What exactly defines a Wow!?
An article posted on our AT&C Facebook page, combined with a couple of conversations that I've had today somewhat all tie together. The gist of the conversation is this: “I know how to use the foundational tools of my LMS. I want to make my content more engaging. Media is always a good answer. Now what? Where do I go from here? What does engaging students online look like?”
I have been pondering this thought for quite a while now. In fact, in 2010, I authored a presentation called: Beyond Lectures-How to Re-Invent Your Online Delivery to Effectively Engage Students. It included specific uses of Web 2.0 tools embedded into course content. I used Xtranormal to create and embed a cartoon of Albert Einstein explaining how to multiply two digit numbers in your head. It is pretty engaging. But it is also a bit difficult to understand because Albert still has a computer voice. So I really recommended Xtranormal for announcements or else supplemented by the universal design concept of having the exact same content available in the LMS is another format such as written text. Another tool I demonstrated was mind maps. Specifically I used Mindomo to demonstrate how the causes of the American Revolution reflect in the text of the Declaration of Independence.
Both tools are great and engaging, but another inevitable problem I encountered was that they are no longer free (or freemium as explained to me by Chris Anderson in a keynote presentation in April 2010). Whereas before, I could use the product for free and just adjust to the lack of some useful tools. Now, if I want to use the tool at all, I need to pay after a very short, mostly ineffective free trial period.
So to recap, I am trying to build content that Wows! I can create videos, mindmaps and a multitude of presentations on the Web. Many are free to use and all can be embedded into my course. So what else is there? I’m not pondering what general ideas are out there but rather specific examples I can share with colleagues to say: “You know, I tried this out and I thought it worked really well.”
There are a couple other ideas I’ve heard recently that I’ve added to my list of ideas to share when asked. The first one came from a colleague in Pennsylvania who told me he learned the idea at a professional development presentation (so if you are reading this and it is your idea, let me know because I’d love to give you credit). Most people are familiar with Wordle which generates word clouds when text is entered. The size of the words correlates to the number of times that word appeared in the text pasted. Large words are presumably important because they repeat many times increasing their size. So, after a robust weekly discussion in a course you are teaching, copy the full text of the discussion contributions, create a Wordle and then add an additional discussion the following week that is a summary/wrap-up discussion. Have the students review the Wordle and summarize in one sentence the most important point from last week’s discussion. Summary and wrap-up are good pedagogy and Wordle makes it engaging.
The other idea I heard yesterday. This one came from an instructor in Iowa who designs each page of content in the LMS as a discussion forum (versus a text/multimedia page or a doc upload or a quiz). The actually content is placed in the introductory text section of the discussion. By doing so, all online course content simulates the view of most content online that includes a comment box below the article. Students can post comments with thoughts and ideas right underneath the article which in this case is course content. The threading is already there so general comments are organized and relevant.
These are four ideas that I’ve encountered or used. Each one of us probably has one or two simple but engaging tricks/methods they include in the online portion of the courses. Just like the voting page of the article referenced in the beginning, I too would love to hear what ideas you have. What tools are you using and exactly what are you doing with that tool (like the Wordle that displays content from a discussion thread). If you reply either in the comments of this blog or post on our Academic Training and Consulting Facebook page, I would love to compile a list of all the ideas out there for creating content in your LMS that wows!
Pamela Kachka
Academic Trainer & Consultant, Teaching & Learning Group
Pearson eCollege
Inter-Institutional Collaboration Project
At the Pearson Cite conference several weeks ago I met with representatives from several colleges who were interested in piloting a Pearson CourseConnect Analytics Edition (CoCo AE) course. The Analytics Edition versions are currently intended for LearningStudio customers who are also using the Learning Outcome Manager (LOM) tool to manage and track student progress toward mastery on learning outcomes.
CoCo AE courses come with student learning outcomes pre-mapped to presentation content and assignments. This mapping also includes assessment rubrics which have both content and assignment type criteria. Pearson’s course authors wrote performance level descriptors for the assignment type rubrics which can be modified if desired. The course design team decided it would be best to allow individual instructors the ability to define their own performance level descriptors for content type criterion (see rubric example below from the American Government course).
Part one of the collaboration will be to get teaching faculty together from participating institutions to work on group authorship of the content type rubrics. We’ll create criteria banks by outcome that all faculty can choose from or adapt for their own instances of a course. Colleges will then run the selected CoCo AE course in their Winter/Spring 2013 terms. For the second collaboration component we intend to work on a data sharing project that will allow peer institutions to see anonymized data on aggregated student performance against commonly taught outcomes. Our hope is to present this project at Pearson Cite 2013 in Chicago.
