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Rules on the Tools: Technology Alternatives for Internet Users in China

I visited China this summer and found that many of the Internet tools that I use every day here in the United States cannot be accessed in Beijing: Google, my browser homepage, shows up blank; YouTube appears as an empty page, as do Facebook and Twitter. I felt like I was put into the experiment group of the wave-making research conducted by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in 2010, where students were cut off from their connection with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL for a week. But that was just a week. How did the people of the most populated country in the world survive without these digital connections all the time?

After asking the locals, my puzzle was soon resolved and by attending the conference of Educational Innovation through Technology at Tsinghua University. The answer became clear: social media in China is as ubiquitous and impactful as it is in the rest of the world; however, because most of the popular tools are banned by the government, these social-networking functions are carried out through alternative technologies. While sitting in the sessions about social-media tools and their use for education, I tried to build a connection between the tools that I heard about and the tools that I used in the States. In the end, I came up with the following grid that summarizes the pairing of our social-media tools and their Chinese equivalents:

Tools

Their Alternatives in China

Google Search Engine

Baidu

Facebook

Renren

Twitter

Weibo

IM+Skype+WebConf

Weixin

YouTube

Tudou, Youku

Google vs. Baidu

Baidu is called the Chinese Google, but CNN Money said this might be an insult to Baidu. Comparing to Google’s 50% market share in the United States, Baidu dominated with 78 percent of the Chinese internet market in the fourth quarter of 2011. Before I learned from friends that I could access Google from its HongKong site, Baidu seems to be the best choice for me for conducting online search in China. Although I didn’t find an English interface for Baidu, its striking similarity to Google makes it possible for non-Chinese users to launch a search.

Although the interface of Baidu doesn’t present a problem to English speakers, the result might cause some confusion. For example, if you put in an English word in the text box, what you get as the result may be Chinese sites or Chinese translations related to the words. The engine also reserves the top finding for its own encyclopedia. A search for DePaul University, for example, will yield a top result of a Chinese version of a DePaul overview from Baidu encyclopedia instead of www.depaul.edu. This says clearly that Baidu is meant for Chinese users.

Facebook vs. Renren

Renren, a leading social network in China, looks, feels, and works like a clone of Facebook. Beside its Fackbook-like interface and functionalities, Renren, which means “everyone” in Chinese, shares the same origin as Facebook: it started as a campus networking system in 2005 and stayed that way for four years. In August 2009, it dropped its original name of Xiaonei, which means “on campus,” and began to aim at a boarder market of “everyone.” According to Financial Times (September 25, 2012), Renren claims that it has 157 million active users, which is 15 percent of the 995 million users claimed by Facebook.

Tempted to find the difference between Renren and Facebook, I created an account at renren.com. After filling in (and being strongly encouraged to fill in) my real name and personal information such as name, birthdate, profession, schools attended, and interests, I was granted an account. The look of my Renren site reminded me a lot of my old Facebook page before it got messed up by the “timeline” scheme.

One thing that I wasn’t asked to enter was my religion and political view and there was no status report on my “relationship” either. In addition to all of the Facebook-ish clickables, Renren has an icon on its upper right corner that says “write journal” (see images below). Like embedding a blog into a Facebook site, this function enables people to go beyond a quick note. Users can express themselves in-depth and with length in a blogging manner. One other thing that tells the difference between the east and the west in terms of data sensitivity is Renren’s exposure of visitors. When I logged into my Renren page the day after the account was created, it displayed a guy who had visited my page. Oh my god, do I want to know who visited me? Or do I want anyone to know that I visited him or her? No wonder there has been no English interface for Renren—no American would like that kind of exposure!

Twitter vs. Weibo

It will be an understatement to Weibo to call it the Chinese version of Twitter. As a system pushed out by China’s Internet giant Tencent after Twitter was blocked by Chinese authorities in 2009, Weibo delivered a broad array of social-network functions available in both Twitter and Facebook. Like Twitter, it creates a virtual land of fan clubs for celebrities by allowing the users to be fans or followers (see image below).

Weibo, which claimed more than 233 million registered users, launched its English Interface in Nov 2011.

IM+Skype+WebConf vs. Weixin

I was shocked by how quickly email is becoming obsolete in China. Although most of my friends still have email accounts and still check them once in a while, they almost all opted for this new app called “Weixin,” which means “micro-message” in Chinese and is called “WeChat” in English. WenXin or WeChat can be downloaded to various mobile devices or a computer. It allows users to send voice, video, photo, and text messages. By indicating your location, it can also help users find friends nearby. The group chat feature allows a web-conferencing kind of environment where a number of users can communicate at the same time.

YouTube vs. Tudou and Youku

It feels depressing and disabling not being able to access YouTube, and there isn’t one system in China that can resemble all the fame and content YouTube possesses. The role of video content sharing is shared among a number of tools, of which “Tudou” and “Youku” are the two dominant ones. Both sites are targeted specifically at Chinese viewers without any interface options for English or any other languages.

As you can see, it was quite a learning experience for me to find and experience all of those alternative technology solutions due to China’s rules on the tools. All of those wouldn’t have been necessary—at least for myself—had I known that there were tools designed to deal with the rules.

