Distance Learning at LCCC

Eight Week Adventure in Economics

2006-11-08T19:32:00.000-08:00

Recently I heard an amazing story on NPR's All Things Considered about an online Microeconomics class at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The entire class is an online video game. Completing the game (along with associated tests) earns students three college credits.

The game is an adventure in which the students play a race of aliens who have never known scarcity. When a disaster befalls them, the student becomes the leader and must learn the lessons of macroeconomics in order to survive. All the reading and homework are part of the game, but students must take tests along the way as they progress through the adventure.

To read or hear the NPR story follow this link.

The story gave me the impression that students are beating down the door to get into this class. The faculty running the game/course plan to test these students to compare their performance to students in the classroom. In December they will have their first results.

Serious Games: Shawnee 4.0

2006-11-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

"Games are the Trojan Horse of home entertainment."
Peter Tamte, 2006

Dr. Terry Green and I represented LCCC at Shawnee Conference 4.0 in Portsmouth last week. The keynote speaker, Peter Tamte (he founded the company that made Halo) gave a terriffic perspective of the video game industry.

Tamte outlined three forces that he believes will shape the coming years. Tamte's first was accessibility. games are now accessible to more players than ever. He said that the new field of casual games (Pop Cap, etc.) has an audience that is 65% female and mostly 30 - 64 years old. This is a new demographic, and they play a new kind of game.

Tamte's second force was more niches, bigger niches. The internet is taking gaming from a broadcast model, wherein one game is played by a million people, to a broadband model, which allows one person to access a million games. This will shape an industry with a tremendous hunger for specialized niche games.

But it was Tamte's third force that brought me to Portsmouth that day: games are getting serious. Today's growing game sector teaches you something or promises to increase your general intelligence. He mentioned "Brain Age" and "Guitar Hero," the latter earning a tidy $300 million for its developers. Other games are used for patient education in hospitals and, obviously, student education in colleges.

Tamte said that serious games make up 70% of today's market.

And then there are the VERY serious games. Tamte showed his "First to Fight" title, which was developed for the United States Marine Corps. But you can buy it to play at home, too.

Podcasting with iTtunes U

2006-08-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

In Spring and Summer 2006, LCCC began limited podcasting of a few classes. These were MP3 files hosted on our local webserver. "Podcasting" is a trendy term for audio (and some video) files that students can download and play on their computers or MP3 players. The delivery method is called RSS (really simple syndication) feed. It is very convenient for the recipient.

While hosting the files on our webserver does work, the process is clunky and labor intensive. Going from recorded lecture to RSS feed takes several steps involving many people. Publishing one lecture sometimes takes several days and several hours of labor. Obviously this syetm could only support very limited classes.

But as of this writing (August 29, 2006) LCCC is ready to move away from our own webserver. Today our students can log into the top podcasting service in the world: iTunes. Using iTunes U our faculty can upload their own lectures and students can download or subscribe to them. These lectures may be audio or video files, but remember: the ipod has a very small screen.

Ironically, last night I heard this segment on Public Radio International's Future Tense. UC Berkeley made international headlines by announcing that they are podcasting lectures via itunes U.

I believe that LCCC is the first college in Ohio to release public content on iTunes U.

This has all been happening very quickly for us. While LCCC has been pursuing iTunes for months now, we only gained access to it this week. We are still learning our way around the system, but we are making rapid progress.

Video Streamed ANGEL Training Now Available to LCCC Faculty

2006-08-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of weeks, the LCCC Distance Learning team has put together three faculty training videos for streaming over the internet. We have captured them using one of LCCC's new Accordent capture stations and uploaded them to LCCC's new video streaming server. While face-to-face training is often better, we have found that it is difficult for faculty to fit a 3 - 4 hour training session into their busy schedules.

While I am the one who appears on camera, I must point out that Mary Jane Palmer edited them very nicely. She added chapter points which allow viewers to skip ahead to sections of interest to them. She did this using the Presenter Plus software that came with the Accordent capture stations.

The videos are out there now, and if you are an LCCC faculty member you should have received a link in your email. If you don't have the links, please contact the Distance Learning team. We will not publish the links in this blog because it can be read by students.

Personalizing your ANGEL Course

2006-08-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

One session at the ANGEL user conference was "Creating a Virtual Presence: Personalizing your ANGEL Course."

The session discussed some things that many of our instructors do already such as selecting a theme for the course (available under Tools), writing a welcome letter, and adding tips to the top of each lesson in the course.

