Welcome Letter

Well, we are 5 weeks out from the start of Summer Quarter. Ideally, I'd be farther along than I am, but I've still got plenty of time to get this well established class gussied up for Summer. 


Two weeks out from the start of the quarter, I write to my students with my Pre-Class Welcome Letter. This is the start of my orientation period. My orientation goal is two fold. One is to let students know what they are getting into and make sure that they have time to drop the class and take something else if this isn't what they wanted. 


Two is to make sure they are set up to succeed once we start substantive work on Wednesday of week One.  Towards that end, I have them do a very low stakes activity for every technical task I expect them to do during the quarter.  For example, I expect folks to know how to post to the discussion board, so I have them post their introduction on the discussion board. I expect them to be able to take quizzes, so I have them take the syllabus quiz.


So, this will all get started with my Pre-Class Welcome Letter. That launches my Welcome Activity, within ANGEL.  I expect students to do this activity before the quarter starts. This insures that they are able to log into ANGEL and if not  they can seek help before the crunch time. It also make sure they are ready to hit the ground running on day 1.


The Welcome activity has 5 steps, but I might whittle it down to 3:

1. Welcome information - read a little bit about what it is like to be in an online class. This used to be way more involved years ago when we didn't have a slick learning management system like ANGEL and most students had not taken online classes. However, times have changed. I'm wondering now whether I should delete this step and incorporate it into another step.
2. Do a system check - This helps students know whether there is something about their computer setup that will cause problems.  Since ANGEL does a system check every time students log in, this might be another step I can eliminate.
3. Find your Learning Style - I like this as a way to have students take responsibility for their learning. I have them use this quiz - http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/stylest.html
4. Prepare a backup plan - this has students prepare for the inevitable technical problems that arise. I also have them report back on their learning style and plan when they are going to work on the class.  I make suggestions on how they might do this with the 15 Hours document.
5. Get to Know ANGEL - I encourage folks to do the ANGEL tutorial if they have not used ANGEL before.

A Canvas Import

I'm not sure what happened to the week, but here we are at the other end of it, without the catching up that I had hoped to do. Oh well.


My college, Seattle Central, will be piloting Canvas in the fall and we're starting to make plans and everyone is getting quite excited. In that spirit, I decided to export my class from ANGEL and import it into Canvas, just to see how it worked. I recorded the experience in real time for your viewing pleasure.


The whole process was really very easy. The main lesson I took from the experience (which I should have remembered from moving from Blackboard to ANGEL) was to clean up my classroom BEFORE doing the export. Delete all those miscellaneous files and assignments that I don't use any more. That whole idea of "garbage in, garbage out" is alive and well when it comes to moving from one LMS to another.

Book selected for American Government

I selected a book for American Government. I will be using Flat World Knowledge's American Government and Politics in the Information Age. As I mentioned in a previous post, Flat World Knowledge texts are open source and free for students to read online. They are completely editable and students can select from many formats to have the content printed if they wish.  I need to move aggressively on customizing the book - I learned that I'm about 2 weeks late on my fall book order! Why order a book? I'd like to have a few in stock for folks who prefer the traditional page (which, to be honest, includes me when it comes to textbooks).


I also discovered a cool new tool that will make it way easier for me to do course mapping. I am using Workflowy.  I'm an outline kind of girl, so this tool just works for me. Here is my Workflowy Course Map for American Government. As with everything - this is a work in progress - I only discovered Workflowy this weekend and already I'm lovin' it.


Resources:
Workflowy - www.workflowy.com

Dynamic Calendar

Last week was insane and I did not have a chance to post at all. This week I hope to make up for it with 2 posts a day. Today's post was motivated by an email from a student who will be gone for a week during summer quarter and wonders if she should take the Global Studies class.  That motivated me to get out my Dynamic Calendar.  


My dynamic calendar was created by my friend James Peyton, economics faculty at Highline.  He showed it to me at least 10 years ago and it's been working for me ever since.  I like having a one page download for students to see the whole class schedule. Though my class basically follows the same pattern every quarter, I was always having to tediously  change every date for each new quarter. This calendar is an excel spreadsheet. I change the first two dates in the calendar and all of the rest of the dates automatically update to this quarter. Woo hoo!


Just a note about how I schedule my quarters. Following the model of WAOL and the advice of a wise Highline colleague, Diana Lee, I start my weeks on Wednesdays and have work due on Tuesdays at midnight. This has several advantages. First, work is not due on weekends. We know students wait until the last minute and then have questions. I don't want to answer those questions on the weekends. So, I have work due during the week when I am happy to answer questions.  Also, this schedule makes it easy for the students who want to work primarily on weekends or primarily during the week to both be happy.  


