion tool more than average tend to be successful students and that students who use them email tool more than average tend not to be successful. I bet that is about your experience also. :^)

We are planning to start looking at the data we can get from Vista and from Banner soon -- as soon as we have time.

best,
Lisa

Study Mate Workshop: April 23 - 27

“Alex, I’ll take Interactivies for 200”
“The answer is…a nine letter word that starts with S.”

What is StudyMate?
Correct you are!

Want to add some zip to your course? How about some fun activities to help your students through rough concepts or vocabulary? Try StudyMate! This program will help you create 10 different games and activities that you can upload into your online course.

What you will get:
• Instructions to download and install the program on your computer.
• An electronic user manual to keep on your computer desktop.
• Instruction and practice creating the interactivities including Fact Cards, Flash Cards, Crossword puzzles, Challenge games and more.
• Instructions for uploading your files into your Vista course.

What: StudyMate -- CCCOnline training workshop
Format: Self-paced with facilitator guide
Where: All Online
When: April 23-27
How: Register at http://cccs-lms.ccconline.org/RegistrationForm/
For more information: Training@ccconline.org

TELECOOP Pictures

This year the Learning Technology Council (DL folks from all of the colleges nominated CCCOnline's Academic Technology Team for the Technology Support Person of the Year. Above you see Jonathan Fuller, Rick Hadley's brother Drew, Frank Vazquez, and David Chatham. Chris Dos is a part of the team, but was unable to come collect the award in person. Yea guys! This was a well-deserved award considering the amount of support they have given all of us this year!



And just as a side note, this is the second time Frank has won the award.



Rick's mother, Anne Hadley, was also able to come up to TELECOOP this year to spend some time with us and to watch Cheryl's Second Life presentation. Cheryl did a fantastic job -- she kept the entire room spell-bound for the presentation. It was a good time to talk about Rick and the enthusiasm he had for Second Life and the Second Life project. Cheryl is planning to continue that project and even has some "land" in SL courtesy of Rick.










Cheryl presented a second time, with Aaron and Mary. This presentation also received rave reviews from a rapt audience. (It was Friday morning after all of the dire snow warnings and they still had a full room.) This presentation was on Teaching with Technology - I had several requests to get them to put it together as a workshop so more folks could attend.



















Alice Bedard-Voorhees presented on podcasting and audio interviews. She had yet another fascinated audience for that topic. This is Mary and Alice, with Donna Welschmeyer (Accounting) in the background taking pictures.



I didn't manage to get a picture of Jeri Heinicke, LL Program Chair, and Jon Sherrill, math faculty and other hats, in their presentation. They demonstrated software Jon wrote to allow students and faculty to record foreign language assignments for the foreign language courses. It's really exciting stuff and might add something to courses other than the language courses.



Karen Kaemmerling, SS Program Chair, and Rhonda Epper presented on the Digital Content Project and talked about Karen's textbook free history course. Somehow my camera missed them also. Karen also provided a lot of input in my presentation on using 3rd party content in courses.



And Linda Bowman, system VP for Academic Affairs and CCA President, came up for part of Thursday to watch the guys get their award. I did get a picture of her, but didn't think it was one she would want on the blog. :^)



The slides from all of these presentations will eventually be available on the www.telecoop.org website.



It was a great conference as usual -- lots of information of exciting subjects like Second Life, Podcasting, Quality Matters, Distance Learning happenings in nearby states, etc.



We also had a chance to talk to old friends who have moved away like Ed Bowen and Paul Romero. That's Ed below. He's in Texas now as an Executive Dean for Dallas Telelearning. He talked on the Quality Matters project - I really want to bring him back for our conference in September.




And in case you think no one does any work at conferences, here's Jonathan and Frank gradually building themselves a home in one of the labs.






















best,


Lisa

Workshop Opportunity: Creating Virtual Teams 4/16 - 4/27

Creating Virtual Teams

Research suggests that building a virtual community with others who share common goals or purpose may help defray feelings of isolation in distance learning. Collaborative learning, such as small group work, can help foster relationships through team-building activities that create a mutual-interdependency to succeed. So why aren’t more faculty using collaborative activities?

These are the questions we often hear:

o What should be done to facilitate the best possible group outcomes?
o What Vista tools are available, and how are they used?
o How should teams be formed?
o How many students should be in each group?
o What are some dark sides of teams, and what can be done to overcome these issues?

In Creating Virtual Teams, you’ll learn the answers to these questions and much more.

What you will get:
• Information on theory and best practices for setting up and facilitating collaborative projects.
• Instructions on using the Vista Group Tools.
• A lesson plan that can immediately be applied in your virtual classroom plan.
Sign up today!

What: Creating Virtual Teams -- CCCOnline training workshop
Where: All Online
When: April 16-27
How: Register at http://cccs-lms.ccconline.org/RegistrationForm/
For more information: Training@ccconline.org

Scholarship Fund for Rick

Many of you have asked me if there is a place for contributions honoring Rick. Rhonda has helped his family to set up a scholarship fund in his name at Metro State College where he completed his undergraduate degree. If you wish you can send a contribution to:

MSCD Foundation
P.O. Box 17971
Denver, CO 80217 -9812
Please note on your check: In memory of Rick Hadley

The memorial service is this afternoon beginning at 12:45 at the Carbon valley Recreation Center in Frederick, CO (outside of Longmont).

There is also an online memorial to Rick at the SLED project blog (Second Life Education -- a project Rick was very excited about). Your posts are welcome there: http://www.rickhadley.com/sled/

Lisa