Resources, Tools & Trends « Ecampus Course Development and Training

Good assignments for online classes share many of the same qualities as good assignments for on-campus classes, but may require the use of some different tools or different approaches. If you are looking for ideas for improving or creating assignments for your online course, check out this video, which includes suggestions about different types of assignments to use, tools you and students may need for online assignments, tips for creating and managing group assignments, as well as some tips for evaluating assignments in online classes.

Here is an example of interactivity in a PDF. The file was created from a PowerPoint and, as a new instructional designer, my first foray into creating elearning. As I created the PowerPoint I had several of John Medina’s Brain Rules in mind. The first one? We don’t pay attention to boring things. Guess what? Students don’t either! This shouldn’t surprise you. I didn’t want to this simply be another passive learning task. I designed this piece of elearning with the idea of offering learners an opportunity to interact with the content and learn by listening, watching, reading and writing. I chunked the information in order to not overwhelm the learner with text. Ready for the next rule? As instructors and designers, we need to strive to stimulate more of the senses. Learners need to be stimulated! In this example, there are a few audiovisual experiences embedded in the form of photos, YouTube videos and an active learning collaborative task. I saved the best rule for last: Vision trumps all other senses. With this in mind, I searched high and low for images that would not detract from the learning process, but enhance it. I wanted the images to relate to what was being taught and serve as a reminder for what the learners had read. It’s easy to overwhelm elearning with the numerous visuals – especially if they aren’t related to the content. Is this the best example of all things elearning and visual design? Of course not! I have just entered the world of visual design and strive to keep learning and improving.

An approach known as “inverted” or “flipped” learning is gaining momentum in contemporary higher education. Inverted learning figuratively flips the traditional lecture-plus-homework format of many college courses on its head. Rather than using class time for the largely one-way delivery of information from instructor to student, the lecture material is made available online for students to study prior to class. Then classroom time can be used for face-to-face interaction that includes clarification, amplification, small-group work, problem solving, review, and assessment of learning built on the foundation of online course content and readings.

As illustrated in Robert Talbert’s presentation, “Inverting the Classroom, Improving Student Learning,” the inverted learning model moves more of the transmission of information outside the classroom, so that class time can be devoted to higher-level assimilation activities. A growing body of research, including a widely publicized University of British Columbia study published recently in the journal Science, points to the efficacy of devoting class time to learning activities other than lectures.

By nature, inverted learning is well suited to “hybrid” courses, which include both regular classroom meetings—with class meeting time typically reduced by 50%—and significant online content delivered via a learning platform such as Blackboard. A pilot program for development of hybrid courses is the centerpiece of OSU’s new Teaching & Learning Technologies Initiative. A request for proposals to participate in this pilot program will be distributed to OSU faculty by early September.

Gaining students’ attention is the first of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction. A great way to gain attention is to provide a catchy animated video about the topic you are presenting.

What’s that? You’re not a trained animator? Don’t let that stop you! If you can choose items off a menu and type some dialogue, you can create an animated video for free at www.xtranormal.com. The animation below was created for an upcoming professional development workshop at Ecampus. The whole project took about 10 minutes to create.

Blackboard will be upgraded to version 9.1 in time for Fall term 2011.

Although there will be some minor cosmetic changes, basic functioning in the most frequently used areas of Blackboard (i.e. discussion board, grade center) will remain the same.

New features to look for include:

Wikis
Grading in blogs and journals
New content creation menus
Accessibility improvements for multimedia
Mashups – ability to embed Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube content
Ability to move assignments and tests within a course site

If you want to see these new features in more detail, view this 7 minute tutorial.
Blackboard 9.1 Overview

Have lots of papers to grade? Lots of student assignments that need your expert, detailed feedback? Instructors and students alike know the value of formative assessments, but instructors know how much time quality, detailed feedback takes to supply. Shortkeys is a helpful program that can help instructors provide detailed feedback and save time in grading by reducing the need to re-type the same passages repeatedly.

Shortkeys is a macro program, which is a program that allows you to set up replacement text for a small number of user-defined keystrokes. If there is anything you type multiple times, this program is for you. There is a limited-use free version, called Shortkeys Lite. The full program costs around $25.

