GE Online

OpenStax: “Open” is better than “Free,” and What the Resource Offers

May 22 2014May 22, 2014

Yesterday, David Harris, Editor in Chief of OpenStax, came to speak about the organization’s project and development. OpenStax is a free, open textbook resource, meaning that not only are their texts available for use at no cost to staff or students, but they can also be cut, modified, and customized endlessly with no copyright issues. More about them from their website:

OpenStax College is a nonprofit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of your course. Through our partnerships with companies and foundations committed to reducing costs for students, OpenStax College is working to improve access to higher education for all.

For those interested in browsing their content, we have made their textbooks available for download here. To be clear, OpenStax is working to create texts that are not only free but infinitely adaptable without the instructor themselves having to author the work. OpenStax very much aligns with the goals of Creative Commons — the intent to make information and resources available for use without concern of copyright issues. While copyright itself may not seem of imminent concern to all, especially students, another viewpoint to be held is that copyright equals cost. Hence, “open” resources of any time translate into reduced costs for students. Were a university to entirely adopt this system and eliminate textbook costs altogether for undergraduates, that would mean a student who had needed student loans to get their college education would graduate with thousands of dollars less in student loan debt.

If you have questions, Ashley Miller would also be happy to talk in more detail about OpenStax to any interested parties. She can also arrange a phone call or WebEx with the OpenStax team, particularly if anyone would like to see a demonstration of the web editor interface. You can email her at miller.6275@osu.edu.

Instructor Q & A: Dr. David Ewoldsen

May 8 2014May 2, 2014

In this series of posts, we’ll ask instructors to describe their experience at the onset of the online GE creation process. Once the semester has finished, we’ll revisit them to see how things went.

David Ewoldsen, Professor of Communications

Dave Ewoldsen is a creative and engaging scholar and researcher who teaches in both the Communications and Psychology department. He brings a student-centered approach to his classes as well as his work across the university. In his courses, he often teaches his students about theory and challenges them to apply complex concepts within their environments. His student-centered approach is his principal focus as he cultivates his online general education course for fall.

Q: Thinking back to the initial decision to create the online general education courses and your involvement, what were some of your first concerns or questions?

A: I was very concerned about the level of technological support. Obviously, Ohio State has the hardware to carry out this project, but I was not certaine had the personal onboard to help the faculty develop the course content.

I was also concerned about the misperception that online courses allow a professor to more easily teach a large number of students. The reality is that online courses take a lot more faculty time to teach if it is done properly because of the demands placed on the faculty member involving interaction with the students.

Q: One aspect of any online course is the incorporation of technology, and this can happen to varying degrees and in different directions. What decisions about technology are you making (or have you already made)? What questions arose in relation to software and services available?

A: We are trying to use a variety of different ways to teach the course besides the standard talking powerpoint presentation. So we are trying to be creative in how we can use the technology to teach the course.

We are also trying to be creative in how we use the technology to assess students’ learning. The course I am teaching is traditionally a large lecture course where the major assessment involves tests. In the past, tests and quizzes have accounted for up to 95% of the grade in the class. With the online course, tests and quizzes will still be important, but they will account for about 1/3 of the final grade. Students will also be expected to actively participate on discussion boards and to aid in the construction of a class wiki that will highlight many of the topics covered across the semester. Students will be required to go beyond the classroom for the wiki assignment with the goal of instilling in the students a sense of how they can find more in depth materials for the course as well as integrate the material that they found with other people’s ideas.

Q: What do you hope to see happen in the course when it begins in the fall that will differ from a traditional course?

A: The online format should allow students to elaborate more on the course content and to learn how to integrate the theories they are learning into their day-to-day lives. These skills will be a much larger part of the online course than they ever could be in the face-to-face course with 400 or more students.

Q: What would be your advice to other instructors and professors who are just beginning the process of converting a traditional course into an online course?

A: Get rid of the misconception that teaching an online course is easier than a face-to-face course. But on the other hand, I find that online courses open up many possibilities for creatively engaging the students. But in developing an online course, you have to start early. Also, to take full advantage of the online format, it is important to understand that creating an online course is not simply recording your face-to-face lectures. There is so much that you can do in an online format to engage the students.

Instructor Q & A: Mike Bierschenk

April 30 2014April 30, 2014

Mike Bierschenk, English Department

Mike Bierschenk spoke with us about the process so far in developing the online sections of English 1110, a first-year composition course that focuses on teaching students skills in analytical thinking and writing as well as introducing them to university culture. Four online sections of this course will be available to students for the fall 2014 semester. On average, around ninety-four sections of this course are offered each semester at the Ohio State University. Starting in August, the new online sections will serve approximately seventy-two university students in their first offering.

Q: Thinking back to the initial decision to create the online general education courses and your involvement, what were some of your first concerns or questions?

