Faculty members, it is once again that time of year when we wrap up the spring semester and prepare our summer courses in Moodle while daydreaming about long days at the pool.
Your IT team has posted a helpful checklist with links to several tutorials explaining how to complete those end of the semester Moodle chores. View the checklist here.
As always, if you require assistance, please contact us at extension 229.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Guest Blogger Nina Dulabaum shares her experience attending the Distance Learning Conference
Enriching Learning Environments with Technology was the theme of the Distance Learning Conference on March 7th in Elgin. Dr. Maria Andersen
began her keynote speech with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, “Anyone who can be replaced by a computer should be." Gasps from faculty were audible as she continued with her
predictions for the future:
Her presentation continued discussing the implications of these predictions and what this means for the future of education. In addition, I soon learned the true meaning of “Busynessgirl” – she shared many resources and tools for teaching and engaging students, including a few minutes of a Hans Rosling’s TED Talk from 2006 that certainly makes statistics come alive! Click here for interesting handouts!
Yes, she thinks computers should replace faculty in some instances (refer to above). No, in the end, she emphasized that education needs competent faculty – professors and instructors – who embrace and leverage technology and focus on “acting human” – mentoring, assisting, and supporting students in all those ways computers can not.
I took this opportunity to speak with her personally, and she shared her views on some innovative technology on the market – e.g., adaptive tools such as the SmartBook. Having used a similar adaptive study resource at another institution, I am excited about exploring this option and finding new ways to assist our students in becoming successful learners here at Sauk! Just like Raph Koster’s quote she posts on her blog, her session truly demonstrated that “Learning is the brain having fun.”
~ Dr. Duly
“(1) Learning that involves information transfer will be replaced by technology
(2) Any repetitive assessment or learning task that can be replicated by a computer will be.
(3) Any computerized course that is cheaper and results in equal or better learning outcomes¹ for students will be delivered that way.
(4) The only technology that will improve learning outcomes for the majority of students is the technology that begins to mimic a tutor-student relationship.” http://busynessgirl.com/4-predictions-about-the-age- of-technology-enhanced-learning/
Her presentation continued discussing the implications of these predictions and what this means for the future of education. In addition, I soon learned the true meaning of “Busynessgirl” – she shared many resources and tools for teaching and engaging students, including a few minutes of a Hans Rosling’s TED Talk from 2006 that certainly makes statistics come alive! Click here for interesting handouts!
Yes, she thinks computers should replace faculty in some instances (refer to above). No, in the end, she emphasized that education needs competent faculty – professors and instructors – who embrace and leverage technology and focus on “acting human” – mentoring, assisting, and supporting students in all those ways computers can not.
I took this opportunity to speak with her personally, and she shared her views on some innovative technology on the market – e.g., adaptive tools such as the SmartBook. Having used a similar adaptive study resource at another institution, I am excited about exploring this option and finding new ways to assist our students in becoming successful learners here at Sauk! Just like Raph Koster’s quote she posts on her blog, her session truly demonstrated that “Learning is the brain having fun.”
~ Dr. Duly
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Moodle Quiz - Certainty Based Marking
Moodle Quiz offers a scoring option called Certainty Based
Marking. When this option is selected, students are asked how certain they are
of their answer after answering every question.
The following excerpt from Moodle
documentation explains how it works.
“When a student answers a
question they also have to state how sure they are of the answer: not very
(less than 67%); fairly (more than 67%) or very (more than 80%). Their grading
is then adjusted according to how certain they are, which means that for
example if they answered correctly but were only guessing, their mark is
adjusted from 1 to 0.33. If they answered wrongly but were very sure, their
mark is adjusted from 0 to -2.”
This grading option is selected in the quiz settings, and is
one of many choices under
the Question behavior section.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Growing Online Learning Conference - Recorded Sessions
Last week your IT Department was able to attend the Growing Online Learning Conference online from ILCCO. These sessions have been recorded and are available for you to view at your leisure. Keep reading for descriptions of each session and links. Two sessions I found interesting were "Creating an Accessible Online Course" and "Enrich Online Student Learning Experience by using Screencast-O-Matic". Both provided relevant and up-to-date information with great ideas for implementing them in your online course.
-Greg Noack
“Online teaching will never be as good as real
teaching," and other lies your elders told you.
Michelle Stephens Coordinator of Richland Theatre Program
Richland Community College
Author of Prepare for Impact and Teaching in Zero
Gravity
Stephens, author of Prepare for Impact and Teaching in Zero
Gravity, is both a lover of technology and a skeptic. During her keynote
session, she explains how the outcomes of online education have nothing to do
with the classroom impact. Working deftly, like a hibachi chef, she will
separate out all of the key components of online education and of teaching and
explain that not only is real comparable online education within our grasp, it
is at our door. Then she will toss them with some vegetables and throw them on
your plate. (These are often referred to as "takeaways.") She will
also explain how having impact in the classroom is a lot more low-tech than you
think. Using multiple perspectives, Stephens weaves pedagogy and storytelling
like ... Well, like a person who weaves a lot of things together. Particularly
important things.
