Announcements to Promote Student Success

Communication is key for student success.  This is particularly true for online courses where a sense of community is a key factor in student retention and achievement.

Found under the Course Tools in Blackboard, the Announcement tool is an excellent way of increasing communication with your students and to build a community of learning that is key for student success. 

To create an announcement, just click on the tool to view all the previous announcements and:

1. Select the Create Announcement button.
2. You will have to get the announcement or title or “subject”.  It is helpful to make these brief and to the point.
3. The content editor will allow you to add:
1. Text
2. Hyperlinks
3. Youtube videos
4. Photos, or
5. Anything else you can add create with the content editor
4.   The Web Announcement Options will give you the option to immediately publish or set a time for the announcement to be revealed.  You can also choose to email the students the announcement.
5. The course link can also link the announcement to a specific content page or assessment. 
6.  Don’t forget to hit ‘submit’.

Now you know how to use the announcement tool here are four tips to use it better:

1. Regardless of whether you teach a traditional, hybrid, or online course, using the Announcement tool is a create way to keep the students engaged in the course. It offers a tool for sending reminders that can keep the students focused and on track with the course.
2. The announcements offers you a better way to reach out to your students. The phone app pushes announcements to students’ phones to ensure they get the message.  Likewise, by choosing “Send a copy of this announcement immediately” you can also send the announcement to their college email as well. 
3. Minimally try to release an announcement once a week.  This helps keep their mind on the course and increases student engagement.  You might want to pick a specific time (such as Monday morning coffee hour) to be the regular time you send out a course announcement. 
4. You can create an announcement for each week all at once in the beginning of the semester, and set each announcement to be revealed on the appropriate week – using the Date Restriction feature.  This way you can set up a regular set of announcements to remind students of milestone events all at the beginning of the course.  This front-loading the course with announcements is a smart choice that can free up more of your time for teaching and less on administrivia.  You can then go about teaching knowing that you can add specific announcement messages when the need arises. 

By taking advantage of the Announcements Tool, you can foster a sense of community in your course, keep the students focused on their tasks, and contribute to your student’s success.   

The Delivery of Digital Content from Textbook Publishers Matters

Digital content supplied by publishers is convenient for faculty to adopt and studies show students support its inclusion in courses. It also affects a significant number of students. In the 2016-17 school year, 60% of students polled stated they accessed the publisher web content while taking college classes. While this contributes to the rising costs of textbooks, and increases the value of Open Educational Resources, there are times when the digital content is advantageous. For example, sometimes there are no appropriate OERs available for the content that is necessary and the digital content may be the only academically acceptable option. Likewise, if the school has mandated the use of the book, or the text is already needed for the course, the content is merely a free addition.

It may be clear that the predeveloped content makes it easier for instructors to offer online content. Further integrating the content with an LMS allows the content to seamlessly interact with the LMS and its gradebook. Nevertheless, this is not an issue about learning and pedagogy, but out of convenience. A simple pedagogical question arises with digital content from textbook publishers that is often not address.

Does integrating digital content from textbook publishers affect the performance of students in online literature and writing courses and do students prefer it?

In a pilot study, Wolf and Richardson (2018) investigated this very issue. They ran a pilot study on a class testing the performance and student preference of integrate textbook digital content. The study investigated variances student progress and preference of textbook publisher digital content between the modes of delivery. In general, publisher digital content can be accessed by either hyperlinking to the publisher’s website or integrating the content within the LMS. There are two ways to integrate the content and they are:

• Plug-ins. These suffer from required updates and poorer user experiences 
• Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI). This for is a direct link to the content is its stability makes it more preferable. 

The study use Pearson REVEL. The only integration option was to use a plug-in. Consequently, the study compared the differences of the plug-in with simply hyperlinking the material.

After setting the conditions to control the experiment, the pilot study revealed that:

·       Students performed better when the content was integrated with a plug in

·       Student rate of completion was also better when the content was integrated

·       Students also preferred the content integrated

There was also an unexpected result. There was a small percentage of helpdesk calls from students requesting assistance with the digital content. This has the added benefit of both:

• having students spend more cognitive time learning the material and less on navigation 
• Freeing up man-hours from the IT department 

While more study is required, the study is one of the first to confirm that evidence suggest that students will perform better when the have less impediments in navigation. Integrating publisher digital content, instead of sending them to a labyrinth of pages on the publisher’s website reduces some cognitive load and encourages students to spend more time in the learning environment. Consequently, it contributes to a large level of student success.

Reference

Wolf, D. & Richardson, A. (2018). Assessing the Pedagogical Effectiveness and Student Preference of Publisher Digital Content Presentation in Online Literature and Writing Instruction. In Proceedings of E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 355-359). Las Vegas, NV, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Objectives and Outcomes

When communicating with students, it is critical to discuss the learning objectives and outcomes of the course. These form milestones learners must achieve in order to complete the course successfully. The objectives define what students need to demonstrate to reveal their level of mastery of the topic at course completion. This is not just a matter of providing a proverbial roadmap for completing the course, but is also a key part in motivating students. In general, everyone likes to understand why they are performing tasks and communicating the objectives confers the meaning of the exercises that are being performed. Because of this, it is not surprising that students are more successful when they understand why they are learning content, of participating in particular academic exercises, and how the exercises connect to course outcomes. This offers a framework that makes the necessary work meaningful. This is particularly true with adult learners, who respond best when they know why the learning is required (Wlodkowski, 2008).

Naturally, all course content, learning activities, assessments and other interactions should be aligned with the learning objectives and course outcomes. There should be no busy work, but only meaningful assignments with clearly aligned outcomes. This is just best practice in course design. However, it is not just that the learning objectives are aligned to the assessments and activities. These relationships should be clearly explained to the learners to reveal their relevance to the objectives/outcomes (Knowles, 1984). This will better motivate students and offer guidance to the direction of the course.

