Concurrent Hybrid Courses: Teaching face-to-face and remote students simultaneously

In distance education, hybrid or blended courses are those in which some sessions are held face-to-face and some others are held online.  “Concurrent hybrid courses”, on the other hand, are those in which a class is taught in real time having both face-to-face and remote students concurrently.

Advances of video-conferencing technology and software make it possible to have one or more students joining a live face-to-face class from different distant geographical locations. Teaching face-to-face and remote student simultaneously; however, offers a new set of challenges to the instructor that need to be considered in advance. For example, depending on technology capability remote students might feel isolated or might miss important visual information that might hinder their understanding of the topic.

Here are a few tips based on the experience of several instructors who have taught under this setting:

Including non-concurrent online activities. Even though students have already been engaged in real time during class, online activities have the potential to reinforce their understanding. Common online activities include brainstorming and exchanging ideas in a discussion forum or reflecting upon a topic using a blog and then commenting on each other’s’ blog entries.

Implementing an onsite-online pair buddy system. Under this approach, a student on campus is paired up with a remote student using a laptop and video-conferencing software. This way, students on campus can facilitate the interaction between remote students and the instructor by asking any questions or making any comments that remote students might have. Of course, for this approach to work properly it is critical that buddy students on campus have the technological skills and be willing to collaborate with the remote students.

Including interactive group activities in real time. By having remote students being part of groups, they tend to feel more motivated and integrated with the rest of the class instead of being mere spectators. It is helpful to implement group dynamics such as ensuring that each student (including the remote ones) have equal amount of time and opportunity to participate. However, implementing two-way verbal communication in groups of three or more students in which various groups have remote participants might bring audio issues, especially when the discussion a group is so loud that interferes or distracts other groups. This problem could be mitigated it by using the appropriate classroom size, the right videoconferencing technology per group or by having groups using just text-based communication.

Planning and testing the most appropriate technology configuration. The content to be delivered and the type of interaction needed to achieve the course learning objectives should guide the selection of the video-conferencing application as well as the location of the local video-camera(s) and microphone(s). It is really important to test all the equipment in advance with a technology consultant and also with the remote students prior each class starts to ensure that they are able to see you and hear you and vice versa. Moreover, if you are using a PowerPoint presentation, consider sharing your computer screen so your remote students can see and read the content of your presentation too. If you are planning to write something on the whiteboard, you might consider having someone zooming the camera in or using a digital overhead projector to show everything you are writing on the fly so both your face-to-face and remote students can see it.

Recording the class. Since we all know that technology can fail at any time, it is highly recommended to record the class so remote students can watch it again in case their connectivity drops for any reason.

We’d love to hear from you regarding any other issues you have come across with when teaching concurrently face-to-face and remote students in real time and the ways you have solved them!

Enjoy a Better Grading Experience!

Holiday season is just around the corner! Yeah!!!

But wait, are you still supposed to grade the final papers and exams? Hmm…

Grading can definitely bring gratification, joy, and reflection, but only having several days to grade before the submission deadline may still cause stress and pressure.  Are there some tips one could use to make the grading experience easier? What particular things does one need to pay attention to while grading? Our IC Office sincerely hopes the tips we gleaned in this blog post may answer some of your questions.

Question 1: So, this dauntingly big stack of papers is staring at me, where should I start?

The time at the end of the semester can often be very stressful due to numerous deadlines and last-minute changes. To avoid that this stress potentially influences grading, one could first find a supportive environment where it is peaceful and comfortable enough to concentrate.

Instead of jumping into grading right away, spend some time on preparation and plan on grading strategy so that consistency and fairness can be maintained throughout. For example, to avoid potential biases, consider the order of papers. Papers may be arranged alphabetically, randomly, or with names covered. Experiment and find out what works best for the habit, energy, and mood.

Additionally, reading five or six papers before grading helps one to get an idea of the average time spent on and the range of quality of each paper.  Estimating the time spent on grading each paper gives one a better understanding of how much or how little time on a particular paper.  Furthermore, stop grading if you feel tired, irritable, or bored. When starting again, read over the last couple of graded papers for review and consistency.