Another possibility for this type of collaboration is the ability to provide institutions with a new option for the inter-institutional comparability requirements that often accompany professional program accreditor reaffirmations. Historically, the most common compliance method is a standardized assessment measure along with student surveys like CCSSEE or NSSE.
Imagine a future where you could define peer groups and then compare your students’ performance towards mastery on commonly defined learning outcomes against those of your peer institutions along with the very best even if they weren’t in your peer group. My hope is that part of that future involves more inter-institutional collaboration among faculty and content providers like Pearson to create stronger, more effective curriculum that can proves its effectiveness.
While comparison on its own is interesting, an extension would be to consider external benchmarking where an institution could identify peer(s) whose students tend to outperform those of the home institution. Jeffrey Alstete from the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development explains that the benchmarking strategy can be used to improve teaching and learning by studying processes and practices at institutions that excel and then adapting their methods to the context of the home institution (1995).
A key value of benchmarking is that all institutions involved in the study expect something in exchange for participating in the project; even those institutions who are recognized as best in class. (Management Consulting Partners, 2008). This is not a passive endeavor for any participant so, if you’re interested in benchmarking, it’s important to obtain support from senior leadership and to recognize that this effort will require a significant time investment.
Benchmarking is yet another strategy available to add to the assessment toolkit for higher education. We’re excited to engage with our partners to provide direct data on student mastery of learning outcomes and welcome your feedback on additional ways that we can support continuous improvement efforts on your campus.
Works Cited
Alstete, J. W. (1995). Benchmarking in Higher Education: Adapting Best Practices To Improve Quality. ERIC Digest. Retrieved May 7, 2012 from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED402800.pdf.
Management Consulting Partners. (2008). Applying Benchmarking to Higher Education. 1 (2). Retrieved May 7, 2012 from http://www.mcpartnersllc.com/download/Applying%20Benchmarking.pdf
Brian Epp | Assessment and Analytics Group Manager | Pearson eCollege
The Future Of Education?
I've been at my job with (Pearson) eCollege for 10 years this October. I've seen trends come and go. I've watched bells and whistles become staples while staples disappear from existence. Some things change while others stay the same. But during my tenure with the company, in addition to the 17 years of teaching in higher education for which I've never stopped, I am also tired.
I'm tired of defending the same points to people who don't really care about the answers. I'm tired of trying to show people what it's like to move a mile, just to get them to move an inch. I'm tired of the assumptions based solely on "gut" feel or (worse yet) on tradition. You know the fallacy - "We've always done it this way, so we should continue..." I actually heard the head of one of the largest eLearning institutions in the world start a keynote address with this: "We all know that face to face is the best option. But when that isn't possible, here are the best ways to use eLearning."
Huh? Forget the studies that show how online is BETTER in some instances than on-ground. Forget the research which shows how online, with greater transparency and accountability is a better method for getting students through outcomes-based assessment. Forget that data, which can transform education into a personalized learning environment allowing exponentially more students to pass, succeed, and thrive, only comes when we digitize content, delivery, and assessment. And by all means forget that online education is changing the paradigm of learning from those who cannot (be accepted, matriculate, complete, etc), to those who can (pass, graduate, accel). Forget all of that. Let's just keep doing what we're doing that is and has been failing for decades...
...or not! Instead, why not focus on what we can accomplish if education embraces technology like almost every other facet of our world. What would happen if we really opened ourselves up to delivering incredible content, authentic assessments, and practical tasks to help students work, live, and thrive. Imagine.
Imagine a student sitting on a bus. Maybe a flying bus. (Ok, maybe not - did you know we have pictures of "future" vehicles flying dating back to the 1700's?) But this student is looking at her tablet device. She's a pre-med student going through A&P. So, she clicks on her device, powered by the sun of course, and goes into a lesson on the heart. Immediately a 3-Dimensional heart starts slowly turning above her device. This heart can be turned by her, examined by her, and even sliced open to reveal its contents. Of course, with her ear bud in, she can hear the instructor going through the sections as she views them. Or, she can watch a real heart pumping in a video based on various contexts like during exercise, when in distress, or while sleeping. When her bus arrives, she simply clicks off the tablet and heads to work.