One of the most powerful items, the token, is only used by a few LCCC instructors. A token is simply a server variable that you can access when you write any type of message in ANGEL. There are quite a few tokens available in ANGEL. They always begin and end with a dollar sign.

The most common is $First_Name$. If you put $First_Name$ in an announcement, lecture, quiz question, bulk coursemail, or even the syllabus template, anyone who reads it will see his or her own first name.

Other tokens include $Last_Name$, $Course_Title$, and $User_Id$.

Another good way to personalize a class is to use the Action Editor. This allows you to send message, hide or release content, or redirect students to different parts of your class based on things that they do. For example, you could send them a message for getting a poor quiz score, or redirect them to a second quiz after they submit the first quiz.

If you want to see a little explanation of the Action Editor please watch the video streamed ANGEL training that Distance Learning has made available.

LCCC Wins 2006 ANGEL Impact Award

2006-06-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to report that LCCC won the 2006 ANGEL Impact Award for an Exemplary Course. The winning course was the redesigned online Macroeconomics taught by the Business Division's David Amos. The judging was done by officials from ANGEL Learning.

At the ANGEL User Conference Mary Jane Palmer and I accepted the trophy on behalf of the team that created the course, each of whom received a certificate for their accomplishment. This very elaborate course required considerable work. Here, in alphabetical order, is the 13 member team credited with its success: David Amos, Linda Bake, Marc Bakst, Sandy Crobar, John Crooks, Andy Dovci, Mark McVey, Mary Jane Palmer, Joe Querin, Betty Rhodes, Steve Stein, myself, and Rey Torres.

This link will take you to the press release issued by ANGEL Learning:

http://www.angellearning.com/applied/impact/

Next time you find yourself in the AT building, be sure to drop by Mary Jane's office for a look at the trophy.

New listserv for Pedagogy in ANGEL

2006-06-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

For a few years now there has been an ANGEL listserv. While it occasionally mentions something that would interest faculty, most of the content is for system administrators and server administrators.

Adam Hauerwas at IUPUI in Indianapolis has just created a new, separate listserv which discusses issues of teaching with ANGEL. It is called ANGEL TEACH-L.

To subscribe, point your browser to http://listserv.iupui.edu. On the sidebar to the left click Public Lists at IUPUI, then follow the instructions to join the ANGEL TEACH-L list.

This is brand new, so I cannot vouch for its content yet. But if a faculty member wants to discuss pedagogy in ANGEL with his/her peers from other institutions that use ANGEL, I expect this to become a valuable resource. I am subscriber myself, and as I learn new things I plan to add them to this blog.

Intro to The New ANGEL: Version 7.1

2006-06-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

As of this writing, LCCC is using ANGEL 6.3. The new ANGEL, version 7.1, does pretty much all the same things plus more. The biggest difference is that the interface has changed: some things have different names or are found in different locations. We are delaying the migration to ANGEL 7.1 until faculty have had a chance to be trained. Many other institutions at the ANGEL User Conference simply switched systems and, after a brief settling in period, their faculty learned 7.1 on their own.

ANGEL 7.1 has a number of features requested by our faculty. Built into ANGEL 7.1 are some engaging online study tools: crossword puzzle sand gameshows. ANGEL 7.1 has a more intuitive interface (in my opinion). It has Action Agents which can trigger events at a pre-determined time in the class. For example, suppose a quiz is due by 11:55 Friday. You can program an Agent to automatically send a message to all the students who have not completed it by 7:00 Thursday.

One of my favorite features is that ANGEL 7.1 allows faculty to run "true" online office hours. This is more than a chatroom. In a chatroom students can come and go as they please. A student cannot comfortably discuss any private matters because he/she never knows when a classmate will suddenly pop in. But ANGEL 7.1 allows you to put a queue outside your virtual office. You can invite students in the queue to come into your "office" for a private chat while the others wait outside. Pretty nifty.

We have a pdf document describing some of the powerful features of ANGEL 7.1. LCCC Instructors can log into ANGEL and click Help -> Resources -> Faculty Log-In Info & Help Guides. The document is called ANGEL 7.1 at a Glance.

Content Sharing - Master Courses, Repositories, and Templates

2006-06-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

ANGEL Pre-conference
Monday, June 05, 2006

It is 7:45 on the morning before the ANGEL User’s Conference. I drove to Louisville last night, six hours in the car doubting that the hosts would put juicy information in a crack-of-dawn pre-conference session. But the topic is something used by few classes at LCCC: content sharing. I came a day early to learn the tools. Someday we may need them.