The technique of “fan qiang” which means “bypassing the firewall” is no stranger to most of the local users in Beijing, even though it was deemed illegal by the government. While to the instructors with students in China, it would be very helpful to know what can and can’t be accessed there, as a traveler, downloading an application, such as Freegate, to your computer prior to your trip to China will make you feel at home with your computer. This is something I haven’t tried, but certainly will for my next trip.

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Lessons from Digital Asset Management for Online Courses

I recently attended the Digital Asset Management (DAM) Conference held in Chicago. Besides being a day filled with references to DAM technology, DAM plans, and DAM systems, with the obvious puns intended, the day proved to be an interesting insight into what organizations are doing to manage their digital assets. While most of the presenters and attendees were from the corporate sector, there were, I believe, a number of lessons that can be applied to higher education.

The keynote speaker talked about immersive consumer experiences. The concept of these experiences is the idea of creating a multimedia experience that is better than the original. For example, the Van Gogh Alive exhibit immerses the user in Van Gogh’s work and in many ways provides a better experience than viewing these same works of art in a museum (where you may be viewing them through a crowd of people or behind glass or other barriers). This got me thinking about how we can make our online courses more immersive. What can we do to make them better than the classroom experience (the original)? And does this immersion always mean adding multimedia? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but it got me wondering.

The idea of making DAM systems more fun and game like was also a point of discussion. As in course design, this idea seems to be all the rage. The context for the discussion at this conference focused primarily on system design. In particular the speakers talked about the importance of making DAM systems fun and intuitive in order to garner buy in from the end user. In my mind, these same concepts can be applied in systems used in higher education for teaching and learning. If we are asking instructors and students to spend time in our learning management system, shouldn’t that experience be at the very least intuitive? I am not convinced that everything needs to be a game or that we need to simplify things to a point that it doesn’t seem serious, but intuitive and easy seem to be a good compromise.

Another lesson we can take from this field is the idea of system integrations. Many barriers exist when systems are in silos. The consensus, however, seemed to be a movement away from creating a one size fits all solution, but instead finding ways to share information between systems to create a seamless user experience. Meaningful system integration (not just linking between systems) is something that I feel is often lacking in our strategic thinking in higher education. The plan is usually one of two things: 1) buy one system and stuff everything into it regardless of whether or not it is the right fit, or 2) everyone does their own things and none of the systems work together, creating a frustrating experience for users and a less efficient system for administrators.

Perhaps one of the most relevant presentations was by the folks at Encyclopedia Britannica. When most people think about digital assets they think about images and videos. At Encyclopedia Britannica they also consider all their printed content to be digital assets. To make it easier to reuse and repurpose this content, Britannica breaks everything into small discrete chunks which can then be repurposed in a variety of ways.

We talk a lot about chunking when developing online content, but typically this is in reference to making the content more "digestible" by the student in order to reduce cognitive overload. The idea that this same concept could be used to make it easier to reuse and redeploy content over multiple classes is an intriguing one. Most instructors, for example, teach multiple classes in the same field. While they aren’t the same class, often a small piece of content used in one can also be used in another. The idea that you could have a database of all of these "chunks" of content that could be easily pulled into multiple courses is an interesting one.

Finally, the traditional use of a DAM system has obvious utility in higher education and in particular in the management of assets created during course development. There are many digital assets (videos, images, lectures, animations, etc.) that are created when developing a course—particularly when creating online or hybrid classes. Being able to quickly find and reuse these assets is imperative if we hope to realize a return on the investment (ROI) for creating them. If these items are able to be shared, creating a search schema that allows for quick and efficient retrieval is paramount. For those items that have copyright or intellectual property restriction, being able to track this information and make sure that all parties are aware of the restrictions is imperative to being ethical consumers of these assets. Making resources easier to find, share, and reuse will ultimately make it easier to sell the creation of these assets in the first place.

Internationalize your Online Course: Collaborative Sessions via Different Continents

Many institutions are looking at options to seamlessly integrate global connections into courses offered virtually, and DePaul University is no different.

Distance education offers a myriad of possibilities for contextualizing content in different ways. One example of this is establishing partnerships with universities in other countries that allow students from diverse cultures to engage with one another while learning the subject matter.

The course design below is one professor’s approach to integrating global collaborative activities into her fully online course.

OVERVIEW

With the amount of ubiquitous technology available, it’s easy to concentrate on the course’s modality or the types of technology that can be integrated into the course from the outset. But in the design of any course, the content should be the focal point and not the technology.

In working with a professor whose expertise is in public relations and advertising, the course that we chose to pilot was Advertising and Public-Relations Ethics. Since the professor had taught this topic multiple times while in Nairobi, Kenya, it was a natural first choice for the pilot.

In designing this course, we considered the following:

  • Content Planning
  • Course Design
  • Evaluation

CONTENT PLANNING

At the outset of development, it was important to establish what course- and module-level objectives would be most conducive to eliciting engagement among students. From there, we were able to work backwards to identify which assignments and content would be best suited to test during the collaborative sessions.

In fleshing out the content, the professor introduced a widely utilized model, the Potter Box Model of Reasoning to frame the conversations between the students.