Question 2: How do I approach grading?

While additional techniques exist, there are two universally used grading methods: point score method which means points are broken down according to content sections or criteria, and holistic method which means a grade is based on the overall quality. Some people who prefer the former may grade based on criteria, such as analytical substance, argument structure, use of supporting material, quality of writing, persuasiveness, overall clarity, and internal consistency to name a few. In this case, one may find it necessary to create a rubric. A rubric offers the advantage to assess the quality of a student’s work based on different criteria.  Furthermore, each criterion is broken down into levels of competency. When using rubrics, it is good practice to share it beforehand with students so that students are aware of assessment criteria for the specific assignment. An online tool called iRubric is available to assist faculty and instructor in the School of Education on the Bloomington campus with rubric development, assessment and sharing. One can find many free rubrics in the database and customize them for personal use. (Click here to refer to more information on iRubric)

However, in some cases holistic grading approach is preferred because rubrics do not cover all situations. For instance, when an assignment or project is left open for students to be creative in presenting forms (e.g., a drawing, a poem, a picture), more subjectivity will be involved in judging the overall quality and unique rationale of the work. Please keep in mind that students often desire a certain level of transparency regarding assessment methods, so it is suggested to record the rationale for any grade.

Question 3: How could I best use my teaching assistant in the grading process?

There are several ways to involve teaching assistants in the grading process. The instructor could discuss grading policies and standards to get their opinions and make adjustments as needed. If the teaching assistants are grading, the instructor should discuss the expectations about facets of grading and adopt appropriate group grading strategy. To ensure consistency, each section of an exam could be graded by the same teaching assistant. Another way is to  work at the same time in the same place so teaching assistants can compare their grading policies and reach consensus when disputes arise.

If, as an IU instructor, you have to leave for a conference around the grade submission date, one and more grade proxies could be assigned through IU OneStart system.  Grade proxies have the authorization to submit final grades for you without revealing your passwords to them. (Please click here if you want more information on assigning grade proxy)

Question 4: How could I minimize my students’ complains about grading?

To minimize potential students’ complaints about grading procedures, one should announce the grading scale, policies, and standards in the syllabus and avoid modifying them once published. When receiving a complaint, treat it as an important source of feedback which could be used for improving teaching. Please keep in mind that some complaints are more legitimate than others. The basic principle here is to be receptive and sympathetic, yet firm on these occasions since students are expected to show quality work and sound thinking. Be sure to make positive comments on students work and avoid grading by just taking off points instead of giving credit for good answers.

Last but not the least, plagiarism should always be a concern when grading. One handy tool to check writing originality is Turnitin. Students will be required to submit their writings online through Turnitin.com, which checks for possible plagiarism by comparing submitted papers to several databases. With this being said, the tool needs to be used with caution because the presumption of guilt may cause negative feelings in some students.

References

http://teaching.iub.edu/finder/wrapper.php?inc_id=s2_7_assess_05_grading.shtml

(Grading, Indiana University Teaching Handbook)

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/docs/ta/pdf/grading_papers.pdf

Note: You need to copy and paste this link into the browser to make it work

(Tips for Grading, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University, Stanford CA)

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/assessment/grading-student-work/

(Grading Student Work by the Center for Teaching of Vanderbilt University)

http://www.indiana.edu/~icy/rubric/

(Collection of examples rubrics from the Office of Instructional Consulting at Indiana University)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin

Images

http://www.philnel.com/2010/10/14/procrastigrading/

http://www.wellnesscoach.com/category/matters-of-the-heart

http://mcspellman.wordpress.com/category/complaining/

eTexts at Indiana University

Courseload eText Reader

After a two-year pilot which included over 1,000 students from different academic departments, the Indiana University e-Text initiative will be expanded to all campuses and departments in Spring 2012.   Indiana University joins a few other universities which have also implemented this emerging technology such as University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin.