Another group of students is studying statistics. There is a problem that asks them to discern numbers within a given culture. They are in a late night study session in their school's commons area. One of them suggests they step into a room where one wall is made entirely of an HD monitor. A student touches the monitor which switches on. He logs into an account and sends a video conference request to a friend in another country. Immediately the wall is transformed into a window for another classroom 10,000 miles away. Now two student groups on two continents start working the problem together. They share ideas, data, and learning methodologies as they also connect on a personal level. They simply use their fingers to draw facts and figures on the wall - many of which are translated into another language, all of which are dually usable by both groups. The session lasts for 45 minutes when both groups decide to take their new understandings and craft a solution. The wall becomes a wall again.
An instructor begins class. Students login to their devices (mobile, pc, etc) to hear her speaking, but only seeing blackness. Soon though, the blackness becomes gray. Her talking continues as she describes the geothermal tunnels she is walking through. She is trying to research potential problems with the Earth's crust through a research grant, but what better opportunity to illustrate her findings with the next generation of scientist? The entire class experience occurs through the camera attached to her helmet, with the students able to ask direct and poignant questions along the way.
A class of 400 is broken into groups of 15. The instructor begins the simultaneous lecture / webcast, "Welcome to History 215. You have been placed in groups and have been given a packet which includes journal articles, websites, riddles, and puzzles. Your job is to find out who Nymon Lester is and stop him from harming our school. This 55 year old has more power than you can imagine and is using it to destroy something valuable to everyone hearing my voice. You only have 48 hours. GO!" Immediately students scatter as they devise strategies, assign roles and tasks, and establish norms for their immersive group experience. The course will be over in 2 days and only one group will win.
Finally, we find a woman in her early 50's. She has gone back to school after raising a family, but she doesn't remember much. She needs help. So, as she opens her Algebra eBook during the lecture, she watches the instructor start to piece together a problem on the eBoard. Soon, he asks the students to try it on their own. When she tries to do a similar problem, she gets stuck on step 2 and the book pulls in some content from a remedial math course to show her a video, give her a simpler problem, and help her get to a place where she can succeed. By the end of the lesson, she is caught up. Her digital course remembers what she struggled with and will remind her the next time she logs on to cement the learning, but she is not nearly as far behind as she could be.
Do you see it? More importantly, are you preparing for it? Because it's coming. Every technology described here is being worked on somewhere and even a few exist today. Oh, and don't forget the administrator who can call all of it up on her computer, create a report of the institution's teaching and learning efficacy, and email that to three accountability groups for quick perusal.
So my friends, when you get tired of the fight, remember these things. If you hear the fallacious arguments from those in power, just nod and smile. They will retire. Or, when the change is finally too great, they'll simply leave. In the meantime, keep setting up the foundations of education to prepare for this reality. It's coming. And it's going to be more than amazing...it's going to be transformative.
Good luck and good teaching.
Dr. Jeff D Borden
VP of Instruction & Academic Strategy
Pearson LTG
Aristotle and Online Course Design
According to Aristotelian principles of rhetoric, there are three types of appeal that are necessary for a rhetorically balanced argument: logos, or logical appeal; pathos, or emotional appeal; and ethos, or ethical appeal. The ethical appeal is one that usually confuses my writing students. They often mistake its meaning by assuming that it means making an ethical, or moral, argument. This isn’t correct. Actually, in rhetoric, an ethical appeal is a type of evidence that establishes the credibility of the writer or speaker. In other words, it’s the way that you, the author, persuade your audience that you are worth listening to, that you’ve done your homework and know your business.
Skilled writers and speakers make ethical appeals in a variety of ways. Citing sources carefully is one important way; acknowledging ideas and language that are not your own tells your reader that you are a careful and conscientious researcher and thus helps add weight to your argument. Acknowledging your opposition is another important way to make an ethical appeal and establish your credibility: if your readers know that you are not ignoring the fact that there are legitimate counter-arguments to your own, then you have a much higher chance of winning their respect and maintaining their attention. One of the most important ways of establishing your ethos, according to Aristotelian notions of classical rhetoric, includes demonstrating an awareness of your audience and adapting your style and delivery for that audience.
It’s this last strategy that I have been thinking about lately. I’ve done a fair number of trainings over the past two or three weeks, and I’ve heard from more than one administrator that the faculty at his or her institution are difficult to persuade that course design matters. Many of these faculty, according to the administrators, seem to think that course design is akin to window dressing—it’s pretty if you have it, but the content of the course is what really matters, and if that content is strong, it doesn’t matter how it’s presented. I’m not sure how pervasive this notion is. I’ve conducted no formal studies, so most of my evidence is anecdotal and thus limited to my own personal experience. Based on the research I’ve conducted in online student retention and success, though, I know that lack of attention to course design can lead to disaster for both student and institution: the students end up frustrated, isolated, and unengaged; they withdraw from or fail the course. If the problem with course design is one that spans multiple courses across an institution, then the program itself is in jeopardy. Course design, in other words, is tied to the success of students in the online course environment. It has the potential to have a strong impact on both the success of the students and that of the institution.
