SPRING 2021
DEFINING DISTANCE EDUCATION
LECTURE RECORDINGS & MEDIA STORAGE
QUALITY MATTERS WORKSHOPS
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CONTENTS pg.3 A NOTE FROM THE DEAN
pg.4 A NOTE FROM THE ONLINE LEARNING MANAGER
pg.5 DEFINING DISTANCE EDUCATION
pg.6 BLACKBOARD COLLABORATE UPDATES
pg.8 LECTURE RECORDINGS & MEDIA STORAGE
pg.10 PUBLISHER SPOTLIGHT: CENGAGE
pg.12 QUALITY MATTERS & WORKSHOP CALENDAR PAGE 2
A NOTE FROM DR. BROOKS It was difficult to avoid any media in which the anniversary of the start of the pandemic in the United States was being discussed or even observed in some fashion during the early part of March 2021. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since the university switched rapidly to some form of distance education delivery to allow faculty and students to remain safe.
Assistant V.P. of Online Learning & Dean of Libraries, Dr. Monica Brooks
During this time, the Online Learning office successfully aided hundreds of colleagues in adopting 2-way video lecture modes, Blackboard, 3rd party teaching tools, online test integrity software, multimedia publisher content, and more! The team of Instructional Designers also assisted faculty in launching more than a dozen online degree programs, minors, and areas of emphasis. Soon we will all be vaccinated and HERD immunity will ensue. President Gilbert is anticipating a full return to normalcy by fall 2021. In the coming year, we recognize that many of you may continue teaching with some or all of the new tools you have become accustomed to using. We applaud this effort and are poised to continue supporting you, your students, and your programs! PAGE 3
FROM THE OFFICE OF ONLINE LEARNING In Spring 2020, the university received a call to action, to move all of your teaching endeavors to the online environment. As experts in the field of instructional design, we hope that we have been adequately able to help you rise to this occasion. It is my hope that you will take all of the new skills you have learned the past year and continue to implement these tools in your classrooms as we move back to face-toface Fall 2021. These tools can allow you to provide students with robust learning experiences as we continue to look forward to getting back to a new normal. Looking ahead at the Blackboard roadmap, we are excited to announce preparations toward phasing in Blackboard upgrades during the 2022 academic year. Upgrading to newer versions of Blackboard give course navigation areas an updated feel and will allow us to offer more robust vender content. Microsoft has announced a partnership with Blackboard that will allow us to integrate Teams tools and meetings directly into a course as we look toward moving to the Ultra platform, which will be done in two phases. The first phase, anticipated to take effect in 2022, will affect course navigation. The 2nd phase, tentatively planned for 2023, will update the appearance of courses and give users a more modern interface. During the remaining 2021 academic year, instructional designers will begin developing training and videos to ensure as much of a seamless transition as possible for faculty and students. In addition to updates, I encourage you to continue learning about tools that will benefit your students, such as open educational resources and publisher content. Providing students with more opportunities to practice the course content will assist them in being successful in meeting the goals of the course outcomes. We continue to offer virtual meetings to assist faculty as needed, so stay safe, and contact us if you have questions (big or small)!
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- Chris Sochor, Online Learning Manager
The Higher Learning Commission defines distance education as education that uses one or more of the technologies (internet, one-way or two-way video transmission, and media used in a course in conjunction with the technology) to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interactions between the student and instructor. Along with the overall definition of distance education, we also have specific definitions for various course delivery, and it’s important to note the difference between them — especially when scheduling courses: · Online course: 100% of the course is delivered online (Blackboard, for us), and there are no required meeting times. · Virtual course: has regular class meetings times, with the content and assessments available online, and is delivered in a Virtual Classroom (like Collaborate or Teams). · Hybrid: These courses require that at least 75% of the content is available online, and requires class meeting times. These meeting times can be in-person or in a virtual classroom, and are usually monthly meetings. PAGE 5
Blackboard continues to make updates to the Collaborate tool, but they are also responsibly taking steps to make sure the updates do not affect performance since there are so many institutions around the world using Collaborate as their virtual classroom option. Updates that are new to Marshall users will include:
Figure A
· Collaborate Support chatbot – attendees can chat with support when they receive an error page, or if they click on Report an Issue from the Collaborate panel. The “Chat Support” button can also be accessed by clicking on My Settings in Collaborate, and clicking the “Chat Support” button under Notification Settings. See Figure A. · If you have forgotten to end a recording, you may have noticed that it continued to run, adding a long instance of “dead air” at the end of your recordings. Now, sessions that last longer than 12 hours will be automatically disconnected.* PAGE 6
*The timer is still temporarily disabled.
· Wondering about the privacy of your recordings? On the Recordings page in Collaborate, users can now see an Access column, which shows whether a recording has been made public, is only viewable to students within that course, or has been locked (private). Recordings now also show a “status” when they are processing or complete:
· The attendee limit for large sessions is set to 500 attendees. · Attendees can now tag someone in Chat when they want to send a message or reply to a specific person by typing the (@) symbol and then typing a name. A list of participants appears, and the user can click on the name of the user they wish to tag. Moderators have the “MOD” designation beside their name to make them easier to find. · Did you know you can filter out profanity and offensive slang in the chat? Blackboard has updated their dictionary of offensive terms to include all of the basic profanities, as well as gendered or ethnically offensive terms. In your Session Settings, you can scroll to the “Profanity Filter” heading and check the box to enable the filter in your current session.
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PLEASE NOTE: Collaborate no longer supports the native (original) Microsoft Edge or any version of Google Chrome prior to version 78 and earlier.