A: One of our first concerns was participation: what does it mean to participate in an online class? Is it just reading? Taking quizzes? We knew from the start that that wouldn’t cut it for us; we teach our GTAs that lecturing is often the least effective form of teaching, and instead encourage active student engagement, so there was no way we wanted to take a step backward! Luckily it turns out that in a writing class you can always get students to, natch, write. We’re planning for active written engagement, and we’re writing our syllabi and assignment prompts with that in mind. Continue reading →

Examples from around OSU: Instructional Content Created on iPads

April 30 2014April 30, 2014

When talking to folks about creating instructional or tutorial videos on iPad, the first question most ask is, “What can I do on an iPad that I couldn’t already do on a computer?” The answer is more a redirect: you could do the same thing, but it won’t be as easy or as quick. Essentially, computer software like iMovie and Final Cut is built to allow lots of options and operates like a computer, with uploading, exporting, file format conversion, and so on. The process is slower and the learning curve steeper. iPad applications, though, are built for easy mastery, quick import and export, and communicate easily with other applications on the device. Continue reading →

April 2014: Online GE Project Update

April 29 2014April 30, 2014

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.

Continue reading →

How-To: Adding the Course Intro Video into Carmen

April 23 2014April 30, 2014

This post is intended to walk course instructors and leads through the process of inserting the intro video into the course shell.

ODEE’s Mediasite team created a video player for embedding instructor introduction videos into GE Online the Carmen template. The player is named Video Only Mini Player (4:3) and it can be enabled by following the steps below.

1. Go to http://go.osu.edu/mediasite and login with your OSU name.# and password. Next, locate the video would like use and click on it.

Continue reading →

Online GE Carmen Sites: Sneak Peak

April 17 2014

While folks around campus are undoubtedly familiar with the look and feel of Carmen, the ODEE team designed a new shell specifically for the online general education courses that will roll out this fall. These templates are aesthetically pleasing, preorganized to allow for optimal course organization and content dropping, and built to enable better embedding. In short, the template will allow users to navigate all online-only distance learning courses knowing that the content will be in the same place and that image and video content will be immediately viewable. The sites will also readily host Mediasite content created by instructors.

User Security and Academic Integrity: the Ins, Outs, and Options of Online Assessment

April 15 2014April 30, 2014

Throughout the end of March and moving into April, the work of crafting course content into a truly deliverable online course brought up a great number of questions focused on implementation and practicality. As we built the concepts, they moved out of the abstract and into the inquisitive, and one question that arose over and over again was essentially that of how to effectively test online students.

We discussed these options on various levels: professors described what they wanted and needed and how the course skills and knowledge ought to be measured. Instructional designers spoke with them and in their own groups about best practices and suggestible approaches. University services and vendor contracts were prodded for limitations, options, and flexibility. In order to present this information, I asked Kevin Kula and John Muir, both instructional designers within the Ohio State University’s Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE), to join me in talking about how we’re approaching these questions with university faculty. Kevin, John, and I are leads on several of the online general education projects that will go live this fall at OSU. Continue reading →

March 2014 Project Update:

April 1 2014April 1, 2014

Curious about course progress in the month of March? Here’s how some of them are going:

Course: English 1110

Update by Tara Koger

Our course began with eight interested instructors and a department decision to pilot four separate sections of 1110 for the fall semester. Currently, the department is in the process of selecting which candidates will be teaching in this initial project. Our team uses a private U.OSU.EDU blog to share ideas and discuss topics relevant to the project. It allows easy commenting and discussion. In our initial meeting, there were questions about how much content would be considered “done” by the June deadline, which was certainly valid and something we’ll continue to explore and define going forward. One of the keys to creating an online composition course is acknowledging that the format of the course in the beginning will be significantly different than the end: the first half of the semester tends to focus more on instruction, small projects, and discussion, then culminates in larger projects toward the end. Hence, there will be more content delivery to establish early on and more assessment-based work in the final months. For instructors, this can mean that there’s not quite a full semester of video content to create, or that content is at least stacked heavily toward September and October.

Course: Biology 1102

Update by Cory Tressler

We have begun working on specifics regarding the course. The instructor is working through the Distance Education course blueprint to determine exact content and assessment needs. The course will include a Jigsaw project, and we have developed a framework for facilitating a conducive online collaboration environment for the students. One aspect of the project assignment that we are into taking special consideration is the structure and providing explicit directions. In face-to-face settings that utilize group projects, students are familiar with the framework of communicating and working together inside and outside of class. In an online setting, the instructor needs to provide a framework that guides them through the process and develop clear guidelines for what is expected. For example, the Jigsaw project for this course will require students to sign up for a topic and then develop a blog/wiki that contains all the information they have individually gathered on that topic. These first steps require careful consideration in an online setting. Only 5 students can sign up for a given topic, and, with 100 students in the course, you need to provide a fair way to allow for choice in the sign up but also prevent students deleting a student’s name and adding their name because they really want a topic but were too late in signing up. After students have their topic and need to create their Blog/Wiki, special consideration needs to be placed on what this environment needs to do. For example, the Blog/Wiki needs to be private so that other students with the same topic cannot copy verbatim from another student before the due date and the TA and instructor need access to all 100 Blog/Wiki environments. While these project based learning assignments may require a little more instructional design considerations in an online setting, they do provide an opportunity for collaboration and creativity amongst students with the goal of reaching a higher level of thinking while meeting the course learning objectives.