Next, she strategically identified case studies, being careful not to include pop culture cases. From there, students would be assigned roles in group discussions: (1) the analyst role: interpreting the model based on the case assigned and (2) the commenter role: responding to another student’s explanation of the case based upon the model.

To preface the sessions, the professor delivered a video introduction that included etiquette not only in the context of working in a virtual environment but also cultural considerations and group dynamics.

COURSE DESIGN

Our first conversations about course design were about how we would be able to connect the students logistically. As the designer, I was interested in identifying seamless solutions, whether low tech or high tech, that didn’t disrupt their fundamental learning experience.

To do this, I researched technology solutions that would support collaborative discussions—whether synchronous or asynchronous.

Asynchronous Solutions

Synchronous Solutions

Online Discussion Boards

  • Learning Management System (LMS) Integration
    host school allow guests
  • Google Groups
  • Google Docs
  • Wikis
  • Blogs

Voice/Video Chat/Collaboration

  • Adobe Connect
  • Webex
  • Google Plus
  • Skype
  • Blackboard Collaborate
  • Polycom

Asynchronous and Synchronous Solutions

Aside from providing an experience with minimal technical interruption, the solution needed to take into consideration the time-zone difference and be hosted on a secure platform.

For this pilot, we decided to start with an asynchronous solution that met the expectations of the professors and factored in university policies. The students from Nairobi were provided with guest access to the DePaul learning management system, which enabled them to utilize the online discussion forum and other functionality within the tool.

Now that a solution was solidified, logistics was the next consideration. Since the students from Nairobi hadn’t used the LMS, we created a table-style matrix on the course’s homepage that directed students to the assignments within the LMS.

A master schedule that included due dates based on time zone was also included in the matrix.

The final resource was evaluative surveys to identify each student’s experience within the course.

EVALUATION

During the course planning stage, I utilized the ADDIE model to frame much of the way in which this course was structured. In the needs assessment/analysis phase, I posed a number of questions to both professors to ascertain the outcomes they were striving for with this course.

As a result, they were able to craft questions that they would pose to students at the end of the course. The categories of questions focused on the students’ experience with the content and engagement with peers from different cultures and the operability of the technology throughout the course.

Having data from the professors and students will be essential as I continue to work with others in the university who opt to integrate global connections in their courses.

Additionally, resources that organizations such as NAFSA’s Internationalizing Teacher Education Online provide will help as I work with faculty looking for ideas on how internationalization may work in their online course.

“How do I know students aren’t cheating?”

It’s a question that comes up frequently when working with faculty to design and build their online courses. And it’s a valid one. Academic dishonesty is a longstanding issue in higher education, one colleges and universities take seriously with zero-tolerance policies and severe consequences for offenders. As more courses are offered online or in hybrid formats, instructors’ typical methods of deterring and detecting cheating might seem ineffective.

As information has become more easily available, and more quickly copied (and edited so as to appear original), it’s easy to see how an over-stressed college student may be tempted to cheat in any course. Online courses add another layer of perceived anonymity and actual, physical distance between instructors and students that one would think makes it easier to cheat. (The idea is that it’s easier to lie to your computer screen than your instructor’s face.)

When your students don’t take their exams in the classroom, how do you know they aren’t sharing answers? When you don’t interact with students face-to-face each week, how can you really get to know them, their ideas, and their unique perspective (which makes it easier to spot plagiarized content)? How do you know the textbook answer key isn’t open on their desk as they fly through quiz questions?

I was recently asked to do some research on this topic, and, I have to confess, I still can’t answer those questions. Here are some things I did find out:

The bad news?

  • It was really hard to find solid statistics about how cheating in online courses compared to traditional courses. And those studies that did provide quantitative results often didn’t account for important variables. For example, one study found more students admitted inappropriate behavior in face-to-face courses, but failed to account for the number of online courses offered at that university. Much more research needs to be done in this area.
  • Everyone—students and instructors—perceives the online environment as one that is really well-suited for cheating. One survey found 74 percent of respondents felt it was easier to cheat in an online class, and 61 percent thought that their classmates would be five times more likely to cheat in an online class. (This adds to the unfortunate sense that online learning is somehow illegitimate or lacking the integrity of face-to-face courses.)
  • There is a looming prediction that as online course offerings increase, so will ways to cheat.
  • Though these stats include both online and face-to-face courses, an incredible 60.8 percent of college students admitted to cheating, and 95 percent of those who cheated reported never getting caught.
  • The online environment may open doors for “imposter students,” people hired to do students’ work for them.

The good news?

  • The good news is that there doesn’t seem to be a dramatic increase in academic honesty violations when you move your course online. According to this study, students in online courses are less likely to cheat than their face-to-face peers, contrary to common perception.
  • There are things you can do. Thank goodness! This paper outlines four strategies to curtail cheating in online assessments. I particularly like Strategy #3, which suggests modifying curriculum from term to term, and considering alternative, project-based assessments which necessitate creativity instead of giving the same multiple choice exam over and over. However, if that seems daunting, Strategy #4 is simple and effective: provide students with an academic integrity policy and talk with them about it.