LECTURE RECORDINGS AND MEDIA STORAGE While we are full steam ahead into the Spring term, we would like to remind users of preferred storage methods for recorded lectures and media. Due to limited storage space, we cannot upload video and audio files directly into Blackboard courses. For any self-created recordings, you will need to house them outside of Blackboard and then link to them or embed them into your course. If you are not already familiar with the options, or want a reminder, view your options on the next page.
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STORAGE OPTIONS: Ensemble Video is Marshall’s streaming server and storage option. Recordings and many other media file types can be stored here and linked into your course by going to any content area, scrolling over Build Content, and selecting Ensemble Video Chooser. Instructions can be found on our Online Ready webpage, but Instructional Designers can assist you with getting comfortable using the software. OneDrive offers every user 1 TB of space via the Microsoft Office 365 accounts. Lecture recording files can be stored here; each file has a web link that can be shared with others, which is easily shared as a Web Link in a course content area. Starting Fall 2021, all Teams meeting recordings will be stored directly in your OneDrive account instead of Stream. Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings are saved directly in the course from which you are streaming. Recordings can be marked private (only you can see it), public, or shared to course members. Teams meetings recordings are automatically saved into your Microsoft Stream account until we switch to OneDrive for storage prior to the Fall 2021 semester. Students who are members of the PAGE 9
Teams class will automatically be able to view the recording.
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Cost-effective Cengage Strategies for Students: Cengage Unlimited: for $119.99, students can receive access to the Cengage Online Library of over 20,000+ textbooks, access codes, and learning platforms. Book rentals: Students who wish to have a physical copy of a textbook for the semester can rent a Cengage text from the company for $7.99/book. New resources for Faculty: Cengage Infuse Cengage Infuse will not replace all of the MindTap options that are available to assign to students, but Infuse will live inside our LMS in the course, with autograded activity options. Infuse will allow the product to be embedded directly into Blackboard. The course setup and management is a simple process that contains just the right amount of assessment without overwhelming students. - Embedded e-book with study tools. - Simple MC or T/F questions to gauge student interaction with content with an auto-average of four questions per chapter. - Analytics on student performance and engagement with content. - Automatic gradebook integration with the embedded assessments. *Online Learning is working with Cengage to make Infuse an option starting Fall 2021. If you would like to contact our Cengage representative, Jacque Meredith, you can reach her at Jacque.meredith@cengage.com or set up a time to meet via Zoom at https://calendly.com/jacque-meredith.
To see more Cengage options, visit https://cengage.com/ or https://cengage.com/unlimited.
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QUALITY MATTERS For you, for your students.
At MU, we subscribe to Quality Matters as our online certification program for faculty who are teaching distance education courses of all types (online, hybrid, and/or virtual). If you are teaching a distance education course soon and have not yet taken a Quality Matters certification course, there are still seats available this spring! You may also take more than one Quality Matters certification course, even if you have already completed a QM course in the last
3 years. While you only need to take one of the courses to become certified in QM, Online Learning will cover your tuition to take one of the QM courses on the next page.
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NOTE: If you would prefer to take an in-person workshop, please contact monica.brooks@marshall.edu to be put on the Fall waiting list.
Introduction to Quality Matters (INTRO2QM) Register through WVNET: https://qmtraining.wvnet.edu/ Learn what QM is and how it can help you deliver your distance education course. This two-week facilitated workshop is ideal for those who are new to QM. Explore why QM is considered the gold standard in online quality assurance and how its implementation can support a culture of quality from many avenues. Course Length: 2 weeks Delivery Mode: Online (Asynchronous). Instruction: Facilitated Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) Register through WVNET: https://qmtraining.wvnet.edu/ Learn about the underlying principles behind the QM Rubric and the critical elements of the QM assurance process. Learn about drafting helpful recommendations as you apply the Rubric to an actual course. Course Length: 2 weeks Delivery Mode: Online (Asynchronous). Instruction: Facilitated Designing Your Online Course (DYOC) Register through WVNET: https://qmtraining.wvnet.edu/ Bring your online course to this workshop and get a framework for developing an online course plan. You’ll use a framework and explore the QM Rubric to design one module for your online course. Course Length: 2 weeks Delivery Mode: Online (Asynchronous). Instruction: Facilitated Improving Your Online Course (IYOC) Register through WVNET: https://qmtraining.wvnet.edu/ Use the QM Rubric to review your own courses and develop a course improvement plan. Bring course content to class so you can practice on your own materials. Course Length: 2 weeks Delivery Mode: Online (Asynchronous). Instruction: Facilitated
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The IYOC course is a particularly good option if you have a course you developed during the pandemic and you wish to continue to teach it as a distance education course. Distance education courses that have not been approved before Fall 2021 must be approved prior to being taught Fall 2021. IYOC will help you be in the driver’s seat and get your course approved quickly!
CONTACT ONLINE LEARNING: Designers are continuing to meet with faculty virtually, and can be contacted at:
onlinelearning@marshall.edu
: T H G LI T y O r P a S r b i L e n i Onl ources Res VIRTUAL RESEARCH CONSULTATIONS Students can meet one-on-one with a reference librarian to get support for choosing a topic, finding scholarly sources, and evaluating and citing those sources. marshall.libcal.com/appointments
304-696-7117
ONLINE HELP GUIDES Librarian-created course support to aid your students in their research when they don't have time to meet with a librarian. libguides.marshall.edu
FACULTY SUPPORT Your Library Partner Team can help you learn more about the free resources available to you to make it easier to research, teach, and publish. www.marshall.edu/library/about/cold ev_partners