Visualize Your Course Content

Posted on July 2, 2008 by

I’ve been playing around with Wordle, a tag cloud creator, that takes any text or web page that you give it and makes a visual representation of the words.  The more often a word appears, the larger it’s size will be.  I was thinking that this could be a fun way to graphically represent some of the big concepts in a class.  For example, in the image below, I pasted the text from the Wikipedia entry on “sociology” into Wordle and this is what it produced.  This would be a great graphic to use as a lead in to a class or a specific lesson. (click on the image to see a larger picture)

And here’s one I did using the Wikipedia entry for “biology”.

This could be a fun way to add images into an online class while at the same time helping students to visualize the big concepts of what is being covered.

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Michael Wesch Lecture

Posted on July 1, 2008 by

Michael Wesch is a Cultural Anthropology instructor at Kansas State University who has been very involved with exploring how the Internet and new media are changing information and our relationship to it and how education needs to change to reflect those changes.  His YouTube videos on the subject have been viewed nearly 10 million times. In this lecture at the University of Manitoba, he explains some of his thoughts about the Internet and the future of education.

It’s well worth watching if you have the time.  Here’s the link:

Lecture: Michael Wesch and the Future of Education

In our online learning discussion on 5/23/08, one of the comments that was made was that students seem very comfortable using the technology for socializing and entertainment, but don’t seem to want to use it for more academically rigorous activities.  At about the 25 minute mark of the lecture, Michael makes some great points discussing this issue and explains that student’s do not have these skills and that it is the instructor’s role to teach them how to do it.

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Video Lectures

Posted on June 30, 2008 by

This short video clip is interesting to watch if you are interested in relationships between the brain and learning (so if you’re into that, it’s a worthwhile 10 minutes of your time).  The reason why I wanted to pass it along, though, is that I thought that it was an excellent example of how video could be used in an online class.  Imagine a short video like this at the beginning of each lesson that outlines important points in the readings and raises important questions to think about.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

The great thing about something like this is that it wouldn’t be that difficult to produce. Using PowerPoint for the slides, a webcam, and a software program like Camtasia or Jing to record the talk, it would be fairly simple to put together.

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Open Educational Resource Links

Posted on June 23, 2008 by

For anybody looking for open educational resources that they can add to their class, here is a great list of resources that you can search through:

Open Course Ware/Open Educational Resource Links

There’s also a link on the page to a custom built search for open educational resources based upon the links that are listed on the page:

OCW/OER Custom Search

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UN Data

Posted on June 9, 2008 by

In the online learning discussion a few weeks ago, we talked about some of the trends towards oppenness and sharing of information on the web.  Here’s a great example.  The United Nations has created a web site where they are making available over 55 million records, including the following topic areas:

  • education
  • employment
  • energy
  • environment
  • food and agriculture
  • health
  • human development
  • industry
  • information and communication technology
  • national accounts
  • population
  • refugees
  • trade and tourism

This could be a great resource for instructors or student research projects.

Here’s the link:  http://data.un.org/

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Immediacy Behaviour

Posted on June 9, 2008 by

Here’s a link to a blog post that briefly explains some of the techniques being used in an online communications class at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). 

Designing an Online Communications Course to Span Cultural Divides

The post doesn’t go into much detail, but one of the things I noted was how the instructor purposefully employs strategies to help the students feel a sense of connection and community.  Here’s a quote:

Immediacy behaviours such as “Start with a smile” are prevalent throughout the course. Immediacy behaviours are the nonverbal and verbal behaviours such as smiling and telling funny stories that enable people to feel socially closer to each other. Teacher immediacy behaviours have been shown to increase student learning and satisfaction.

One of the biggest difficulties that distance learning students face is overcoming the sense of isolation they feel from the instructor and from other students in the class.  What strategies do you use to help connect with your students so that they feel like they are part of a class and not just clicking through links on a page by themselves?

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Online Learning Discussion 5-23-08

Posted on June 3, 2008 by

Here are the notes and the audio from the online learning discussion on 5/23/08 for those of you who were unable to attend or who want to review.

