Desire2Learn is Getting a Facelift

On January 2, Desire2Learn is scheduled for an upgrade to version 10.1. Desire2Learn’s new version will improve usability, offer new functionality, and fix a number of bugs and other known issues.

New features include:

• a redesigned interface with a less-cluttered layout
• simplified navigation bars
• easier content creation
• enhancements to the quiz tool
• improved student access to the discussion board and other tools

One of the main changes that you will notice is a change in the navigation for your course site. Now, there will be more drop-down menus detailing the options available from that specific tool. This should improve our navigation of the tools as well as our understanding of the capabilities of each tool. More information and specifics can be found on the OIT site in the Desire2Learn - Version 10.1 Upgrade Information

From what I can tell, it shouldn't take too long to get accustomed to these changes and this upgrade should drastically improve our productivity in the long run!

OIT has many beginning of the semester workshops for faculty. Please visit the OIT Technology Learning Workshops Calendar for the times and dates.

Soliciting Student Feedback

Our students are always asked to take the FCQ (Faculty Course Questionnaire), but the FCQs do not have any questions that are directed specifically to the students' online/hybrid experience.

In order to improve the hybrid experience for next semester's students, I created a short, anonymous, online survey for my fall 2012 class. I have already received a few responses, and these comments will be instrumental as I plan my content and activities for the spring semester.

I am more than happy to create a survey personalized to your needs! We could even use the Desire2Learn Survey Tool, which is straightforward and already within your D2L course.

Please let me know if you are interested! Courtney.Fell [at] colorado.edu

It's that time of year again...

Now is a good time to request your spring Desire2Learn course from OIT.

- To submit a request to create your D2L course, you will need to go through MyCUInfo. Log in at MyCUInfo, then follow these steps linked to here.

** If you do NOT see your fall course within your Faculty Tool Kit, be sure that you have selected the correct term (Spring 2013) at the top right. If you have content within CULearn that you would like to migrate into your D2L course, be sure to specify this during your course request. There is currently a delay of up to two business days from when we submit our request and when we can access the course. Once your D2L course is created, you will simply go to https://learn.colorado.edu/ to access it.

- D2L has a lot of functionality. There are two ways for us to practice using D2L on our own: OIT's D2L faculty workshops, schedule available here; and OIT's online tutorials, access instructions available here.

- In past posts, I have elaborated on a few D2L tools that I am using in my own course such as the Checklists and the Discussion board (see below). But there us much more that we can do within D2L.

Wiley Faculty Network: Connecting with Other Faculty

Wiley Faculty Network

Do you need a few more tips and tricks to make your hybrid course more effective? Are you having a hard time assessing the students' work in D2L, and could use advice from an expert?

Consider streaming online lectures from the Wiley Faculty Network: http://www.wiley.com/college/wfn/

Go to View > Archived Online Events and you will see the long list of topics of past Wiley "Online Events". Some past presentations that pertain to online/hybrid teaching are:

• Providing Quality Feedback in Your Online Course: How to Do It and Keep Your Sanity
• First Principles of Instruction (about instructional design)
• Getting the Most Out of an Online Course: Effectively Facilitating Discussion Threads
• Putting Your Course Online: Practical Strategies for Getting Started (10.3 Session)

There are also discipline-specific presentations, such as "Technology in Nutrition: Using Dietary Analysis Software to Enhance Student Engagement".

You can access a list of the lectures without creating an account, but to view the recorded lecture or enroll in upcoming web events, you will need to create a free account. Go to the Wiley Network homepage (link above), click on "Log In" in the top right of the page, and sign up for an account.

Liven Up Your D2L Discussion Board with VoiceThread!

Has the novelty of your D2L Discussion Board waned with the progression of the fall semester?

Do you feel the need to increase student participation in the hybrid element of your course?

Do your students view PowerPoints for homework but you are looking for a way to improve student interaction with these materials?

Then please attend my VoiceThread workshop: Hellems 145 Tuesday, October 30th 3pm-5pm OR Wednesday, October 31th 10am-12pm

VoiceThread is an online interactive program that allows you to easily create a digital slide show using photos, video, or documents. The VoiceThread creator can then add comments (audio, text or video) and doodles to that slide show and share it with others who can comment as well. Last year, CU purchased a site license for VoiceThread which has done much to facilitate the use of this program in your class. For instance, CU students now log in to VoiceThread using their IdentiKeys and VoiceThreads can easily be embedded in D2L.

