Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Online Teaching Certification and Courses at @ONE

@ONE offers an Online Teaching Certification Program that will help you excel in the digital age. It's extremely affordable, comprehensive and easy to fit within your busy schedule. Cuyamaca College, as well as practically every community college in California, honors this certification as preparation to teach online.

Find out more about the Online Teaching Certification Program

Spring 2013 Online Courses

(You don't have to be in the certificate program to take these courses)










Creating Accessible Online Courses
 2/19/13 - 3/15/13

Designing Effective Online Assessments
2/11/13 - 3/08/13

Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9.1
3/04/13 - 3/29/13

Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning (New)
4/8/13 -5/3/13

Building Online Community with Social Media (New)
4/15/13 - 5/10/13

We recommend only taking one course at a time to maximize your success.



Thursday, January 10, 2013

What do Students [Really] Want in an Online Course?


The Online Learning Insights blog has an interesting post called "What do Students [Really] Want in an Online Course?" that can be read at http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/what-do-students-really-want-in-an-online-course/.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Blackboard bug - Hiding the Cengage Tool

There's no need to try this, but if you go to Tools or Tools Area on your Blackboard course menu and click the "Hide Link" button next to Cengage Learning MindLinks, you'll see a blank white area below the Welcome and My Courses tabs. If you've tried this, just click the back button on your browser to take you back to the Tools area.

This bug will be fixed in a future version of Blackboard, but in the meantime, you can fix this bug and hide the Cengage tool by going to the Control Panel > Customization > Tool Availability. It's best not to change anything in the Tool Availability section. All you need to do is open it. You don't need to click Submit either. Just click on Tools in your course menu again.

When you return to Tools, the Cengage tool will have magically disappeared.





How to Create Excellent Courses with Open Education Resources (OER)

What are Open Education Resources (OER)? Find out at  http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/how-to-create-excellent-courses-with-open-education-resources/.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Blackboard Needs Your Help

Blackboard has three new opportunities to partner with the Blackboard User Experience team to influence future releases of Blackboard Learn. If you are interested in participating, please read further and click the registration links if you want to participate.


Student Engagement & Retention Focus Group

The Blackboard User Experience team is looking for feedback on the design and experience of tools intended to bring retention and student engagement to a teacher's attention, quickly alerting them to potential risk and allowing them to take immediate action.

If you would like to participate in this focus group, please register below.
Registration Link: https://bbuxresearch.wufoo.com/forms/recruiting-for-student-and-engagement-research /


Grading Assignments Research Activity

Are you an instructor? Blackboard is working on streamlining how you grade assignments and we need your help! We've added some new features and we'd like to spend an hour letting you use them and get your feedback.

If you are interested in participating in this research activity, please register below.
Registration Link: https://bbuxresearch.wufoo.com/forms/recruiting-for-grading-assignments-research /


Help Plus Beta

Blackboard is evolving our help (we are calling it Help Plus internally). One key change is we are opening the help system to encourage the community to share the materials they create for their school. Our goal is to build a library of best practices from the community that enhances our help.

We are looking for contributors and end users to help us test the system. Contributors are those of you that are building supplemental resources (videos, PDFs, etc) on Blackboard Learn. If you want to share your ideas and your work with the Blackboard community, we need your help.

End users are those who value help and want to help us test and perfect the system. We need your help, too!

Testing will begin the first week in December with a short introduction.

If you are interested in participating in this beta, please register below.
Registration Link: https://bbuxresearch.wufoo.com/forms/recruiting-for-help-plus/


Friday, November 16, 2012

Creative Commons Licenses

Regent University periodically publishes a video magazine for educators. This month's issue is all about Creative Commons licenses. If you're interested, take a look at http://www.regent.edu/admin/ctl/onlinetraining/centerpoint/.


Monday, November 5, 2012

Instructor Characteristics That Affect Online Student Success

There is an interesting article on the Faculty Focus blog about "Instructor Characteristics That Affect Online Student Success" that can be read at http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/instructor-characteristics-that-affect-online-student-success/.

"From these findings and the comments from participants, we identified communication/availability and feedback as the two primary characteristics that the students found important in their online courses. Students wanted frequent, timely communication and substantive feedback on their assignments. We received comments such as the following:

  • “We must hear from the instructor within 24 hours!”
  • “I would not think twice about withdrawing if the instructor is not available five days a week.”
  • “The worst thing is waiting for a graded paper.”"
What do you think? Please complete the poll below or at http://poll.fm/3yw17.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Grading Assignments Survey for Instructors

Blackboard is working on refining how you grade assignments and they'd love your feedback on how you use assignments in your course and how you expect to be able to grade them. You can share your opinion by answering the questions in the survey below:

Survey Link: http://participate.usabilla.com/891e13ee5a116cf7061662b04082f4279d0b0374

Video Captioning Tool

There is a web-based program that allows you to caption YouTube, Vimeo, or other videos about as easily as any other solution I've seen. They provide easy to follow videos that step you through the process. If you need to caption a video, you might want to give this tool a try.

