Archive for the ‘eLearning’ Category

The economy is slumping and so is your department budget. Luckily for you, lots of programs can be used for free! Use the resources in this presentation to tackle the technology problems that haunt you – online office hours, course design, avatars, surveys, image-sharing, video-capture, mind maps, website-building, and much more.

Best of the Ed Tech Freebies AMATYC 2009

You can access all the links for all the programs in a Zumlink here.

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Originally, I started this post with the title “What I’m doing with Wolfram|Alpha” and then I revised it, because it’s not just me using Wolfram|Alpha.  My students are using it too.  Here are some of the things we’re doing:

Discussion Boards: Wolfram|Alpha + Jing = Awesome

Before Wolfram|Alpha, it could take several steps to get a graph or the solution to solving an equation to the discussion board in an online class.  You had to use some program to generate the graph or the equations, then make a screenshot of the work, then get that hyperlink, image, or embed code to the discussion board.

With Wolfram|Alpha, sometimes a simple link suffices.  Suppose, for example, I needed to explain the last step in a calculus problem where the students have to find where there is a horizontal tangent line.  After finding the derivative, they have to set it equal to zero and solve the equation (and calculus students notoriously struggle with their algebra skills).  Rather than writing out all the steps to help a student on the discussion board, I could just provide the link to the solution and tell them to click on “Show Steps.”

Sometimes, a bit more explanation may be required, and in these circumstances, Jing + Wolfram|Alpha really comes in handy.  For instance, I needed to show how to reflect a function over the line y=1.

Here’s what the reflection over y=1 looks like.  If you graph y=sqrt(x) and y=-sqrt(x)+1 you will see that they are not reflected over y=1.

Here’s another example of Wolfram|Alpha + Jing:

Classroom Demonstrations

We’re also finding that Wolfram|Alpha can be a good program to use for exploratory learning.  One of the subjects we cover in Math for Elementary Teachers (MathET) is ancient numeration systems.  Rather than just tell students how the Babylonian number system worked, students can use Wolfram|Alpha to explore the number systems until they’ve worked out the pattern.

1. Start by exploring numbers under 50 (42, 37, 15, 29).
2. Now ask students to figure out where the pattern changes (hint: it’s between 50 and 100).
3. Explore numbers in the next tier and see if they can figure out at what number the next place digit gets added.
4. Discuss how a zero is written (and why this is problematic).

Supplement to Online Course Shell

Another topic in Math for Elementary Teachers is learning to perform operations in alternate-base systems (like Base 5 and Base 12).  You can easily supplement your online course shell by providing additional practice problems and then linking to the answers with Wolfram|Alpha.

1. Find the sum of 234 and 313 in base 5.  (answer)
2. Subtract 234 from 412 in base 5. (answer)
3. Multiply 234 by 3 in base 5. (answer)

Student Projects

Wolfram|Alpha has also started making its way into student projects because of the ease of just linking to the mathematics instead of writing out or drawing the math.  Here are a few examples.

For one of the calculus learning projects, the group built a mindmap that demonstrates the graphs and translations of exponential and logarithmic functions.

Another group recorded some help tutorials on using Wolfram|Alpha for evaluating limits.  Here are two of their videos (one with sound and one without).

Several of the MathET students have used Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Demonstration links as they mapped out the concepts in our units.

Checking Solutions and Writing Tests

Personally, I’m finding that I use Wolfram|Alpha from a simple calculator to a CAS for checking answers as I write a test.  I’ve also been snagging images of graphs from Wolfram|Alpha to use on tests (use Jing for simple screenshots). Here’s a short 1-minute tutorial on how to change the plot windows to get the image you desire.

Homework Day

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you.  I’ll be down in Champaign, IL for the rest of the week at Wolfram Research.  Tomorrow I’ll be one of the “experts” participating in Wolfram|Alpha Homework Day (a live, interactive web event).  The events begin at noon (CST) and end around 2am.  I’ll be interviewed somewhere around 3 pm and participate in a panel discussion about technology and math education at 8pm.

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For anyone who has ever had trouble convincing your administration to give you the proper tools to teach online, I give you this little gift: eLearning Tools for STEM, published today in eLearning Magazine.