Where to begin?

It is easy to get muddled up when presenting the learning objectives thoroughly.  Remember that the objectives should address what learners need to know when they complete the course, or within a module. The aligned activities and assessments will showcase how learners will achieve the objectives. Well written learning objectives have four parts that identify:

1. the learner,
2. the skill the learner must demonstrate,
3. the conditions the learner will demonstrate these skills, and
4. what the criteria are that will measure skill mastery. 

When presenting the material online for students, it is best to conform to medium for expressing them most effectively. In particular, use lists or bullet points to make understanding the objectives simple and visually compelling.  You might find a grid, rubric, concept map, or hierarchy may demonstrate how these objectives work together to accomplish the course goals. Once you have done this, you will want students to be able to access this information in:

• The course syllabus
• Online course information documents (an online deconstruction of the syllabus), and
• Each module’s beginning (the At-a-Glance pages).

Finally, using second person, (you/ your) offers a friendlier tense when communicating with students.  It personalized the statements and is a more affective motivator.

And now the hard part – let’s work on clearly stating the objectives and explaining how the assignments map to them.

References

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wlodkowski, R. J. (2008) Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, 3rd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Communicating a Feedback Policy

You uploaded your syllabus and it seems as if no student reads it. This is not a fault of students. People do not like reading pdfs on the web (Nielsen, 2003). This might be why nobody can find your notes about feedback in your uploaded 15 page pdf file with your feedback policy buried on page 11, sections 5.42. How can we remedy this? Offer the information in a preferable format.

Deconstruct the syllabus for the web. Harness the web and make the imparting information more effective in this medium. By breaking it down into a set of pages, such as a set of Course Information Documents, the information is presented in manageable chunks that are easier for students to access and review. The ‘findability’ of this information helps students more effectively orientate themselves to the course. Research reveals that courses where course information is easy to find have a direct impact on students’ perceptions, overall experience, and learning outcomes (Simunich, Robins, & Kelly, 2015)

Having a policy statement explaining how the instructor/student feedback occurs can reduce expectation gaps that create student frustration because they do not know what to expect. This can also reduce communication about feedback and allow students to focus more time on task. A concise policy statement can establish expectations and knowing how the course functions and the instructor’s expectations allows students to keep on track and prioritize their responsibilities (Ladyshwesky, 2013).

You will find that offering detailed guidelines that are easy to find defines course protocol and allows students to focus on learning the content instead of the process of the course. Students’ expectations about the frequency of the feedback, the response time for assignments, and the quality of interactions that are expected of them will help them focus on their success. This may also effectively reduce your workload as an instructor because you can spend more time on teaching and less time on reviewing course policies with the students.

References

Ladyshewsky, R. (2013). Instructor Presence in Online Courses and Student Satisfaction. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 7(1), 1-23.

Nielsen, J. (2003) Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading. NN/g Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved Juy 24, 2018 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/avoid-pdf-for-on-screen-reading/

Simunich, B., Robins, D. B., & Kelly, V. (2015). The Impact of Findability on Student Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Perceptions of Online Course Quality. American Journal of Distance Education, 29(3), 174-185.

Faculty Introductions and Building a Learning Community

Taking an online course can be intimidating and the environment can seem cold and impersonal. Students can feel that they are on their own navigating a morass of information where the solutions to their questions is difficult to find. Ironically, this also can apply to a traditional face-to-face course. However, using best practices in course design can help overcome this.

One way to breakdown the impersonal atmosphere of the Learning Management System is to remind students that you, a person, are there and that they can communicate with you. Adding a Faculty Introduction or Welcome page to the course is an excellent opportunity to make the learning environment less sterile and add a personal touch. Be sure to let the students know a little about yourself and your credentials to both demonstrate that you are indeed a person and a highly qualified instructor to better influence their acceptance of the course content (Dulaney, 2013).

 When you are creating an introduction, you should consider taking advantage of the medium and including multimedia. Simply adding an image of yourself can influence student perception of you (Russo & Campbell, 2004), and their retention of the material (Mayer, 2009), such as your expectations. By using video, instructors will increase students’ perception of connectedness with the course (Rose, 2009) and studies show that they will be 20% more positive about their interaction with the you and the content. This has been shown to have a direct impact on their success in the course (Jones, Naugle & Kolloff, 2008). You will also find that with currently technology, creating an introductory video is not the difficult.  (For a templated see the discussion about video introductions and your course, see: https://instructionaldesignsccc.blogspot.com/2018/03/video-introductions-and-your-course.html )

While you have a stand-alone page developed, it is wise to include the best ways for students to communicate with you.  In order to communicate high expectations, you first need to be able to communicate.  Including the best means to reach with you and the length they can expect in order to get a reply, affords insight for the students so that they understand what is expected. It also gives the students a location to consult if they forget the most effective ways to communicate with you, e.g. email or messenger.  The advantage is that this page can be a continue beacon that promotes a learning community and communication.

References

Dulaney, E. (2013). Does the Credibility of the Presenter Influence Acceptance of Content in the Classroom. American International Journal of Social Science, 2(4), 14-20.

Jones, P., Naugle, K., & Kolloff, M. (2008). Teacher presence: Using introductory videos in hybrid and online courses. Learning Solutions. Retrieved on March 26, 2014 from learningsolutionsmag.com

Mayer, R. E.  (2009) Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2^nd Ed. 

Rose, K. K. (2009) Student Perceptions of the Use of Instructor-Made Videos in Online and Face-to-Face Classes. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 5(3), Retrieved July 18, 2018 from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol5no3/rose_0909.htm

Russo, T. C., & Campbell, S. W. (2004). Perceptions of mediated presence in an asynchronous online course: Interplay of communication behaviors and medium. Distance Education, 25(2), 215-232.