Online course design should be approached like any other kind of presentation. The instructor is presenting content to the students, and thought must be give to how that presentation will be made. The first place instructors should begin when determining how they can most effectively present their content is the same that Aristotle tells rhetoricians to begin: audience. Consider your audience. Is the audience a group of traditional undergraduate students? If so, think for a moment about their expectations of online technology. These students are digital natives. They are extremely adept in using social networking tools and mobile technologies. Is the audience primarily non-traditional students—working adults with families and full-time jobs who are returning to school, possibly after a long hiatus? If so, your job may be harder; some of these students may be very comfortable technology, but others may not. (I teach non-traditional students, and I have some who have no difficulties at all with the technology required in an online classroom; other of my students still use their computers as you would a typewriter and create double-spaced papers manually by using a hard return at the end of each line of text.)
If you are working with the first audience, a group of traditional undergraduate students, you can be pretty creative about how you design your course—you’re probably fairly safe using a mixture of technologies and content presentation methods. You will, however, lose them completely if your courses are entirely text or if your course does not follow some fairly basic principles of web design. They will expect a polished, professional appearance to the course, and if they do not find it, they will judge your credibility accordingly. The second audience may be more intimidated by technologies that do not function seamlessly and intuitively. Think carefully about requiring them to download or install any special software (unless, of course, your institution provides really strong support for the students with such installation). These students may be more forgiving of a fairly basic content presentation, but they will still expect the course to be structured in a way that makes navigation effortless. They may become frustrated when things aren’t where they expect to find them—for example, if you refer in the syllabus to “assignments” but don’t explain what those assignments are, where and how they are to be submitted, and what the requirements are. Here, too, if the students do not find what they need, if you leave them with unanswered questions, if they have trouble simply navigating through the course and finding what they need, you will have lost all credibility with them. The bottom line: you must always anticipate your audience’s needs and questions as you design your online courses.
Jennifer Golightly, PhD
Academic Trainer & Consultant
Let’s Talk About: “What’s Going Well?”
I saw this blog recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education and want to share it with you. It’s short, so rather than trying to summarize, I’ve copied it in its entirety.
What’s Going Well?
March 21, 2012
By Natalie Houston
My training and experience as both a teacher of literature and as a personal productivity coach have shown me time and time again the value of asking simple questions. A good question doesn’t have to be long or complicated. A good question shouldn’t be an argument misleadingly packaged as a query. A good question often opens up other questions.
So here’s today’s question: what’s going well for you right now?
I like this question for several reasons:
Most people don’t spend enough time thinking or talking about what’s going well. At a deep neurological level, our brains are designed to pay more attention to potential danger than to neutral or beneficial things. Learning to pay more attention to the good stuff, even just with simple journaling exercises or breathwork, can help create new, more positive neural pathways.
Most people find it easier to focus on or complain about what’s not going well. I’ve written about this before, in relation to the social scripts that academics often engage in. (Have you heard anyone say, “oh, I didn’t get enough done over spring break” lately?) Rewriting those scripts has the power to shift your energy and that of people around you.
It’s also the case that our intellectual training tends to be organized around critique and competition. It’s much more challenging to sustain a conversation about what you liked and agree with in a text than about what you disagree with (try it with your next graduate seminar and you’ll see what I mean). There’s nothing wrong with intellectual critique – but it’s good to experience appreciation and celebration too, of yourself and others.
We can learn from what’s going well. By exploring what’s going well, you can discover core values and habits that you can extend from one area of your life to another. Do you prefer to be alone or with others? What do you find motivating? What helps you be persistent? Whether it’s writing, exercising, or cleaning the garage that you want to improve, you can apply strategies and ideas from some other area in which you feel more successful.
If we take this article to heart, and think about how we can apply this to our own work in an academic setting, what might be some questions we can pose to our students? I can think of a few examples.
Let’s imagine the beginning of the class period (for face-to-face) or a discussion item in an on-line course immediately following a lengthy reading assignment. We typically ask students if there was anything they found confusing or didn’t understand in the assignment. What if we turn that around and instead we ask our students to name one thing they really understood well and to give us a summary of their understanding of that one thing. This serves a similar purpose, in that we would be getting information about what our students learned from the assignment. It also provides a nice review and can help students who may not have understood the item.