Please contact me if you plan to attend the workshop: Courtney.Fell [at] colorado.edu

Here is an example VoiceThread from my Continuing Ed Spanish class from last spring.

Instructions for Installing and Setting Up the VoiceThread App:

http://tinyurl.com/voicethreadapp

Event: Desire2Learn Workshop at ALTEC

Next week is the fourth FLTP workshop for the fall semester at the Anderson Language & Technology Center, "Media in Desire2Learn". This workshop is open to Continuing Education faculty who are teaching hybrid and I strongly recommend that you all attend if possible!

Viktoriya Oliynyk and Brad Grabham from OIT will lead us through this workshop to customize our D2L pages and to explore the media capabilities of D2L.

Come learn how to: 

• "Insert Stuff" such as YouTube videos and film via Kaltura
• Customize your course homepage
• Create "New Widgets"
• Embed GoogleDocs and VoiceThreads
• Edit your course's navigation bar
• Add external links to your course

Workshop Logistics: 
Hellems 145 Tuesday, October 16th 3pm-5pm
OR
Wednesday, October 17th 10am-12pm

To sign up for this workshop or to ask any questions please email Courtney.Fell [at] colorado.edu

For this workshop, you must have a Desire2Learn page. It can be a page that you are using/would like to use for a specific course or a Sandbox (a test page). If you are unsure if you have a D2L Course, try logging in at https://learn.colorado.edu with your CU log-in information. If you are unable to log-in, then you need to request a course or a Sandbox from https://mycuinfo.colorado.edu/

Event: ALTEC's Fall 2012 Guest Speaker

My center, the Anderson Language & Technology Center is excited to announce our guest speaker presentation for this fall. Christopher M. Jones from Carnegie Mellon University will be presenting on "Open Educational Resources and Language Instruction", Tuesday October 9th from 12-1pm in Hellems 145.

Presenter: Christopher M. Jones PhD, Carnegie Mellon University 

• Professor of French and Computer-Assisted Language Learning 
• Director, Modern Language Resource Center 
• Director, Masters in Applied Second Language Acquisition 

Presentation: "Open Educational Resources and Language Instruction"

• The history of the sharing of instructional resources and OER 
• A demonstration of the French Online course through the Open Learning Initiative 
• A discussion of possible future directions in OER 
• What could OER mean for the individual teacher 

Email Courtney.Fell [at] colorado.edu with any questions!

Event: FTEP "How to Create Community in Online Courses?"

Creating an online community

CU's Faculty Teaching Excellence Program has an upcoming presentation that could be of interest to those of you preoccupied with the task of creating a sense of community in the online environment.

On Thursday, September 27th from 3:30-4:30pm (ATLAS 200), Sam Gill, Professor and Associate Chair of Religious Studies will address a very important question in online teaching: How can online courses be developed and presented so that everyone feels some personal connection? This ‘how to’ presentation will offer a number of examples and techniques that help to create community and even take advantage of the distance among participants. Faculty should bring their own laptops for use during this workshop. MAC laptops will be available for those faculty who would like to borrow one.

For more information: http://www.colorado.edu/ftep/events/eventdocs/presenceinonlinecourses.html

Guest Post: Dr. Dawn Stanley, Sociology "Grading Online Discussions"

Do you have ideas to share
with other teachers?
Contact Courtney

Adding a discussion thread component may seem like an easy way to hybridize your class. And it is. But discussion threads result in additional labor for the professor: you’ll probably want to participate in the discussions and there’s the question of grading.

Until you get the hang of using the D2L discussion grading system and of grading the comments, having a discussion thread component to the class will add extra time to your course prep and work. But with a clear rubric and practice with the system, you will be able to zip through the grading.

I’ll cover 3 possible discussion thread grading models: 2 based on weekly grading and 1 on end of the term grading.

By Dawn Stanley, Ph.D.

stanleyd [at] colorado.edu

Dawn's explanation as well as her discussion board rubrics are available here. 