Effective Communication & Instructional Design

Imaging that you entered a room and the instructor looks you the eye and sternly states:

“Beachtung! Sie müssen Nummer zwei Bleistift und setzen Sie sich hin"

If you did not understand German, you may be baffled. Meanwhile the instructor is frustrated that you are not following instructions and holding up the class. Did the instructor give you directions? Yes, but the instructor did not communicate them to you.

Now, image you are a new freshman student unfamiliar with online learning and you are taking a fully online course with directions referring to “threads” and “dropboxes” while burying needed information deep within nested folders that are difficult to find. The new environment may as well be a different language and this can impede student success.

It is clear that increased communication with students while the class is in session should promote student success.

 

When teaching there are several tools and heuristics to promote success by offering prompt feedback (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), such as:

• Logging on three or more times a week to make a presence,
• Using an Announcement tool to send communications to students (at least once a week) that can be pushed to their phones.
• Taking advantage of the course messaging and email features to keep regular contact and to check up on delinquent students.

However, did you know that there are features of course design that can either aid or inhibit communication?

Sometimes the design of course can systemically affect communications. Simply, adopting certain best practices in course design can aid communication with students and contribute to their success.

This resource will review several aspects of how employing best practices can help reduce communicative mishaps and streamline the process of students understanding their learning objectives and how to meet them with minimal technological or course design issues to impede there success. In particular, it will focus on better instructional design that can be applied before the class even begins. This resource will review:

• Communicating expectations effectively
• Faculty Introductions that develop an effective learning environment
• Explicit feedback policies
• At-a-Glance pages
• Communicating Learning Objectives, and
• Grading Rubrics

With the intent to communicate expectations better and improve student success.

Below is a e-book, that can be downloaded as a PDF, with each section a corresponding video accompanies each section.  Be sure to click on the interactive object below to be able to see it in full screen and have other features, such as text searches and navigation tools.

Helping Students Sign on to Blackboard

Often students, as well as faculty, are new to the online tools of a college and logging onto the learning management system (LMS) can be intimidating.  The latter a student enters the class often contributes to the student not having enough time to complete course assignments or even knowing about the assignments.  Needless to say, it is critical for student success to get the students familiar with the online learning environment quickly so that they can focus on learning.  Sharing the video below as well as the PDF (downloadable below too) either from an email attachment or course hand out during the first day of class procatively addresses this issue and should increase your student success rate.

How do we get started?

You want to use the My SCCC Portal. You can get there, and then to Blackboard, by performing the following:

1. Go to the SCCC website (http://sunysccc.edu)
2. Select (click on) the MySCCC button in the top right corner. (it is the orange one)
3. Sign in using your email username and password to the SCCC Portal. If you do not know these, please contact the SCCC Help Desk at: (518) 381-1487
4. Look to the left column and notice the “Launchpad”
5. Scroll down and select (click on) the “BlackBoard” link

That is it. You are now in Blackboard. You should take a look at the institution page and notice your courses are on the top right corner as well as on the “courses” tab.

Now that you are in Blackboard, you can get started on completing your course work and getting your degree.

Below is a PDF you can download or print out to distribute to your students.

Creating a Rubric in Blackboard

Blackboard offers an option in its tools to create a rubric that can be used for grading.  This rubric is integrated with the grade center and makes its use easy for both the faculty and students. Let’s look at how to create a rubric in Blackboard.

1. Select the Rubric option from the list on Course Tools on the menu.  From there you can either create a rubric or import one.  You will need to have a have a rubric made in Blackboard, (in a .ZIP formatted file) to import the file, so let’s start as if you do not have a rubric and want to create one.
2. Select the “Create Rubric” button.
3.  Give your Rubric a Name and then write a brief description.
4.  In the “Rubric Detail” section you can choose many different rubric types.  Let’s choose one for point ranges.
5.  You can also edit or create rows and columns to meet your needs.  Be sure to label the rows with criteria that is meaningful and easy for the students to understand. Then the level of achievement should likewise have meaningful descriptions. 
6. Now it is time to Describe each level of mastery for each descriptor (fill in the cells) This will help students better understand why they received their grade and assists them at getting better.
7. Hit “Submit” and you saved your rubric.

Now you are ready to go. You can use this rubric by selecting the “Add Rubric” button under the Grading section whenever editing an assessment.

Remember, rubrics help you as an instructor and contribute to student success, so let’s start using them more often.

Above: When creating an assessment, you can add any rubric you created with use of the "Add Rubric" button,

How do I Create a Grading Rubric?

Grading Rubrics are easy to create and often there are plenty of templated tools to help you.  You must identify:

• The type of rubric. Do you want to group the headings (holistic) or just list the criteria separately (analytic)?
• The rubric’s criteria. These are the aspects of performance to be assessed.  These will define the rows and the descriptors (cells) in each.
• The performance levels: that will rate the students’ level of mastery (the columns).
• Describe each level of mastery for each descriptor (the cells)

Once you have these, you are ready to make a rubric.  There are plenty of free online tools that can assist you such as:  Rubric maker or Rubistar.

There are even grading rubric tools in Learning Management Systems, such as Blackboard.  These are easy to use and sync to the grade center.

What are the Best Practices when Creating a Grading Rubric?

There are a few things to keep in mind when making your rubrics. Be sure to:

• Keep your language consistent
• Use language that is accessible to the students.
• Keeping it simple. Not having a plethora of columns helps students focus on the criteria.
• Choose an even number on the mastery scale and keep is small (such as 4).  When there is an odd number, instructors gravitate to the middle.
• Focus your descriptions on the presence of the quantity and quality that you expect. This is more positive.
• Share your rubric with the students in advance to clarify what is expected
• While the rubric may seem rigid, be sure to accommodate and promote creativity.  Grading rubrics should not hamstring the creative process required by such assessments as art projects.

 Remember, your rubric should look to Blooms taxonomy to promote high levels of learning in students. Luckily there are online tools that can help such as the Differentiator: (http://byrdseed.com/differentiator/)

Finally, test your rubric.  This helps to ‘calibrate’ the rubric to ensure that it accomplishes what you want as an instructor.

