WebCT news at SFU

The University of Carleton has a teaching and learning blog, with some postings on WebCT use.

This postings discusses the use of educational technology as a means of acheiving (or at least approaching) a paperless classroom.  Instructors at the University of Carleton and at SFU post classroom materials online: syllabus, lecture outlines, links to readings and weblinks and assignment descriptions and guidelines online. This gives the student just one place to look for these materials (instead of coming through past emails, or stacks of paper). Online quizzes can also be a means of implementing regular assessment (graded or self-testing) and feedback into the course without contending with mountains of paperwork.

Another posting is more general, talking about creating learning opportunites using technology.  This is an opportunity to look at three different courses who use the WebCT online environment to:

• create long term resources
• reducing trivial emailed students from students
• fostering an online learning community
• create a common look and feel for the course
• using images on the course content home to reinforce key ideas and concepts from the course
• importing other tools (Google Calendar or Picasa photo management) into WebCT, to combine those tools ease of use with a central online location for the course materials and community.

We are planning on having some SFU faculty demonstrate their use of WebCT in the new year. Keep an eye on the LIDC calendar of events for dates and times.

In the quizzes, you can currently post settings so that a student can do the same quiz more than, and you take the highest, average or first score of their attempts. This is a means of encouraging students to learn immediately from their mistakes.

How it’s set up

This is done when editing the properties of a quiz. Under the heading attempts, you can allow a set number of attempts, and under the heading student score, you can choose which score you choose as the students grade.

Under the section results properties it would seem logical to choose options 1 (show the question text), a) i) (show the percentage value of the students answer), 3 (show the students score for each question) and 4 (show the students total score of the assessment).  Ideally, this would tell the students which questions they got wrong, but not give them the right answer.

The bug

It seems that if you do choose option 1 a) i) (show the students response for each question and show the percentage value of the students answer), then the quiz results will also show the correct answer. It makes the subsequent quiz attempts much easier if the student can simply copy down the correct answers, and misses the point of formative assessment.

The solution

I’ve recommended that under the results properties section, choose only option 1, 3, 4. Student will not see their response for each question, but they will still know which question they got wrong, and which they got right.

This is a short term solution. I’ll also look into this at the online forum, and send in this feedback to WebCT/ Blackboard.

part two: delivery

Your delivery will depend largely on the communication, administrative, assessment and content-driven tools that you have chosen to use.

Write expectations and guidelines for your students and the communication tools available. Use the discussion, mail tool, chat or announcements to give and receive regular feedback. Promote the the discussion forum as a place for student collaboration or the journal function to introduce reflective practice.

Use the goals tool to remind students of the expected learning outcomes. Attach different content, communications and assessments to specific goals to reinforce how goals and assessments connect to the syllabus and the whole semester.

Create formative evaluations to track student understanding or surveys to request feedback. When using the assessment or assignment tool (for small quizzes or homework), create a test quiz or assignment to reduce student anxiety. Create a rubric to attach to the assessment or assignment, and read all the options available. When you are done, use student view to complete all assigned assessments as the demo student.

Encourage student community by setting it up so that students can contribute URLs to the weblinks tool, add the roster tool or ask students to publish their assignments to the class.

The gradebook is a quick and secure tool to provide grades and feedback to students. Give the demo student grades so you can preview in the student view, release each column as you finish adding grades, and download grades into a spreadsheet for backup or to enter grades offline.

Keep your course design simple, so students can easily navigate it, and be consistent in your communications, grade delivery and content release.

This is going to be part one of a three part series: the planning, delivering and wrapping up a web-supported course.

With some simple planning, you can reduce the basic administration associated with the classroom and connect with students. Alternative texts, video or audio can provide depth or context to student learning. Extending the classroom discussion to an online environment or reinforce concepts with regular assessments and feedback. How might this save you time in basic tasks, help you connect with students, recognize diverse ways of teaching and learning, and increase student learning?

part one: planning and setup 

To start, get some inspiration by looking at other web-based courses (http://www.webct.com/exemplary), attending a workshop or asking colleagues.

Advance planning will help you set your objectives, manage expectations and prioritize your time. What do you want your students take away from this course? What materials, approach and assessments can help you reach these objectives? Incorporate ideas that you’ve seen in other web-supported courses or that your colleagues have told you about. Which administrative tasks take up time in the classroom? How can a web-supported course help?

Write a list of the content, links, resources, and media that you currently use or would like to use for a course. Use this content to reinforce concepts, use different learning and teaching styles or to provide alternative resources and viewpoints. Review the tools available - is there anything new you’d like to try? Take the content, the communications and the assessment and put it in a logical order.

Write a welcome message using the announcements tool or the discussion forum to state your expectations, and what students can expect from you in this environment. Describe to your students the learning path this course will take and how the combination of the web-supported and face to face classrooms will support their learning.

When you are ready, request an online course section using the form at http://webct.sfu.ca∞

Your course container is yours to customize. Start by adding the tools you want to use. Add your syllabus and any course material - you can hide it or set release date to manage student access. Using the assessments described in the syllabus, setup the gradebook, and give your “demo student” some grades. Use the student view tab to see how the content appears, which grade columns are visible and which tools are available. Reinforce the prerequisites needed for your course by creating a low-stakes quiz to bring students up to speed, and help connect your course with the prerequisites.

Students are added to your web-supported course section automatically at SFU, as they register in SIMS. By default, students will be able to access the online materials in WebCT on the first day of classes.

When creating a quiz or survey in WebCT, one of the options is to send the results of each submission to an external email address.

If you have a large class, your inbox would quickly fill with the individual responses, but if you have a small class, or use the platform for self-directed quizzes or assessment, this is a very useful summary of a student’s responses.

In the BUILD tab, open the assessment in question. Using the ActionLink, choose “edit properties.” Scroll down to the bottom, and click on the header “submission options.” You can choose then to have each of the individual student submissions sent to an external email address.

I was confused yesterday about when a student is actually denied access to an assessment, and what happens if a student starts an assessment, but does not complete it before the designated end time.

The help materials say: Disallow answer submission if time has expired: Allow only saved answers to be submitted after the assessment time has expired.

So in fact, any end time for a quiz has to be the “noted” end time PLUS the assessment time (duration). You can start any quiz one minute before it’s end, and then have the entire assessment time to finish it. And if the assessment time allowed is unlimited, then the quiz doesn’t ever have to end!

I make a suggestion to WebCT, since I find that confusing and misleading. I want students NOT to be able to answer anymore questions after the end time for the quiz.

In the meantime, to stop students from taking the test, I will have to open the quiz after the end time, and reset the assessment time to one minute to force a quit.

I learned today that there is apparently code that you can add to a quiz so that students cannot print it out.

You can access the discussion thread on this topic in the Ask DrC forums.