Benefits of using this program:

Significantly reduces grading time – a clear benefit for instructors
Much more efficient than copying and pasting from Word files
Reduces errors due to typos
Significantly improves the depth of feedback instructors can provide, given time limitations – a clear benefit for students
Useful for URLs, HTML code, phone numbers, email addresses, library card numbers, page references in textbooks, or any other information you find yourself having to look up more than once

How it works:
The user programs each “shortkey” code and types out the replacement text. Once the shortkey is saved, it is ready to be re-used. For instance, for a shortkey that is programmed to explain a comma splice and how to fix one, a user could set the shortkey as “##cs.” As soon as the user types that code, a full explanation about comma splices is placed in the document: This is a type of run-on sentence called a comma splice, which is two complete sentences linked with nothing but a comma. Two complete sentences need more than a comma to separate them. To correct this, change the comma to a semi-colon, add a conjunction, or simply make two separate sentences.

Possible applications:

To explain common grammatical and punctuation errors
To provide examples to students, such as example thesis statements
To refer students to outside resources
To demonstrate proper citation styles for various types of sources
To include “here’s what I was looking for & here’s how your assignment measured up” notes for student assignments
To record summaries and announcements that you re-use in my courses from term to term
To remind students of course policies, such as late policies
To record HTML code you use frequently in Blackboard

Where to get it:

To order the software or to download a free trial version, visit www.shortkeys.com.

Jing is a free program that allows you to create annotated screenshots and narrated screencasts (“movies” of anything you can show on your screen, with your voice-over narration). Jing screencasts can be up to five minutes long, which makes it ideal for online instruction. Jing works with word processed documents, spreadsheets, websites … anything you can show on your computer screen.

Instructors can use Jing screencasts to provide mini-lectures, feedback on student work, web-tours, demonstrations of software, assignment directions, online course orientations, or any time they would like to bring their voice to the online classroom. Students do not need special software to view Jing videos; any modern web browser will display the videos. Jing is a great way to bring life to an online class!

Jing works in partnership with Screencast.com, a site that provides free storage (2GB of storage and 2GB of monthly bandwidth). You record with Jing, upload to Screencast, and then share the image or video with the link Screencast provides. (There’s even an option to get an “embed” link if you wish to embed the video on a webpage.)

Once you download Jing, you’ll have the Jing Sun on your desktop, an easy-t0-use interface that hangs out at the edge of your screen, ready to help you create an annotated screenshot or narrated screencast video.

Jing is easy to use, and both Jing and Screencast are free. You can download Jing at http://www.techsmith.com/jing/. Register your Screencast account at http://screencast.com/.

Part of quality online course design is ensuring that students have opportunities to practice with course content in active, engaging ways. Providing students with lectures to read and hear passively is a start, but is generally not enough to help learning happen. To make real learning happen online, it’s important to encourage students to engage with the concepts they are learning actively.

Another best practice of online course design and teaching is providing opportunities for formative assessments, that is, low- or no-stakes practice activities with feedback that lets students know if they are on track for summative assessments, such as final exams.

Yes, but who has the time?

These kinds of practice activities and formative assessments are great, but they can take time to create, facilitate, and respond to, and most of the instructors we know don’t have excesses of time!

Thankfully, there are tools available to help create quality learning activities quickly and easily. StudyMate games are a quick and easy way to include these sorts of activities in your classes. Furthermore, the feedback is built into the game, so once they are created, they don’t require additional time for facilitation. Best of all, students find the games to be enjoyable and effective ways to study course concepts.

StudyMate games are built using one of three types of questions:

Single answer (such as a term and its definition)
Multiple choice
Calculated (math problems)

Instructors provide the questions, and the OSU instructional design team can help create the games. Games include flash cards, matching, crossword puzzles, and a Jeopardy! – like challenge game.

You can even use this software to create a glossary of terms for your class:

Try some StudyMate games used in Charisse Hake’s Math 105 class.

To learn more about StudyMate and to see other sample games, visit the StudyMate Sample Games Page.

To learn how to create StudyMate games for your class, contact instructional design specialist Shannon Riggs at shannon.riggs@oregonstate.edu.

Ecampus Course Development and Training

Providing inspiration for your online class

Category Archives: Resources, Tools & Trends

Assignments for Online Classes

Example of PDF interactivity

Inverted Learning?!?

Xtranormal Animation

Blackboard 9.1

Shortkeys

Jing

StudyMate Active Learning Games

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