There are a lot of resources available to help.  Be sure to check our collection of resources for more information on how to create an effective grading rubric:  https://www.diigo.com/outliner/fkra8t/Grading-Rubrics?key=31rk9x6l4y

What is a Grading Rubric?

How much would you pay for a tool that can help you assess student performance while offering a uniform structure that makes the grades clear, helps students understand assignment expectations, and makes grading easier on the instructor?  Luckily, you can have all of this and more for free when you adopt a well-designed grading rubric.

What is a Grading Rubric?

A grading rubric is a coherent set of criteria to assess the students’ work that includes descriptions of levels of performance quality for each criterion.  By offering a descriptive document identifying the various values of components of an assignment, the grading rubric helps students understand the manner in which the assignment will be assessed.

Why would I want a Grading Rubric?

Whether or not you use group headings to classify different criterion, i.e. holistic rubrics, or simply list all the criteria separately, i.e. analytic rubrics, both offer several benefits for the instructor and the students (Carriveau, 2010). After implementing a grading rubric, students’ scores at Washington University improved 3.5 times over their pre-rubric performance (Kelly-Riley, Brown, Condon, & Law, 2001).  This is not surprising since students can benefit from grading rubrics in many ways, including:

• Encouraging critical thinking by increasing students’ ability to notice recurring issues that they can address to improve their work.
• Facilitating communication about assessment that gives students insight illustrating what is expected from them and key aspects about assignment. This can help the student outside of class as well, for example, they can share the rubric with tutors to get focused help.
• Making feedback timely and this is critical for student success. (Rucker & Thomson, 2003)

Grading Rubrics also assist instructors by:

• Illustrating how effective instructional materials are at preparing students for assessments.
• Offering insight on areas where students need the most help
• Providing information to refine our teaching skills.
• Ensuring consistency in grading across courses
• Reducing time spent writing comments when grading because of preset substantive descriptions. 

With all these benefits, the real question is why wouldn’t you want to use a grading rubric?

References

Carriveau, R. (2010). Connecting the Dots. Denton, TX: Fancy Fox Publications, Inc.

Kelly-Riley, D., Brown, G., Condon, B., & Law, R. (2001). Washington State University critical thinking project resource guide. Retrieved from https://web.uri.edu/assessment/files/WSU-Critical-Thinking-Project-Resource-Guide.pdf

Rucker, M. L., & Thomson, S. (2003). Assessing student learning outcomes: An investigation of the relationship among feedback measures. College Student Journal, 37(3), 400–404.

At-a-Glance Pages

Having a road map is helpful for navigating new places and avoiding getting lost.  This is equally true for students looking at online content.  Having a brief map or “At a Glance” page can help prevent students from being lost in the content and assist them in their success.

Creating an At-a-Glance page is relatively simply.  You preface a module, unit, or chunk of content and briefly review what the student is about to accomplish and why.  In a short, and easy to comprehend at a glance, you want to prepare the student for the task ahead. It also assists the learners with navigating though course.

A successful At-a-Glance page should include:

• a brief introduction
• objectives
• learning activities
• list of assignments
• information about when things are due
• a list of references, readings, or resources required.

Remember, a brief introduction is important because it gives context to the learning at hand.  Research has shown that offering context and describing why one needs to learn the material helps adult learners succeed in their learning experience.

For those feeling creative, supplementing the page with a visual guide of for students can also improve their success as well. 

How many does your course need?

When creating a course it is best practice to break their material up into easily understandable chunks of content.  Include an at-a-glance page, for both the overall course, and for each encapsulated module, or unit, in the course. You will find that you spend more time teaching because you are spending less time answering questions about course navigation, expectations, and course logistics.  Likewise, you may notice an uptick in student success.

References

Javadi, N & M. Zandieh (2011) Adult Learning Principles. Journal of American Science. 7(6): 342-346.

Wlodkowsi, R & M. Ginsberg (2017) Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults, 4th edition. Jossey-Bass: San Fransisco, CA. 

OSCQR: Quality Rubric for Course Assessment

New discoveries in the content area, instructional design, or technology tools a course uses are some of the on various aspects of your course may make the course outdated.  Having a continuous review and revision cycle allows for perpetual improvements for the course.  This benefits you as an instructor, the school with accreditation and academic standing, and the student success.  For this reason, it is best practice to consider a revision cycle for any course, and particularly online courses.

Assessment is key to instructional design regardless of the design model you implement, such as ADDIE or Dick and Carey.  Collecting feedback and reviewing the course is not a measurement of the faculty or developer, but to perform a diagnostic assessment on the design and effectiveness of the course.  It is important to not view the course review as a means to evaluate faculty.  This creates a culture of secrecy and mistrust amount faculty, instructional designers, and administration.  The review is a process for reflection on how we can improve the course to benefit the instructors and the students.  This cooperative approach adopts the premise that courses are not owned by a single person nor are they a direct reflection of that person.  Instead they are developed and improved through a collaboration of individuals with varying specialties with the goal of producing an exemplary course that promotes learning and student success.

In many ways the OPEN SUNY OSCQR Process and Rubric embodies the collaborative approach to course review and evolution. The three step process or framework includes:

1. A Course Review that results in a non-evaluative Action Plan to improve the design of the online course.
2. The Course Refresh prioritizes and targets specific improvements suggested in the Action Plan for improvements.
3. A Learning Review that identifies and determines the next set of improvements for continuous online course quality improvement

This framework is cyclical.  It creates a continuing process that promotes courses using best practices in instructional design, including promoting course accessibility. To that end, it is a tool to assist faculty, professional staff, administrators, and students by providing a process for improving education and student success rates.