I liked Natalie’s suggestion that using journaling could “help create new more positive neural pathways.” I wonder what the result might be for students if we asked them to keep a journal in which they must identify things that are going well in the course but with a focus on how they personally are doing well in the course. Perhaps by asking our students to focus on their own feelings about themselves as learners and by targeting what’s working and going well, students may come to see themselves in a more positive light and this might improve their confidence. It might also help students to better understand the important role they must play in their learning and thus, take more responsibility over their learning.
I’m sure you can think of many other ways to use this approach with your students. Please add your ideas or experiences with using this approach with your students (or coworkers). Tell us what is going well.
Kimberly Thompson
Assessment Consultant
Academic Training & Consulting
Pearson eCollege
Live from Pearson Cite 2012!
This is Rob Kadel, your on-the-scene reporter, coming to you live from the site of Cite! This is the Pearson Cite 2012 Conference, being held at the J.W. Marriott Grande Lakes in Orland, April 10-13. Distinguished lecturers and speakers, presenters from some 65 Pearson Education Partners, 500 attendees, and 200 Pearson employees have gathered together for four days of discussions and collaborations on online learning. And we’re loving it.
On Tuesday afternoon, Cite opened with a special, fun treat – an iBand composed of several Pearson employees (yours truly included) playing a medley of songs all from our iPhone and iPad instruments. Silly, yes, but we enjoyed getting the crowd revved up for the conference.
The highlight that afternoon, of course, was an excellent keynote presentation by Dr. Mark Milliron, and author and educational technology consultant currently working with Western Governors University. Dr. Milliron discussed technology as a solution toward increase college enrollments and matriculation, especially among those living in low-income households who need education to break out of the cycle of poverty. But he also challenged us to go further in our thinking, to recognize that simply fitting new technology into an old mold of education may not be the most effective way to deliver learning. We need new ideas about the actual structure of the educational experience to take advantage of technological tools and reach the students who need education the most.
With concurrent sessions focused on everything from mobile learning to assessment and analytics, there was no shortage of discussions around the trends in online higher education. Student want information not only when they need it, but also where they need it. And institutions are getting into a groove now recognizing the potential for data not only to describe their current students, but to prescribe new directions for future cohorts. Dr. Marilee Bresciani’s keynote address on Wednesday took such discussions further to show us how outcomes-based assessment can help to identify where true creativity and critical thinking are taking place.
On Thursday morning, Dr. John Medina treated us to a keynote presentation entitled Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Dr. Medina presented us with neurological research on how our brains actually process information as we learn and what the critical points are in instruction to ensure that students learn.
Overall, it’s been a great conference and a great experience. I’m already looking forward to Pearson Cite 2013 in Chicago! (Look for additional information here in the coming months.) I hope to see you there!
--
Rob Kadel, Ph.D.
Academic Training & Consulting Manager
Pearson
Scavenger hunt
Hi! You found us.
Please leave a comment below so we know who’s been here.
If you’ve made it this far, take another leap and read the QR code below to join us at our final site. When you get there, please leave a comment to let us know you reached the finish line.
Have fun!
Rinse Then Repeat: The Lost Secret to Preventing Plagiarism
Plagiarism.org defines plagiarism as an act of fraud. “It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.” As we read what is contained in this definition, it is evident why plagiarism is such a very huge issue. Acts of plagiarism can lead to expulsion, suspension and even job termination for some. These are very strong outcomes for something that can be committed by accident.
What else can be offered about plagiarism that has not already been said? How much more can instructors and administrators hold student’s feet to the fire of academic mandates that suggests, “Here are the rules, you must play by them lest we hammer thou into the ground.” This was the tone of my graduate school “writing workshop orientation;” a mandatory session that left me with the sense that I could potentially find myself in serious trouble for my writing without even knowing what I did wrong.
As I progressed through the ranks of student to higher education instructor (now since 2004) it became crystal clear that institutions come by their rigid posture against plagiarism honestly. From having to contend with the likes of paper millers such as Ed Dante (a pseudo name for The Shadow Scholar), to the department chair who orders faculty to leave their students alone when they are caught in the web of plagiarism and should rightfully be held to the school and department standards of conduct. Perhaps more can be done to actively assist students how not to plagiarize, innocently or otherwise.
At Pearson’s eTeaching Institute, we often hear faculty who take our Web-based courses on special topics related to designing and teaching online, express concerns about preventing cheating. In such cases, we advise a more proactive approach by asking future online instructors to consider, “how they can encourage honesty in coursework,” as a way to preempt academic dishonesty. We believe this and more is a good position to take. In addition, I propose that a shared sense of partnership between students, faculty and administration is a proactive step in the right direction to prevent plagiarism. After all, if we are going to maintain tight control with rigid anti-plagiarism mandates in place then, the least we can do is to move a bit closer in the direction of, “here are the rules, you must play by them AND I am going to help you.”