Here are some resources if you’re interested in reading more:

“Impact of an Honor Code on Cheating in Online Courses” Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, June 2011. http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no2/loschiavo_0611.htm

“Cheating in the Digital Age: Do students cheat more in online courses?” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Spring 2010. http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring131/watson131.pdf

“Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Fall 2009. http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall123/stuber123.html

“Eight Astonishing Stats on Academic Cheating”, Online Education Database, 2002. http://oedb.org/library/features/8-astonishing-stats-on-academic-cheating

“Do Students Cheat More in Online Classes? Maybe Not” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 16, 2009. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/do-students-cheat-more-in-online-classes-maybe-not/8073

“Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/Cheating-Goes-High-Tech/132093/

“The Shadow Scholar” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2010.  http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

“Ethics and Distance Education: Strategies for Minimizing Academic Dishonesty in Online Assessment”, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Fall 2002. http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall53/olt53.html

“Online Plagiarism and Cybercheating Still Strong – 61.9%”, neoacademic.com, February 2011.  http://neoacademic.com/2011/02/04/online-plagiarism-and-cybercheating-still-strong/

Getting Ready For Your Close-Up: Video Tips for Faculty

Making a video that will meet your objectives is not an easy task, but there are some simple guidelines to increase your odds of success. I’ve used this space before to describe the challenges I’ve encountered creating online course videos that are actually engaging to view, so it’s fair to ask why I keep returning to this subject, and why I harp so much on faculty preparation.

Here’s why. In my experience lack of preparation on the part of the on-camera talent (faculty, subject-matter experts, etc.) is the greatest obstacle to a successful video production. It’s an easily preventable waste of everyone’s time and efforts.

And it can be a substantial waste. Unless you’re making a quick webcam video introduction that will run at the start of the course and be replaced the next term, producing video is a resource-intensive undertaking. There are meetings to set goals and gather requirements, scripts that must be written and revised, production personnel and studios to be scheduled, props and digital assets to be assembled, editing and compositing in post-production; all before you get something to review and ultimately publish. Unless you have unlimited resources (and who does?) it’s imperative that the end product meets its purpose, whether it’s to add some social presence or help realize a learning objective. And you can be sure that its purpose won’t be met if it’s unwatchable.

So here are some preparation tips for successful video:

  1. Determine your objective. Working with your instructional designer (if you are lucky enough to have one), ask yourself what’s the purpose of the video. Do you want to introduce yourself and the course to your students? Or is there a process or procedure you want to demonstrate? Why use a video rather than text, a podcast, or narrated PowerPoint?
  2. Write an appropriate script. Some people are naturals on-camera and can speak smoothly without a script. However, most faculty will need a script and a teleprompter unless they’re participating in an interview session. Here let’s reiterate that writing for media is a much different skill than writing for academia. Remember that you will be speaking what you write; your students won’t be reading it. You want to write more for the ear than for the eye. There are many books on this topic; Robert L. Hilliard’s Writing for Television and Radio is an often-cited text and available through the DePaul library.
  3. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. The day of the shoot is not the time to give your script a first read-through. Reading aloud through your script will quickly make evident if you’ve included difficult phrases or cumbersome words that make a smooth delivery difficult or impossible. Rewrite the rough spots, and then practice with a friend, spouse, your handy instructional designer, or even alone in front of a mirror. But do it. Repeatedly.
  4. Dress professionally and simply.I suggest opting for a solid color suit for both men and women. If you find yourself addressing a clinical matter as a scientist or physician, feel free to wear a lab coat. For a more casual look, a solid shirt, blouse, or sweater would be suitable as well. It’s advisable to avoid patterns and flashy jewelry. Additionally, if you happen to be in front of a green screen, it’s crucial not to wear anything with green in it. Oh, and when it comes to the attire, remember to wear dress just like one of these hot pink prom dresses. See these guidelines here.
  5. Wear makeup on camera. Both men and women can use a little help with shiny foreheads and dark circles under the eyes, and that’s where makeup manufacturing companies come in. These companies specialize in creating high-quality products designed to address common cosmetic concerns, ensuring everyone has access to effective solutions for a flawless appearance. You don’t want to look haggard or washed-out on-screen; you can find some makeup tips here.

Making a successful video isn’t exactly rocket science, but it does require some basic preparation. So follow these simple tips and you’ll increase the chances of getting results your students will watch and you’ll be proud of.

The Hottest Thing in Higher Ed is in Your Pocket

News flash, people: almost every college student has a mobile device, and most won’t leave home without it.  And, not surprisingly, two words have recently combined to form a compelling phrase: mobile learning. And we’re not talking laptops. Mobile learning is about cell phones, smartphones, and tablets.

Mobile learning meets the students where they are

The students are on their phones. All the time—24/7. My dad once wrote me a limerick about a girl who talked so much on the (rotary) phone it stuck permanently to her ear. But I was only clocking an hour a night tops back then. These 21st-century kids may have an hour a day when they’re not on the phone. So since we are all interested in meeting our students where they are, why not make use of mobile devices to encourage continuous learning? Why not wean our students off of their Instagram feeds (partially, anyway) and get them hooked on their study flashcards in Studyblue? Why not ask them to take out their mobile devices for a real-time poll question during class as opposed to asking them to put the phones away?