Additionally, I use the first two days of the quarter for orientation, to get the students up to speed, doing introductions, etc.  By Wednesday of the first week, we're ready to roll with real work, as opposed to sacrificing the whole first week for that kind of activity, as I've seen people do. I've suggested this model to lots of people and everyone who tries it is really happy - you should give it a shot.


Here is the link to my draft schedule for Summer 2012 and here is a link to a basically blank dynamic schedule that you can adapt for your own use. It is set up for the 8 week summer quarter, but here is one for a 10 week quarter.


Resources
8 Week Dynamic Calendar Template
10 week Dynamic Calendar Template

Online Group Work

Today, I am sharing with you one of my biggest teaching fears - group work. Group work is something I avoid like the plague if I can. However, this quarter is all about being open and I imagine that I am not the only person terrified of group work. 


With that in mind, I decided to try a small group project in my American Government class. I also decided to talk to a few of my favorite communications faculty for suggestions on how to make it not so scary. 


So here, in the first of a series (I hope) is an interview with Debra Waddell. Debra is a part time faculty at Cascadia, Shoreline, Edmonds Lake Washington and Walla Walla.  She teaches in every format, including several online communications classes. We sat on my deck last Sunday and chatted about the scary aspects of group work and how to avoid it. I think I can sum it up by saying plan for conflict.


Online Group Work Interview with Debra Waddell (about 20 minutes)


I have not tried posting audio in a blog before. I've uploaded the file to my Google Drive and am sharing out the file. It's a little clumsy, it won't stream, you'll need to download the file. If this link doesn't work for you, let me know. 


In the interview, Debra references a great team contract format initiated by Cascadia instructor Danielle Powell, in the reference section below. 

Resources 
 Danielle Powell's team contract (Thanks Danielle!) (As always, if you decided to make use of any shared resources, be sure to give credit where credit is due!)

Technology Takeover

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a series of stories on Marketplace called Robots Ate My Job, in which David Broncaccio drove from coast to coast trying not to have personal contact with anyone, dealing only with automated hotel check ins and self checkouts, etc. It was very interesting.


Over the last few weeks, I've been at several meetings and conferences where I encountered a very real fear among faculty that technology would take over their jobs. This, for example, was a frequent unspoken message when folks talked about why they didn't use Tegrity (what if my students stop coming to class?).  


This fear is, frankly, baffling to me.  In my mind, if technology can do the same thing that I do, that means it probably does not require my two terminal degrees to get that job done.  So, hooray for technology - I'll let it do that job while I do something more worthwhile that does require at least one of my fancy degrees. Technology isn't stealing our jobs, it's liberating us from the mundane to really engage with students in a more authentic way. It's a tool that makes it easier for us to do our jobs.


Of course, if you are reading this, I'm preaching to the choir, so I'll get down off my soapbox. I'll wrap up this commentary with a brief postscript. On my way home from the ATL conference, I stopped for lunch at Jack in the Box.  In the lobby of the restaurant was a big machine urging me to use it to place my order instead of the friendly looking woman at the counter. Thinking of the Broncaccio story, I decided to try the machine.  I should say that I am one who generally opts for self check out at the grocery store and ATMs instead of going in the bank. The Jack in the box machine was quick and easy to use. However, it somehow felt rather unsatisfying. I would have preferred to chat for a moment with the friendly woman at the counter.

Back from the ATL conference

I had a great time at the Assessment, Teaching and Learning conference. It was fabulous to see so many of you there, particularly my former colleagues at Cascadia.  I always enjoy this particular conference for the opportunity to see people I haven't seen for a while and the great ideas generated not only in the sessions but in the hallway conversations.

It was one such "hallway conversation" (actually, it was outside of the Starbucks) when someone advised that one should take a moment after the conference to reflect and then take two or three good ideas and commit to incorporating them. That seemed like wise advise, so here are my three ideas from the conference that I'm going to integrate into my upcoming teaching.

(Some of the links below are to my conference blog. I like to blog conferences as a way to remember what I learned and to share some of that information out with others.)

1. Data Collection. I attended a pre-session on gathering qualitative data. I like to survey my students fairly regularly, but it is somewhat inconsistent. I'm going to be a lot more strategic with my surveying and have all of my questions planned out before the quarter starts.

2. Digital Storytelling.  I attended a fabulous session on digital storytelling.  I think it could have good application in both of my classes on the Service Learning Project. I really need to explore this idea, though, as it might be too much, given all the other stuff I do in the classes.  I have to question myself as to whether this would just be using technology for the sake of using technology or whether it will increase student learning significantly enough to justify the effort of me and the students.

3. Assessment Dashboard.  Hands down the best session I attended was one by my friends at Cascadia on creating an assessment engine or assessment dashboard.  It is sort of a physical manifestation of outcomes, to help look at individual assessments to determine whether they are achieving all of the goals one is trying to achieve. Genius.  I will aim to build my own dashboard this weekend, while it is still fresh in my mind.