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Faculty
Feature
Karen
Vail-Smith
Department
of Health Education and Promotion
College of Health
and Human
Performance vailsmithk@ecu.edu
Karen Vail-Smith has been on the faculty of
the Department of Health Education and Promotion since
1989. She
was the first to offer an ECU General Education
requirement online
when in 1999 she taught the
DE version HLTH 1000 (“Health in Modern Society”).
At the time that she was developing the
online version of the class, she had been teaching HLTH
1000 for over ten years and knew that in order for it to
be successful online, it must motivate students to
challenge and change their behaviors just like the
traditional face-to-face (F2F) Health 1000 classes had
done for many years. Therefore, she
had to find a way to be informative, interesting, and
motivating in cyberspace.
Her
goals with DE HLTH 1000 were to:
1.
Provide an educational experience that is equal to the
F2F class
2. Organize the course so that it is
easy to navigate and accessible to all
3.
Produce new instructional media that appeals to the MTV
generation
4. Develop a new online instructional
interface that allowed for the seamless use of various
forms of media
5. As
much as possible, ensure that all resources developed
for the online class could also
be used in F2F classes by
other instructors and graduate teaching assistants
DE
HLTH 1000 proved so successful that in Fall 2006, all
75+ sections of HTLH 1000 taught each year switched to
being offered half online and half F2F. In the online
part, these hybrid 1000 classes use ten of the MIMMs
(“Multimedia Integrated Media Modules) developed by
Karen and the College of Health Education Instructional
Technology Consultant, Chuck Baldwin. The Flash-based
MIMM interface allows online instructors to seamlessly
combine text, audio, video, interactive assessments
activities, and animations into a single, cross-platform
application.
A unique non-linear navigation system allows
users to easily access any part of a presentation. The
MIMM interface provides a variety of instructional
options for both online and in-class use. (An example of a
HLTH 1000 Learning Module using the MIMM interface can
be viewed at http://core.ecu.edu/hhp/vailsmithk/MIMM/sleep/sleep.asp) Primarily for
her work with DE HLTH 1000, Karen was awarded the 2005
Max Ray Joyner Award for Continuing
Education.
Areas
of Specialization:
Sexuality Education, College Student Health Promotion,
Instructional Media Development
Courses
Currently Teaching (Spring 07): HLTH 1000
(Health in Modern Society) and HLTH 2050/51 (Sexual
Health)
Using
Technology to Teach in DE Courses: The
primarily educational goal of HLTH 1000 is to motivate
students to lead healthier lives. In the F2F
classes over the years, we have developed many
interactive, student-focused educational strategies that
effectively engage students in the learning
process.
With the DE 1000 course, I needed to find ways
of effectively engaging my students without
that valuable F2F time.
Much of the
technology I use to teach DE courses is the same that
most instructors use: Blackboard,
discussion boards, chat rooms, online lessons and
assignments.
I do however try to make my online teaching as
media-rich an experience as possible. This has meant
that I have had to develop most of my own media. With Chuck
Baldwin, I have developed over 30 different videos that
I incorporate into my online teaching. This video
development lead to the need and development of a new
instructional interface (MIMMs) which would allow
students easy access to all media.
Karen's
Technology Tip:
A working partnership with your Instructional Media
Consultant is the most valuable educational resource you
have at ECU.
In addition to being ‘techies”, the ITCs have
great expertise in instructional design and can help you
develop strategies for improving your online
teaching.
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Learning Technologies
Available this Spring:
Confluence, Moodle, Open
Journal Systems, and Sakai
Academic
Outreach (AO) is researching and testing learning
technologies that can be used to enhance distance
education courses. AO provides the initial
infrastructure, technical, and pedagogical support
necessary so that interested faculty can integrate this
technology into teaching and learning. At this
time we are inviting faculty to participate in any of
our pilot projects. For more information on each
learning technology, visit the Pilot Tools web page and
contact the pilot project manager.
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/learningplatforms/pilottools.cfm
Current pilot projects
include:
Confluence
Collaborative
software, usually known as a “wiki”, which allows
users to freely create and edit content using any Web
browser. Contact: Ginny
Sconiers
Moodle
Moodle
is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package
designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help
educators create effective online learning communities.