The OSCQR rubric is an open resource and can be modified to the individual needs of most any institution and can be applied to more than just online courses. To this end, if you are sincere about developing quality online or hybrid courses, you should be working with your instructional designer or teaching and learning specialist and applying the principles in this rubric.

For a detailed view of the 50 standards in the rubric, please take a look below. Alternatively, these open resourcesite includes notes and short video for each of the 50 standards.  

The Content Editor in Blackboard

The Content Editor is a key tool used throughout Blackboard.  Whenever you need to:

• create content, or
• other pages,
• create messages, or otherwise
• post text

the content editor will be the tool you use.

Besides text, you can insert images, add web links, and many other features a word processor or web editor would allow. On the editor, there is a tool bar filled with icons, and when you roll your mouse pointer over an icon, a tool tip will appear to identify the icon.To prevent the loss of work, it is good practice to type your information offline in a simple text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit , and copy and paste into the Content Editor. To paste copied text into the Content Editor, you will need to use the "old-school" keyboard short cut: Ctrl -V (the mouse option does not work).

There are two views of the Content Editor:

• Advanced Mode: This presents the full toolbar of icons indicated by the upward pointing double arrow.  Click on that icon to reduce the number of rows of icons in the view. This will bring you to the Simple Mode and offer more screen real estate. 
• Simple Mode: Minimal set of icons featuring the most commonly used formatting functions. Click on the downward facing arrow to access more icons. 

For the most part, the Content Editor functions much like a word processor or any editor on the web.  Some of the most common functions you will use include:

• Formatting text.  The top left part of the bar have most formatting features.  Remember to use the Headings feature to identify headings.  It improves the accessibility of your work.
• Bullets and Numbers.  These are excellent for formatting web content. 
• Remove Formatting:  Have wonky formatting?  Is something not right?  Sometimes it is best to strip all the formatting and start again.  This can help.
• Indenting/Outdenting: This is excellent for formatting content for the web and accounting for whitespace.
• Insert/Edit or Remove Link:  Add hyperlinks to your documents to harness the power of the web.  Add context to the link with a brief description. 
• Insert Image:  This tool allows you to insert images.  You should be sure to
  • Consider copyright issues
  • Include a Title and Description (for accessibility)
  • Consider its position on the page
  • Be sure to use an image with the appropriate size and resolution
• The Mashups tool.  This will allow you to search and embed web 2.0 technology including images from Flickr and Videos from YouTube. 
• The HTML Editor: This tool lets you "look under the hood" at the HTML code that makes your page.  While this may intimidate some, this tool can be very powerful and allow you to embed useful interactive tools. 

Remember  to title the pages you create and hit submit.

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Helpful Tips:

• Functions that are grayed out are not currently available 
• You must select text to format text. 
• Click on the Full Screen icon in the toolbar to expand the working area in the Content Editor. You cannot save (submit) the page when in Full Screen. Click on the icon to reduce the screen, and the "submit button appears. 
• Click on the Preview icon in the toolbar to see the page as it will appear to the end user. 

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Credit to Open SUNY, Using the Content Editor.  Be sure to see the Open SUNY Student Orientation for more tips.

Gamification: 2 Learning as Improving

Shedding a Traditional Approach to Assessments

It is the first day of class and students enter the course with a dread of failure.  Usually homework and learning opportunities offer only one chance to define their grade which will be more damning and permanent than Hester’s scarlet letter. 

This is often not a fault of faculty being lazy. They simply do not have the time to make the work better and afford students multiple attempts - effectively offering the students a chance to improve. Nevertheless, this results in students dreading assignments and fearing failure.

As an alternative, we should view failure as an opportunity for students to assess the situation and progress. One is reminded of John Stuart Mill’s line in chapter one of his autobiography:

‘A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do,
never does all he can.’

Learning should be thought of as a way to improve and one does this through multiple attempts.  If you do not succeed at first, you try again – often using different strategies to learn how to solve a problem.

Discouraging students from trying new solutions, even though some may fail, is doing them, and ourselves, a great disservice. If we adopt the mindset that students should have the opportunity to experiment and explore solutions, we may not only find that they will be more open to try harder problems but that we are fostering creative problem solvers.  This requires that we consider creating learning activities that allow for multiple attempts.  These attempts will offer opportunities to assess and improve.

This is one of the keys to the success of the gaming industry.  Gamers recognize that they will fail in their attempts.  They also know that if they keep focused, try multiple times, and often have to think innovatively, they can overcome the challenge. The ability to save progress or use a reset button is not a coincidence. It allows for multiple attempts to test various strategies.

By allowing students to participate in learning activities multiple times so that they can improve their skills, we are fostering a non-defeatist mentality that will benefit our students. Students can explore options, review feed back and see how the lessons they choose to adopt directly affects their success.

We are also mirroring actual learning environments where people must experiment with strategies to determine which will succeed and to learning from their mistake. 

Another important feature of viewing Learning as improving, is that we are encouraging a sense of agency in the students.  Their decisions matter and what learning strategies they employ will directly affect their success.  This will contribute to their success both as a student and as a person.

So when designing your learning activities and assessments, consider offer more time and allowing multiple attempts.  The results may surprise you.

Starfish: For Students

Accessing Starfish

Starfish is a student success software that allows professors to alert the administration of possible issues you may impede your academic completion as well as offering your referral to help you succeed. It can it designed to help you succeed and also has an area where you can receive positive reports, or “Kudos”. There is even an area where you can ‘raise your hand’ that takes your question and sends it to the appropriate college professional so that she or he can help you.

How do I access Starfish?

You will need to go to Blackboard, and to do this you should use the My SCCC Portal. (If you have a question on how to enter Blackboard, please see the How do I log on to Blackboard handout.) Once you are in Blackboard you can access Starfish through the Tools folder. You can do this the following two different ways:

1. On the Institution Page
• On the right, Go to the Tools Module (box labeled Tools) on the left
• Find the one labeled “Starfish” and select (click on) it.
2. Enter any of your courses
• Select “Tools” from the menu on the left
• Find the one labeled “Starfish” and select (click on) it.

