More Video Resources

Last week I posted about video resources and some of you let me know about even more resources that are available.

From Diane Palmer, Humanities Instructor:

YouTube EDU (lectures from top universities, tons of subjects)

Annenberg Foundation  (unbelievable range of subjects, sort of dated but ancient Rome is ancient Rome, wonderful lectures)


From Roxane BenVau, Librarian at Grossmont College:

Free Media Resources on the Internet  (Roxane compiled a comprehensive list of video resources in this document!)

Blackboard Exemplary Course Program

The 2010 Blackboard Exemplary Course Program is now open! This program "was born with the goal of identifying and disseminating effective practices for designing engaging online courses. Using a rubric, instructors and course designers can evaluate how well their own course conforms to effective practices for Course Design, Interaction & Collaboration, Assessment and Learner Support. "

You can submit your course for review or volunteer to be a reviewer. To find out more, visit http://www.blackboard.com/ecp.

Winners will be announced in April 2010 and highlighted at BbWorld 2010 in Orlando.

Video Resources

Today I have two excellent resources for those using or interested in using online video for your courses. The first comes from Rick Salisbury from DePaul University who wrote a blog post on Beyond YouTube: Great Places to Find Video for Your Online Course.

The other resource is from the Ohio State University Web Accessibility Center. It provides relatively easy instructions for Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls.

Undelivered email

If you sent out an email to your class through Blackboard, you may have received an email that had the subject "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender." This message is telling you that it tried to send your email to all your students, and one or more of those student email addresses are incorrect. If you look into the body of the message, it will tell you what email addresses caused the problem.

If one of the email addresses causing the problem is update.email@WebAdvisor, that means one or more of your students doesn't have an email address in WebAdvisor.

You can find out which students are affected by going to the Control Panel, clicking on List/Modify Users, then click on the Search button to display all your students. Scan down the list to see who has update.email@WebAdvisor as their email address and give them a phone call.

Any changes made in Blackboard to the email address will be overwritten each night with the information in WebAdvisor, so students need to enter their correct email address in WebAdvisor. You can give students the link to these instructions on How to Your Change Email Address in WebAdvisor.

At the beginning of each semester, it might be a good idea to follow the steps above to scan through your student email addresses and make sure you have valid email addresses for each of them.

Surprising Study Results

Jeremy Tutty has summarized a presentation by Penny Ralston-Berg at the 25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, titled: “What Makes a Quality Online Course? The Student Perspective” in a blog post. The results were not what you may expect!

To quote Tutty:

"As expected, students highly valued technology that worked; clear, consistent navigation in their course sites; and instructions on how to access resources. It was what students found least valuable that caught my attention. Based on this survey, online students do not want to:

1. Find course-related content to share with the class
2. Use wikis, shared documents, or other collaborative tools
3. Introduce themselves to the class
4. Coach other students
5. Attend synchronous meetings
6. Interact with games and simulations
7. Work in groups
8. Receive audio or video content

Surprised?"

I know I'm surprised! To find out more, please read his blog post or take a look at the PowerPoint slides of the original presentation.

Learn at Lunch Desktop Seminars

Techsmith recently released the Camtasia screen capture software for the Mac. @ONE is offering a free lunchtime online seminar introducing this new application on Wednesday, September 30th at noon. So if you're a Mac, check it out!

For information on other seminars offered, check out the @ONE website.

Assignment Upload Error - Update

When faculty or students try to upload an assignment in Blackboard, they may get an error message that says, "Please enter a valid file."

I originally posted about this error on August 12th, but it is affecting so many faculty and students that I am updating this information. This error occurs when using Firefox 3.5 or Chrome browsers. I have heard some reports of it happening with Safari as well.

The solution for now is to use IE 7 or Firefox 3.0. If you already have Firefox 3.5 you will need to uninstall it first. You can then upload Firefox 3.0 from these web pages:

Download for PC

Download for MAC

Please forward this information to any of your colleagues that are using Blackboard, but may not be subscribed to this blog.

If you are getting this blog post for the first time, please subscribe! Just go to the Cuyamaca Online Blog and put your email address in the Email Subscription box.

SafeAssign Comments Not Showing to Students

We have just discovered that when you grade a SafeAssignment and make comments to your students, they cannot view these comments through My Grades. This has been reported to Blackboard and we have two temporary workarounds.

One workaround is to make the SafeAssignment available after you have finished grading. This way students could view the assignment and see your comments. You would need to make sure to enter zero points for those students who haven't turned in their work on time so it would be clear if they tried to submit it late.

Another workaround is to enter the comments in Grade Details by clicking on Modify Attempt. I understand that this would require several extra steps and may not be very feasible.

This is a priority issue for Blackboard and we hope to get a fix for this soon.

Guest Speaker for Online Courses

Here's an offer you can't refuse from Kari Wergeland!

To All Online Instructors

Last semester I “visited” one of Cindy Morrin’s online classes as a guest speaker. This was my first attempt at offering a library instruction session online. To get the ball rolling, I started several threads on the discussion forum about various research (information literacy) topics. Then I appeared throughout the rest of the week to answer questions. Cindy jumped in, from time to time, too.

I would be happy to come in to any of your virtual classrooms to help your students become better researchers. My appearance could be geared toward a specific assignment; or I could go over Cuyamaca’s virtual library; or I could cover various search strategies. Of course, I am always open to your suggestions, as well.

If interested, please contact me at kari.wergeland@gcccd.edu or x4412.

