| Tom Shoemaker shared the World Religions (REL 243) class
he instructs online for MCC. You can access Tom's course
at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~tomshoemaker/syllabii.html
Tom uses WebCT for two parts of his course - for surveys and
for quizzes. His students take an opening and closing survey
delivered via WebCT. These surveys help Tom assess the backgrounds
of his students.
Surveys are created in WebCT just like quizzes. However, when
students take a survey, their responses are anonymous. Credit
for completing the survey can be entered into the grade book
however, as the instructor can see whether or not a student completed
the survey. S/he just cannot see what specific responses a student
gave. The instructor sees the responses as a group.
Tom also uses WebCT's quiz function for quizzes on each unit.
After students have completed assigned readings, they take a
quiz on the material. Students retake the quiz if necessary until
they earn a grade of 100%. If they do not earn a perfect score
eventually, they cannot get any points for subsequent work on
that unit.
In order to make the instructor/course seem more personal, Tom
has incorporated several features:
1. Short Quicktime videos of Tom talking/instructing. Tom
poses questions in his video. Students respond to these questions
on the online bulletin board. The videos were burned to CD's.
Tom mails the CD's to enrolled students along with a letter
shortly before the semester begins.
Note: Now that he has created these videos, he uses them with
his on-campus classes also. They watch the video in class and
then begin their discussion.
Adaptation: Tom has a hearing-impaired student in his
online class this semester who is fluent in sign language. The
student could not hear the audio portion of the Quicktime videos
he created. Special Services on campus provided a person
fluent in sign language to sign Tom's videos. They put this
on a CD for the hearing-impaired student and she is now able
to understand the videos.
2. A “buffet” of options from which a student
chooses assignments for each unit (e.g. links to discussions/presentations
on National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/ ),
links to online TV videos (e.g. Dateline NBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/ ) ,
articles in Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/ ),
or powerpoint presentations Tom has created.
3. Having students submit a photograph of themselves to Tom.
He prints a roster with each student's name and photograph and
sends it to each student. Alternatively, photographs and information
could be posted on a website if it were behind a password (e.g.
within WebCT). Tom finds that in an emotionally-charged class
like Religion, student are much more civil to one another in
their bulletin board discussions if they see photographs of one
another. It makes them seem more like real people, rather than
just a name.
4. Using Outlook templates to deliver individual emails to students
as they submit their assignments without taking a significant
amount of instructor time
Tom created a series of emails that can be automatically sent
by Outlook to students when they submit a particular assignment. Using
Outlook's Rules Wizard, Tom set up the "rules" in outlook
so the student's assignment is filed in the appropriate folder
for subsequent grading.
The rules also ensure that the appropriate email is triggered
when a student submits an assignment with the proper heading
in the title (to indicate what assignment the email is about). The
headings are selected by the student from the pull-down menu
in a form Tom created.
Tom used Outlook 2003 to create the email messages. He created
the email message but did not put a name on it. He used the "save
as" outlook template option.
From the student's standpoint, it appears that he/she has received
a personalized response. From Tom's standpoint, it is one of
many messages he created before the semester began. With the
Outlook rules in place, the responses are automatically sent
without his intervention. This leaves him much more time to address
instructional issues in depth, rather than responding to bookkeeping
tasks.
MELANIE KROENING AND WEBCT STATISTICS
Melanie shared a new CTL webpage that displays statistics on
our students' use of WebCT on a monthly basis. See the data by
clicking on this link: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/ctl/webct/webctstats.html |