It is currently housed on a server in AO. Please check
out Moodle on: http://eagle.aos.ecu.edu/moodle
or http://www.moodle.org. Contact: Sharon
Collins
Open Journal Systems
OJS
is a journal management/publishing software that can
enable your department to manage and publish scholarly
journals online. OJS assists with every stage of the
refereed publishing process, from submissions through to
online publication and indexing. Through its management
systems, its finely grained indexing of research, and
the context it provides for research, OJS seeks to
improve both the scholarly and public quality of
referred research.
OJS
is open source software made freely available to
journals worldwide for the purpose of making open access
publishing a viable option for more journals, as open
access can increase a journal's readership as well as
its contribution to the public good on a global
scale. It is currently housed on a server in AO
and available for use. Contact: Sharon
Collins
Sakai
Sakai
is a course management system
(CMS) similar to Blackboard. An
open-source software
management system designed for faculty and students to
use in teaching and learning. It is currently
housed on a server in
AO.
Contact: Biwu
Yang
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Academic Outreach
Research Studies
This
Spring Academic Outreach will be conducting two studies,
Social Presence in Distance Learning and Threaded
Discussion. Both studies are designed to enhance
communication and interaction among distance education
students and their instructors, which should ultimately
improve the online learning environment for our faculty
and students. A brief description of each study is
below.
Social
Presence in Distance Learning
Social
presence can be defined as the sense of being and
belonging that students have in a course. Research
currently states that social presence improves student
satisfaction with online courses. The goals of
this study are to verify that these results are
consistent with our DE population and to identify
specific strategies that create and develop social
presence.
This Fall we conducted the pilot study and we
will begin the second phase of this project in the
Spring 2007 semester. For more
information about the Social Presence in Distance
Learning study, please contact Ginny Sconiers at sconiersg@ecu.edu.
Threaded
Discussion
Academic
Outreach will be researching threaded discussions in the
Spring of 2007 in order to develop effective and
efficient strategies for their use. Part of the research
will be instructor interviews and training. As this project
moves forward we will be asking for faculty
participation thru university wide announcements. If you
have questions about the Discussion Board study, please
contact Matt Long at longm@ecu.edu.
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The Academic
Outreach/Technology Advancement
Center
COURSE
ON A CHIP®
- -
Freedom to Learn and Communicate without a
Continuous Connection to the Internet
Distance
Education students live and work in a wide range of
environments where Internet connectivity is sometimes
poor or unavailable. However, an
Internet connection is critical to access content on
course management systems such as Blackboard. We all have
periods of time when we are waiting for events to
happen.
These blocks of time could be used f or learning if a
more flexible learning system was
available.
The
Technology Advancement Center and
Academic Outreach are now working on a project to
develop a
system
for displaying entire websites in the field with
automatic refresh to
high-capacity digital chips when an Internet connection
is available.
When
the mobile learner is able to connect to the Internet
they can automatically upload completed assignments to
the professor while simultaneously downloading updated
content from a course management system. This unique
capacity to refresh allows the student to stay current
with changes that are made throughout the semester. If
you are interested in being involved in this
initiative, we would like to
hear from you. One or two
future-focused faculty members will be selected to test
Course on Chip ® components with their students. You must be an
ECU faculty member teaching a DE class in Spring or
Summer 2007 to be eligible. If you are
interested, contact J. Barry DuVall (duvallj@ecu.edu). |
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January
2007
In This Issue
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1. Faculty
Feature
2. Learning
Technologies
3. AO Research
Studies
4. Technology
Advancement
Center
5. Blackboard
6. Academic
Integrity for
DE Courses
7. Contingency Plan of
DE
Courses
8. Upcoming UNC
Portal
9. University
Multimedia
Center
10.
