:TeachTech

Another full house for the noon session and a good crowd for the afternoon as we explored the Desire2Learn quizzing features. Folks were excited to learn about the special release conditions that you can apply to certain students to accommodate for needs like extra time, different dates of availabilty and more. This will be very helpful to our students and save us time as well.

Learning more about the quizzes, we have found that the import is not as smooth as we want. Questions do come into the Question Library and into the quizzes but they are not “linked” so a change to one is not reflected in the other. This means a good deal of clean-up before the fall but it is doable. You just have to delete the questions from the quiz and re-import them from the library. Then, things are linked and work in the best practice as suggested by D2L.

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We learned today about the Dropbox tool, which is the counterpart to the Assignments tool in WebCT. There are a few  major differences in the tools such as:

• The dropbox tool provides the ability to organize dropbox folders into categories for organization on the screen to help keep similar folders together in an order you want, rather than by due date only
• Creating a dropbox folder does NOT automatically create a column in the gradebook like it does on WebCT. You must associate the folder with a grade item. (you can create that grade item from the Dropbox creation screen, which is nice)
• Dropboxes can have availability dates for both starting and ending deadlines
• You can create instructions for the dropbox folders. Using the HTML editor, you can also use Quicklinks to provide links to other course files, web sites, etc for each dropbox folder
• When grading a dropbox submission, instructors can provide feedback via the Dropbox feedback (where you can also return a file). They can also provide comments in the Grade tool, if the dropbox folder has a grade item associated with it.
• When downloading a file from the dropbox, the system prepends the student name to the file. So, instead of 25 files called “paper one.doc”, the instructor will have files that are named “Mickey Mouse paper one.doc” and “Master Yoda paper 1.doc”
• The system automatically emails the student to inform them of a successful submission to the assignment.

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WOW! Standing room only at the lunchtime session for this hot topic!

The Content tool combines at least three WebCT tools (Content Module, Single Page, URL). You could also argue that it supplants the Syllabus tool as well. It also is different in that this means there is only ONE place for your course materials to go. It will pay to plan that content structure before you begin creating or cleaning up your course after migration.

In D2L, each “chunk” in the Content area is called  Module. In the modules go “topics”. Topics can be files that you create as well as links to web sites or links to other parts of the course (these are called Quicklinks).

The other new thing about this tool is the availability of selective release on topics and modules as well as the ability to hide a module until it is ready for “prime time.” Nice.

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Each faculty member who uses WebCT (or plans to use D2L) has his/her own personal approach to teaching. Because of that, there is no one BEST way to migrate your current courses from WebCT into the new system. In fact, even for the same instructor, one option may be best for one course and a different option for another.

After you complete the Faculty Orientation Course inside elearn.pstcc.edu, you will see a new module available in the Course Content called “Next Steps”. It contains resources like the Teaching with Desire2Learn manual, videos explaining the migration process and the Master Course concept a bit more and two planning documents for helping you determine how to proceed wtih your own course migrations.

If you don’t want to wait, we have placed the Migration Flowchart and the Desire2Move Checklist on the Support Site for Online Teaching/Learning.

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One of the goals for our training options is to fit as many schedule demands and learning styles as possible. So, we have created a slate of varied offerings. They are:

Ask Your Online Digital Assistant (Ask YODA): Designed for those who cannot make it to the other options or just want to ask a question or need a short demo of a tool after exploring on your own.  These sessions are online Elluminate sessions.

Open Labs: For folks who want to work at their own pace…in small groups or on their own.

Tool by Tool Tour Tuesdays: These will continue starting back on March 13. A different tool each week. These sessions are being recorded and are available on the Elluminate server about 4 hours after the presentation has concluded.

Workshops: If you prefer a more traditional hands-on workshop, there are three workshops planned at various times. View the calendar online to see dates/times and register via the RSVP link.

• SHARE: This workshop will focus on the tools used to share materials such as handouts and lecture notes. We will focus on the content tool, the FAQ and Calendar.
• COMMUNICATE: This workshop focus is on the tools use to communicate with students. Empasis will be on the Discussion tool, News tool and Email inside D2L.
• ASSESS: This is the most intensive workshop as we will work with the Quiz tool, the Dropbox and introduce the Gradebook.

For more complete descriptions of these sessions, check your email or visit our Support Site – linked to the right.

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In addition to our Tool x Tool Tour Tuesdays, we unveiled our new Faculty Orientation Course on Friday. Every member of the webct-l discussion list should have an account on our D2L server now. Information for logging in was sent to the list on Friday afternoon.

Once inside, you will see two courses in the My Courses widget in the lower part of the center column.
The Faculty Orientation Course is to introduce you to D2L from a student perspective. You must successfully complete this course to request your courses on the server. It will also provide you access to other training materials and resources

A personal “sandbox” course has also been created for you. This will give you access as a instructor/designer level so you can start to see how tools look from that perspective while you are waiting to get your courses migrated.

We also have lots of planning and training resources available and more on the way. Visit our Support Site for Online Teaching and Learning for more information.

By the way, that site is our new “one stop shop” for all things about online courses and using our course management system. So, you might want to bookmark it for future use:
http://www.pstcc.edu/online

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