IDEAL to present at National Conference
Director of Distance Learning, Connie Molnar, and Instructional Designer, Terence Armentano will be presenting IDEAL's Online Faculty Training Program at the Distance Learning Conference 2006 in Madison Wisconsin. The 3 week training program has been a very effective method of providing BGSU faculty with an authentic online learning experience while guiding faculty in good online teaching pedagogy and exposing them to new and emerging technologies in distance education.
IDEAL HOSTS TANZANIAN DELEGATION
In June, the IDEAL staff hosted a roundtable discussion of distance education opportunities between BGSU staff and business and education leaders from Tanzania, co-sponsored by the Great Lakes Consortium and BGSU's Continuing & Extended Education. IDEAL HOSTS TANZANIAN Presentations by CEE's Stan Lewis, Director of Adult Learner Services, Michael Bankey, Assistant Dean for Professional and Community Education, and IDEAL's Connie Molnar and Bruce Edwards, sparked an interest in the delegation for further collaboration on online training and credit course delivery in major urban areas of Tanzania. The Graduate College's Assistant Dean, Terry Lawrence, had made a trip to Tanzania in the Spring, exploring the possibility of web-based degree delivery to Tanga, TZ. Last summer, Associate Dean for Distance Education and International Programs, Bruce Edwards, secured a Fulbright grant with the help of the Great Lakes Consortium that sponsored eight NW Ohio teachers on a five-week journey at the major teaching centers of Tanzania. Plans are continuing to pilot the delivery of BGSU course work to Tanga.  For more information on this project or if you are interested in other international online opportunities, contact Bruce Edwards at 2-7302 or <edwards@bgsu.edu>

IDEAL welcomes new staff members
BEKA ROGERS has joined IDEAL as our administrative assistant and is ready to assist you in scheduling appointments and answering questions about faculty services offered by IDEAL at 2-6792 or <rogersr@bgsu.edu>



JEFF GRILLIOT, in his new capacity as Director of Global Initiatives, will work with IDEAL in exploring online training opportunities and degree-completion partnerships with international campuses. Jeff can be reached at 2-8896 or <jgrilli@bgsu.edu>

Important Updates: Discussion Board

In the newest version of Blackboard version 7.1, several new features will be added the Discussion Board that will change the overall direction of online communication.

Forum and Thread Grading
Grading settings will be available when creating or modifying a forum in a Course. When grading settings are enabled for a discussion forum, both Instructors and Teaching Assistants will be able to assign a grade to any discussion forum, post, or thread. If thread grading is enabled for the forum, Instructors have the option to turn grading on or off for each new thread.

Discussion Board Statistics
The total number of forums in which the user has participated is displayed for each user in this column. Clicking on the number in this column directs the instructor to a user detail page that displays links to all forums in which the user has participated and usage statistics for the user in each forum.

Rate Posting
Post rating allows users to rate posts in the forum on a scale of one to five stars. When enabled, post rating is a simple yet effective tool for peer review.

Thread Subscriptions
Subscribe to Thread feature can be used to notify both instructors and students each time a new post is added to the thread. The notification is enabled by the user and sent to the email address stored in the user's Personal Information.

 


Do you want to teach online but don't know how to get started? Contact Connie Molnar, IDEAL Director at cmolnar@bgsu.edu or 419.372.7900 for assistance.






Listen to IDEAL's first Audiocast:
BGSU Professor, Dr. Barbara Toth, located in China, talks with IDEAL about collaboration and engagement efforts, via Skype. Use IDEAL's Audio player to listen to IDEAL's first AudioCast.
Skype is a VOIP tool that enables free PC to PC calls anywhere in the world. Skype and other VOIP tools can be an effective asset in the online environment. Terence Armentano, Instructional Designer for IDEAL at BGSU, used Skype to talk with BGSU faculty, Dr. Barbara Toth, for free from China about her collaboration efforts on the development of a writing center. Terence used the free audio recording program, Audacity, to record and save the conversation as an mp3

Teaching Online
by: Michael Kudela
Instructional Designer - IDEAL, BGSU

I have been an Instructional Designer for a few years, and this summer I was offered the opportunity to teach the 3 week Online Faculty Training Program for IDEAL. Looking back now, I can say that it was a fantastic experience in which the participants and I grew in our understanding of sound online teaching and learning.