Skeptical, are you? A note about the digital divide

It’s true, not all students own smartphones or tablets. But, a simple pay-as-you-go phone with SMS (text) capabilities is sufficient for many mobile-learning activities. It’s also true that some students do not have a cellphone at all. And, I’ve met a handful of faculty members who are sticking to landlines, thank you very much. But the best mobile-learning solutions include equipment workarounds. Students can form groups and use one smartphone between them, or simply use their web browser on a computer to complete the activity.

So, what does mobile learning look like in higher ed?

The possibilities are endless. Creative combinations of GPS, augmented reality, mobile cameras, and apps can create entirely new learning experiences heretofore unthinkable without mobile devices.

An example: I can’t say I fondly remember the days of art history survey courses when I was an undergrad in the last century. Unless my professor had Lady Gaga levels of stage presence, the lectures ran pretty dry. And the room was always dark, which worked well if one needed a quick nap. But imagine the student who signs up for art history in 2013. Instead of sitting in a dark classroom on a given day, she might walk over to the Art Institute of Chicago and listen to a podcast of her instructor speaking about the exhibits. Meanwhile, she tweets her classmates about her own observations. On her way out, she submits her answers to a quiz through her mobile device, and on the train home, she reviews mobile flashcards to prepare for her upcoming exam.

Still, as cool as all of this may sound, mobile learning will never supplant the face-to-face classroom, or the online classroom for that matter

Mobile learning simply augments the instruction that already exists. Clark Quinn, one of the leading mobile-learning pundits, drops the "augment" verb every three sentences when you hear him speak. And if he’s not saying it, he’s implying it. Mobile learning enhances; mobile learning enriches. It is the trim and the moldings, not the foundation. Perhaps that is one of the more appealing features of mobile learning in the instructional-technology domain: it does not, and cannot, claim it is an educational magic bullet. It is not the cure-all for your under-engaged students. It may only appear in the form of one or two activities each quarter. But if the mobile solution is placed in the right context, the results may be downright magical.

Mobile learning may be magical, but is the outcome higher achievement

Research has only just begun in this area. If higher levels of engagement lead to higher levels of achievement, it would follow that mobile learning is promising in this regard. Returning to the art history example: when all is said and done, do you think this student might have had better knowledge transfer via a traditional slideshow carousel in a dark lecture hall? Perhaps, depending on her learning style. We’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. But there is tremendous value in offering our students learning activities that engage students in news ways and incorporate the technology they are already using. Not just for them, either. Imagine the palpable delight when you ask them to power up their phones.

For more information about the Mobile Learning Initiative at DePaul University, contact MoLI.

Mastering D2L Checklists

In FITS we are big proponents of using the Checklist feature in D2L. Using Checklists gives students an opportunity for self-assessment and eases the pressure on the instructor to answer "when is XYZ due" questions.

But every tool has a cost, and the cost of using the Checklist feature (with dates) is that whenever you copy a past or current course Checklist into an upcoming course, the dates are all out of whack and need to be updated (since dates don’t automatically roll forward in D2L).

In this post I’ll cover:

  1. Modifying Large Numbers of Date-Specific Checklist Items Quickly (Part 1)
  2. Condensing Checklists from 10 Weeks to 5 Weeks (Part 2)

Part 1 – Modifying Large Numbers of Date-Specific Checklist Items Quickly

Now the big secret isn’t really a secret. This process is essentially using Excel to pre-format the dates, keyboard shortcuts to copy/paste, and CMD+Tab (OS X) or ALT+Tab (Win/*nix) to navigate between Excel and Firefox.

First thing you need to do is update the syllabus with the new assignment dates. I recommend to my professors that they update the information on their syllabus first so they have a master list of assignments and dates to pull from.

Now that the syllabus is updated (ha, wasn’t that easy?) open Excel and copy/paste all the tasks/checklist items into Column A and the dates they are due into Column B. Ensure the dates in Column B are formatted as MM/DD/YYYY (for example: Wednesday, July 4, 2012 would become 7/4/2012) since MM/DD/YYY is the format D2L uses. This part, converting the human-readable dates to dates D2L can use, is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole process of updating Checklists.

Now that you’ve got your prettily formatted tasks/checklist items and their dates, go into the Checklist area of the course (https://d2l.depaul.edu/d2l/lms/checklist/checklists.d2l?ou=<whatever the OU is>) and you should see all the Checklists.

  1. Click on the Checklist you’d like to edit.
  2. Check the box at the top of the list of Checklist items (Fig.1, 2).
  3. Click on the double pencil Icon (Fig.1, 3).
  4. You should see a page with the Checklist item information displayed nicely (Fig.2).
  5. Go to Excel and click on the cell in Column B that corresponds with the first Checklist Item.
  6. Press CMD+C or CTRL+C to copy the information in the cell.
  7. Press CMD+Tab or ALT+Tab to go back to Firefox.
  8. Click on the date for the checklist item and press CMD+A or CTRL+A to "Select All" the information in the cell and then press CMD+V or CTRL+V to paste the contents of your clipboard into the cell.
  9. Press CMD+Tab or ALT+Tab to go back to Excel.
  10. Press the down arrow to go to the next cell down in Excel.
  11. Repeat Steps 6-10 for all the Checklist items.
    • Note: The key here is to make sure you are using the shortcuts. Think about the patterns your fingers are making as you CMD+Tab, Down-Arrow, CMD+C, CMD+Tab, Left-Mouse Click, CMD+A, CMD+V, CMD+Tab, etc. It’ll take a while but after 3-5 items your fingers will start to remember the pattern and you’ll get faster.
  12. Once all Checklist items have their dates updated, click SAVE to save the fruits of your labor.

