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The DL newsletter is a monthly online flyer published by IDEAL (Interactive Distance Education for All Learners) to provide faculty with current news and initiatives in online learning at BGSU. Each newsletter will contain online pedagogy articles, training and workshop dates, online teaching tips, online teaching resources, and interviews with BGSU faculty or staff who teach online.

DL News and Updates

• "BGSU is accredited from the North Central Association for its distance learning programs at BGSU and has also been granted the "Best Practices in Student Services" designation by the Ohio Learning Network."
  
  
  ** Join the growing community of leaders in distance learning at BGSU by participating in the free 3 week ONLINE faculty training program beginning August 1st.**

• The next IDEAL Online Faculty Training Program begins August 1st and ends August 19th-- Sign up soon to reserve your spot in the course.
  • Click here to view details and register or call IDEAL secretary,Debbie, at 419-372-6792.
    
• IDEAL also offers face-to-face training for online course design:
  • Click here to view face-to-face training schedule for online course design.
    
• Blackboard Course Management System update
  Blackboard Release 6.2 has just been installed and provides additional functionality as well as resolves many issues experienced with the current version of Blackboard. Listed below are new features of Blackboard 6.2:
  Test Answer Download: Instructors can now download the results of a test. This allows them to track student performance across sections of a course and across semesters using 3rd-party statistical analysis tools.
  Survey Response Download: Instructors and organization managers can now aggregate data and perform item-level analysis.
  Quick Tool Linking: Instructors can now add material to the content page, add a discussion board forum, add a live chat, or any tool directly in any area of the course with only a few clicks.
  SCORM Player: This simplifies the proper handling and display of SCORM 1.2 and NLN compliant content by bundling the player into Blackboard.
  IMS Content Player: This supports reuse of content developed under IMS standards within specific content areas, facilitating faculty collaboration with peers and use of the best quality content.
  
  For information about resolved issues and for more details about the upgrade to Blackboard 6.2, go to: http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/its/blackboard/bb62.html

Effective Online Pedagogy: Choosing the right online assessment to meet your learning objectives.

There are many ways to approach assessment in distance learning just as there are many options in the traditional classroom. By using an assortment of assessment methods online, you will address the students’ different learning styles and more effectively measure if the intended learning outcomes are being achieved.

• Assessment methods for students to:
  
  • Think critically and make judgments: Discussion, Essays, Reports, Journals, Guided Research, Group Collaboration
  • Solve problems and develop plans: Case Studies, Simulations/Role Play, Team Design, Drill-and-Practice
  • Perform procedures and demonstrate techniques: Hands-on Activity, Virtual Classroom
  • Manage and develop oneself: Journals, Portfolios, Learning Contracts
  • Access and manage information: Annotated Bibliography, Guided Analysis, WebQuest/Scavenger Hunt
  • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding: Exams, Quizzes, Reports, Essays
  • Design, create, and perform: Projects, Portfolios
  • Communicate: Reports, Journals, Essays, Oral presentations, Role Plays, Debates, Discussions

Tip of the Month: Working in Groups
Working in Groups is a very effective way of learning and solving problems in both the f2f and online environment. As a BGSU Online faculty member, it is important to know how to set up and manage Groups for your own online classroom in Blackboard. Check out this quicktime movie on how to create Groups in Blackboard. (movie clip taken from the IDEAL online faculty training program)

Click here to view the Quicktime movie on setting up a Group in a Blackboard Course.


Online Instructor Training
The internet is a powerful tool but teaching online is an art. Gain the confidence to master the art of teaching online by participating in this online workshop. An online course is not a repository for information. It is an interactive, collaborative, and informative method of instruction. Join your colleagues in learning how to harness the power of online instruction by participating in a 3 week online workshop delivered via Blackboard and facilitated by a distance learning specialist. Just like most distance courses, this course works around your schedule rather than vice versa. The best way to learn how to teach effectively online is to first become a student online. More info on this course below.