Dr. Dawn Stanley teaches her Introduction to Sociology course through Continuing Education and has been kind enough to share her insights, grading policies, and rubrics with the rest of us. Thanks!

The "New Widget" Tool

Within D2L, there is often a logical place to upload certain information. But what if we want our students to view something very specific and we want that content displayed for most of the semester on the course homepage? D2L has a "New Widget" tool that can be customized and placed on your homepage for these purposes.

Many of you will want to follow these steps to create the "Course homepage image" for your particular course.

- Creating the widget:
Within your D2L page, in the top right of the page go to Edit Course > Widgets

Next, you will need to name your widget and then add the content that you want your widget to display. (If you add text within the "Description", that text will not appear for the students.) In order to insert content for your students to view, go to the "Content" tab and add in a photo or text or video or links. Then "Save".

- Inserting your widget into your homepage:

For your students to view the widget, you will need to activate it in your homepage. Go to Edit Course > Homepages. Then, select the homepage that you are using*. Select the Content/Layout tab and then Add Widget. Find your new Widget using the Name that you gave it above. Check the box next to that widget and select Save. Your New widget will now appear on your course homepage!

* if you have not yet made a "Copy of the Course Default" you will need to do this step first.

Syllabus Recommendations

As we are fully aware, the hybrid class model may be completely new to our students. If we want to avoid confusion and problems in the long term, we should include as much information as possible to assist our students on the front end, in our syllabi, regarding our expectations of their work.

I recommend that our syllabi for this fall contain the following elements:

• The Hybrid/Blended Course Model: A "hybrid" or a "blended" course is slightly different than the traditional courses offered at CU. In a hybrid course, in addition to face-to-face class time, a portion of our contact hours per week will now be conducted online using Desire2Learn and the other online elements that I have designed. The two principle advantages of this model are that we can dedicate more of our time in the classroom to practicing content and that you can learn new material at your own pace from home. I have done my best to set clear due dates for the activities that I intend to be completed online. Please adhere closely to these deadlines to stay on track!
• Netiquette: Keep in mind that operating online requires us to communicate with each other through written text. Therefore, the online environment is missing many of the nuances that we can provide in face-to-face communication (tone of voice, facial expressions, etc). Thus, online, be sure to pay close attention to: tone of voice (is your language possibly strong or offensive?); clearness of communication (did you clearly explain your thoughts?; do excessive typos confuse your message?).

The University of Wisconsin Colleges Online provides a short but comprehensive set of recommendations  for online etiquette based on the books Netiquette, by Virginia Shea and Arlene H. Rinaldi's The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette. 

• The D2L Discussion Board: I also recommend that those of you using discussion boards include a section on your expectations for student posting and commenting as well. This information will depend on the teacher and the course requirements. 

*** I will be out of the country in July, but am happy to troubleshoot via email! *** 

Courtney.Fell [at] colorado.edu

Requesting your D2L Course and Getting to Know D2L

As you all know, one requirement for our fall 2012 hybrid courses is that we use D2L. From my meetings, I see that many of us are new to this course management system. One easy first step in preparing for the fall is to go ahead and submit your request to OIT to have your D2L course created. Then, you can start uploading course content and familiarizing yourself with the system.

- To submit a request to create your D2L course, you will need to go through MyCUInfo. Log in at MyCUInfo, then follow these steps linked to here.

** If you do NOT see your fall course within your Faculty Tool Kit, be sure that you have selected the correct term (Fall 2012) at the top right. If you have content within CULearn that you would like to migrate into your D2L course, be sure to specify this during your course request. There is currently a delay of up to two business days from when we submit our request and when we can access the course. Once your D2L course is created, you will simply go to https://learn.colorado.edu/ to access it.

- D2L has a lot of functionality. There are two ways for us to practice using D2L on our own: OIT's D2L faculty workshops, schedule available here; and OIT's online tutorials, access instructions available here.

- In past posts, I have elaborated on a few D2L tools that I am using in my own course such as the Checklists and the Discussion board (see below). But there us much more that we can do within D2L.