Plagiarism.org goes on to suggest that by giving proper authorship credit, we can avoid plagiarism. However, writing a good paper which avoids plagiarism involves much more than citing. If citing sources is all that is needed then why is the practice of plagiarism such a huge issue demanding large expenditures of academic energy and resources to prevent and detect and punish students for committing the act? Are students receiving enough “hands-on” resources and training to assist them with preventing plagiarism outside of doling out the building number, address or web site to the writing lab? Perhaps more of a sense of partnership with students is one way to help accomplish the goal.
Having evaluated many papers from undergraduate and graduate students over the past eight years; some replete with word-for-word transcripts from Wikipedia including links to the plagiarized content listed as the source, I decided to try tactics different from the usual, “don’t you dare.” The first task in all of this was to focus on that sense of partnership with my students, which I have hawked about previously. I decided to view plagiarism prevention as a shared responsibility that included some very positive and attainable steps students could take to prevent these acts. After all, if we are to hold them to the standards of our plagiarism deterrence tactics then, the least we can do is show them how not to plagiarize; and not necessarily in a one-time event or a syllabus policy or student handbook they may never read in the first place.
Could a more direct approach and (repeated) conversation be appropriate, followed by some very non-threatening steps on how to avoid plagiarism? Should we institutionalize methodologies that suggest to our charges that we recognize the temptation to take dishonest shortcuts then demonstrate that it is possible and relatively easy to avoid acts of plagiarism? After arriving at, “I need to do this without making a part-time job out of it,” I developed my mini-lecture, a cliff note of sorts, which included some very critical but important steps to avoiding plagiarism.
The first step in my brief tutorial to students is to make sure they understand what plagiarism is and its consequences. In our August 2010 Online Blogucation entry, my colleague, Dr. Jennifer Golightly noted that instructors should present clear and understandable statements about, “what plagiarism is, how it’s defined, and what the consequences for committing it are.” This is a first and critical step in the process of deterring plagiarism. I also believe that when delivered with a message of partnership, assistance and other measures that Jennifer discussed, we would likely assist more students from committing plagiarism. Next, I encourage students to:
• Decide what their argument or premise of the paper will be. This may be assigned but sometimes not.
• Find time to read journal articles or other sources which supports the work. This is a requirement.
• Properly summarize and paraphrase sources. This does not mean changing a word here or there.
• Quote sources sparingly using proper punctuation; another mandate.
• Deliberately cite sources within the body of the offering. This will give credibility to the work.
• Reference sources by using a properly formatted works cited or reference page.
• Rinse then repeat. Perform these steps throughout the entire paper.
The session takes about fifteen minutes depending on Q & A and I wrap things up by reiterating my commitment to their academic success (as they should too) and that they should ask me for assistance when needed. Again, it takes much more than the steps above to write a good paper but it’s a start.
Practices to prevent plagiarism may seem harsh to students who find themselves caught in the snare of the deed. However, they are necessary and should be refined based on our experiences with the problem. Many institutions see the wisdom of ranking punishment based on the severity and number of offenses. Some schools employ student tutorials as a proactive measure. Others, keep a pile of lopped off heads in the back of the school. Not a first choice in my book.
Where needed, faculty and administrators should ramp-up their efforts to be partners in their students’ academic success to the extent that we present regular reminders and brief ‘how to sessions’ on avoiding plagiarism. Additionally, we should find creative and cost effective ways to assist students to make better decisions such as instilling a sense of partnership, more orientation and training aimed at preventing plagiarism before our students find themselves in really big trouble. The result could save valuable time for faculty and administrators then, schools can plant a nice flower bed where those heads are kept.
Do you have creative ideas about assisting students with preventing plagiarism? What do you think about an online student discussion forum with assignment endpoints addressing how not to plagiarize? What would be the benefit? Post your comments and suggestions in the space below.
Other Resources:
Best Practices to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Learning
Cheating
Ralph Kennedy, MSW
Academic Trainer & Consultant
The Search is On
Image Source: OpenClipArt.org
I’ve been developing and teaching online courses for several years and I’ve noticed that as part of that process I find need of certain things on frequent occasion. After some time, the resources that continually help me find what I need become a valued part of my go-to toolbox for course development and enhancement. In this blog post, I’ll share with you one such valued part of my toolbox.
