WNC Online Support Blog

Developing Teaching Materials Using Prezi

Clarence — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:12:51 +0000

Prezi is a free and very easy to use presentation tool that you can use to create teaching materials for your Canvas online courses. Using Prezi you can import your PowerPoints, graphic files, text and also embed YouTube and Vimeo videos to create teaching presentations.

Sample Prezi Presentation

Need Help To Make Your First Prezi?

More Help Using Prezi

http://prezi.com/learn/

New HyFlex Courses For Fall 2013

Clarence — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 21:10:19 +0000

What is a HyFlex Course?

HyFlex courses use lecture capture technology to broadcast the live class lecture to online students at the same time students are also in the classroom attending the face-to face lecture. The main difference is that the student can choose to attend face-to-face, online, or both if something changes in their life or their work schedule.

Here is how Educause describes HyFlex courses:

“HyFlex is a course design model that presents the components of hybrid learning (which combines face-to-face with online learning) in a ﬂexible course structure that gives students the option of attending sessions in the classroom, participating online, or doing both. Students can change their mode of attendance weekly or by topic, according to need or preference. In this “ﬂexible hybrid” design, instructors provide course content for both participation modes and can tailor activities for each format. This is not a self-paced model, even though online sessions can be either synchronous or asynchronous. Students frequently take the same ﬁnal assessment, regardless of the chosen path through the material. The menu of options offered by HyFlex can ease the scheduling burden for students who commute long distances or who must be away from campus for athletics or other competitive activities. It is useful, too, for students who must coordinate work and family responsibilities with a challenging course schedule. In providing an online option, the model provides the ﬂexibility to keep a class from falling behind if, for example, the instructor has to travel unexpectedly or the campus is closed due to weather or other circumstances.”

What are HyFlex courses?

The HyFlex experience for the student.

The HyFlex experience for the teacher.

Want to know more about HyFlex?

Educause – The HyFlex Course Model

San Francisco State University

Four Fundamental Principles for HyFlex – The Pillars

HyFlex Instructional Model

Moving Your Course Materials from Moodle to Canvas

Clarence — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:52:55 +0000

Fall 2013 all online, web-enhanced and HyFlex course at WNC will be taught on our new learning system Canvas.

Here are some things you need to know:

Canvas training is mandatory. If you had the Moodle training that’s great but now you will need to complete the Canvas training to teach using Canvas.
There is no course copy or automatic conversion process. If you have a course in Moodle you will need to rebuild this course in Canvas.
Two weeks before the Fall semester starts August 12, 2013 your online courses will need to be complete and ready to teach.

Moodle to Canvas Course Conversion

WNC Canvas Teacher Help

Canvas Instructor Guide

Profile of an Online College Student

Clarence — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:17:43 +0000

According to a collaborative study by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, while less than 10 percent of college students were taking at least one class online in 2003, nearly one-third of college students are now taking at least one of their courses online. While students come from a variety of ages and ethnicities, they do seem to have some things in common, particularly when it comes to their gender and household income. They also have similarities when considering motivations for taking online rather than on-campus classes.

Click to see full size image.

What is Lecture Capture

Clarence — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:02:52 +0000

Lecture capture definitions and approaches

Lecture capture means recording classroom-based activities in a digital format that students can then watch over the web, on a computer or their mobile device. Lecture capture technology records the presenter’s audio and video, as well as any visual aids – laptop, tablet, whiteboard, document camera, visualizer – synchronizes them, and webcasts the stream live or archives for on-demand playback.

What Students See

Lecture capture is often about capturing more than just lectures, including any type of educational instruction, from student presentations or user generated video to collaborative exercises or lab demonstrations to guest speakers or other campus events. The term is also known as elearning, video-based instruction, online classes, blended education, hybrid courses, distance education, coursecasting, virtual classrooms, virtual learning environments, academic capture and more.

The Mediasite Recorder

Right now there are hundreds of learning activities taking place in classrooms around the globe. Over time, academic staff and faculty have used different technologies to share this knowledge beyond the bricks and mortar of the classroom, from written correspondence to TV to VCRs to CDs to videoconferencing, but the web greatly accelerated the sharing of classroom instruction as a learning object.

Sonic Foundry created Mediasite as a purpose-built, appliance-based platform for lecture capture. It features an automated workflow to record, deliver, manage, search and track video-based instruction, leveraging your in-room and on-campus infrastructure.

Students Can Watch Anywhere

By design, Mediasite requires no instructor intervention. Much like projection, it relies on the facility, not the faculty, to take the lecture online. And this approach has made it the most used lecture capture technology in the world.

Mediasite Player

Instructional Objectives and Storyboarding

Clarence — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 15:33:33 +0000

When I start a new course design, the first thing I do is write a set of measurable learning objectives. Many designers call these ABCD objectives which is a mnemonic for audience, behavior, condition, and degree. The application of ABCD allows me to focus on what is to be learned and helps me write usable objectives.

Why I LOVE Instructional Objectives

Another part of my course design process is the construction of a storyboard. I use a storyboard to identify the workflow of the course. Online learning can contain multiple learning processes in in the same course. For example,I may have the students do both individual study and assignments as well as a group project. These are two vastly different workflows that I need to understand and guide the students through. This is where the use of a storyboard helps me understand how students will do the work and allows me to write instructions and create job aids to accomplish these tasks.

Nuts and Bolts: Storyboarding Basics

Learning Objectives & Made For Online Pedagogies

Clarence — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:21:23 +0000

Learning objectives are one of the two core concepts in Quality Matters. If you don’t have clear and measurable learning objectives then your course will not meet the first and most basic requirement of the Quality Matters rubric.

Measurable course learning objectives precisely describe what students are to gain from instruction and provide the criteria instructors need to accurately assess student accomplishment. Objectives describe student performance in specific, observable terms.

Here is a great website form Park University that will show you how to write quality learning objectives.

Writing Quality Learning Objectives

The second core concept in Quality Matters is the alignment between your learning objectives, teaching materials and assessments.

The concept of alignment is intended to convey the idea that critical course components work together to ensure that students achieve the desired learning outcomes.

Online instruction requires a completely different teaching method. When moving a class to online we need to apply an online pedagogy versus what was done in the classroom.

The University of Central Florida has a wonderful site that list in great detail the many pedagogical approaches that can be used online.

UCF’s Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository

Good Teaching is About Presentation

Clarence — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:00:32 +0000

Here is a great video by the Brain Lady. This video reminds me of some great ideas by Dr. John Medina in his book Brain Rules.

How to Add a Start Here Block to Your Course

Clarence — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:46:55 +0000

An easy way to help your students start the semester is by adding a “Start Here!” block in your course side menu. This start here block can contain a syllabus, welcome video and a screencast guided tour as well as links to other resources. The videos below and the graphic elements will help you create your first start here block.

How to add a “Start Here” Block

How to Download and Save Graphic Elements

Graphic Elements

Start Here Graphic

Horizontal Rule For Header

Horizontal Rule

Why Teaching With Videos and Screencast Works

Clarence — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:49:28 +0000

In this TED video Salman Kahn explains why Khan Academy works. Here is a quote from a recent Stanford Graduate School of Business lecture:

“Our total invested capital to date is less than $3 million, and we’re pushing about 5 million unique students per month,” Khan said proudly. “That’s six to seven times the number of students that Harvard has served since 1636.”

Think about the return on investment that we are seeing here.