Stream Your Films for Your Students

Many of you are considering assigning an activity that involves your students watching film-length films outside of the class. One option to increase the effectiveness of this type of an activity is to make the film available to your students by streaming. This means that your students can access the film via the internet and watch it in the convenience of their own home.

To stream your videos through D2L, contact Nikolas.Hunnicutt [at] colorado.edu, the Media Production Manager for Continuing Education. He can put your DVD into the Kaltura streaming system and then, through D2L, you can add the Kaltura tool to your D2L page and students can access your video at home, any time. The instructions for accessing your video once it is in Kaltura can be found here.

The next step, would be to create a D2L quiz as a comprehension follow-up to the video. Come see me for help!

Keeping Your Students Organized: The "Checklist" Tool in D2L

In the online environment, it is absolutely pivotal that the instructor be clear about assignments, deadlines, and the general expectations that they have of their students. One way to effectively communicate a set of tasks to your student population is through a checklist. D2L has a tool that allows the instructor to create and categorize checklists and then link steps within each checklist to external websites or to other tools within D2L.

Say you want your students to read an entry in their textbook, then watch a YouTube clip, then contribute to the discussion board; then you want to encourage those who need extra practice to watch a follow-up tutorial. You want to be sure that the order of all of these steps is clear and you want to add deadlines to different steps as well.  Make a checklist!

Come visit Courtney and we can plan dynamic lessons that are easily executed by students using this D2L tool. 

Open Educational Resources (OER)

TED-Ed provides high quality video presentations and
follow-up quizzes and activities that can be customized
by you for your students and then linked to. And, it is free!

Don't reinvent the wheel for your Continuing Education hybrid course!

OERs are digital teaching materials created by other instructors who have kindly shared their work with others. Many of these resources are open for easy editing as well.

There are many collections of OERs. Most of these databases are easily searchable and include an advanced search option to filter by level. A few that we like at ALTEC include TED-Ed, MERLOT, OER Commons, and Khan Academy.

Please leave a comment on this blog post if you know of other good OER options for your subject!

Effective Use of Discussion Forums

"Using the discussion board to build community in online classes": In the online journal EDUCAUSE, William J. Allen of Arkansas State University described his use of the discussion board in his online classes. Dr. Allen begins every semester by informing his students of the participation guidelines for the class, in which he states that students will receive a grade every week for their posts in the discussion forum, "For each discussion topic that I post you will receive three grades, 0-5". He then goes on to outline how he assigns the discussion grade. The three grades are composed of the timeliness of the student post, the substance of the post, and lastly participation. Dr. Allen has found that although the first few weeks of the discussion posts are typically rather "mechanical", as long as he resists the temptation to overly-direct the student discourse, the discussion forum "takes on its own life".  Please visit Dr. Allen's blog post to read more: "Using the discussion board to build community in online classes", March 9, 2006.

I highly recommend that faculty who intend to use the discussion forum in D2L, place a clause in the syllabus about your expectations for student participation in the discussion forum. Also, consider incorporating discussion board posts into the formal class grade.

An Alternative to D2L's Discussion Board:
If you are adventurous and want to try an alternative to D2L's online discussion forum, another option could be Piazza. Let us know what you think!

Embedding Video in D2L

Many of you are using D2L and digital video clips in your classes. Rather than simply linking to videos from your D2L page, consider embedding them into D2L.

In D2L, go to Content > New Topic > Create New File > Insert Stuff

The OIT page also has a tutorial on using the "Insert Stuff" option in D2L.

Contact Courtney if you want us to help walk you through this process!

Students in Need of Technology Resources

Checking Out Technology:
CU students can check out laptops from the Norlin library for 2 hour rental. The policies and more information are available at the UCB Norlin Commons website.

ALTEC is also open and willing to assist your students who are in need of equipment such as digital cameras or camcorders. Our Multimedia Library (Hellems 159) is open M-F and there are attendants on duty to help students access these resources.

Computer Labs:
ALTEC also has two computer labs that are open M-F. If you want to hold a computer class, consider reserving either our Mac classroom (Hellems 145) or our PC classroom (Hellems 152). When it is not being used for classes, the door to our Mac classroom is open for CU students. More information can be found at the ALTEC website.