Centra |
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New:
Blackboard
Threaded Discussion Board
Grader
(Will
be released on 1/26/07)
The Discussion Grader is a
feature on Blackboard that simplifies the process
of evaluating and grading a student’s
participation in discussion board forums. With the Discussion Grader, you have access to a single page with every
message
that a student has posted to a particular
forum, number of words per
message, and number of original messages and replies. After
reviewing the student’s
information on the forums, you can enter a grade for the
student. The grade for the student will then be stored in the Blackboard Gradebook for the
course.
http://ecu.supportcenteronline.com/ics/
support/default.asp?deptID=557&task=
knowledge&questionID=1135 |
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Academic Integrity for Distance
Education Courses
Distance education courses, whether they are
fully online or blended, pose new challenges in the area
of Academic Integrity, for faculty and students alike.
Combine student high technology implementation with the
widening availability of new technology, and this often
equates to new and unique ways to diminish integrity.
Presenting students with guidelines or discussions
concerning integrity early in each course will go a long
way in securing decisions which will help develop
ethical behavior and improve Academic Integrity.
An Academic Integrity web site for Distance Education is
now available to help you with your Spring 2007
course. This web site contains information and
strategies that will help foster Academic Integrity
within online and blended courses, as well as items you
can personalize and copy/paste into your course
materials. You can find this site at: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/academicoutreach/Integrity/.
Please direct questions or
comments to Ginny Sconiers at s coniersg@ecu.edu or
Sherion Jackson at jacksonsh@ecu.edu.
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Contingency Plan for DE
Courses
As with any technology, Blackboard and other
Internet based course delivery systems have the
potential for technical problems. To prepare for
potential problems and/or downtime, we strongly advise
all instructors using Blackboard or other Internet based
course delivery systems to have a contingency plan when
the technology is not available. A contingency plan
involves anticipating and planning for an alternate
delivery of course material and communication when a
service interruption occurs. Your contingency plan
should
appear
on your course syllabus so that students know their
responsibilities and what to expect in a downtime
situation. You can find suggestions to
help develop your contingency plan at:
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/learningplatforms/contingency.cfm Please direct
questions to Ginny Sconiers at sconiersg@ecu.edu. |
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Upcoming UNC
Portal
The General Administration of the UNC system is
creating a web based portal to assist students in
finding online programs at the UNC member institutions.
The database of program information will be searchable
by both campus and discipline with both brief program
descriptions and pointers to campus websites.
Sub-portals are being created for persons interested in
transferring from community colleges and for military
personnel as well as for out of state and international
students. The portal, which is scheduled to premiere in
April, will include information about all of ECU’s
online programs.
The University
Multimedia Center
The
University Multimedia Center http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cad/umc/index.cfm
designs and develops multimedia
projects for interactive course content. Our team works
with faculty to create intuitive, engaging environments
for learning. Projects range from animation and web
design to interactive CD/DVD titles. To propose a
project: http://www.ecu.edu/umc/proposalform.cfm
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Connect,
Chat, Share - Centra Makes it Possible!
Centra is a user
friendly distance learning program for use by ECU
faculty and students for online/hybrid
learning. It has audio, video, file sharing
and collaboration capabilities. Centra is a
web confernecing software solution that is
administered by Academic Outreach with support by
AO staff and the ITCS Help Desk. Students
are excited to be able to chat, verbally and text,
to one another while actually seeing each other
face to face.
AO has been able to secure an
unlimited license for Centra users which means
anyone is able to schedule a class online through
Academic Outreach.
We would like to set your class up for
the Spring semester and introduce you to the power
of Centra. This will include one-on-one
instruction, help with your first few sessions,
and your students will receive assistance as
well. Please visit: http://ecu.centra.com for more
information.
Sharon Collins and John Southworth lead the
Centra team with additional help from student
workers Marcus Garrett, Matt Pisto, and Rhiannon
Screeder (http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/learningplatforms/CentraStaff.cfm). They will work
hard to ensure that your sessions run smoothly by
attending
your event and
assisting with any technical problems.
Please contact Sharon (collinss@ecu.edu)
or John (southworthj@ecu.edu) if you would like to
schedule a session, online office hours, exam
review, or other classes. Or use the online
form located at:
http://falcon.aos.ecu.edu/aotools/Centra/
Request_form.htm
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