Course: Stats 1450 (and 1350)

Update by Kevin Kula

Our Statistics 1450 team jumped out of the gate on our GE Online project. Through initial conversations, we decided to focus on this course first because of its relationship with high school AP Statistics. After we accomplish this, 1350 is on deck to go online.

Our team consists of Faculty, Course Coordinators, and technology consultants. We have our standing meeting on Monday afternoons to hash out our agenda and discuss any topics relevant to the whole group. I have been impressed that this team is asking the right questions on resources, timelines, and the details for going fully online with a course. A recent topic we tackled was how to administer exams and address proctoring needs. 58 students will be enrolled in the Statistics 1450 online course in Autumn 2014, and we are excited to give them a stellar Ohio State online experience!

Course: History 2201

Update by Mike Kaylor, Doug Dangler, and Allen Coleman

The team that will be working on the development of this course is made up of 3 ASCTech and 1 ODEE instructional support staff and 1 faculty member from the Department of History. A shared box folder for the project has been setup to allow the sharing of templates etcetera across the team as needed. A shared MediaSite folder has also been established for this course with permissions for access given to the faculty and staff assigned to this course. We will be meeting with Tim for the first time this week as a team and as a part of this meeting we will write up a course proposal with important milestones for completion as a part of this project. We are also working with Tim to identify any equipment or software needs that he may have to aid in the development and support of the distance learning section of History 2201. Thus far, he has requested a desktop version of SoftChalk for the development of elearning activities and content. The team will also be working on migrating video content currently being housed on the ODEE streaming media server to MediaSite for use in this course.

Course: Communication 1110

Update by Mike Kaylor, Doug Dangler, and Allen Coleman

The team that will be working on the development of this course is made up of 3 ASCTech instructional support staff and 2 faculty members from the School of Communication. A shared box folder for the project has been setup to allow the sharing of templates etcetera across the team as needed. A shared MediaSite folder has also been setup for this course with permissions for access given to the faculty and staff assigned to this course. We will be meeting with Dave for the second time this week as a team and as a part of this meeting we will write up a course proposal with important milestones for completion as a part of this project. We are working with copyright media from Dave that will need to be “ripped” for use on his course. We have made arrangements for Dave to drop the media off at the studio in 142HH to begin this process. We are also working with Dave to identify any equipment or software needs that he may have to aid in the development and support of the distance learning section of Communication 1100. Thus far, he has requested a microphone to aid in the creation of voiceover lectures.

Course: Mathematics 1152

Update by Doug Dangler

The team that will be working on the development of this course is made up of 3 ASCTech instructional support staff members, an ODEE staff member, and 2 instructional staff members from the Department of Mathematics. A shared box folder for the project has been setup to allow the sharing of templates etcetera across the team as needed. A weekly meeting time has been established, as well as a list of project responsibilities. We are working to identify who can do which aspects of the course and how to best generate new content.

Course: Psychology 1100

Update by Allen Coleman

Our first full Psychology 1100 team meeting will take place on Thursday, April 3, in Hagerty Hall. The team that will be working on the development of this course is made up of 3 ASCTech instructional support staff, 1 ODEE instructional support staff, 1 Program Director from the Department of Psychology and 2 Graduate Teaching Assistants. A shared box folder for the project has been set up to allow the sharing of templates etcetera across the team as needed. A shared MediaSite folder has also been set up for this course with permissions for access given to the instructors and staff assigned to this course.

When our full team meets later this week, we will write up a course proposal including important milestones for completion as a part of the project. We are also working with the Psychology team to identify any equipment or software needs that have not yet been recognized and incorporated.

In addition, Psychology has decided to use a face-to-face proctored environment to administer three online-tests, using iPads and the ExamSoft testing platform. The tests include two midterms and a final. Students will come to Main Campus at 060 Denney to complete their exams.

Consequently, Mike Kaylor and Melissa Beers met with Kevin Stringfellow from the OSU College of Medicine to get an overview of their best practices for onsite proctored testing using iPads and ExamSoft. The College of Medicine has used this model successfully for the past two years.

March 3 2014April 3, 2014

Welcome to the General Elective (GE) Online project blog!

The Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE) is partnering with the College of Arts & Sciences (ASC) to develop online versions of ten popular OSU GE courses. The overall goal of the project is to create one online class for each GE by June 2014, for use with students during Autumn Semester 2014. Department Chairs and Faculty for each course will work directly with Instructional Designers and Educational Technologists from ODEE and ASC to develop course materials and content that will provide for a rigorous, accessible, and quality online experience.

The following is a list of the GE courses that are part of this project:

Biology 1102
Communication 1100
Economics 2001.01
English 1110.01
History 2201
Math 1116
Math 1151 & 1152
Political Science 1100
Psychology 1100
Statistics 1450

This blog will be updated regularly by the faculty and staff working on each course and will be a mechanism for communicating the process of creating these online GE courses and content examples from each course.