The tools for STEM eLearning

1. Tablets
2. Recording & editing software
3. Jing
4. Equation software and training
5. Synchronous communication system
6. Online homework system

Other head-turning resources for STEM

• Wolfram Demonstrations
• Digital libraries (a lengthy list)
• Video collections (another list)
• TI-SmartView

Other tips (about accessibility, computer labs, etc) can be found at the end of the article.

You can read about all the tools, and why I recommend them, by going to the article, eLearning Tools for STEM.

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This is a follow up to Starting from Scratch (Part I).  Whether you’ve already built an online course from scratch or whether you’re facing the inevitability of doing it sometime in the future, it’s like starting with a blank slate.

This semester, I’m building a course shell for Math for Elementary Teachers.  It is a course I’ve taught before, but I haven’t taught it for a few years and so there is no “digital” course shell for it.  Even though this is a completely traditional course (meeting four hours a week in person), I’m using the opportunity of teaching it to build a digital shell that will (a) enrich the course and (b) will serve as a strong base for an online or hybrid course in the future.

In Starting from Scratch (Part I) and in Dump Schedule-driven Course Design I discussed how to create the general structure of a course shell.  Now we begin to fill it with good stuff as we prep to teach the topic.

When we begin, there is literally nothing in the folder for this topic (Sets and Venn Diagrams):

1. Add the written materials you have created yourself. This might consist of a set of notes, worksheets, group activities, or handouts. You should put all the materials in a file format that will open on any platform (PC or Mac).  I suggest you use either RTF (rich-text format) or PDF.  If you use PDF, make sure that students download Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files.  I also like to add a thumbnail image (if the handout has visuals on it) to remind myself (and the students) what this handout looks like (see below).

Even if you plan to pass these materials out in class, you should place them in the course shell.  This will make it easy for y0u to find the appropriate materials to print the next time around, and, in the future, the students in this shell might be fully online students and they will be able to print the files themselves.  Having access to the handouts is also handy for students that miss class – they don’t have to wait until the next class to get these materials from you.

2. Plan where you will make video lessons. For every topic there are some points that are harder to understand than others.  I do live recordings in class, and I actually plan for these at this step in the process.  In the course shell you’ll see “Watch the video on finding intersections and unions (not here yet).”  After I’ve edited and produced the video, I will go back and insert the missing videos.

3. Find interactive media. The next thing I look for is interactive media by doing a general Internet search and by looking at more well-vetted resources (like digital libraries or digital materials from the publisher).  For math, there are several places I always look: Wolfram Demonstrations, NLVM,and  NSDL.

You could easily waste a lot of time browsing through games, applets, videos, etc. so it’s important that you STOP once you find a few good supplements to the topic.  There’s always the next semester to find more good stuff!

4. Meet Specific goals. Depending on the course, you may have specific goals that you want to meet as you prep the course.  For example, you may want to add a 3-question quiz to the end of each topic.  Perhaps you want to look for application problems to include with every topic.  Maybe you want to add a concept-oriented question for discussion.  This semester, I am checking Wolfram Alpha to see how it handles every topic that we cover and including examples that link to the W|A pages, where appropriate.

5. Add humor and/or videos of interest. Even though this step is the most fun, I save it for last because it is really just the spice that flavors the rest of the material.  You’re likely to stumble across most of this while you are doing the rest of your searching.  This is where I add cartoons, funny YouTube videos, and interesting TED talks that mention the topic.  Honestly, I don’t usually set out to find this stuff, it’s the material you either know about already or it’s the stuff that you slowly accumulate over time.  It never hurts to look though!

6. Assignment. I save this step for last, because I don’t know the whole assignment until I see what I can find on the Internet.  Usually it’s a mix of reading, some textbook problems (or online homework), and time doing interactive applets.  Even though I save this for last, I place it first in the list of items for the section so that it’s easy to find.

Here’s what this looks like when I’m finished:

To see a “live link” (and larger) version of this page, click here.

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What do you see when you look out at your students?  Do you see them writing down everything you write and everything you say?  How does it make you feel?  Honored, proud, powerful?

What if those same students then put those notes online and share them with the rest of the class, or the world?  What if they sold those notes to a note-selling business like Einstein’s Notes, for profit?  Would you be okay with that?

Michael Moulton, a University of Florida professor felt violated when it happened to him.  So much so, that he filed a lawsuit in 2008.  An article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed shows Moulton’s frustration with students who participate in these activities.

