Ecampus Course Development and Training

What does the latest research say about the most effective approaches to online and blended learning? Consider adding one or more of these peer-reviewed journals to your summer reading list:

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning – The current issue of this twice-a-year journal is a special edition on the hot topic of open educational resources.

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks – Articles in the latest issue delve into mobile learning, e-portfolios, and student engagement. JALN is published by the Sloan Consortium, whose website has a wealth of resources about online and blended learning.

Journal of Interactive Online Learning – Recent articles cover learning analytics as predictive tools, the challenge of establishing a sense of community in an online course, and a comparative study of student performance in online and face-face chemistry courses.

Journal of Online Learning and Teaching – The current issue of JOLT (the best journal acronym here!) includes such diverse topics as instructor-made videos as a tool to scaffold learning, comparative usefulness of web-based tech tools in online teaching, and student perceptions of online discussions. JOLT is published by MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, a great collection of peer-reviewed open educational materials that could be useful in your online or classroom teaching.

1. Audio Audio Audio!

Audio is just as important, if not more important, than the video. Most people are willing to tolerate bad video if there is good audio, but not the other way around. Ecampus has wireless lavaliere mics (the little black mic that clips on to your shirt) that can be checked out with the camera to capture good audio.

2. Consider your Background

What is the background of your video is just as important as the subject of the video. Avoid windows in the background or shooting with the sun at your back. Flip cameras have no control over exposure so they adjust according to the brightest light in the frame. If you are shooting in your office with your back to the window, the camera will adjust to the light outside which will make you, the subject, really dark and underexposed. Also make sure there are no plants, pillars, signs or anything right behind your head or that “split the frame in half”. These are common distractions that pull focus away from the subject

3. Keep the Camera Steady

Handheld, shaky, video is very distracting. If you have a tripod, use it. Ecampus has small, desktop tripods, which work well for placing the camera on a table or shelf.

4. Here is a link to the OSU guidelines on shooting video http://oregonstate.edu/brand/video-best-practices

There are many ways to get engaging discussions started in a discussion board, but my favorite is to have students make something to share with their classmates as discussion starters. The tools students can use to create many types of presentations have become incredibly powerful and easy to use. These tools range from the more traditional presentation tools such as Prezi and Google Presentations (part of Google Drive) to the more creative such as slideshows in Vuvox or Animoto, interactive digital posters such as Pinterest or Padlet, animated cartoons with Go!Animate, or digital multimedia timelines with myHistro. Having students create things to share with classmates leverages the “write” part of the read/write web (also called web 2.0) to turn students into producers of content rather than consumers of content. This also creates a greater sense of student ownership of their own learning, especially when they are free to select the tool with which to create their discussion starter. Best of all, it reduces the likelihood that after half of the class has posted their thoughts in the forum everyone else struggles to come up with something new to say—usually ending up saying exactly the same thing with different paraphrasing. The accessibility of Web 2.0 tools varies. Giving students a choice of tools to use is a recommended approach; instructors seeking to create content for online courses should consult with Ecampus for recommendations about accessible tools.

Here is an example of what a typical set of assignment instructions might say:
Part 1: Create a presentation addressing your assigned topic using Prezi, Google Presentation, or Vuvox.
Part 2: Post a link to your presentation in the discussion board by clicking “Create Thread”. (Due Wednesday of week 1)
Part 3: Read at least 5 classmates’ presentations and give in-depth responses. Respond to classmates’ presentations which have the fewest responses. (Due Friday of week 1)
Part 4: Read the responses you received from your classmates and reply to each one. (Due Saturday of Week 1)

Do you find yourself typing the same thing over and over?

Do those fingers and wrists hurt after typing the same comment on every student paper?

I’ve got a solution for you! It doesn’t matter if you are a Mac or a PC, you can find a program to create shorter statements for you to type and have your computer input the entire comment for you.

aText logo

For Mac users, aText ($5 after free trial) allows you to create a typed code of your choice in order to input a longer statement. For example, you choose to type “zzchoice” and the program would put in “I like your choice of voice here. I can hear that you have thought about the content and used the knowledge in order to form your response.” This allows you to give expanded feedback to students in their papers without typing that same statement 30 times. This program runs in all applications as well, making email responses quick as lightning too!

Just think of the possibilities for the time you can save with a text expander program!