Even after developing a new course or revising an existing one, I find that I am often in search of great images I can use in my courses. Very simply, a great image for me is an icon, a photo, a graphic or clipart that I can use to raise visual appeal or to illustrate a concept in some area of my course. If you often find yourself in my position, turning to the search engines of the World Wide Web to locate a great image, read on.
The internet is a truly expansive reservoir of images and turning to it to locate an appropriate visual can be easy, fun and effective. That’s the easy part. Increasing challenge comes in finding an image that is without copyright, or “open” for use without violating the copyrights of the owner of the image. Truth be told, many of us would probably agree that we’ve often been tempted to use a simple Google Image search to locate a visual that meets our needs and to then hit that copy or save button to ‘snag’ the image for our use. The flip side to this is that many of us would also say we believe copyrights should be honored. It’s simply good practice and it is what we would each want if the copyrights were ours.
So, on to the valuable resources that may soon become a part of your resource toolbox. Let me share with you 8 sites you can use to locate graphics, icons, photos or clipart the next time you find yourself looking for that great image.
Stock.xchng 6.0
www.sxc.hu
This site is a go-to resource for photos. Their stock photography catalog is extensive (350,000 images). Additional features, including capability to comment on photos, browse photos by New Additions, Top Images or Subject area as well as a community blog and tutorial posts, add to the site interest. Note that when running a search, two categories of content may appear. Towards the top of your results page, you’ll find all of the free content available that matches your search criteria. You’ll also find a second heading of results towards the bottom of the page. This second category provides additional suggestions and links to premium content that can be purchased from istockphoto.com. If you browse through all free photography results and find that you prefer an image from the premium content category, you may decide to purchase the desired image.
Creative Commons Service Search
search.creativecommons.org
This site provides a central point of access to search services provided by other organizations. After typing in a keyword for your search, click on the service you would like to use to obtain relevant search results. Available services include Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia Commons, Open Clip Art Library and more. Search open resources for images and additional content you can use, share or remix.
Microsoft Office Image Gallery
office.microsoft.com/en-us/images
This site is a well-recognized go-to resource, in part because it is embedded in Microsoft applications such as Word and Powerpoint. Use the direct web link listed above to run searches for illustrations, photos, animations and sounds. You can also browse through thousands of images by gallery including featured collections like “basketball” or general categories such as “sports.” Get news about free clip art, images and other content through the Templates and Images blog: http://blogs.office.com/b/templates_and_images/.
Open ClipArt Library
openclipart.org
This site is one of my all-time favorites and I return to it often. Open ClipArt Library is “the Largest Collaboration Community that creates, shares and remixes clipart. All clipart is released to the public domain and may be used in any project for free and with no restrictions.” It doesn’t get much easier than that! The site is easy to navigate and the images are high quality. You can run an image search by Keyword, Artist, Collection and more. You can even download image “packages”, such as “Presidents” or “Flags of the World”, in a convenient zip file. You can also subscribe to the mailing list, become a supporter and/or contribute images of your own.
Open Icon Library
openiconlibrary.sourceforge.net
Open Icon Library is an archive of icon files gather from various sources. The site is designed to offer a single location for free and open icons for anyone to use on their computer, website or any other project. The Library boasts a collection of over 10,000 unique icons. Note that using the site feels like a bit of a navigational challenge. From the homepage, click on “Online Icon Gallery” and then click on “Icon” or “Symbol” to browse my topics and categories such as “Actions” or “Devices”. Finally, click on the icon image to get to the download page.
Cooltext
www.cooltext.com
Ok, so Cooltext is not a clipart site or a photo site, but it’s a pretty handy one-stop-shop for generating font graphics. Have you ever wanted to add a banner to a Unit Home Page? Or, perhaps you’ve desired to spice up those PowerPoint slides with meaningful and colorful titles? Cooltext offers you a fast way to select from over 1,200 font styles, type in your title or text, and download it as an image file with a neat transparent background. Check it out!
Turbo Photo
www.turbophoto.com/Free-Stock-Images/index.htm
Turbo Photo offers a collection of royalty-free images that are easily accessible via a simple interface. But don’t let the simplicity of the site fool you! Behind the basic 10 categories to choose from, there are over 2,000 photographs waiting to be used in your course. With categories ranging from Plants and Food to Cities and Landscapes, you’ll be sure to find a suitable fit for your online environment.
Flickr: Free Use Photos
www.flickr.com/groups/freeuse/
Most of us have heard of Flickr Photos, the image hosting and video hosting website that allows users to upload, organize and share their photos across the internet. But perhaps few of us have heard about the Flickr Free Use Photos Group. This is a group “where members can share photos that can be used without any copyright restrictions.” All of the images contributed to this group are free and there is no need to submit for permission to use. The nice part of this project is that if you are interested, you can join the 500+ members of this group and contribute some of your own camera work to the growing collection.