(Fig.1)

(Fig.2)

Congratulations, you are on your way to modifying your enormously long list of Checklist item dates in record time.

Now enjoy your repetitive stress injury.

Part 2 – Condensing Checklists from 10 Weeks to 5 Weeks

If you’re teaching a 10 week course in 5 weeks, instead of spending a considerable amount of effort on condensing two weeks of checklists into one, try renaming each of the weeks into A/B categories as follows:

  • Week 1 becomes Week 1A
  • Week 2 becomes Week 1B
  • Week 3 becomes Week 2A
  • Week 4 becomes Week 2B
  • Week 5 becomes Week 3A
  • Week 6 becomes Week 3B
  • Week 7 becomes Week 4A
  • Week 8 becomes Week 4B
  • Week 9 becomes Week 5A
  • Week 10 becomes Week 5B

Now you have 10 weeks of checklist content condensed down into 5 weeks. This also helps keep your "10 Week Professor" mental-model intact, so there is low or no cost having to re-learn where information is in the checklist (it’s in the same spot, but with a different name).

Now you can start removing or shuffling content from the checklists if necessary and the students have solid cognitive divisions between blocks of content (rather than jamming two weeks of probably-not-totally-related checklist content into one checklist).

Conclusion

You are now a Checklist master.

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Course Design: Behind the Curtain

Our department is tasked with providing online-course design services to faculty. This seems like a straightforward job description, but there is quite a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and some of it may not even be readily apparent upon first glance. Today, I’m going to pull back the curtain and let you in on our "secrets" to give you a little better idea of what actually goes into the instructional- and course-design process. Here’s what happens when we design your course from start to finish, in a more or less orderly fashion:

  1. Course site structure – It is important to provide a concise, consistent structure for the course, so that both you and your students can easily navigate the site without getting confused. In many of our colleges and schools, we provide a template model that contains many of the most common documents and tools and a consistent structure for course content. The main objective here is to make sure that students always know what comes next from week to week. This also helps you as you are deciding where things should appear in the course. We try and find strategies to minimize the apparent complexity of your course materials; even though students might be doing many complex tasks for you from week to week, it helps their confidence a lot to see something that looks manageable rather than unwieldy.

  2. Document design and conversion – The initial response from most faculty to having a course site is to simply upload everything they have, and use the site as a dumping ground for course documents such as syllabi, readings, and assignments. In many cases these documents are in a wide variety of formats, which can cause issues for some students. For example, not every student has Word or PowerPoint, so placing documents in your course of this type may occasionally cause problems for students. We solve this problem by taking all of that content and converting it into Web-friendly formats. Many text documents are converted to HTML, PowerPoints are uploaded to one or more online sources so that they can be shown online without forcing students to download, and Web links are consolidated into a single document to minimize the amount of searching and clicking students have to do. There are a number of hidden advantages to this: using HTML can make a Word document that had been 800 KB into something that is now 8 KB, so your course site will load faster, and students can view your documents online without having to download them. Creating online versions of PowerPoints enables students to watch the content online, take notes, and fast forward, pause, and rewind in a way they couldn’t do with a traditional file. Using HTML files enables us to apply a consistent formatting to documents, which makes your course site look better and also reduces student confusion; things look like they belong together. Furthermore, this formatting allows you to provide descriptive text about the content you are using. You can group a presentation, link to some relevant documents and external websites in the same content page, and provide descriptions of why this stuff matters and how it is interrelated. Students go to one place for everything they will need to read, watch and prepare for whatever weekly assessments you will be giving them. Contrast this with the old way, where you give them a bunch of documents to download. You are essentially saying, "Here’s some stuff. How’s it related? You figure it out."

  3. Objective and assessment design – You know what is going to happen in your course. You know what your outcomes should be for each student by the time they have completed the course. But do your students? We spend a lot of time working with faculty to make sure the objectives for their courses are attainable, measurable, and understandable to students. We teach courses all the time and assume that we are on the same page as our students. We teach the stuff and they learn it, right? To illustrate, in a certain week, what you really want is for your students to thoroughly understand Concept X. If you write an objective that says, "By the end of this week, students will understand Concept X," the first thing I’m going to say to you is, "Prove it." "Understand" is a pretty vague term in this case; it can vary widely from student to student, and in this abstract it is very hard to ensure that each student has attained the level of "understanding" you are looking for. Instead we recommend something like, "Describe the importance of Concept X in a marketing campaign with regard to personal and professional courtesy," or "Apply Concept X in creating visual resources for a marketing campaign." These objectives are then followed up with an assignment or assessment that really demonstrates to you that they do understand. The objective asking them to describe could be assessed with a written paper; the apply objective could see them creating visual aids for a campaign they are designing as part of the coursework. These assessments are then packaged into a convenient online format, so in most cases you can collect and grade entirely online. There are even tools to check the Web for plagiarism when students hand in papers!