The two main attributes contributing to the promotion of eTexts are affordability and accessibility. eTexts are remarkably more affordable than new textbooks; the cost of IU eTexts will be just 35% of the original textbook.  In order to get this low price, all students within the course will be assessed an eText fee which is somehow similar to a lab fee. Due to the fact that eTexts are available online, students can have access to them at any time and any place, even right from their cell phones, and no longer need to carry heavy books wherever they go.

Instructors who were considering using eTexts for their spring course had until October 14, 2011 to submit their requests to determine the availability and cost of the desired electronic text books. Here is a summary of key information about the IU e-text initiative, in case you might be interested in including eTexts in your courses in the upcoming semesters:

• Students are able to access the digital version of the textbook through Oncourse via any device that has a web browser (e.g., computer, laptop, tablets, smartphones)
• Students are able to highlight text with multiple colors and to annotate it with comments.
• Students are able to share their eText comments with each other and the instructor.
• Students are able to print the text without any additional fee; furthermore, they could print the text with comments or just their comments.
• Students have access to their eTexts as long as they are enrolled at Indiana University.

To get a clearer idea of the advantages of the IU eText reader and see how it works, consider taking a look at the course demo in which you’ll have access to several eTexts from different academic fields. Just follow the directions located at http://etexts.iu.edu/courseload/ (make sure that your browser is set to support “third-party cookies”). For more general information about eTexts at IU refer to: http://etexts.iu.edu

Cloud Computing in Higher Education: Launch of IU SharePoint

IU SharePoint is a web application platform originally developed by Microsoft in 2001. During the summer of 2011, University Information Technology Services (UITS) at Indiana University integrated SharePoint into the Indiana University environment. SharePoint provides a set of key features for team collaboration and content management. IU faculty, staff and graduate students are provided with 20 GB space to store files in MySites (think about it as the current o-drive). While some features require some time to learn, many aspects that IU SharePoint offers seems to be promising. Here are the some of the main functions:

1. Collaboration and Project Management

When you are involved in a team project, you might have realized that even group e-mails are a cumbersome method of sharing information. At present, rapid advancement of information technology such as mobile devices allows for collaboration anywhere at any time. SharePoint allows users within organizations to collaborate and share work within a commonly accessed Web-site framework. Graduate student, faculty, and staff can create personal sites as private work places where a number of individuals come together to engage in a group work. Group members are not only able to share their documents and files but also have an active collaboration through group discussion forums. For example, instructors, who supervise a course with sections taught by graduate assistants, could repeatedly use the same resources stored on MySite. Therefore, archiving resources on MySite enables to save a large amount of time in communicating with graduate assistant and locating course-related files from a hard drive. In addition, built-in features such as calendar and announcement tools are also useful tools to update and remind necessary information in a timely manner. In the case of Twynham School, a comprehensive school in   England, students have developed increasing sophistication in how they interact and share information via forum collaboration. Although teachers initiate the discussions, the vast majority of discussions are taking place between students and this form of collaboration is growing through SharePoint forums. (For more information http://sharepointineducation.com/student-collaboration-in-sharepoint-forums)

2. Social Networking and Individual Space for Education

One of the biggest aspects in today’s computing environment is the influence of social networking, and its influences for educational uses. With that said, IU SharePoint is also current with the cyber social movement and networking. SharePoint MySites is quite straightforward and self-explanatory.

In Overview, a quick snapshot of one’s social contents is shown along with basic profile data, one’s picture and presence information linking back to Microsoft Lync (formerly MS Office Communicator).

• Under the Organization, a bigger organization chart is displayed with more detailed information than in the Overview. It also shows an organizational hierarchy including your peers in parallel and your superiors above you. Colleagues and tagged notes are shown in the other categories as well as a distribution lists for to which one belongs.
• Creating Blogs is also beneficial to keep others informed. SharePoint provides rich blogging functionality for both internal and external purposes. This blogging functionality provides all the features you’d expect, with blog creation and management, blog posting, support for multiple authors, and more.  Instructors could benefit from blogging activity, for example, one might create a course-specific blog and encourage students to use it for reflective journaling. By articulating students’ thoughts and opinions without strong restrictions, students could reflect on what they learned during a class activity or project which would lead to sharing ideas based on one’s own practice.
• Furthermore, SharePoint provides users traditional wikis along with wiki-specific web parts for customizing the experience. Wiki allows collaborating with a specific group of peers and, therefore, is more private than blogs.