That is it. Feel free to click on and download the PDF instructions below.

Starfish: For Educators Who Desire Student Success

Retention Software

Starfish Early Alert offers a single solution to allow faculty, staff, and students to access to a robust amount of information that will contribute to student completion and student success.  With it faculty can record information about the student, such as referrals, and opt to share this information with the student.  Most common among Starfish users, attendance can be recorded and flags can be triggered to remind instructors and administrators that potential issues may be occurring that could impede the success of the student.  When used responsibly, Starfish can assist the instructor, as well as the school, in retaining students and contributing to their success.

How do you access Starfish? 

There are several ways to access the Starfish software when it is integrated in Blackboard. This is particularly useful since Blackboard does not offer a solution for taking attendance.  Access to Starfish all depends on how your school has set up the program.  Depending on how your college sets it up. However, one of the easiest ways to access Starfish is through the Menu of your course.  Simply:

1. Enter your course in Blackboard
2. Go to the Course Menu and select Course Tools
3. Select the Tool called “Starfish”

This will move you into Starfish. You may be greeted with an option to set up your office hours.  You can choose to use this option or ignore it.  Choosing it will only make a record of your office hours and make it easier for students to reach you.

Attendance

Taking attendance in Blackboard will vary depending on whether you teach an online course or a traditional class.  If you teach an online course you will need to set up the attendance feature and select the dates that your wish to record as a designator for attendance.  This could represent each time the student entered the course, or mark for weekly attendance. Since this feature is up to the instructor, it must be created by the instructor.  If you teach a traditional course, the system will automatically import the class times to the attendance calendar.

1. To record attendance, you.
2. Go to the Students Tab
3. Select the Attendance Sub-tab and either:
   1. Select the Students individually and choose the Attendance status and date, or 
   2. Select “Record Attendance”, choose the dates and mark attendance.

What is important to remember is to be sure to select the correct date.

Flags, Referrals, and Kudos

Communication is key to student success.  From the “My Students” sub-tab from the Students tab, you will have the ability to select several options that include:

• Flags: These allow you to alert administration of important issues. Remember this creates a record that can help identify problems before they begin.  It can also help the school identify dangerous situations and tend to them. 
• Referrals:  These will assist students and will not get lost in their notebook.
• Kudos:  Never underestimate the power of positive re-enforcement.  Let the students know when they are succeeded and give them a record that they can choose to share.

To submit any of these, you merely need to:

1. Select the corresponding button
2. Choose the appropriate option from the drop-down menu
3. Add any other comments. It is important to remember that having a record is very useful.

With these tools, you can help better guide the students and make sure less ‘fall through the cracks’. Effectively, you will be contributing to student success.

Video Introductions and Your Course

Taking an online course can be intimidating and the environment can seem cold and impersonal.  Students can feel that they are on their own navigating a morass of information where the solutions to their questions is difficult to find. Ironically, this also can apply to a traditional face-to-face course.

One way of breaking the ice is to use short introduction videos.  A brief video can introduce you to your students as well as possibly sell the course to others. Clever authors can make the video both introduce the instructor and sell the students on taking the course. This will allow you to have an introduction video that can also be used as a promotional video for students deciding on which courses to take.

Why use an introduction video?  Studies show that students more positively about their instructor and participate approximately 20% with online content.   Even adding a photo and a video improves students’ perceptions of the instructor and the class (Russo & Campbell, 2004).  From a practical perspective the increase on your instructor evaluations offers a pragmatic reason to add video introductions. However, the video introductions help students perceive a relationship between themselves and the instructor and which students have identified as having a direct impact on their success (Jones, Naugle & Kolloff, 2008).

Is Video Hard?

There are several easy ways to create video.  One of the simplest is to just use your phone or web camera on our laptop computer.   You may notice that this is not as simple as it sounds.  Pointing a video camera at someone and shooting does not make a successful video.  Like everything in life there is a little work.  Also like everything in life, knowing successful heuristics can help you accomplish great feats in a significantly decreased amount of time.

Besides using video from a video camera, there are several web and mobile tools that allow you to create slick animations and slideshows that can be converted into video.  Add a voice over and you can have a great show.

There are several video creation web resources out there.  With technological advances, there are now great mobile apps that can offer impressive video editing.  For example, iMovie is only $4.99 and it can convert your phone or iPad into a virtual editing studio.

Feel Free to take a look at some of the videos in the playlist above.  Most were made with affordable and simple web tools.  Two were made with professional tools. Can you tell which ones?

How do I create a good introduction?

Understanding of a few key rules and process can easily get you on your way to producing excellent video introductions.  Ironically, not following these rules can also make some dreadful attempts.   One of the best things to do if you are at a college is to contact a specialists, such as your instructional designer.  They can easily get you going.

Understand that video is successful is short.  About 48% of people viewing will stop after 1 minute.  So make sure that the video is succinct, engaging and to the point.
Second, make the script first.  Rehearse a little and work on good audio.  The video will follow.

Below is a sample script.

References

Dulaney, E. (2013). Does the Credibility of the Presenter Influence Acceptance of Content in the Classroom. American International Journal of Social Science, 2(4), 14-20.

Jones, P., Naugle, K., & Kolloff, M. (2008). Teacher presence: Using introductory videos in hybrid and online courses. Learning Solutions. Retrieved on March 26, 2014 from learningsolutionsmag.com

Russo, T. C., & Campbell, S. W. (2004). Perceptions of mediated presence in an asynchronous online course: Interplay of communication behaviors and medium. Distance Education, 25(2), 215 — 232.

Widmeyer, W. N. & Loy, J. W. (1988). When you're hot, you're hot! Warm-cold effects in first impressions of persons and teaching effectiveness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1), 118-121.