A more recent altercation took place at San Jose State University.  Here, it was determined that the student does have the right to display homework results online.

Many professors invite the use of shared notes amongst classmates.  They see it as an opportunity for collaborative study.  A research paper by DeZure, Kaplan & Deerman indicates that  students (in general) fail to record 40% of the important points in a typical lecture.  First-year students, on average, do considerably worse.

Whatever your take on this, there are several note taking and sharing sites available today.

Here are just a few sites available for free:

• NoteMesh — this site seems like the most honest of the bunch in that students collaborate to build a set of good notes and there is no profit to be made.  Students have to  indicate their college/university and add their classes to their profile upon registering.  Students in the same class can then post and edit their own notes.  Since each class uses a wiki, students are able to view and edit their peers notes as well.  Like most wikis, there is a “history feature” which allows you to remove any changes if necessary.  The real question, in my mind, is whether the site has build in LaTex compatibility so that math notes can be shared (I doubt it, as this is not addressed anywhere in the FAQs).

• Notecentric — this site is similar to NoteMesh but also gives the user the ability to “spy” on other classes.

• Knetwit – students can (try to) make money off their class notes (one muses to oneself why the student without notes does not just pick up and read their textbook instead)

• Sharenotes –  students (or presumably the professor) can post notes and charge by the download if you’d like.  You can also browse institutions  for specific notes on specific classes.  Some notes are shared free of charge.  Should professors really be charging for notes?  I think not.  Nor should students, though.
  

• University Notes — in addition to sharing notes and/or tests nationwide, students can also rate their professors here and use the on-site blog.

Here are some links to other blog posts / articles on this topic in case you are, like us, morbidly fascinated with this industry that is emerging around the economy of notes:

• The corridor of uncertainty
• Taking notes beyond the classroom
• Sharing your notes online – and getting paid for it
• Finished with your exam? Good, now share it.

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Very rarely do learning management systems (Blackboard, Angel, D2L, etc.) do math well.  However this is definitely the exception.

Personally, I use Moodle as an LMS on TeachingCollegeMath to host discussion groups and workshop materials.  It’s free, it’s relatively painless to get it up and running, and frankly, it tends to get features that incorporate new technologies faster than the other guys.

One thing that Moodle does particularly well is math.  Just turn on the LaTeX editor and you’re good to go.  When I was getting started, I asked Bob to make us a tutorial on how to get your math editing up and running in Moodle.  Kindly, he obliged (click here) and I was surprised how easy it is.   I swear, this one is painless.  First, you turn on TeX notation in Moodle:

Then you can use TeX or use MathType to paste the TeX into Moodle!  Since I am notoriously bad at using TeX, Bob was nice enough to make me a second video showing us exactly how to go from MathType to Moodle.  The surprising part?  You can go in reverse too!  Just drag the equations from Moodle back to MathType!  Watch the video to see how.

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This is just priceless.

“but still … I wouldn’t trade … teaching online in my robe everyday…”

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In a previous post called Starting from Scratch (Part I), I mentioned that I think it’s a mistake to design an online course around the schedule. I received several questions via email asking me to elaborate on why I think it’s a mistake to do schedule-driven design, so here we go…

First, let me be very clear that I do have a schedule for every course. I just don’t design the course around the schedule. If a student wants to see when an assignment is due or when a test will be, they can, in one click, view the schedule for the course. However, as far as the design goes, the schedule is almost always the very last thing I create. What keeps students on track in the online course is the due dates for online homework and the test dates. As they become motivated to complete the assignments and learning tasks, they go diving in to the learning materials.

Many instructional designers and eLearning professionals will tell you that “best practice” for online course is to design the course around the activities and content for each week – making the “week” the unit of instructional design. Let’s me see if I can explain why I think this is problematic.

1. Schedule-driven design makes it difficult for students to find learning materials. Suppose you’re a student, and it’s roughly the middle of the semester, and you’re studying for an exam. You know there are few topics you need to go back and look at, and you know that the material is available somewhere in your online course. Here’s what you see when you log in to view the course materials:

Are those screens helpful to you? Do they immediately direct you to the content that you’re interested in? Do they reinforce your knowledge of the vocabulary that’s used?