In conclusion, SharePoint provides users with plenty of options for social networking, web-portal function as it collects information from diverse sources on a central page, and content management tool for collaboration. Even though some features might not be intuitive for those new to SharePoint, anyone who is familiar with the current services such as Oncourse (IU’s Course Management System), Facebook, or Microsoft Outlook should feel comfortable with using these tools. As we are moving towards the Cloud Computing Age, we see some great potential in SharePoint for educational use. (For more information about IU SharePoint: https://www.sharepoint.iu.edu IU authentication required)

Images are from:

• http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/5-ways-social-networking-has-improved-in-sharepoint-2010-007325.php
• http://sharepointlogics.com/2008/03/windows-sharepoint-services-overview.html

New Possibilities with Google+ for Education

Google+ is a newly launched social network service with several promising features in an attempt to compete with Facebook. Early impressions are that Google+ and Facebook share many similar features and one can easily get going. Overall, looks are compelling and captivating but what about Google+’s potential as an educational tool? Early reviews are positive and indicate that Google + holds a lot of promises for educators. Noteworthy facets include “Circle” with better control over sharing information, “Sparks” for sorting interesting stories and articles by specific topics, as well as possibility for in-depth discussion with a new way for videoconferencing through “Hangout” feature.

Below are the four features that might be used for education:

1. Circle: Limit sharing and grouping

We have seen many stories about inappropriate online sharing, particularly for teachers, in the news. States like Virginia and Rhode Island even banned teacher-student interaction via social media. Even without outright bans, many teachers are reluctant to friend students on Facebook for such reasons. However, Circle feature in Google+ might be a solution for privacy issue. By grouping students into particular circles, a teacher can limit the information that is shared with a particular set of circles.

2. Hangouts: Engage your students with videoconferencing

Google + offers numerous ways to communicate within a Circle. For example, one can quickly initiates a video conference with other users by creating a so-called “hangout’. Even though it seems there already are many videoconferencing tools available, some will find many of them are rather difficult to get the interface work seamlessly.
Google+ Hangouts, on the other hand, has so far been impressive with its user-friendly interface. This might be helpful for instructors who are trying to remotely manage office hours (e.g., virtual office hours) to assist students with work. One teacher might announce that she/he will be available in Google+ at 7-8pm for questions. Students will be able to drop in and out and interact with their instructors in a more personalized and effective way. Providing a place where students easily get instant feedback, without spending much time for setup, seems to be prominent to develop social presence and close relationship between teacher and students at any level of institutions.

3. Sparks: Share specific interests

Sparks is a new feature on Google+ that automatically loads such information as videos and articles found on the Internet to your profile. From an educator’s perspective, it has great potential for helping instructors and students research and stay updated with current events. As a similar concept to the “like” button in Facebook, where users can express their agreement, “Sparks” is essentially a way to gather news, blogs, and information about topics that interest you, as well as immediately share that information with others. For example, instructors can provide helpful learning materials to students by suggesting resources for certain topics.

4. Huddles: Keep in touch with your students!

“Huddles” might be interesting to use as a way to keep in regular touch with students at times when they are working on their own in various places throughout a campus. This feature is similar to group texting function that allows sending a text message to particular groups. But this is only accessible by downloading Google+ Android app on your Android phone.

As of now, Google+ is still in infant stage with much potential remained. For its educational use, it probably won’t be long until the developers start plugging in additional Google services and apps making Google+ a yet more powerful platform. Being optimistic, it could be used as an innovative approach that combines social media and a Learning Management System. Considering Google’s past misstep in the social media before, as lessons learned from Wave and Buzz, this neat and simple social media seems to be in right direction so far. But, it might be taking some time to realize true potential.