Throw Out the Cookie Cutters!
Linda Lee, Associate Director of Educational Technology and
Innovation
Jill Johnson, Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral
Science
Carl Sandburg College
Throw out the cookie cutter and allow students to shape
their own learning space in online classes. Personalized learning paths and
U-Pace will be discussed.
https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.279A93A22F1802C21BD741D6B2CA34&sid=2012692
Building Content Knowledge and Community in an Online Course
Using Storybooks
Elizabeth Kershisnik, Professor of Chemistry
Oakton Community College
Having groups create a child's storybook about a chemistry
concept can help solidify content knowledge and build group cohesion. This
presentation will cover 1) how the group project is designed, 2) ways to assign
groups, 3) rubrics and assessment, and 4) successes and pitfalls of this type
of learning module.
Creating an Accessible Online Course
Janet Peters Project Coordinator for Education and Assistive
Technology
University of Illinois at Chicago
What does the word accessible mean to you? You may first
think of the word available. Something that is accessible is available, or
perhaps within reach for you to use. However, just because something is
available doesn't necessarily mean it is accessible. For instance, if you are
hard of hearing or have poor vision, a course may be "available" but
hard or impossible for you to use because it was not designed with
accessibility in mind. This session will discuss the reasons to create your
course in an accessible way and will offer practical and easy tips on how to do
that, including checklists and resources to streamline the process.
Improving Online Student Retention
Kona Jones Director of Online Learning
Richland Community College
Retention and success are important issues, yet in most
cases there is little to nothing done to directly monitor and provide early
intervention strategies to online students at risk. Because of this, Richland
Community College partnered with AspireEDU to help improve their online
retention. Aspire pulls various pieces of student information from Richland's
LMS and is able to then provide a "risk index" of how likely it is
that each student will drop out or fail their online course(s). Using this risk
score, Richland was able to quickly pick out the online students most at risk
and start an early alert intervention with the students. This session will include
tips on how to identify at risk students, Richland's early alert strategy, and
results of the initial online retention pilot.
Enrich Online Student Learning Experience by using Screencast-O-Matic
Online students benefit from personalized contact and
encouragement. Incorporating video and audio feedback for written assignments
adds another dimension to online pedagogy.
Getting Audio and Video into Your
Online Course
Nancy Heuer-Evans English Instructor
Brandy Thatcher Instructional Media Developer Illinois
Central College
Brett Coup Associate Dean for Instructional Technology
College of DuPage
Join us for a discussion of tips, tricks and ideas for
working with audio and video in your online course. We'll discuss common
challenges for getting audio and video into your courses: efficient storage of large
media files, competing video formats, browser issues. You will also hear a
faculty member's perspective on using audio and video in her online courses.
We'll demonstrate a few solutions, such as using Google Drive for hosting video
Monday, February 10, 2014
Hide Suspended Students in Gradebook
Students who withdraw from
courses after the tenth day of enrollment are suspended rather than completely
withdrawn from Moodle in order to safeguard grade and attendance records.
Instructors may choose to omit these students from view in the gradebook.
Navigate to Grades and select the
My preferences tab, as shown below.
A new page will open. Scroll down
to the General section and locate the drop down menu titled Show only active
enrollments. Selecting No will display all students, including suspended
students, in the gradebook. Selecting Yes will show only the students who are
actively enrolled in the course. After you have made your selection, scroll to
the bottom of the page and Save changes.
In order to view the records of
the suspended student once again, return to the drop down menu and select No.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Update Concerning Moodle Login Notifications
On Dec 27th 2013 Moodle Rooms applied a minor upgrade to our Moodle site. This upgrade crippled a process critical for the seventh and fourteenth day Moodle login notifications to function. Our institution was the first to notice this failure and alert Moodle Rooms. We have since removed the notification rules from all online courses this semester. Students did not receive the planned notification on the fourteenth day if they did not log into your course. We encourage you to monitor student progress and contact any students who have not been participating in your courses. Moodle Rooms has since fixed the issue, and we hope to utilize these notifications again next semester.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
New Process for Making Moodle Course Visible to Students
Another minor change you will find is that your resource and activities settings no longer appear as a long scrolling page. Instead these settings have been collapsed into links. Click the title of the settings to see those options for the activity or resource. View the video below to see how the new feature works.
One new feature that is now available is in the Assignment Activity. Teachers can now allow individual students to resubmit an assignment before the due date. To do this, when creating a new assignment activity (or edit your existing assignments) in the submission settings section, set "Attempts reopened" setting to "Manually".
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| Click image to view full size. |
When you are grading assignments, you can click the black arrow in the edit columns menu to see a list of options, choose "Allow another attempt."
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| Click image to view full size. |
Keep reading our blog to learn more new features in Moodle.
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