Week of Feb. 04, 2013 | Volume 67 | Issue 15
The women’s basketball team gears up for their homecoming game on Saturday at 2 p.m. Megan Cureton, sophomore guard, passes the ball to her teammates during a drill.
The student voice of Indiana University Southeast
Week long celebrations kick off homecoming By ETHAN FLEMING Staff ethflemi@umail.iu.edu As the sounds of the players dribbling, running, and jumping echo off the walls of the Athletics Building, the IUS basketball teams are readying themselves for the upcoming Homecoming games. The women’s team will tip-off at 2 p.m. on Saturday Feb. 9, and then directly after at 4 p.m. the men take the court to face St. Louis College of Pharmacy. Fans are asked to wear white during the games for the Homecoming “WhiteOut.” Both teams are bringing winning records into Saturday’s games, with the women at 12-9 and the men at 183. Robin Farris, head women’s basketball coach, thinks the excitement of Homecoming will have a positive effect on the morale of the players. “I don’t feel like we’ve had a real great home court advantage,” Farris said. He said support has not See HOMECOMING, page 2
CourseNetworking
Education upgraded to 21st century with social media
By HANNAH ASH Staff hash@ius.edu
IU Southeast has found a way to integrate social networking into student’s education through the use of their Oncourse account. The new program is called CourseNetworking. CourseNetworking is a social network available to IUS students that is focused on improving the educational experience by opening up dialog and interaction between like-minded students. Sarah Zike, director of business development at CourseNetworking, said CourseNetworking is designed to offer students a cultural experience. “It is a useful educational tool because it helps open up the classroom,” she said. “It helps students see their academic discipline from another perspective.” David Rainbolt, IU Southeast Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence technology coordinator said CourseNetworking functions as an add-on for Oncourse. Rainbolt said CourseNetworking provides features such as discussion forums, polls, quizzes and events. He said faculty members can grade interaction and participation by tracking anar seeds. For each action on CourseNetworking, users can gain anar seeds. He said anar is the Persian word for pomegranate, and these seeds serve as a point system for CourseNetworking. Rainbolt said using default anar seeds settings, users can earn up to 20 seeds per day, 100 per week and 1600 per semester. Faculty members can decide how to ap-
ply anar seeds to student grades, he said. Some faculty members could decide to use anar seeds as extra credit points or as part of a participation grade, Rainbolt said. He said CourseNetworking is still in the Beta-testing stage and some features are not available or fully functional. “Beta testing, for CourseNetworking, is a state where the site is still being heavily refined,” Zike said. “We’re still collecting known issues, learning about bugs and optimizing the site for the iPad.” Rainbolt said it will take time for faculty and students to get used to using CourseNetworking. “It’s taken a long time for Oncourse to get where it’s at,” he said. Zikes said that a major developing feature of CourseNetworking is a mobile app, something Oncourse does not offer. She said she those designing the program expect a version of the CourseNetworking mobile app to be available soon. Another upcoming feature, a video feature, CourseNetworking will allow one-way video casts, Zikes said. She said instructors can broadcast lectures, and students can broadcast class presentations. Rainbolt said CourseNetworking also allows integration with Twitter and Facebook, and he thinks the interaction with social media is a valuable aspect of CourseNetworking. “It’s an attempt to get students to think about class
See SOCIAL MEDIA, page 2
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INDEX News.................................................. 1, 2 Sports.................................................... 3 Events.................................................... 4 Opinions................................................ 5 Profiles................................................... 6 Diversions.............................................. 7 Features................................................. 8