Text expansion demo: http://screencast.com/t/vaEiu5q7kEi

aText: http://www.trankynam.com/atext/

For PC users, please see this previous post:

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/inspire/2011/07/21/shortkeys/

Are you looking for a new way to engage your online students without leaving your Blackboard course site? Consider using a wiki, blog, or journal! Wikis allow your students to collaborate on a single document within Blackboard and you are able to track their participation. This is a great tool for brainstorming, collecting research, or producing a student-created FAQ or glossary.

A blog is meant to be a place where students can post their opinions or climb on a ‘virtual soapbox’ and deliver a message. There are opportunities for others to comment, but the focus is on the initial posts and what the student had to say.

A journal is usually intended to be used as a private space for reflection. It is a space that can only be ‘written’ on by the student and the instructor, although you can control whether the rest of the class can read each others’ journals or not.

Sometimes using a different tool for a week or two gives the students a break from the traditional discussion board routine – -and that in itself can improve student engagement in a class. Instructions for setting up a wiki, blog, or journal are found here.

Are you looking for a webtool your students can use to create multimedia presentations? Look no farther than Smore! Smore is a tool used to create online flyers, but it has a lot of potential in the world of online education. With its drag and drop editor, themes, the ability to embed videos, documents, individual photos and galleries, and even maps, students can create quickly great looking media projects just like this one in no time flat! Do you have 75 seconds to spare? Watch the video below to see for yourself how easy it is! The only thing students have to do to submit their project is copy/paste the link. How can a class project get any easier than that? View Video on Smore.

Note: This technology does not yet meet accessibility requirements, so we don’t recommend it for presenting content, instructor to student. However, it is a tool students can use to demonstrate that they are meeting course objectives.

plant detective title — the title screen

Often an instructor will bring us media (like a collection of photographs) and ask if we could help create some sort of interactive exercise (like a microscope simulation, to explore their photographs). We’re happy to do what you ask, but when time and interest permit – we like to push a little further. Sometimes we will ask if it’s all right to make a game.

This past term in Botany 350, we created an anime-themed adventure game, Plant Detective, which let students collect clues and present their findings to a humorous caricature of their instructor. You can play it here, and I’ll discuss how we made it after the break.
Continue reading →

Some instructors are surprised when they first hear that they should begin preparing for a recorded lecture by writing a script. Some instructors believe that writing a script will take a lot of time, and that using a script will make the finished recording sound like they are reading, and that they should approach their online lectures the same way they do the on-campus ones – without a script.

Preparing a script for an online lecture is an essential step, however, that actually helps to save time and create a higher quality finished lecture.

So why script your lectures?

To Save Time
To Keep Online Lectures at an Ideal Length and Quality
To Make Lectures Accessible

On-campus and online courses meet the same learning outcomes, but the online learning environment is different from the face-to-face environment. Writing a script as the first step in creating your online lecture content is a great way to help you create content that will be effective for online students.

A great example of a lecture that was recorded with a script was done by Julia Goodwin for her HST 104 course World History I: Ancient Civilizations, here is her lecture for week 8

Every term a group of OSU faculty participate in the hybrid faculty learning community. Group members each redesign a classroom course for hybrid (a.k.a. blended) delivery in which a substantial portion of the course learning activity takes place online, and face-to-face meeting time is typically cut in half.

Beyond individual hybrid courses on the Corvallis and Cascades campuses, some entire OSU graduate programs are offered in a hybrid format through Ecampus, such as the College of Education’s doctoral program in Adult and Higher Education.

In what ways are hybrid and online course pedagogy the same? In what ways are they different? For more information about hybrid course design and delivery, visit the Hybrid Course Initiative. And, if you’re interested in participating in the hybrid faculty learning community, see the Request for Proposals for the Fall ’13 program; the proposal deadline is April 30.

Part 1 and 2 are both only 1 slide long, however they exemplify the change in the design. These were created after I found the Oregon State style guides, so they were created with official colors and a more streamlined layout. These allow students to practice identifying kids that might need alternative learning options. These don’t feature any groundbreaking changes, however they do show how I’ve become more layer oriented with a cleaner display.

Experience Part 1 or Part 2 of the storyline yourself.

Providing inspiration for your online class

What Are We Learning about Online and Hybrid Education?

Tip for shooting video with a Flipcam

Student-Produced Artifacts as Discussion Starters

Text Expansion

Wikis, Blogs, and Journals – Oh My!

Want your students to do Smore?

Plant Detective – What a custom game can bring to your course

Why you should be scripting your lectures.

Hybrid Course Design

Articulate Storyline – Exercise Sports Science

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