Additional resources for more info:

• Wired Campus: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professors-consider-classroom-uses-for-google-plus/32131
• Some early thoughts:http://www.edsocialmedia.com/2011/08/google-in-schools-some-early-thoughts/

Image from:

• http://www.flyteblog.com/flyte/2011/07/how-to-use-google-circles-to-control-your-information.html
  

There is a (portable) app for that!

Heading off to teach and not sure whether particular software is installed on the classroom computer? Tired of going to a conference and lumbering your laptop through airport security? How about plugging in your USB flash drive and having your software, bookmarks, and settings available to you!

Using a computer on which you do not have administrative access to install software can lead to situations where particular programs are unavailable to you and certain files don’t work (e.g., video, audio). Both circumstances can be frustrating when standing in front of an audience and result in significant scrambling on your part. But now there is a simple and free way to bring along your favorite computer programs with all of your bookmarks, settings, email as well as a range of popular programs. Portable apps allow you to install and run programs directly from a storage device, such as an USB flash drive or an iPod. This way, you do not have to install any software on the computer and, moreover, do not leave any personal data behind.

What is it? How does it work?
Portable apps (short for applications) are open source programs that can be installed and run on portable storage devices; therefore, avoiding the necessity to install software on the actual computer. This is particularly helpful when you need to work with many machines and you do not have permission to make permanent changes to a desktop’s configuration (e.g., teaching in different university classrooms). All one needs to do before entering the classroom is to download and install the app using a computer where one has administrative rights.

What is it not?
Be careful not to confuse portable apps with apps distributed by Apple or Android for their respective mobile devices. Although similar in concept, portable apps do not need to be installed on devices that house their own processing power (e.g., smart phones, iPads). Instead portable apps can run on so-capped dumb devices, such as storage drives. Furthermore, portable apps are free and open source for anyone to download.

What apps are available?
PortableApps.com currently lists more than 100 apps including popular software such as Skype, VLC Multimedia Player, or Open Office. On the website, one can find apps listed in categories such as accessibility, development, education, games, music & video, Internet, and more. Unfortunately, these apps can currently be used only on Windows machines.

Where to find more info?
For a list and description of available apps visit PortableApps.com (http://portableapps.com/)  or feel free to visit the Office of Instructional Consulting (http://www.indiana.edu/~icy).

Creating Accessible Online Courses

Emerging technologies make it possible for students with disabilities to take classes in the online environment. Thousands of students with some type of disability have successfully completed online programs in different fields. However, as an instructor, you can facilitate the process to access and assimilate instructional content to distance students with visual, hearing, or cognitive impairments. Here is a list of suggestions to make your content more accessible:

1)  Contact the Instructional Consulting Office or the Adaptive Technology centers in your department or University. They will provide you with helpful resources and will work with you on making your particular online class more accessible to students with disabilities. Generally, the sooner you involve these specialized centers in the process, the better. In this way you give them enough time to assist you on looking for effective instructional alternatives to deliver your class. They will also help you in making your instructional content more accessible such as closed captioning videos, creating accessible Word and PDF documents, printing Braille documents and tactile enhanced graphics, etc.

Here at Indiana University, you can contact the Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers for more information and for workshops related to making online content more accessible.

2)  Find out what features from your Course Management System are not too accessible and use viable alternatives. For instance, the features that are generally inaccessible to students using adaptive technology in Oncourse are:

a) Rich text or “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) editors: Even though these editors facilitate formatting text to most students, they tend to cause a lot of difficulties to screen readers thus being  unusable by visually impaired students. An alternative to these editors is allowing your students to attach an external file so they don’t have to type their answer in the embedded rich text editor.

b) Forums: Navigating through the Oncourse forum messages can be very challenging to visually impaired students because the concept of a thread is mainly achieved by adding a visual indentation among messages, which cannot be detected by them. This makes it difficult to know who is responding to a specific message in the thread, especially when there are many students carrying out multiple discussions. in the forum.