The seminar room is packed with 30 ANGEL users from different colleges and universities, hunched over laptops, sipping coffee. They take content sharing seriously.

Before the session even starts I discover a few things from the chatter in the room. ANGEL seems to be spreading like a brushfire across America. Most of the people in the room are pretty new to ANGEL; LCCC is practically an elder statesman. But despite our vast experience with ANGEL, everyone in the room does more content sharing than I do.

As he starts his presentation, ANGEL’s Steve Brunner says: “I know a lot of you are using ANGEL’s Master Course feature. It is very popular.” Heads nod. The room buzzes with agreement.

I just sit quietly. As far as I know no one at LCCC uses the Master Course feature. The DL team knows about about the Master Course, but none of our faculty has ever been interested in it. Maybe I just don’t sell it well?

Perhaps the time has come. Here is a brief description of the tools covered. Some are new or updated in ANGEL 7.1, most have been around for years.

Master Course: This is a course that instructors can access without being assigned to its roster. Access to Master Course material is controlled by a filter, say "CHMY 151." Anyone with Course Editor rights in a course that with CHMY 151 in its name would have the power to import material from the CHMY 151 Master Course. They cannot, however, add material or even enter the Master Course.

A Master Course can be cross departmental. All it requires is a broad filter.

One consequence of a Master Course is that it is possible to create a shared assignment. For example, it is possible for a drop box in a History class to also count in an English class. Some people in the session use this as a strategy to increase the quality of papers submitted by students. I suppose the theory is that the History instructor may see better use of English, and the English instructor may see better content.

Content Repository: In ANGEL 7.1 a Content Repository will do what a Resource Library does in ANGEL 6.3. Currently we do use some Resource Libraries. Chemistry instructors, for example, copy content from a library to their courses. It is also possible to link content, leaving it in the library. You should decide which is best for you based on the content’s purpose.

In the case of pages, links, files, and many other objects, linking is a way to save space and make content modification easier. Suppose you want to change a Power Point presentation that is used in ten different classes. If the classes link to the Content Repository then you only need to change the repository, if the classes contain copies then all ten classes must be changed.

But you need to be careful when you link to quizzes, surveys, drop boxes, discussions . . . anything where student responses are important. If students respond to a linked quiz, for example, their responses go to the Content Repository, not to your class. You will not be able to see or grade them.

Master Courses with Links to Content Repositories: These two strategies can make a powerful hybrid. If the Master Course has links to a Content Repository, then all classes built from the Master will have the same links. Instructors need not deal with mundane tasks like making links, they only need to teach course content.

Merged Roster Access to Master Courses: Remember, the filters that control access to a Master Course key on attributes like course number or department. Many of you use merged rosters, and I am happy to report that you do not need to worry about any problem here. When you merge two or more courses you designate one as the primary. The merged course has the filter attributes of the primary.

Learning Object Repository: This does in ANGEL 7.1 what “My Content” did in 6.3. It is your personal repository of content. One of the nifty features of this is that you can create content to share if you like. You may designate editors in other courses as having access. You only need to know the course, you do not need to know the editor’s username.

HTML Editor Macros: Personally I think these are poorly named, but they are handy. Using the blue star icon in the HTML editor you can create or paste a “macro”, actually a text string of arbitrary length. It works like the Windows clipboard, except content stays available for as long as you like, years, if necessary. These are a very handy way to share content between multiple sections in the same or different terms.

Content Template: The name sounds the same as a Master Course, but a Content Template is not a course. Everything in a Content Template must be under the Lessons tab. Creating a Content Template is a lot like writing raw computer code. I expect that a few of our faculty may dabble with this tool, but it will probably be up to the DL team to do most template development.

That said, a content template is a tool for implementing best practices. For example, a content template could include a syllabus quiz which unlocks course content when students get a certain score. Any instructor could use this template to develop a custom syllabus quiz. He / she might enter questions and deter mine the score needed to pass, but would not need to write any code. That would have been done by the template developer.

One nifty trick: you can make tokens on the fly. It is like creating custom variables in a programming language. I must admit I was unaware of this powerful feature.

If you want to dabble in content templates, your personal Repository (in ANGEL 7.1) is the only place to do it. Otherwise you can expect the DL team to start publishing some basic Content Templates starting in January (earlier if we go to ANGEL 7.1 in the fall). These will be available to help instructors build courses that incorporate best practices with minimal work.