August 1st - August 19th: Three Week Online Faculty Training program- Click here to learn more and enroll in the online training program or for more information call 419-372-6843, or e-mail ideal@bgsu.edu
Face-to-Face Instructor Training
Click here to view face-to-face training seminars and schedule for online course design.

Q&A with Featured BGSU Faculty Member: Dr. Paul Cesarini

1. What do you teach and how long have you been teaching online?
It depends on how you define "online". I have been teaching and learning with technology for over a decade now, and began integrating electronic communications technologies into my courses back in 1999. These were comparatively primitive, text-based MUD and MOO [multi-user domain] environments, usually coupled with LAN-based chat clients and some external web links.

2. Why do you think teaching online is as effective as teaching face to face? Don't the students need to be in a physical classroom to learn?
Many times I teach both web-based and web-centric sections of the same course, during the same semester. While the content is similar, it needs to be tailored to different delivery mechanisms. For example, presentations might be more visually-based for my face-to-face sections, since I am there to provide additional context, but might be more text-based for my web-based classes. Alternately, the web-based classes allow me to explore different methods of communicating this content with my students, including using the Digital Video Streaming Server (DVSS) to store and stream some of my own audio or video content, and even experimenting with newer methods such as podcasting.

3. You use a variety of media in your online courses. What kind of multimedia do you use and how does it enhance the students' experience and learning retention?
The best approach I've found is a "shotgun method" of having a variety of different types of content accessible to my students. This includes PDF-based handouts, PowerPoint files with images, text, and external links, numerous online articles, externally-streamed audio and video clips, internally-streamed audio and video clips, extensive group discussion forums, occasional hardcopy texts, and infrequent virtual classroom chats.

4. What do you think the major differences are between a poorly designed and facilitated online course and a course that has an excellent instructional design and is facilitated properly?
Ultimately, people will have different learning styles regardless of how effective or ineffective a course is designed. Courses that are 100% web-based, and well-organized, designed, and moderated will likely have a great deal of success. Yet, even then there will still be students who feel too removed, overwhelmed, or otherwise confused to continue. As optimistic as we'd all like to be about it -- myself included -- distance education can be a terrific tool for teaching and learning, but it is still not for everyone.

5. Assessment is a crucial component of any learning environment. Do you think some methods of assessment are more conducive to online education than others? Why? What are some assessment methods you use in your online course?
No single approach can be a silver bullet for assessment in web-based courses, so I again opt for a shotgun approach that involves papers, exams, discussion forums, polls, virtual office hours in the chat room, and frequent feedback and communication on my part throughout the semester.

6. How do you deal with copyright issues online? What would you recommend to faculty who are using materials, including multi-media online that are not their own original works?
To say that it's complicated would be a colossal understatement. BGSU is currently drafting a comprehensive fair use policy for copyright materials used in face-to-face and web-based classes. Even when it is completed, navigating that all-too-often blurred line that balances the Copyright Act with the DMCA and the TEACH Act will still be somewhere between difficult and frustrating for many faculty.

In terms of what I would recommend to faculty in this regard, I would suggest all faculty consider joining and supporting "digital rights" groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), DigitalConsumer.org, and others. I'd also recommend faculty support legislation that will promote a fair and flexible use of digital media, such as the proposed Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (DMCRA). I'd also suggest that every single faculty member in every discipline across campus subscribe to WIRED, Technology Review, and Mobile.

Further, I would suggest all faculty read News.com, Slashdot.org, Wired.com, Techweb.com, the Sci-Tech section of Google News, technology-related articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and possibly The Register and Information Week on a daily basis. Then, I'd recommend every faculty member read the Benton.org Communications-related Headlines each morning, and perhaps a few others. I read all this, every single day, and I'm still just barely able to comprehend how this ongoing transition to digital will impact teaching and learning. This daily ritual has become both invaluable and unnerving for me, in that the more I read about issues in this area, the more I become aware of how little I actually know and consequently how much more I need to become involved and informed.