3) Add structure to your class resources such as Word and PDF documents and PowerPoint presentations: In an unstructured document, screen reader applications would read the content from beginning to end, line by line. This means that visually impaired students would need to listen to the whole document to get to the “Results” section. By adding structure to the documents, students with disabilities can easily navigate within it. Here are a few recommendations to add more structure to your documents:

a) Use styles to create heading formats (Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, etc).

b) Add alternative text to all included  graphics

c) Do not use tabs and spaces to create a table, instead use the “Table” tool

d) Use bulleted lists to emphasize individual points and numbered lists for a series of steps in a sequence

e) If converted a Word document into PDF, use the accessible options provided by Adobe Acrobat
(http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat/overview.html)

Additional resources:

• Oncourse Accessibility Hints for Course Creation IC Podcast
• Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
• Converting Accessible Documents to PDF

Google Goggles – Search by sight!

Are you an art education teacher preparing for a discussion on oil painting in your class? What if you are reading an art magazine for inspiration and are impressed by one of the paintings and are eager to know more about the painting beyond the information provided (history, painter)? How about using your cellphone and taking a picture of the painting? It is as simple as that; you can search the Internet using the camera function of your phone and have results displayed on your screen!

Don’t believe it is real? You have to try Google Goggles!

Search by taking a picture!

Until now, the only option for web search has been through typing or speaking into a search engine. Google Goggles lets you search about the world by taking pictures with the smart phone camera (Android or iOS 4.0).  This visual search engine works with the phone camera to capture visual information that can be read by Google’s various applications (i.e. Search, Maps, Earth, Translate and etc.). It helps you identify what you are looking at and point you to the relevant information online.  

Does it identify everything you see?

Since visual search technology is still in its early stages, the range of items you can identify with Google Goggles is still limited.  It works best on books & DVDs, artwork, landmarks, logos, business cards, products, barcodes, and text.  But it doesn’t work well yet on things like food, cars, plants, animals, furniture, or apparel.  As this technology advances in the coming years, expect visual searches to become prevalent on more mobile devices and be able to identify what they cannot today.

How can you use it in teaching and learning?

Visual search technology brings exciting implications for teaching and learning since it has the ability to access information in various locations, which static books cannot.  Students are no longer constrained to their classrooms or desks and they can search the Internet every moment and everywhere. For example, students could easily retrieve the history of an antique object they saw on a museum field trip, learn a new Spanish dish name at the restaurant by searching for its translation in English, or research more about an international association they noticed on a poster in the hallway.  It is exciting just thinking about all these options!

Requirement and updates

Google Goggles is enabled only for English-speaking users and since it requires an auto-focusing camera, it is only supported on Android, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 running iOS 4 or above. Since its launch in December 2009, Goggles has had several updates with the most recent version being able to read barcodes faster, identify print ads in magazines, and put any Sudoku champion to shame.  

It is reasonable to believe that the range of the items Goggles can identify will be extended and it will gradually be appearing in more mobile application stores.

Can’t wait to try it out?

Check out more on Google Goggles at the Google webpage – CLICK HERE.

Image source:

http://droid-2.net/?p=173

http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/11/16/google-goggles-goes-commercial-partners-with-five-brands-in-marketing-experiment/

http://smarterware.org/3933/google-goggles-searches-by-camphone-photo

IU has a new island in Second Life!

Indiana University has just extended its virtual presence by acquiring an island in Second Life, which is the biggest and most popular 3D multiuser virtual environment. As any other virtual world, users interact with each other through avatars and can communicate by chat or voice teleconference. This type of real-time immersive interaction has the potential to promote social presence.

The island counts with seven different meeting places, some of them are informal while some others keep a more formal design. There are three informal places: a gazebo, an amphitheater and a casual room. The gazebo fits seven people surrounding a firecamp.  You can even hear the cracking of the fire! For bigger groups of students, there is an amphitheater which can fit about fifty people. Moreover, there is a casual room for up to seven students to relax as they converse among them.

The formal places include an old type classroom which fits up to sixteen students “comfortably” seated. There are two meeting rooms, one of them fits seven people whereas the other one fits sixteen. There is also a new type of classroom in which students are seated in groups of four. Both classrooms and conference rooms have a type of whiteboard which include a web browser for students to see the content of a specific web page. Instructors could upload their PowerPoint presentation to websites such as slideshare and then show them to their students within Second Life.

