Online Course Delivery
Presentation by Linda Ffolliott, ECAT
March 22, 2007
Online course delivery – what
does this mean?
• Teaching classes or doing instruction
• Somehow the Internet is involved in teaching, as
opposed to correspondence course
• Today we are looking at tools, then doing a
discussion of pros and cons compared with faceto-face
My experience
• Have taught at least 15 distance classes, starting
with email delivered courses, moving over to
web, have used WebCT for several courses, and
have used Breeze and currently using podcasts
• Have taken 7 classes myself, some lasting for
multiple months and others just a few weeks
• Encourage you to take distance classes to see
what it is like from the “student” side
Handout
Outlines tools and gives contact
information or URLs for more
information
Any experiences taking online
classes?
• International Webmasters Association
http://www.iwanet.org (not free, $150+
charge); have to buy book
• Hewlett Packard sponsored classes (lasting a
couple of weeks)
http://www.hplearningcenter.com (free but
limited in scope)
• Linked from cals.arizona.edu/ecat/classes
Components involved
• Delivery of content through the Internet
• Communication with students
• Interaction of students with materials and each
other
• Instructor is physically separate from students
• Students can be and often are separate from
each other
Tools
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D2L
Moodle
Breeze
Password protected site on CALS
Listservs
Blogs
Podcasts
Live or not-live?
• Synchronous – students and instructor are
connected and “doing the class” at the same
time
• Asynchronous – students and instructor for the
most part are connected at different times;
makes it easier for people who are working with
schedule conflicts or are in different time zones
D2L
• Learning management system
• Replaced WebCT on UA in 2005
• Lots of features such as time-release of
materials, discussion area, calendar, notices,
online quizzes, surveys, email within the course,
chat, dropbox, FAQ, glossary, online gradebook
D2L continued
• Requires a University NetID to use system, so
rules out using this for classes for public
• If the class is non-credit, there is a charge of
$14.50 per seat per year to deal with manually
adding and deleting students into the class
• www.help.d2l.arizona.edu/forinstructors.htm has
links for tutorials and to request a site
Moodle
• Online course management, open source (free),
available on UA computer, NetID is not
required
• Being used by several other land grant
institutions
• Not being used for any real classes at UA,
limited support
• See book Moodle E-Learning Course
Development ($40)
Moodle (and D2L) designed for
interactive learning
The theory is that people learn best when
they interact with the learning material,
construct new material for others, and
interact with other students about the
material.
Interaction is not required but that is how
this tool was set up.
Interaction with course
materials
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Assignment (uploading files to be reviewed)
Choice (a single question)
Journal (an online journal)
Lesson with conditional, branching activity
Quiz
Survey (results can be shared with others)
Interaction with other students
• Chat (live online chat between students)
• Forum (discussion boards)
• Glossary (students and instructors can
contribute terms)
• Wiki (shared web document)
• Workshop (support collaborative, graded
efforts among students)
Moodle continued
• Has time release of files, discussion forums,
calendar, notices, online quizzes, chats, glossary,
ability to generate certificate online. Does not
have online gradebook nor email within the
system.
• Contact Jim Austin at
jaustin@email.arizona.edu to set up site
• Example courses at http://moodle.com/course
Breeze
• Web conferencing system available through
Learning Technology Center
• A synchronous tool, so people can conduct a
“meeting” while being in different locations
• Can share documents or applications on your
computer
• Contact Wayne Brent at
wbrent@email.arizona.edu to be set up as
meeting organizer
Password protected site on
CALS
• You can create a website on CALS which is
password protected.
• Fast way to get up content, but does not have
online quizzes, time release of files, discussion
forums
• Would have to use with a listserv or blog for
communication
• Contact Linda Ffolliott for help with setting up
a password protected folder
Listservs on CALS
• Entire course can be delivered through email but
it is doubtful you would use this alone
• Two options on CALS server
– Mailman – graphical interface, more functions and
configuration options
– Majordomo – send commands to manage list
• People can have any type of email but must be
CALS faculty/staff to request
• Request at http://cals.arizona.edu/calsnet/lists
Blog
• Special user-generated website where entries
are made in journal style and can be “threaded”
• Typically contains text, images, links, web
pages, and other media
• To request a blog, contact Stuart Glogoff at
stuartg@email.arizona.edu
• This would probably not be an entire course
Blog continued
• http://graphics.ltc.arizona.edu/ltccss/resources_tools_blogs.cfm
Podcasts
• Media files distributed by subscription (paid or
unpaid) over the Internet.
• Can be audio or visual with audio
• People play files on iPod or using iTunes on
computer
• General information at
http://podcasting.arizona.edu
Recording Powerpoint
• To record Powerpoint talks with voice can use
Camtasia.
• Release 4 lets you export as Quicktime movie
(with special settings) which makes it useable by
iTunes.
• Camtasia sold by TechSmith
www.techsmith.com
• Single user license is $299. Can download trial.
Discussion of Experiences and
Observations
Why are you considering an online course?
Can this be used with all students?
Face-to-face teaching
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Advantages?
Disadvantages?
Student requirements?
Instructor requirements?
Online teaching
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Advantages?
Disadvantages?
Student requirements?
Instructor requirements?
Think about
• Is this totally being taught online or is there
a face-to-face component?
• Length of class (length of individual
“lessons” and over what time period and at
what interval)
• What do you want students to learn?
• What expect students to do/show?
Things to do
• Decide on content and its format
• Decide on length of a given session and
frequency
• Decide how students will interact with
each other
• Decide on exercises or quizzes
• Decide about topics for discussion