The Learning Sweet Spot

Ever wonder way it is more difficult to remember long strings of information? For over 50 years, studies have suggested that our ability to accurately recall information is capped at about seven numbers or items (Miller, 1956). If we break up the information in little packets, or chunks, we are better capable of remembering greater amounts of information (Simon, 1974).  Thus remembering a number such as 5138675309 is much easier when broken into chunks, e.g. 513-867-5309.  More current research suggest that our limits with difficult topics, such as college learning, may be closer to four chunks of information (Cohen, 2010). Naturally, the introduction of electronic media and distractions decrease this more.

When developing courses it is best to organize information to allow learners to easily access it in a way that enables them to recall it better.  Key is organizing information in packets that are simple to recall and that allow the learner to easily access these packets. To assist this, short overviews, or Modules at a Glance”, can effectively act as a roadmap to reinforce their learning experience.  Essentially, in accordance with Cognitive Load Theory, difficult (course) content should be refrain excessive information (Sweller, 1988).  Keeping the number of modules between four and seven will assist online students in understanding the content.

The take home:  It is best to design course content into four to seven modules or sections.

References

Cohen, N. (2010)  “The magical mystery four: how is working memory capacity limited, and why?”  Current Directions in Psychological Science. February 2010 vol. 19 no. 1 51-57.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864034/

Miller, G (1956) The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information”. The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97.http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/

Simon, H (1974) “How big is a chunk?” Science, Feb. 183:4124, 482-488. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/183/4124/482

Sweller, J (1988). "Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning". Cognitive Science 12 (2): 257–285.

Extending Time for Tests

You are finally getting around to implementing a test in Blackboard for your course.  You discovered great options, such as:

• Randomizing the questions and the ordering of their answers,
• Pools of questions that allow each student to get a random set of questions, ensuring each test is unique
• Feedback for each question, to re-enforce learning and to guide the student to assess where they need to spend more time improving.
• Students can take the tests multiple times, to work to improve their knowledge
• Adaptive Release and automated announcements about the test
• Tests can be timed.

Everything is going great and then you get a call from the Office of ADA Transition Services. You have a student that requires 90 minutes of time to take your 60 minute test.

At first, this seems scary.  Is there an easy way to do this without having to make another test or having to learn how to develop Groups and merge their grades in the Grade Center.  You already developed a Baroque grading schematic that requires calculus to understand, and you have no idea how this new development will play out in the Grade Center?

Yes there is!  You can take a deep breath and rest assured.  Blackboard made it easy and can solve all these problems.

You simply select Edit Test Options.
Scroll down to section titled “Test Availability Exceptions” and select the “Add User or Group” button.
This will open a window where you can select the student who needs more time.
You will notice you can:

• allow more attempts,
• change the time, and even
• change the availability of the test for the student.

Now hit “submit” and you are done

Blackboard will take care of the rest and the testing will take place seamlessly.

One advantage over regular face-to-face instruction, is that using this medium allows those with ADA requirements to not even notice their exam is any different or feel singled out from the class.
Coincidentally, this is one of the reason a large number of people with disabilities prefer the anonymity of online environments.

So, when you need to extend the time, or add special exceptions to a test, know that you can easily do with the tools we have in Blackboard.  In fact, once you use them, you may wonder why you would ever go back to tradition pen and paper.

Blackboard Test Option Crib Notes

Do you want to investigate the slides from the above video for a tutorial on how to make the most from your online quizzes?  The slide show below will offer you tips on how to take advantage of these features in Blackboard.

Creating an ePortfolio and Sharing it in Blackboard

Creating a Digital Portfolio with Padlet

Having a digital portfolio is an excellent way to document your accomplishments as well as possibly to advance your career.  You can develop a digital portfolio easily with several various digital tool.  We will specifically focus on Padlet (http://www.padlet.com ).

To create a digital portfolio with Padlet, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Collect the information you would like to share in your e-portfolio.  This could be documents (in pdf format), hyperlinks to webpages, media files and any other information.  (Now you are ready to create a digital portfolio with Padlet)
2. Go to Padlet (www.padlet.com) and create an account.  You can use either your Facebook account or a Google account for easy sign in, or just use your college email.
3. Create a “New Padlet” You will be given a choice on the format.  Select the format you think will best represent your work.  When in doubt, you should try to keep it simple so your content is best represented.
4. Time to Modify Your Padlet
   1. Name your Padlet – I recommend something obvious like “My e-Portfolio”
   2. Format your Padlet.  On the right you can select a wallpaper.  The less busy, the more professional it will look and the easier it will be able to read.
   3. Hit “Next”
   4. Select Privacy settings:
       a) Keeping it secret allows you to show your Padlet to the people you share the link with and no one else.
       b) If you want everyone to see it, select “public”
       c) You probably want to limit those who see the Padlet to only be able to “read” the Padlet and not to change the content.
       d)  Now Select “Next” – this should save and get your started.  If you want to make changes, just select the sprocket up on the top right.
   5. Now it is time to add Posts.   This is how to make a post -   Click on the plus sign area on the bottom right. This will create a white box.  In this box you can:
   •  Title the box
   • Add a description
   • Select “Add an attachment” . With the Add an attachment feature you can:            
     • share a URL
     • upload a file
     • Use your webcam for a photo  
   Now you may want to develop your portfolio and include: 
   • You contact information.  
   • Add a CV or resume, you can easily attach a document file, and we recommend using the PDF file extension.  It is a standard file format that can easily be viewed and you can save to it from MS Word.
   • Add content, you can choose how to do this from you options
   • Add as many posts as you need
   
   
   Congratulations.  You have completed a Padlet that acts as a digital portfolio. 

Sharing your Padlet

Once you have your ePortfolio Padlet, or any Padlet for that matter, complete, you can share it with others rather easily.

