July 9, 2012 Leave a Comment

Video Code Easter Eggs

I have this sneaky trick I use to tell which students watch online videos and which don’t.  I hide “secret codes” in the videos (like the programmer’s Easter Eggs).  When a student finds one of my “Easter Egg codes” they can submit it for 1 point towards participation.  Sometimes the codes are numbers I generate at random (Ex: 40234) and sometimes it’s a word, phrase, or story (my cat is chasing a fly in front of my computer).

I don’t tell the students where the codes are. I don’t tell them HOW I’ve shared the code or what kind of code it is.  Some videos have codes, and many don’t.  Because of the random distribution of codes in videos, and my “loose” way of collecting them for points, I can always add or remove videos with codes, and it won’t affect the overall point system.

Here's an example of a video code inserted as a callout bubble. Click on image to enlarge.

Let me explain. Students are not required to watch particular videos and there are two other ways to earn participation points.  Participation for each unit is counted out of 10 points, but 5 extra credit points may also be earned.  Thus, there is a cap on the total number of points I will count.

Participation points can be earned by:

  1. Participating in a live online chat. (2 points)
  2. Posting something substantive in a Discussion. (1 point)
  3. Turning in a video code. (1 point)

Here are various ways that I hide the codes in videos:

  • In callout bubbles I add post-recording and pre-production
  • On calculator screens (sneaky, huh?)
  • In something I say out loud
  • In something I write on the journaling screen
  • In something I say and write on the journaling screen
  • In the text of a math equation
  • Underlining a particular word or phrase on the screen from a lesson
  • An action to take (call my office phone and sing the quotient rule to me)

Collecting the codes is the real trick.  Some years I’ve used a Google Spreadsheet or Doc for the collection.  This year, I’m using the comment field of the Canvas Graded Discussions.  I set up one Discussion for each unit, worth 10 points.  When a student participates in an online chat, I go to the gradebook for this Discussion and add a comment “Chat 7/9/12 = 2 points” for that student.  When the student submits a video code, I go to the gradebook for this Discussion and add the comment “Video Code 40234 = 1 point”.  Then when I go to grade the assignment, I see not only all the students’ discussion posts, but also all their collected codes and chat points (see image).

Canvas Discussions grading screen with comments. Click on image to enlarge.

It’s really interesting to see which students find and submit the codes and which students never submit a single code. This helps me to track the progression of students through a particular unit.  Pessimistically, it helps me to “catch” those students who claim they are watching videos when, in fact they aren’t.  But optimistically, I can also tell who consistently watches all the videos by seeing their collected codes pile up.  While I haven’t always enjoyed keeping lists of students and codes, the “Easter Egg” method has worked well over the years to keep track of video-watching as a way to participate in online courses.

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Filed Under: eLearning, Learning Design, Lecture Capture, TALDA (Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age), Teaching Math Online Tagged:
May 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

Escaping Blackboard and Redesigning for Instructure Canvas

I’ve been in the process of redesigning my Online Calculus course for Instructure Canvas, and I thought I’d share a bit about the design of the new course. In the redesign video, I will compare the same content as it existed in Blackboard, how it transfered “raw” to Canvas upon import, and then how I’ve re-styled it to design for “Pages” instead of “Folders.”

You’ll find that it helps to settle on a consistent look and feel for your new Canvas pages. Find a relatively complicated page and spend some time thinking about page design. What elements do you consistently want to highlight on these pages? Videos to watch? Pages to be printed? Required elements? You may want to play with several different styles and layouts before making your final choice (remember you can always resurrect old styles by going to the Page History and restoring to a previous version of the page).

My Canvas Page Design (click on image to enlarge)

Here’s a little guide to my redesign:

  • Topic in Header 2 style
  • Body of text in Paragraph style
  • Learning objectives listed by bullet point below Topic
  • Light Green highlighting = printed material
  • Image “snapshot” of printed material uploaded using “Images” panel
  • Light Yellow highlighting = video lecture
  • Light Blue highlighting = link to outside webpage
  • Horizontal line = break between topic areas (has to be manually inserted in the HTML)

 

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Filed Under: eLearning, Learning Design, TALDA (Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age), Teaching Math Online Tagged:
February 6, 2010 4 Comments

Tech Tools 2010

Today I was the keynote speaker for Tech Tools 2010 in Scottsdale AZ, which was really fun!

I survived the twitter backchannel (I “called out” the tweeters, according to @soul4real).  This seemed to work really well and I’ll write more about what I did later.  I also got “best dressed presenter ever” for wearing my magic doc martens with silver swirls.

techtools2010-poster

Here are the links to today’s presentations and resources.

GE Plug into the Smart Grid (Augmented Reality)

Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age Mindmap

Careers in the Future

Have PRIDE in what you TEACH. (What did you learn this month?)

Interdisciplinary Studies

Organize Your Digital Self  (Slides or Mindmap)

For future reference, you can find all of my mindmaps, slide decks, and past recorded webinars under Resources in the menu bar on the top of this blog.

Several of you asked this afternoon about the magnifying program I used to magnify web URLs.  It’s called Virtual Magnifying Glass (free, PC, Mac, or Linux).  If you teach anything from the Internet to a room full of people, you should consider using it!

I was also surprised to discover that many participants who are Second Life regulars had not read Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash.  Stephenson basically describes “Second Life” (called the metaverse) in Snow Crash, written in 1992.  So if you want to speculate about what Second Life will become, reading Snow Crash would be a good place to start!

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Filed Under: Classroom Technology, Digital Age Projects, Faculty 2.0, Faculty Development, Interdisciplinary Studies, Learning Design, TALDA (Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age)
September 18, 2009 Leave a Comment

Starting from Scratch (Part 2)

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):

startingfromscratch1

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).

startingfromscratch2

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.

startingfromscratch5

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:

startingfromscratch6

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

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Filed Under: eLearning, Learning Design, TALDA (Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age), Teaching Math Online Tagged:
July 2, 2009 1 Comment

Dump Schedule-Driven Online Course Design

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.

calculus-schedule

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:

schedule-driven-design

schedule-driven-design2

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:

schedule-driven-design

schedule-driven-design2

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:

content-driven-design

content-driven-design2

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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Filed Under: eLearning, Learning Design, TALDA (Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age), Teaching Math Online
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