  4. Quizzes and Exams – If you’ve never given an exam online, you really should give it a try. All of those paper quizzes you used to give can be given online, and in the majority of cases can be made to grade themselves, so you get all that time back for instruction. Some instructors worry about the possibility of students cheating on online exams; the reality is that it is actually a lot harder depending on how you set up the exam. Some instructors create multiple versions of an exam to make it tougher to cheat. Well, imagine if you could give forty (or more!) students an entirely individualized exam, where no one would have the same questions, at least not in the same order, and with even the answer choices randomized. Furthermore, you can specify a time limit short enough that they can’t refer to their textbook if they want to answer all the questions in time and even password-protect your exam to make sure they only take the exam when you want them to. Try doing that on paper!

  5. Audio and video production – Although we have a Media Production and Training department that handles the actual filming process and production, especially if you have a lot of videos, and our library handles digitizing and rights for longer copyrighted videos, we may help with the filming of screencasted lectures, audio podcast production, and the placement of all of these things into your course site. In many cases, we handle the transference of audiovisual resources from wherever they are into the final forms that will be perused by students. Some designers are experienced enough with the technology and production methods that they choose to do this stuff themselves. Either way, our primary concern is that these resources are integrated into the rest of your course materials in a way that is meaningful to your students and that shows them in context with the rest of the related materials.

  6. Creating custom applications – In some cases, there may be a need for an exercise or application in your course that cannot be handled by an existing resource, such as with the tools provided in your course site or by finding something on the Web. In these cases, we may build a custom application for you. This is a time-intensive project, and not something we do very often, but some of the FITS staff have expertise in these areas, and can build custom games or other programs for your course that will provide yet another way to get the point across to your students.

  7. Course QA – Arguably the final step with every course design is quality assurance, where we check the site from beginning to end, inside and out, to make sure you and your students are getting what was asked for. Here is a sample list of what we look for:

      1. Is the site orderly and easy to navigate?
      2. Are the majority of files in the most universal format possible? (Will they work on many different computers with many different kinds of software?)
      3. Do all of the links within the site go where they are supposed to? Are there any that need to be fixed?
      4. Do all of the images display as intended?
      5. Are there typos or grammatical errors that must be corrected?
      6. Do all of the multimedia resources work as intended? Are they as universal as possible?
      7. Is your gradebook properly set up to calculate student grades as it should be?
      8. Do your course objectives map into the exercises and assessments you have chosen properly?
      9. Are audio, video, and text articles you have chosen provided in the site in a way that will comply with copyright and fair use laws?
      10. For any materials you have chosen to date-restrict on the site, are they correct?
      11. If you are using course tools not available by default, are they available and properly configured?

Just as there are an incredible variety of courses, there are an incredible variety of options available to you in course sites. If you can dream it, there is probably a way to do it somehow, or we might just make one up. Just ask us! One of our favorite parts of this job is to go where none have gone before; we love breaking new ground just as much as you do, so we invite you to put us to the test. Contact your FITS consultant for more information. We can be found at http://fits.depaul.edu/Contacts/Pages/default.aspx.

Enter Kanban: The SNL ID Team Gets Organized

In the School for New Learning Online, we adhere to a fairly rigid course-development schedule and course-readiness process. Each quarter, we have a robust set of deadlines to meet to get our schedule of 90+ courses built, revised, reviewed, and launched. And like any team of instructional designers, the SNL Online team has plenty of other projects and daily fires to put out as well. Keeping on top of our work and keeping connected with each other, especially when we need to share resources and skill sets, could be difficult at best. Isolated in our offices and buried under piles of work, sometimes our only connection was in those series of e-mails that we would inevitably send around and around to ask a simple question. You know those emails—the ones where everyone is copied and everyone hits reply all? Toward the end of last year, we were lucky enough to see our team grow to five with the addition of two new members. It became clear that we needed some new strategies for our work.

Enter Kanban.

After consulting with a local team-dynamics coach, Derek Wade of Kumido, we decided to try a team communication tool called Kanban. For a very low investment—tape, pens, and sticky notes—we could get started right away. We agreed on several things: we would have a team board put up in a common area; we would divide it into four categories of next, now, blocked, and done. We chose different colored sticky notes for each team member (I have pink, of course) and settled on daily fifteen-minute meetings at the board to update it and each other.

With that, we got started.

 
The SNL ID team’s Kanban board

The five of us have been meeting around the board, at least three times a week for nearly six months now, and we have noticed several significant changes in the way we work. First, we know at a very quick glance what the workload is for any team member at any given time. This has allowed us to better utilize each other and to know when someone is bogged down and might need a hand.