There is also an area (sandbox) in which you and your students can build new virtual objects such as cylinders, balls, buildings, etc. The objects you create remain in the sandbox for about two hours before disappearing. It’s a nice way to practice your 3D modeling skills.

Currently, access to the island is restricted to prevent anyone from interrupting instructional sessions. If you have considered using a virtual world for a synchronous activity as part of your class, please contact the Instructional Consulting Office.

Finally, before starting using Second Life as an educational platform, it’s advisable to plan the goals for its use. There are some caveats that need to be addressed such as having to download and install the program to run it, amount of computer resources needed and required bandwidth. So, it might not be too convenient to use it just as a teleconference tool or to give a lecture since there are more straightforward technologies that could accomplish that, such as Adobe Connect or Skype. Additional information about instructional uses of Second Life are provided by EDUCAUSE over here.

The semester is over! What now?

Archiving your Course

The final exams are scored, papers are graded, and you are ready to enjoy your well-earned break…

Well, before you head out, keep in mind that there is a good chance that you will have to return and teach the same or a similar course again. Considering the time you spent developing the class, it might be a shame to let all your work be forgotten by shelving it in some place that nobody knows about. Instead, think about archiving the course.

If you think there is even the slightest chance that you might teach the course again, the archived version provides ideas and resources for any future installment. Instead of starting from scratch, one has something that is already developed and potentially reusable. Additionally, many universities are now making teaching portfolios a critical component of degree program or tenure requirements. So, why not take a course that is already finished, spend a little time polishing it, and—voilà—completing a significant chunk of a teaching portfolio! Also, if the course is important for accreditation, documenting any experiences now can prevent potential headaches when it is time to assemble a report. Finally, although you might not be teaching the course again, be a good colleague and offer your course materials and any respective insights to the next instructors. People will remember good deeds when you need to call in a favor!

So, instead of “set it and forget it,” here are a few steps that you can do NOW with your course (including potential technologies):

1. Save it!

Review the course resources (e.g., readings, assignments, video clips, tests) and save any electronic files in a permanent storage location (e.g., server, hard drive). Although Course Management Systems (CMS), such as Oncourse, generally keep courses accessible for longer than the duration of the semester, this doesn’t mean resources   are kept for an eternity. When saving course materials, make sure you have access to the files and organize them for easy management in the future.

If you use public websites (e.g., WordPress) for your course, you might want to consider whether you want to make them private now that the semester is over.

Potential Technologies:

• For files: Portable hard drive, server, CMS, Oncourse Practice Site
• For URLs: delicious, diigo, Endnote

2. Document your experiences!

When archiving your course, it is a good idea to note your experiences while teaching this course. What worked? What didn’t work? How did students react to various lessons and activities? This kind of reflection is extremely valuable when re-designing a class, but it is hard to remember at a later point in time. Whether you take a few minutes to scribble down notes or compose a full-fledged journal, document your memories.

Potential Technologies:

• Text editors:      MS Word, Open Office, Google Docs
• For URLs:             delicious, diigo, Endnote (allow to add notes to URLs)

3. Ask students for permission!

Are you thinking about using your course as part of a teaching portfolio? In order to demonstrate learning among your students, student artifacts are a powerful and helpful resource (especially when combining them with any feedback you provided during the course). Whenever sharing those artifacts with outsiders, ask students for their written permission to address any privacy concerns.

Potential Technologies:

• Email
• Signed note

4. Schedule time for updates!

In your course, some topics might require more updating than others. And even if you don’t need to update the content, there are still areas in your course where you might want to adjust or try something else. While memories are still fresh in your mind, schedule some time to explore new ideas, such as courses from other universities. Look for new inspiration while you can, because the next semester (and its commitments) is already looming on the horizon.

Potential Technologies:

• University courses:         MIT Opencourseware, Open Yale
• Resources:                          Open Educational Resources (OER), National Repository of Online Courses (NORC), Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT)

For more information and possibilities on archiving and updating your course, check out Dr. Bonk’s video on Ending & Archiving Online Courses or visit the Office of Instructional Consulting.