Resources, Tools & Trends Archives - Page 8 of 10 - Ecampus Course Development and Training

In building online courses, we try to create three forms of interaction on a regular basis throughout each class:

Student-Content, where the interaction is as active as possible for the student;
Student-Instructor, where the students have a chance to ask instructors questions, engage in facilitated discussions, and receive feedback from their instructors on assignments;
Student-Student, where students have an opportunity to communicate with peers and learn in the framework of a learning community.

Sometimes these interactions are formal and graded, such as graded class discussions, group projects, or multimedia presentations. Other times, though, we want a more informal means of generating these three forms of interaction.

Wallwisher is a free online tool that can be used for this purpose. Wallwisher is a simple website that allows participants to visit and post quick, virtual sticky-notes that include text or links to audio or video content. Wallwisher is easy for instructors to set up and easy for students to use.

Here’s a Sample Wallwisher page we set up for you to try. This page asks students to quickly note which concepts they’ve found most difficult so far during the course of a term. An instructor might use this tool to gather opinions, gauge assumptions, check comprehension, or to help students prepare for an exam.

Looking for ways to make your online class more interactive? Wondering what your students are thinking about a certain topic in your class? Wondering if your students are struggling?

Surveys are helpful tools to help us meet these needs in online classes. Google Docs offers a free survey tool, Google Forms, which you can use in your online class by following a few simple steps:

1. Go to your Google Docs account.

2. Create a Form.

3. Choose a Theme.

4. Write your questions.

5. Share a link to the live form.

6. Collect your responses in one convenient location, your Google Form spreadsheet.

Click the image above to watch a brief video that explains how Google Forms can work in your class.

Did you know that the OSU Library offers Course Guides? Course Guides are webpages that the librarians can help to create for your class. Then Ecampus can place these webpages in your Blackboard class.

Course Guides are a great way to …

Guide research projects
Put students in touch with the library and library staff
Guide students beyond Google and Wikipedia
Focus your students on specific journals or even on specific articles
Provide plagiarism prevention information
Provide citation formatting information
And more …

Visit the library course guide webpage to browse through course guides from courses in almost every discipline. To start setting up a Course Guide for your class, please contact Stefanie Buck (stefanie.buck@oregonstate.edu) or your subject’s librarian.

Are you searching for a way that students could post a presentation to you or your class online? One option might be Zoho Notebook. This online program allows you to easily create content and collaborate with others using a familiar notebook-like interface. Combine text, images, audio, video, or live web-content in one place. Other uses of Zoho Notebook include using it as a location to aggregate research for a project or as a device for you to create and tell a story using a variety of multimedia resources.

Check out this short tutorial for more information about how to get started using Zoho Notebook.

Are you currently using Adobe Presenter to add narration to your PowerPoint presentations for your online classes? Consider going a step further and adding short, interactive quizzes within your lecture. Research shows that students have fewer attention lapses while listening to information when active-learning activities are integrated. Adobe Presenter allows you to easily add a couple of quiz questions at various points in your PowerPoint deck. This forces students to stop and check their understanding of the information — as you’re presenting it.

View this tutorial for instructions on how you can add short quizzes to your next online presentation.
Adobe Presenter – Creating Quizzes

Blackboard has a built-in equation editor that allows you to add scientific and mathematical notation to a discussion board entry, an assignment submission, or an exam answer. The Equation Editor is available anywhere the visual text editor is available to you in Blackboard.

Students who may be new to building equations using this editor may find that it is not entirely intuitive. We’ve developed a short video tutorial and a template-group sheet as a guide. We hope you find these resources useful.

Tutorial – Using the Equation Editor (6 min.)
Equation Editor – Template Groups (PDF)

This tool is great for Instructor to Student interaction either to show a quick demonstration or for office hours use. Students to Student interaction for group collaboration work. Student to Instructor/Students for a project presentation.

Pros

Voice/Video communication up to 10 people.
Free
Most everyone has a google account
Screenshare
Sketchup
Google Docs Integration
Use with mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, iOS Devices, Android Phones)
Dial in a guest speaker via phone

Cons

Google+
Install Plugin

If students don’t want to use their personal account or share personal information, have them create an alias account under a different name or email address.

Here’s what the Google Hangout interface looks like

Google’s Guide to Hangout.

On Air, this is a new feature that google just added, so not everyone will have it yet. It will allow:

Real-time streaming of your google hangout up to 10 people viewable to anyone on the Internet.
Allows viewers to interact with the hangout via chat interface.
Upon completion the video broadcast will be recorded and stored on youtube for viewing.

So you don’t have On Air on your account, how do you record your Google Hangout session?
5 Free Tools for Recording Google+ Hangouts

Looking to bring a strong interactive visual element to an online class you are developing? Consider adding an interactive timeline like the one recently created for Paul Wanke’s HST 487 class using Articulate Engage.

These kinds of learning objects help to engage students with the course and can even help a topic come alive.

Looking for a different type of learning activity for your course? Did you know that in this version of Blackboard you can create a ‘wiki’ for your class? A wiki is a collaborative space that allows anyone to add or edit content. It is a place in which knowledge can be pooled and improved on by the class. As people contribute to the wiki, a unique resource is created by and for the group. And – by having students build their ‘wiki’ within Blackboard, you have the ability to track each student’s contribution and grade them from within the tool itself.

Here are some ideas for using a wiki in your course:

Create a glossary of technical terms
Create a newsletter for reporting on a breaking event
Create a community of practice virtual space
Create a student-constructed FAQ list
Post research project results for group analysis
Create an online guide, reference lists or outlines
Research items of local interest that can be updated and shared.

View this short video to learn exactly how to set up a wiki in your course.

Click the image above to view Cynthia Chapman’s lecture done in Adobe Presenter. Adobe Presenter is a PowerPoint plugin that allows you to narrate your presentation and upload it to the web in a fashion that is extremely accessible for students and is easy for them to navigate and review.

Notice that:

Each slide has a play button and slider with the total time for that particular slide
Presentation length is displayed on the bottom right
Each slide is listed by name in the sidebar for easy navigation and review
There is a “Notes” tab which displays notes for anyone who can’t hear the audio
There is a “Thumbs” tab for those who would rather navigate by picture
There is a “Search” tab that allows students to search all notes and slide text

Students love these narrated PowerPoints and these presentations are easier to make than you might think.

Ecampus Course Development and Training

Providing inspiration for your online class

Category Archives: Resources, Tools & Trends

Wallwisher

Google Docs — Forms

Library Course Guides

Zoho Notebook

Adobe Presenter – Creating Interactive Quizzes

Blackboard’s WebEQ Equation Editor

Google Hangouts

Timelines

Wikis

Adobe Presenter

Contact Info