You have two options for sharing – Dynamic presentation and Static presentation. You can do either with Padlet by selecting the Share Feature. For purpose of demonstration let’s see how we can share our Padlet in Blackboard.

Sharing your ePortfolio dynamically has the benefit of harnessing the web and any interactivity it affords.  This dynamic feature usually increases user engagement, which results in people spending more time looking at your ePortfolio.  There are two ways to share your Padlet dynamically.

After we selected the Share/Export/Embed option in Padlet, we can:

Share a link to the ePortfolio.  We can do this by:

1. Selecting “Copy Link to this Padlet.”  This will copy a link to our clipboard. 
2. Go into Blackboard to post.  (You may want to have it already open in a tab)
3. In the editor in Blackboard, click in text field and press Ctrl-V (paste).  This will copy the link as text into the editor.
4. Highlight the text (click down on the button and drag it across the text)
5. Select the Insert/Edit Link button (it looks like a chain on the second row of tools)
6. Copy (Cntl-V) the link into the “Link Path” field and select “Insert”.
7. Provided you gave the post a subject, you are done.  Select “Submit” to post.

A better, or nice looking, way to share your Padlet in Blackboard is to Embed it. You can do this by:

1. Selecting Share/Export/Embed
2. Select “Embed this padlet”
3. Copy the HTML code (the first set)
4. Go to Blackboard and prepare to post
5. Once in the editor, select the HTML button on the bottom right (third row)
6. Paste (Cntl-V) the embed code into the HTML code view window and hit “Upgrade”
7. Select “Submit”

 A static presentation is always good when archiving or when faced with the possibility of not being viewed online.  It would be prudent to add a static presentation as well when sharing your Padlet.

There are two easy ways to do this with Padlet.

First you go to the Share/Export/Embed option.  You then scroll to the export section and either select “Save as image” or “Save as PDF”. Both will give you a static file that you can attach to a Blackboard post as an attachment.  You could even do this to a post that you shared a link or embedded the Padlet with HTML code.

Once you do this, you are done.

The Edit Mode and Missing Content

The Case of the Missing Content

You logged in this morning and you are missing content in your online course!

This is why you hate Blackboard - you spent most of last night developing a large portion of your course including tests for the students, and now it vanished.

Don’t panic.  If you did not actually delete the files, the chances are you may be viewing the course with the EDIT MODE off.

In the top corner of a course in Blackboard you can access the Edit Mode
Button. You can toggle it to turn the Edit Mode on and off.

When ON, you will see all the course content and the editing controls.  You should note that students will not see this.  The Edit Mode function appears to users with a role of instructor, teaching assistant, course builder, and administrator only.

When Edit Mode is ON, all the instructor functions appear, such as Build Content or the appearance of instructor tools on the menu, like the Control Panel.

When Edit Mode is OFF, all instructor functions, such as the editing controls, are hidden. You will see the content as if you were a student. If a page is hidden from a student, even through adaptive release, you will not be able to see this.

This is sometimes handy, as it gives you a quick way to view the course as a student.  However, this can catch you by surprise and make you think your content is not there.

Now, check your course.  Is the edit mode off?  This is probably why you do not see the content you made earlier.

 Below are some cribnotes to help you.

Student Preview

There are a few items students will have access to that you will not when the Edit Mode is off. These include:

• Submitting assignments and take tests
• Creating blog and discussion posts
• Creating journal and wiki entries
• Viewing student tools, such as My Grades 

If you Enter Student Preview, you can view these features as it will create a mock student and ‘see the course with its permissions.  The Student Preview is located next to edit mode button. If you exit this mode, you can even save it and view it in your gradebook.

Embedding Dynamic Content

You have worked hard on your course and created some excellent content pages.  Since you know that students perform better with multiple modes of content presentation, you would like to offer some alternatives to text.  Today there are several options for including dynamic content from the web.  You could link to these sites, however, you would rather have the students have a streamlined learning experience.  You know that people are more likely to review the video before reading the text.




Besides, when you link to another site like Youtube, the students are taken out of their learning environment and subject to distractions, such as by videos of adorable cats. It is in the interest of these hosting sites to drive traffic to their site and retain it.  This is not in your interest as an instructor.

This is exactly why embedding the video in your content page better meets your pedagogical goals.  Embedding keeps students in the course and focused on learning.  Simply, embedding protects students from being distracted by those adorable cat videos. Moreover, you reduce the number of clicks to get to the content, and it common web developing knowledge that this encourages engagement.

In Blackboard, you already have the Mashup tool and it does embed the content at one level. This does not give you the same flexibility that you can enjoy when you opt to embed material by using the HTML button from the content editor.  Further, inside the content editor there is an option to access the Mashup tool. This offers the option of embedding video from Youtube, or offering a link, or providing a mashup.  While the tool does work, there is an even easier way.  Skipping this for an old-school way that will allow the freedom to select more web 2.0 options.  

Simply follow these steps to embed an object into Blackboard:

1. find object's embed code (note: When working with YouTube deselect the option to show related videos)
2. copy the embed code
3. go into Blackboard (it is best to use another tab)
4. create a 1 X 1 table and right align it – or chose the alignment you want.
5. add a little buffer, say 5 spaces horizontal and vertical
6. type a large number of the same digit (222222222222222222222)
7. Select the HTML button (third row down on the toolbars)
8. Scroll and find the large number (222222222222222222222)
9. highlight it and the paste the embed code in over it
10. Select “update”
11. Select “submit” and you are done.

Now let’s take a look at embedding a different dynamic content.  Look for the Share option, and then copy the embed code.  If you follow the same instructions – creating a table with only one cell, using a string of digits, entering HTML editing mode and replacing the string of digits with the code, you will have the same effect.

Using this technique will benefit your students with seamless access to many various engaging presentations and web tools.  Minimally you can use it for YouTube videos, but you should feel free to adopt this to take advantage of the several Open Educational Resources that exist and offer embed code.