8.28.2006

50 ways to take notes

Solution Watch compiled an incredibly convenient collection of websites to assist you in your random acts of note-taking and list making throughout your day.

8.25.2006

WebCT Drop Lowest

This was a nice little find in the Dr. C WebCT help boards. It's simple and effective. If you ever need to drop your lowest test score in your WebCT grade book (version 4.1) this formula might help. To use this, all your tests would need to be out of the same number of points or be calculated percentages. First add a calculated column to your gradebook. Then edit the formula for that column. You will want to add up all your tests with the SUM method, and then using the MIN method, find the lowest score of those same tests and subtract it. The formula for 5 tests would look like this:

SUM{[test1],[test2],[test3],[test4],[test5]} - MIN{[test1],[test2],[test3],[test4],[test5]}

8.18.2006

audio component


I helped build this audio glossary spelling tutorial component for a new online pharmacology course. I think everyone was happy with the results. The students click on the vocab items to hear the pronunciation. With the spelling hidden, only ****s show. I wish I could post the entire component here, but with all the audio files, it's just not practical.

8.17.2006

web 2.0

TechCrunch put together a nice 24 minute documentary/interview video Q&A-ing many Web 2.0 industry leaders. And I use the word "industry" loosely.

8.11.2006

social brain

Here is a quote from the recent 10 question interview with Arthur Chickering from iStream. Kirkwood subscribes to iStream, so any Kirkwood employee can read the whole interview once you register on the site. Many good articles to read. I chose this quote mostly as a reminder to myself. I need to exercise my social brain.

What do you mean by the phrase, “Learning is a whole-person, whole-brain activity?”

Here is what brain researchers have found: Body, mind, and brain exist in a dynamic unity; our brain is a social brain; the search for meaning is innate; the brain establishes meaning through patterning; emotions are critical to patterning; learning involves conscious and unconscious processes; complex learning is enhanced by challenge, inhibited by threat; and every brain is uniquely organized withresulting differences in talents and preferences.


iStream Portal

8.06.2006

multiple communities

Community building is stressed often as an important element to distance learning. The social aspect of education is powerful if not necessary. I was reminded recently of my own difficulties in individualized French instruction in large part due to the missing error correction that inevitably happens when learning in groups. Later, when I took classroom French courses, I was part of the error producing group. There was comfort and relief in that I no longer had to make all the mistakes myself. But I was also part of the grad-student-in-undergrad-course community. And I was part of the sit-towards-back-right-of-room community (oh, the jokes made at the expense of the lef-side-of-room were many). And I was part of the prepared-for-class community. And so on. The point is, if I may be so bold as to have a point, there isn't just one community to build. And by building, I mean, allowing to exist.

8.04.2006

Sir Ken Robinson

This is a speech by Sir Ken Robinson. It speaks to many reasons why I question the trend I see in many distance learning program's design team structure. While I do believe a designers input and involvement is important, I think the creativity of instructors will be hampered by templated and ultra-uniform design.

8.01.2006

Course Evals - Article

A new edition of Innovate is out. The article quoted below is timely since we will be piloting a student evaluation in the Fall. Many of their findings certainly ring true with my own experience. I had no say in my course eval procedures and felt like it was just another administrative hoop I needed to leap through. That attitude most certainly tranferred to my students and likely explains how they completed the surveys so quickly (with no reflection or thought at all). While some students did take the surveys seriously, they were usually the ones who had something to gripe about. Little insight could be gleaned from such feedback other than personality differences.

Moving student evaluations online inherits challenges unrelated to technology and the Internet; instead, as is often the case, it is the migration online that puts an old issue under a new light. There remains a persistent lack of evidence that student evaluation instruments evince strategies for improvement, ostensibly their principle purpose. In fact, evidence suggests that most student course evaluation instruments may even impede improvement (Birnbaum 2000). The lack of a shared understanding of the purpose of evaluation among students, faculty, and administration underlies this concern.

Innovate - Online Student Evaluations and Response Rates Reconsidered