My students were eager to learn and I was happy to facilitate. The first day discussion assignment filled up the forum quickly. Reading through everyone's responses gave me a solid understanding to the people behind each post. The energy in the course was high and I felt like the class had moved well beyond the boundaries of what was required.

By the second week of class, I found myself spending more time interacting on the discussion board. With every new post, I found myself being drawn into the position of an online instructor. I looked for opportunities to branch current discussions into new topics. I researched and introduced new technologies in online learning into the course.

The third and final week, things started to slow down as the class spent most of the time finishing their group assignments. The groups presented their materials and really synthesized the important concepts of the course. The class members finished strong and I feel that we all left the course with a better understanding of what it takes to be a better online instructor.


To learn more about online learning, contact ideal@ideal.bgsu

Bring the Discussion Board to Life

Student interaction is one of the main components to building successful online learning environments. Student interaction in an online learning environment can either hinder or increase the success of a student in an online course. Without effective communication, the online course ceases to be a classroom for learning and becomes a holding place for documents.

It is important for facilitators to implement and enforce procedures that direct student responses to be written in a clear and professional manner to help students understand their fellow peers. The syllabus is the best place to start for setting the tone of an online course. IDEAL encourages instructors to include a section in the syllabus that covers how online communication in the discussion board will be handled. This will help avoid student responses of “I Agree”, “Yes”, “No”, and “What they said”.

IDEAL also recommends that instructors include a discussion rubric or guide that will help to set student expectations for online discussions. Participating in and online discussion might be a new concept for students, so it is helpful when instructors lay out exactly what they are looking for in student participation. This can be accomplished by using examples in the discussion rubric of what you think counts as a high-quality answer. Also, providing examples of what does not count as an answer will help students understand their role in your course better.

For more information on teaching online or setting up a successful online course, please contact IDEAL at ideal.bgsu.edu

Firefox as an E-Learning Tool:
Internet Explorer is the supported web-browser for Instructors to use for creating courses in Blackboard, however, if you are using Internet Explorer for general web surfing, then you are missing out on a much richer and powerful web browser called Firefox. In a previous e-Learning Newsletter, Terence Armentano, Instructional Designer for IDEAL, wrote about the Firefox web browser and provided a video tutorial on how to use it's built in RSS reader. If you don't know what RSS is, then do a Google search on "RSS" and learn. It's revolutionizing the way we receive and manage information on the internet. Though Internet Explorer is still better for working in Blackboard because that is what they support, Firefox is a better alternative to Internet Explorer for browsing the web in general for many reasons (more options, rss, add-ons, security, etc), and the following article supports that idea in the area of e-learning by explaining how one can use Firefox as an e-learning tool. Read Full Article
IDEAL's 3 week Online Faculty Training Program
Next 3 Week ONLINE Faculty Training Program: August 7th - 25th

What BGSU faculty are saying:

  • “All of it was valuable.  Perhaps most useful was seeing what could be done, the detailed instructions and being in a position of being forced to complete assignments........seeing it through the eyes of the student.”
  • “Overall, I found this extremely valuable and will recommend it to colleagues.”

An online course is much more than a repository of information. It is an interactive, collaborative, and informative method of instruction. What better way to learn how to teach effectively online than to experience it from the student's point of view. Join your colleagues for 3 weeks in learning how to harness the power of online instruction by participating in a completely online workshop via Blackboard and facilitated by a distance learning specialist. Just like most distance courses, this course works around your schedule rather than vice versa. After completing this workshop, you will receive an IDEAL Certificate of Training and you will join the ranks of other leaders in e-Learning at BGSU as a member of the BGSU e-Learning Colloquium.

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

NOTE: This course is most beneficial for instructors somewhat new to facilitation and course design in the online environment.

The Distance Learning newsletter is published bi-monthly 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.

"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."