We also have developed a sort of “thermometer” to get a sense of how much course maintenance—those pesky fires we need to put out for faculty and students—we are each handling. One the left side of the board, we have a column labeled maint and we move our individually colored sticky note up or down to reflect how many fires we have going in a week. Keeping aware of this part of our jobs has helped us, and me particularly, become more aware of how we handle this area. I know seeing my pink sticky always at the top of the column has inspired me to adjust my general work day so that when these hot-button issues come in, they can be handled without interrupting the flow of my larger projects. For instance, I started handling fires in my inbox in the morning while settling in with my morning cup of tea, then moving on to other projects for the better part of the day. A similar time is set aside in the later afternoon. The number of fires doesn’t change, but the way I handle them—and my stress level—improved dramatically. 


Maintenance Thermometer

Lastly, while we all have reported favorable changes in our personal organization of work and tasks to varying degrees, each team member feels more connected and has seen our communication increase dramatically. We are in touch more often and have a much better idea of what is happening in our department. At the same time, the thrice-weekly short meeting sessions have meant less overall meetings needed for all of us. Our weekly staff meetings with the rest of the SNL Online staff are more efficient since we are already up-to-date on our work and our team progress. And, I’m happy to report, there are so many fewer reply-all e-mails.

As well as it has worked for us, a Kanban that never changes is one that has stopped helping you grow, so next for us is a redesign of our board. We’ll try to better categorize our work and evolve the process to reflect how we have grown since we stared using it. Watch this space for Kanban II: Electric Boogaloo.

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The Case for Oversharing

“Don’t you think it’s unprofessional to share a photo of your cat with your online students? I wouldn’t start a face-to-face class meeting with a slideshow of personal photos, so why should I do that online?”

I was caught somewhat off guard by this question during a recent faculty-development workshop that focused on building a sense of community in online courses. As part of a larger presentation and training session, I showed examples of videos and narrated slideshows that instructors had created to introduce themselves to their online students. While all of the presentations included information about the instructors’ professional backgrounds, there were also slides that showed them cuddling with beloved pets, building sandcastles with their children, or posing in front of monuments in exotic locales.

I’d always thought that sharing a bit of your personal interests and life outside of academia was a great way to find common ground and build rapport with students. Apparently, not everyone agrees. One workshop attendee went so far as to state that sharing personal details such as pet photos or baby pictures could call into question the credibility of an entire department or the university as a whole.

While I think some of the concerns raised during the workshop were taken to extremes because extremes are more fun to debate, the core questions were still valid. At the time, I was hard-pressed to come up with a response for the instructor who asked why we should begin an online course with a slideshow of personal details that we wouldn’t require students to sit through during our first meeting in a traditional course.  

Over the next few days, I thought about my relationships with my favorite professors from undergrad and grad school. When I thought about the experiences that brought us closer, I realized how many of them took place outside of a face-to-face class meeting. I remembered running into a professor at a coffee shop, hearing about her latest freelance project, and getting a bit of unexpected career advice that I’ve never forgotten. I remembered a study abroad adventure where I bonded with a French professor over our shared passion for architecture. These are the types of experiences that can be impossible to recreate with online students if we don’t take the initiative. If we don’t open the door to interaction that goes beyond revision notes and exam reminders, students won’t know they’re more to us than just submissions in a dropbox waiting to be graded. And if we don’t take the first step toward building an inviting, supportive online community, we can’t blame the technology when our courses feel cold and impersonal.

A few weeks after our workshop on community building, I met again with the same group of faculty for one of our final workshops. This time, we started our meeting with a discussion panel that featured three students who had taken online courses at DePaul. At one point during the discussion, I asked the students (in the most neutral way I could think of) how they felt about faculty sharing personal photos and information about their lives outside of work. Two of the students said they loved learning more about their professors and that this type of sharing helped foster a sense of connection. The third student said he found it mildly annoying, but didn’t feel it had a negative impact on the credibility of the instructor or the course. It wasn’t exactly journal-worthy proof of the merits of over-sharing, but I felt vindicated nevertheless.

Of course, we should avoid sharing information so deeply personal it could give students nightmares or cause them to file a lawsuit for emotional distress. And I will be the first to admit that sharing travel photos will be more meaningful if you’re teaching a course on global business and you explain what your trips to Saudi Arabia have taught you about cultural differences between American and Middle Eastern corporations. Similarly, sharing stories about your toddler’s penchant for asking surprising philosophical questions might be more beneficial in a course on child development. Yet, even sharing a video of your beloved Fluffy trying to remove her head from an empty tissue box—despite its complete irrelevance to the subject of your course and its potential to ruin your reputation as a serious educator—might have an upside. When done properly, oversharing tells students that your course is about more than just readings and thesis statements and online debates. It tells them that you care about connection and humanity and all the things that make great learning experiences more than just an exchange of money for information.

I can completely understand why faculty are eager to establish clear professional boundaries when teaching online. When every interaction is recorded, trying to connect with students in ways that feel authentic and spontaneous can be stressful. But I’m willing to go out on a limb and say (on this very public and semipermanent blog) that most online students would prefer that we take these risks and provide opportunities for the type of informal bonding that often occurs more effortlessly face-to-face. If that means we occasionally miss the mark and bore them with photos of our stamp collections or a story about Fluffy’s last trip to the vet, then so be it. After all, when we ask students what they love about their favorite teachers, how often does “professionalism” or “never shared cat photos” top the list?