Download Audio from the online learning discussion 5-23-08

Notes – Online Learning Discussion

  1. From a site perspective, what are some of the barriers that students experience with online learning?

    • difficulty getting and remembering login in information
    • students need help and support getting started
    • it should be a requirement for students to complete CMPS 100 & CMPS 101
    • courses need to have more discussion and more interaction
    • students complain that they have difficulty contacting their instructors

  2. What are your top three challenges?

    • students are drawn to the social element of the technology, but are reluctant to use it for academic work
    • it is difficult to keep in contact with students, students don’t receive e-mail messages or don’t access the site
    • students don’t have adequate computer skills – need cmps 100 & 101 first
    • inadequate access to computers & internet
    • tribes block necessary sites
    • we need to assess student access to a computer and to the Internet when advising students about online classes
    • students need to sign a contract at the beginning of a quarter that lays out expectations and requirements
    • mandate participation through points to get them started interacting and sharing
    • BOOKS!  Could we use more online open education resources in place of textbooks?

  3. What kind of support do faculty and students need?

    • standardized documentation and materials (instructions, expectations)
    • forum for instructors to share information and techniques
    • there needs to be an online learning handbook for students (there actually is one, it’s just e-mailed and not mailed anymore)
    • students should be required to watch the introduction to Moodle tutorial
    • sites need to help their students get started in Moodle
    • students need tech support & help (students having trouble with compatibility using different versions of Office or other word processing programs)

  4. What students are most/least effective?

    • students that are well prepared, professional, working people tend to be successful in any type of course
    • math, speach, science lab classes are difficult to teach online

  5. How do we improve the quality of our courses?  What is the best way to evaluate and improve our courses?  What is the best way to do faculty training?

    • We need someone to do an evaluation and assess the courses
    • Instructors have difficulty carving out the time
    • Faculty want to be required to take a training course on teaching with Moodle (they have difficulty making time available, so need specific time set aside where they are required to participate) – We need to use the loan officer technique with faculty
    • There needs to be more training opportunities
    • Could we have our own mini-conference on e-learning where faculty share and present ideas?
    • Faculty need release time to develope course materials
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Improvements to Online and Hybrid Classes from Rochelle

Posted on May 28, 2008 by

Rochelle has posted the slides from the presentation she did at Friday’s meeting on Slideshare.  I wanted to share them with everyone so that people who weren’t able to attend the discussion last Friday can look at some of her ideas for how she is improving her online and hybrid classes.  She has done a lot of work to encourage student participation and interaction in her online courses along with exploring the uses of open education resources as a substitution for textbooks.

Here’s her presentation:

[slideshare id=431790&doc=improvements-in-online-and-hybrid-courses-1211935849600769-9&w=425]

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NWIC eLearning Trends Presentation

Posted on May 27, 2008 by

Thanks to everyone who attended the online learning discussion last Friday.  As I promised, here is the link to the wiki page that I put together to talk about some of the current trends in e-learning.  Also, I just wanted to quickly say (because I think I forgot to on Friday) that the changes with web 2.0 and the Internet are happening with business and society (particularly with the younger generation) and are happening globally.  The conversations in e-learning have been around how these larger trends affect how we should be thinking about teaching online or just teaching in general.

Here’s the link:

NWIC eLearning Trends Presentation

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Storytelling in Online Classes

Posted on May 6, 2008 by

While attending the Center for Service Learning Summit last week where the theme was, “Storytelling & Service Learning: A Traditional Native Educational Model,” I started thinking more about ways that storytelling could be used as a tool to increase student engagement in online classes.

I wanted to share this podcast I found on the use of storytelling as an instructional tool for online classes:

Download “Storytelling” Learning Times Green Room

They do a good job explaining how storytelling can be used by an instructor to introduce topics and share their personal passion with students.  They also make the case for using narratives and case studies to help connect students with the material, making it more “real” to them.  One potential use for stories that they didn’t bring up was having students as the ones sharing stories instead of always having the stories coming from the instructor’s end.  This could be an excellent way for students to connect class content to their own lives and learn from the perspectives of one another. 

I think that stories in the form of audio podcasts or short videos could really add a lot to certain classes if used in the right way.  I’d love to hear any ideas that anybody else has.

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