Designing around the “week” may even give the mistaken impression idea that learning takes place at a particular time, and once you’re past that time, you should be done with that learning. Schedule-driven design implies that learning is complete when the week is over, while real learning takes place whenever we become engaged and interested. At the moment when a student becomes engaged and interested, it should be easy to find the appropriate learning materials.

2. Schedule-driven design makes it difficult for instructors to place learning materials. Now suppose you’re the instructor. One of your colleagues has just sent you an awesome YouTube video that you know would be the perfect addition to your online course. So you log into the course in order to find the appropriate place to put this video. Here’s what you see:

Was that helpful to you? Could you immediately determine the proper location to insert that video in the course? Again, the structure of the schedule-driven design has gotten in the way. As you find new learning material to enhance your online course, it should be easy to locate the proper place to put it.

Look at these screenshots instead, from a course designed around the content instead of the schedule:

Do you see the difference?

3. You should not have to redesign everything when the course format or schedule changes. Suppose you spend gobs of time carefully designing an online course to run in a 15-week semester using a schedule driven design concept. This is all well and good until somebody informs you that you’ll be teaching a 10-week hybrid version of this course in the next semester. Guess what? You’re now going to have to redesign the entire digital platform around that new schedule and format. That really seems like a waste of time that could be better spent designing good learning experiences. If only you had designed around the content, all you would have to do is think about ways to change the assessment and engagement for a hybrid format, and set a new course pace in a separate schedule.

4. Learning should be flexible within the semester. When the course design is schedule-driven, it becomes difficult to make course corrections during the semester. With a content-designed format, if we need to spend a little more time on a topic, I don’t have to worry that my whole course designers will be thrown off by that. I can make a simple adjustment in a one-page schedule or make an announcement that we’re altering course slightly. However, the online course environment has not changed in the least bit.

5. Online course design should emphasize learning vocabulary. We give lots of lip-service to improving our students’ communication skills and encouraging them to read and practice with vocabulary. And then what do we do? We design courses around folders called “Week 1,Week 2, Week 3…” I design courses around folders with names like “Functions and Models, Limits and Derivatives, Differentiation Rules,…” Inside these folders are more detailed, concept-oriented folders that say things like “Tangent and Velocity Problems” and “The Limit of a Function.” As students navigate through the course and go back to relearn something they didn’t quite catch the first time, the course structure emphasizes vocabulary. Not only that, it helps students to form a “big picture” structure of how topics fit together as they navigate the course structure. Would you rather have students understand that velocity is part of understanding derivatives, or have students that understand that velocity was something that they learned in week three?

6. Online course design should make it easy to continue to add new materials. It is much easier to continue to add layers of material to a digital course platform if it’s easy to find learning objectives for the course. I never have to redesign the course simply because it runs in a different format or different number of weeks. My face-to-face course shell, my hybrid course shell, and my online course shell all look exactly the same from a design standpoint. The assignments for the students and the assessment of the students might vary slightly depending on the course format, but this is simply a layer sits on top of the course design. With each semester, the digital course platform becomes a richer place for the students to explore and learn. Every semester I add more content: website references, clever YouTube videos, videos that I record in class, videos that students record and are willing to share, games that help teach particular learning concepts, etc. If I were designing around the schedule, then I would spend a great deal of time every year rearranging the course to fit within the specific weeks, holidays, and format, instead of spending that time finding valuable material that might help my students learn better.

7. Online course design should facilitate use for instructional reference. I use the digital course platform course shell as a reference for my own teaching. Five years ago, I had a system of binders that contained lecture notes, group activities, worksheets, etc. Before each class I would consult the binder to see what materials and notes I had available to use in class. Today I consult the course shell. The one-page schedule tells me roughly what I need to cover to stay on track for the semester, but I dive into the “Virtual Classroom” of materials to see what I have available to me in my toolkit for class. The Virtual Classroom is an index of all the learning materials I’ve found over the last several years. I won’t use all of it, but it allows me to be really flexible with what we do in class. I can constantly assess how well the students are learning, and then adjust based on that assessment. If we don’t “cover” something in class, I know it’s available to students in the digital materials and that they can access it later. If a student asks a question, and I’ve found an interactive demonstration that would help answer the question, I know exactly where to find it. If a group of students comes up with a really clever way to explain a concept, I can ask them if they’re willing to record it and then add it to the course shell after class, sharing their wisdom with all of the successive students that follow them.