Now its time to start!
Copy and paste the following link into your internet browser's address bar to open all of these sites at the same time. Check them out and then tag one or tag them all as your favorite to easily return in the future.
Link: fur.ly/7lej
You can also scan the QR Code (short for "Quick Response"), which contains access to all of the websites I've referenced in the post. (A QR Code is essentially a barcode that carries data which can be scanned by most smart phone cameras. Be sure to download a QR Code Reader App that will utilize your phone's camera like a scanner, allowing it to "read" the barcode. I personally use ScanLife for iPhone free app available for download at the iTunes App Store).
QR Code:
Have you used any of these sites to locate images for your courses? Do you have a favorite site you like to use? Consider sharing by commenting on this blog post. We’d love your input!
Rachel Cubas
Academic Trainer & Consultant
Assessment & Analytics Group | Academic Training & Consulting (ATC)
Head in The Cloud
Recently, I was working with one of Pearson’s latest and greatest new products, OpenClass. Here are a couple of talking points about OpenClass for consideration:
- In The Cloud — Our cloud-based architecture gives us the unique ability to evolve rapidly and incrementally – without the need for large-scale upgrades or major upheavals in user experience. New releases are instant, with no need to schedule downtime or interrupt your service. But we also recognize that control and customization are important, so we'll always announce when new features are available and provide you with the option to test-drive them before ultimately rolling them out to your institution.
- On The Go — OpenClass is already extending the experience of learning to mobile phones and tablets, and mobile functionality is improving every day. Dedicated apps for Apple iOS and Google Android are in development and we'll be opening up our mobile API's for institutions to advance and customize as they choose.
Okay, so that’s the commercial for OpenClass. Let’s talk about these two concepts — the cloud and mobile technology — as they relate to building courses in OpenClass and indeed how it will relate to many mobile-based solutions going forward.
Flash back briefly to a blog post I wrote in September 2011, “Why the iPad Didn’t Work for Me.” One of the features (or lack thereof) that I didn’t like was that in trying to build content in my courses, I couldn’t browse to files, such as images, and upload them to my course. That is, I had no equivalent of the “Finder” on my Mac or “Libraries” on my Windows 7 computer. So, when I wanted to insert an image, I had no way to actually grab it and put it in my content page.
Now, flash forward to today and the rapid expansion of the use of tablets. Recently, eMarketer wrote an article estimating of tablet usage through 2014. Here’s a chart of their results:
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that our nation’s population will grow to 321 million by 2014. That means that approximately 28% of all men, women, and children in the U.S. will be using a tablet within two years. Staggering!
Why should we care? Apple revolutionized the use of the tablet when it did not include a file manager system in the iPad. Google’s Android OS is similar. If you want to access a file, you need to have it already on the Web somewhere — in other words, in The Cloud. There are literally thousands (maybe millions?) of apps that already do this. I can take a photo on my Droid and upload it to Flickr. I can shoot a video on my iPad, edit it with iMovie, and upload it to YouTube. I can apply really neat effects to a photo with Instagram and share it on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and a bunch of other sites.
All of these services are in the cloud. In fact, if I wanted to have one of these files locally, I would first have to download it from the cloud. Very little of my mobile computing experience is actually transferred to my computer anymore, and I expect your experience is similar.
It is therefore appropriate that my learning management system would also be cloud-based, which brings me back to OpenClass. Recently I was writing a Share post in OpenClass. The Share tool is kind of a combination blog and twitter feed with lots of other bells and whistles that make it easy for students and instructors to share ideas with their class, across classes or other groups, or even across the entire institution. I noticed in the Visual Editor in Share I have the option to enter URLs for photos and videos. What’s the point of that?, I wondered. Why wouldn’t I just browse to the image on my hard drive?
Then it hit me: mobile…cloud… Ah, yes! I can create my Share post on my iPad, and I can use Share’s Visual Editor to paste in links to YouTube videos, images on Flickr, and so on. So, if I keep my content in the cloud, I can access it on my mobile device or my computer (or even on someone else’s computer), without any trouble. It’s in the cloud; it’s always there.
So, the more I move my learning materials to the cloud, the easier it will be for me to access them from mobile devices and share them with my students — more and more of whom will be accessing courses on their mobile devices. It’s an inevitable shift. How might you make the cloud work for you?
Rob Kadel, Ph.D.
Pearson Academic Training & Consulting
