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First Assignment – Contact

The Contact Assignment The first eLearning lesson module should include an exercise that will establish the first contact between the instructor and individual students and be due during the first few days of classes. Ideally this activity should take place while students can still get some tuition refunded (3rd Friday after classes begin) if they (or you) decide to drop them. The purpose of this assignment is to confirm that every student can: log into Blackboard or other course site understands how to get started in the course access their university email account overcome their technical difficulties What’s it look like? [Read On...]

Course Checklist

What is the Checklist? A course review checklist is used as a tool to evaluate that a UAF eLearning course contains the minimum requirements as a quality course. Used by Instructional Designer and Course Developers it can be used to help build a course in the initial stages, as well as to final course development so it can move to accept student enrollment. In the creation of this tool, we reviewed similar documents from other post-secondary institutions. We borrowed ideas from many places, but most heavily from St. Petersburg College in Florida: http://www.spjc.edu/. What the Checklist is NOT! The checklist [Read On...]

Public vs Private Considerations

Learning Management Systems Open Courseware and Materials FERPA Open Education  

Help & Technical Requirements

You will be required to include any relevant help and technical documentation to enable students to get started and to troubleshoot any problems they encounter.  You will also be required to provide links to resources both on and off campus that might be helpful for  students. The instructional designer you work with during the development process can help find these resources, however please keep this in mind as you are looking for ways to ensure your students can locate help if needed. How to be your own IT Support http://madara.community.uaf.edu/how-to-be-your-own-it-support/ Where are Help and Technical Resources referenced? You can link [Read On...]

Community Mechanics

Building and Maintain Community Often one of the most challenging aspects of an eLearning course is getting your students to interact as a class in an asynchronous situation. Providing opportunities for students to share experiences, resources, and reflections can be accomplished using different tools. “Make students active participants in learning. Students learn by doing, making, writing, designing, creating, solving.” (Lucas 1990)  Also providing a space for students to interact with each other (with or without the instructor) is an important element in fostering classroom community. Class Blog Blogs provide an opportunity for online, public reflection without demanding high levels of technical [Read On...]

Instructor Presence Mechanics

Put YOU into your course materials The instructor-led online course will include material that highlights what you, as the content expert, feel is most important in a particular unit’s materials. Instructor’s presence include things like: a personal introduction including photos or video your perspective on each topic your relevant stories in your lecture materials providing links to current information in lecture materials and notes the value-added experience/expertise/reflection that you give to the course content important elements of the topic that aren’t in the course textbook expert interviews/journal articles with an explanation of why they were chosen Techniques for incorporating instructor led [Read On...]

Reflection Mechanics

Providing a mechanism for your students to reflect upon the assignment is one of the required elements of a UAF eLearning & Distance Education instructor-led online course. Student reflection is an important part of academic success. Reflection may take one of many forums, including: reflection on their own learning and learning experience, reflection on the real-world relevance and application of what they are learning, meta-reflection on the learning materials, strategies, and structure employed in the course itself. Asking students to reflect on their understanding can be set up in a variety of ways and it really depends on how private the [Read On...]

Feedback Mechanics

Providing rapid or timely substantive feedback to students is extremely important for student success in an online course.  When developing your course think about how you will want to give both personal and general feedback to your students on a regular basis. Feedback should encourage self-reflection, raise self-awareness and help students plan for future learning and practice. Feedback should be: timely – it should be given as soon after student submits an assignment as possible so the process or interpretation is fresh in the student’s mind and before student’s move on to the next assessment. For assignments (activities, etc.) that [Read On...]

Grade Center Set-Up

Blackboard Grade Center The Grade Center is required for all UAF Elearning & Distance Education courses for keeping track of all graded assignments including discussion board, blogs, tests, and quizzes. This ensures the persistence of record keeping for UAF Elearning & Distance Education and UAF. The Blackboard Grade Center also is a time-saving tool for keeping track of lesson assessments and provides an easy interface for instructors to easily give direct personal feedback to students. It also provides a way for students to keep track of their progress. The Blackboard Grade Center provides a private place for you to give feedback [Read On...]

Student Assignment Checklist

The Student Checklist When you create your course assignment structure you will essentially be creating a timeline for students to easily follow.  Providing a checklist of assignments and assessments that they are responsible for will help facilitate their success through your course. Creating a checklist of items due will also help you with developing courses because it provides a snapshot of your course units, how much each item is worth, and when it is due.  You can quickly assess whether each week is weighted fairly and you will be able to use it to  double-check columns in the grade center [Read On...]