I used to have digital courses designed around the schedule. But all of those courses have become obsolete as schedules and formats changed, and every single one of them has been deleted from my archive for lack of use. The digital courses I design today are designed around content and learning. I am always on the lookout for new materials to add to the courses and every semester, the learning materials are better than the semester before. All I require to get ready for a new semester is a copy of the digital materials from the previous semester, and a new 1-page schedule.

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Subtitle: Why you should create a course shell for every course you teach, and not just the online courses.

I’m teaching Math for Elementary Teachers this Fall semester for the first time in several years.  The last time I taught the course was the semester when I was learning to teach math online, and as such, I do not have a digital collection of materials for the repeat this fall.

The course that I’m teaching in the fall is completely traditional.  We meet twice a week for two hours at a time.  The students will purchase traditional textbooks and there is no online homework.  Nonetheless, I am spending the day today creating a topic-oriented course shell for this course.  Why?

1. I know that eventually, I will teach this course in an alternate format (hybrid, online, etc.) and so I should begin collecting digital materials as I find them.
2. I will begin recording parts of lessons with my tablet and make them available to students to view outside of class.
3. I will ask the students to do some digital projects and it will provide a place to archive and share those materials.
4. It is now how I organize all my classes, and I’d like to try to convince you that you should too.

So here I am, starting from scratch, and I’m going to share my process with you.

The first step in the process is to choose good base materials for the course (text or online materials).  My choice of texts was motivated by looking for something that would help me model the way I would like these future teachers to one day teach in their own classrooms, and so I chose a book that is largely activity-based.  I did search around in hopes of finding a good set of digital materials, but came up empty handed.

Several semesters from now, my growing set of digital materials for this course will be good enough that I could go text-less, but for now, it’s a necessity as I begin the process of seeking out and reviewing how to incorporate those resources.  In this case, the text was so much better than the others, that I have adopted it even though it does not come with online homework.

Second, I requested that my college add the RSS plug-in for our course management system so that I can easily bring in content from several blogs that discuss teaching math at the elementary level.  I could do this manually by linking to stories as they come out, but I prefer to teach the students the habit of continuing to learn and follow those who have good resources and ideas.

Third, I’ve built a topic-oriented “Virtual Classroom” in the course management system.  I should point out that I do not think it is good practice to design the course around the schedule (as is often advocated by eLearning folks).  That’s not to say there shouldn’t be a schedule, just that the course should not be designed around the schedule.  The course should be designed around the content.  For this math class, the online design is pretty easily organized around the textbook.  Here’s a series of screens to show you what my “from scratch” course looks like at this point:

First create a unique "classroom environment" for the course. This will create an easy visual cue for you to easily identify the course shell by the way it looks. Each of my courses has a different banner and menu buttons that match. This banner includes an image of the petroglyphs at "Newspaper Rock" from Canyonlands National Park.

Next outline the major units, chapters, or topics that you want to cover into folders. Start thinking about major projects and assessments you might include, as that will help you with identifying your major topics or units. But don't worry about setting a schedule yet. We'll get to that later.

In each folder, make subtopics (sections if you're designing around a textbook) that include the learning objectives for each subtopic. You will find that including the learning objectives helps both you and the students find the specific information they are looking for.

When I start this process, all the subtopic folders are empty. Don't worry about filling these folders right away. We'll fill these folders as we find appropriate material (e.g. news articles, videos, notes from class) later.

This will be a several-part series, so keep reading for the next installment.  Remember that you can subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog or subscribe via email (see the top of the left-hand panel).

UPDATE: Starting from Scratch (Part II) can now be found here.

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If you’ve ever taught several different courses in the same classroom, you understand the problem. At some point, all the classes start to blend together until you can barely remember who is in which class or what you’ve said where.

This problem seems magnified for online classes, as you do not see the faces of your students when you are “in” each class and there is, therefore, no visual cue to keep them straight. So, as I am teaching three classes with major online components this fall, how will I keep them straight? I especially want to avoid posting the wrong assignments or announcements in a class.

I decided to give each class it’s own unique look, with a different banner and different buttons so that when I am navigating the three classes, it is obvious which one I am in by the color schemes.

The result of my customization: Here are my three classes with their three schemes:

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