If you take Kari up on her offer, here is how you add her as a Guest Speaker for your course:

1. Go to the Cuyamaca College home page
2. In the Online Services menu, click GCCCD Online Classes
3. Click Support for Faculty in the upper right corner
4. Log in with your email username and password
5. Click on Blackboard Course Containers in the left side menu
6. Click ADD an Instructor/Teacher Aide/Workshop Participant/Guest Speaker/Evaluator to a Blackboard container

Or just click this link and log in, but that won’t help you next time you try to remember where this was!
http://www.gcccd.edu/online/faculty_support/courseware/container-req-step-2-add-2009.htm

Register Now for @ONE Online Courses

@ONE has published their Fall schedule of courses for faculty. Most of them don't start until you've had a chance to settle into the semester, but it's important to sign up now to make sure you reserve your seat.

Here are some classes that you may need to get certified for teaching online:

• Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning
• Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9
  (Bb 9 is the new version we may be going to in Spring)
  
• Creating Accessible Online Courses

Optional professional development credit is available from Fresno Pacific University too!

Also, check out their 1-hour Learn at Lunch Desktop Webinars. There will be a webinar on Blackboard version 9 for those already familiar with Bb 8.

Make Old Blackboard Courses Unavailable

This is a reminder that it is important to make your Spring '09 and Summer '09 Blackboard course containers unavailable to students. We've had several calls to the help desk from students that are very confused when they see courses in Blackboard that they're not taking this semester.

To do this:

1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Choose Settings
3. Choose Course Availability
4. Make Course Available: No
5. Submit
   

Start YouTube Videos at a Specific Time in the Movie

I know many of you use YouTube videos in your courses. When playing videos in class or having students view a video online, rather than having it start at the beginning, you may want to have the video start later in the movie. To have a YouTube video start at a specific time in a video follow these steps.

1. Edit the URL you already have for the video.
   
2. Go to the end of the URL and add the time code for the specific time in the video you'd like the viewer to start watching.
   
   For example, if you'd like the viewer to start watching the video at four minutes and fifty-five seconds into the video, you'd add the following time code to the end of the URL: #t=4m55s . The URL with the Deep Link should appear this way:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLzoikMTaOA#t=04m55s
   

Speaking of YouTube videos for your students, below is one I hope every one of our students sees. If you can find a way to fit it into your curriculum, please do. It very graphically illustrates the dangers of using a phone while driving. Click the image below to play it or view it at http://vodpod.com/watch/2063868-cow-taster-001?pod=godiskatt .

Bb Email Address and Login Instruction Resources

I just want to remind you to tell your students that all email addresses in Blackboard come from the email address they have in WebAdvisor. Here is a website you can link to with instructions that show your students how to make sure they have the correct email address listed in WebAdvisor: http://www.cuyamaca.edu/tlc/bb/docs/webadvisor-email.asp.

You may want to double-check to make sure your email address is listed correctly in WebAdvisor too!

Another website you can link to for your students has login instructions:
http://www.cuyamaca.edu/tlc/bb/docs/blackboard_login.asp

SharePoint Designer is now FREE!

SharePoint Designer is the new program that replaces MS FrontPage at our college. It is used to edit web pages.

For those of you that want to use SharePoint Designer on your home computer, Microsoft has decided to give you the program for free. Just go to http://tinyurl.com/cz22uy and download it.

If you don't have SharePoint Designer on your campus computer, please do not install it yourself. Call the Help Desk at 660-4395 and ask to have it installed.

Assignment Upload Error

When using Firefox 3.5 or Chrome browsers, you or your students may get an error message that says "Please enter a valid file." This only occurs when uploading files in the assignments tool . It does not effect the SafeAssignment tool. The way to get around this error is to use IE 7 or older versions of Firefox to upload assignment files.

This has been reported to Blackboard and we're hoping for a fix soon. This is another reminder that, as fast as browsers are changing these days, it's a good idea to tell students that if they have a problem with Blackboard, to try using a different browser. Blackboard has a list of supported browsers that you can refer them to.

Course Copy Redux

Blackboard tells us that the problem with Course Copy was caused when the Grade Center had more than one Total column in it. So before copying your course, please make sure to remove any extra Total columns that are in your containers. You won't be able to remove the Total column with the green check mark, so remove any others as needed.

If you have problems with Course Copy, you can always recycle the destination container and try again with Export/Import Course.

Hide Courses in Blackboard Video

You may find that there are courses showing on your Blackboard "Welcome Page" that you don't need this semester. Blackboard provides a way to hide or show only the courses you want. I've created a video that shows you how to do this.

How to Create and Share a Pencast

Tim Fahlberg, the creator of Math247, has created this video showing how to make a video of solving a math problem using the LiveScribe pen, JingPro, and a document camera.

Don't Use Course Copy

Okay, I'm eating my words! In spite of all the testing we did to try to make sure that Course Copy was working correctly, I've had two reports today of problems with Course Copy.

So to be safe, I suggest you use Export/Import to copy your courses from previous semesters into your Fall containers. Export/Import has been working just fine, and only takes a couple more steps than Course Copy.

If you already tried a course copy (between Friday and today), please forward the email message you received from Blackboard to me, whether you had an error or not. This way we can get an idea of how widespread the problem is.

Fall Containers Are Ready

Last night all Blackboard course containers for the Fall semester were created. You will be able to see them when you log on. If you don't see courses you're supposed to be teaching, make sure that your chair has listed you as the instructor of record in WebAdvisor. The problems with Course Copy and Recycle Course have been resolved and your preparations for the Fall semester should go smoothly.

A few reminders about the Summer semester while I think of it. Don't forget to make your summer containers unavailable when the class is finished. It's also a good idea to archive your courses periodically, but especially after the semester ends and all grades are turned in.

Oh, and enjoy this great beach weather too!