Course: Statistics 1450 (and 1350)
Update by Kevin Kula
April has been a month of progress for our Statistics GE online team. We have had productive meetings and are bringing in a few experts/guest speakers into our meetings to ensure we’re making informed decisions moving forward. Thank you to John Votino from ODEE’s Learning Systems & Infrastructure team for speaking with our group on Mediasite. The information John provided helps us to have further discussions on what software we will use to both create and host our videos for these courses. Additionally, we are collaborating with colleagues from the Math Department on their ‘flipped and flexible’ work with Math 1151 and 1152. We learned some great tips from Elizabeth Miller, including lessons they learned from use of CarmenConnect, in-person proctoring methods, and Piazza integration with our learning management system. We are thankful for supportive Buckeye colleagues like John and Elizabeth.
Course: English 1110
Update by Tara Koger
April has been a month of swift movement for the team. Through the collaboration of the program director, Eddie Singleton, and program coordinator, Mike Bierschenk, the syllabus and curriculum schedule have been completed and the Carmen shell is being fleshed out accordingly. Additionally, the four course instructors who will each teach an online section of English 1110 in the fall semester are now preparing to use iPads for course content creation. In addition to the Mediasite desktop recorder, this will grant them access to a variety of tools for creating video and audio content with whiteboard function and screen capture recording. Moving into May, the instructors will each begin developing their individual content while also communicating on collaborative efforts, such as videos that might be shared across sections. The team is also moving toward finalizing how they will use the Writer’s Exchange (WEx) platform in the course, and work on revising that platform will begin next week through the department’s collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences Technology Services.
Course: Biology 1102
Update by Cory Tressler
The instructor for Biology 1102, Kristin Smock, is utilizing Explain Everything on an iPad to record mini-lectures, approximately 3-10 minutes long, for each week of the course.
Each mini-lecture will be transcribed and captioned and hosted on MediaSite in Carmen. Students will be provided a weekly set of assignments in a systematic order to work through. These assignments will consist of mini-lecture videos, readings from the textbook, guest lecture videos, student response polls, and quizzes. We have yet to determine which student response system will be used, we are considering an instructor plan on Poll Everywhere. Quizzes will be administered via the quiz feature in Carmen. This difference in delivery will help ensure that students recognize the difference between student response questions (which act as a self-check for the student and a quick look at understanding of the material for the teacher) and quizzes (which account for a large percentage of the final grade).
Course: History 2201
Update by Mike Kaylor
With this being the last week we will be able to meet as a team prior to Professor Gregory leaving the country for the summer, there has been solid progress on getting his intro and course content videos made and uploaded into Mediasite for sharing within his Carmen course shell. A virtual meeting room has been setup in Carmen Connect so that we can continue to meet online while Professor Gregory is out of the country. We expect to use this virtual meeting space for collaboration and training as well. The syllabus for this course is being reviewed using the full Quality Matters Rubric Standards and feedback will be given to Tim once this review is complete. There has been a strong focus on ways to increase student engagement for this course. We worked through ideas on using groups within Carmen to increase student engagement. The team also worked to import all of Tim’s course materials into the Distance Learning Carmen course shell and the intro video for the course has also been embedded into the home page successfully! Work is now being done by the team to remove all of the place holders from this Carmen shell.
Course: Communication 1100
Update by Mike Kaylor
Work for this course is currently centered around development of a production schedule with milestones for needed course content and syllabus development. Once the schedule has been set and the syllabus completed, the focus will shift to training on the tools needed to support this course. Professor Ewoldsen would like to use his iPad to make some of his own course content videos. Once a few of these videos have been shot, the team will begin to work with him on Mediasite training and the management of his content within this tool. A Carmen Connect virtual meeting room will be setup for this course as Professor Ewoldsen has decided to use Carmen Connect for his online virtual office hours. Options within Carmen were also explored by the team for tracking student progress within his course as a way to ensure student participation and engagement in a group setting.
Course: Mathematics 1152
Course update by Doug Dangler
Work for this course has been centered around developing a timeline with milestones for content development and getting the course listed properly in the SIS system as a Distance Learning (DL) course. A deadline has been decided on for completion of the syllabus which will help inform the milestones timeline. Dates have been set for the course intro and content video shoots that will be managed by the ASCTech media team. The majority of the course content videos will be created by the Math team through the articulate STORYLINE platform. A request has been submitted for additional equipment and staffing needed to support the development of the online version of this course. The department is looking to hire a content expert to review the content videos with equation demonstrations to ensure 100% accuracy. It has been decided that Carmen Connect will be used for the online recitations and office hours for this course.
Course: Psychology 1100
Update by Allen S. Coleman
With the varying stresses of the end of the term close at hand, April was a very busy and demanding month for all of us. Our Psych 1100 team, having taught this course online for some time now, handled it with a very effective strategic approach.
We met once at mid-month (4/17) with a small team and focused on several critical points. Our team planned for and discussed specific issues like milestones, what done for Psych 1100 looks like, the syllabus updates and production schedule. Our next meeting is set for Thursday, May 1. During the interim, Ryan and Melissa revised and tweaked the new syllabus and will have it ready for our team to explore on Thursday. Once the updated syllabus is in Mike Kaylor hands, he will complete the next stage of the curriculum review process and return the syllabus to the Psychology team as soon as possible. Sam and I will continue to work through the course planning document, offer feedback on specific concerns and consideration like netiquette, the option of using CarmenConnect for online office hours and the options and limitations of resources like Turnitin.
Ryan Hansen will work with us to schedule his course introduction video shoot and talk with Sam in greater detail about questions and options related to MediaSite, such as format choice, resolution and the like. Sam will also be moving all of Ryan’s current course videos to MediaSite , where our team can begin the work of helping Ryan integrate them into the GE online course shell. It has been a productive time with as much happening over the phone and by email as in team meetings. I think it is fair to say that our collaboration is working well and one of the most important and unanticipated benefits is the cross-course collaboration between teams and specific instructors like Melissa Beers, Ryan Hansen and Dave Ewoldsen.