Amara a.k.a. Universal Subtitles
http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/



Thursday, October 11, 2012

Online Student Bill of Rights Video


Quality Matters created this well-done video.
Watch it at http://youtu.be/2mDbSvqBvR8?t=48s

At Cuyamaca College we are committed to quality!




Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Online Learning in the Social Era Video

Michelle Pacansky-Brock traces the possibilities the social era holds for transforming online learning in this short video. Watch it at http://youtu.be/qh2HskDtpK8 or view the embedded version below.

Friday, October 5, 2012

How to Use Social Media to Advance Science Programs

This article in The Chronicle is available for the next 4 days at http://ow.ly/egkAP

Just a reminder, if you want to create a Facebook page for something related to the college, please review the District Social Media Guidelines and contact Rhonda.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

3 Things You Might Not Know About YouTube

Free CCC Confer Webinar
Thursday, October 11th
Noon - 1:00 PDT
Presenter: Donna Eyestone

Did you know you can:
  • Record and edit your YouTube videos from your web browser
  • Easily add and search captions
  • Curate your own playlist, even adding your own intros to other people's YouTube videos?
All you need is a webcam and a YouTube account -- no software, no trials, no downloads so you and your students can easily create videos.

Learn how to:
  • Write a script
  • Get a good camera angle
  • Record without looking like you're reading
  • Edit out the beginnings and ends of clips


Saturday, September 22, 2012

Active Learning

"Studies prove time and again that college students do not learn when listening passively. To clarify further, twenty minutes of listening to a lecture is the maximum amount of time that students can process information effectively according to research cited in Does Active Learning Work, A Review of the Research (Prince, 2004)."

From an excellent article: Learning Online is not a Spectator Sport: How to Make it Active

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Designing an Exemplary Course

Blackboard is offering a free online course titled "Designing an Exemplary Course" that is open for registration now.

Course Description: Using the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program (ECP) Rubric as a guide, this open course will provide both theoretical concepts and practical tools for instructors to recognize, organize, and build online courses for both blended learners and online learners. You decide what level of participation you want to have in the course, so there's no harm in signing up and looking around in it to get ideas for your own courses.

Presenters: ECP Directors and 2012 ECP Winners representing over ten institutions

Duration: September 19th - October 17th

The welcome video can be viewed at http://youtu.be/cenCNR9887g

How to Enroll in the Open Course:
1.    Click here to be taken to the course home page.
2.    Click on “Self-Enroll” to get started.


Friday, September 14, 2012

California Blackboard Users Group (CaliBUG) Meeting on October 19th

The Fall 2012 Meeting for the California Blackboard Users Group (CaliBUG) will be held October 19, 2012 from 10 AM to 3 PM at Ohlone College, Newark Center Room 1100, 43600 Mission Boulevard, Fremont, CA 94539.

Administrators, coordinators, and faculty are invited to attend this free [including lunch provided by Blackboard] event. This is an exciting opportunity to meet with colleagues who use Blackboard. We hope you can attend!

If you are not able to come in person, some or all of the sessions will be offered on the Internet!!

The tentative agenda includes:

  • Keynote –What’s New With Blackboard?
  • Useful Blackboard Building Blocks
  • Blackboard Analytics
  • Spotlight on USC’s Ultimate Blackboard Course Site 

Please RSVP today (!) to this link: http://tinyurl.com/d6vefbv

Monday, September 3, 2012

3 Reasons why Students Don’t Participate in Online Discussions

This article at Online Learning Insights looks into why students don't participate in online discussions and ways to get them more involved.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Fall 2012 @ONE Courses

@One offers courses, webinars, and certification in the areas of instruction and technology skills for the California Community College system. "Creating Accessible Online Courses" and "Introduction to Teaching with Blackboard 9.1" are required courses for being certified to teach online at Cuyamaca College.

These courses are filling up fast, so reserve your spot today!

Available Courses:



Don't Miss these Learn at Lunch Webinars


Monday, August 20, 2012

Playing a YouTube Video in Chrome

There is a problem that can occur when trying to play a YouTube video in Blackboard while using the Chrome browser. The instructions at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/documents/BB-Chrome-YouTube.pdf explain how to get these videos to play. Please pass this information on to your students if you have YouTube videos embedded in your Blackboard courses.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Flex Week Workshops

Here is a list of workshops that many of my blog readers may be interested in. See the full Professional Development schedule for more information. All these workshops will be held in E-206. I hope to see you all there!

Monday
11:30 - 12:30 pm
Accessibility

Tuesday
9:00 am – 10:00 am
Films on Demand Streaming Video

Noon - 1:00 pm
Social Media for Departments and Classes

2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Great Practices in Online Teaching

CANCELLED
Lecture Capture

Wednesday
5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
Blackboard I – Getting Started

7:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Blackboard II – Course Menu and Content

Thursday
2:30 am to 3:30 pm
Blackboard III – Grade Center

4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Blackboard IV – Tests & Quizzes

Friday
9:00 am to 10:00 am
Blackboard V – Safe Assign

10:00 am to Noon
Open Lab with TLC Staff