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Educator's Voice

Volume 4, Issue 3
March 26, 2003

Building the Next Online Course: A Little Help and a Little Ingenuity

Since we have been involved in online teaching and the instructional design process for a number of years, we've seen any number of waves of progress - both in technology and in overall user experience and savvy. We've found that most online instructors will eventually go through a number of cycles - the bare sketch of which might look something like this:

1. Getting the bare-bones (mostly text) content posted in a course to fill in a sketch of what the progress of weeks, units or modules might ultimately look like; adding a few interactive pieces (be they discussions, activities or a combination thereof); and perhaps adding some basic images or clip-art throughout. This initial version will generally run for a few semesters, and each time, the instructor will learn what's working and what isn't and will build on those lessons, making the overall student experience richer with each new run.
   
   
2. The next evolutionary step often arrives when the instructor gets the "jazz it up" bug - applying both to the look and feel as well as "jazzing it up" in terms of learner activities and interaction. This phase might include the introduction of more (or simply more sophisticated) images, some flashy introduction pieces for each unit of learning, and more honed objectives and learning pieces. The course will often become a more holistic, interactive learning space with good group participation and learning opportunities occurring throughout.
   
   
3. At this point, the experienced, time-proven instructor is often asked to take his/her collective experience and begin the process all over with a brand new course shell - the second installment, if you will. This is where our narrative will begin, with our fictional instructor… .

As one of the early adopters in my initial campus online program, I was involved in creating the first version of the U.S. History course. Although I was unsure of exactly what would go into the content of an online course, I took much of my on-campus course materials (lectures notes, a syllabus, handouts and quizzes) and went through the labor-intensive process of getting them all in some sort of electronic format, and by learning some basic HTML, I got it all posted in the course shell.

As time progressed, my experience allowed me to grow as an online instructor - I learned how to ask the types of questions that really maximize the interactive qualities of Threaded Discussions, etc.; additionally, as the tools of eCollege evolved, the authoring of courses became simpler and simpler, so I ultimately added more images to diversify the look of the various pages of content in the course. I even incorporated the use of some PowerPoint slides (using the MS conversion tools) to help break up the sometimes monotonous scrolling of my lectures. Through the various iterations, I finally came up with what I'd consider a pretty good course - the interactive pieces, like threads, have definitely elicited some great conversations, and my student satisfaction numbers are higher than ever.

As a result of these successes, the head of my department recently approached me with the prospect of building another course - a World History course. Although there is a small stipend associated with building online courses, thinking about the amount of effort and time that the first course took to get to the point where it currently stands is somewhat overwhelming. Initially, I told him that I'd have to think about it a bit, and I went back to my office and got on the Internet - just sort of looking for some help with the process. After searching a number of free online archives, I found myself looking around on the eCollege site, just wondering what sort of help might be available there. I was pleasantly surprised.

Although I do use textbooks for my online courses, my first goal was to find some supplementary reading materials to provide my students. Over the years of teaching online, my repository of reading resources has grown exponentially, and I love the flexibility of being able to use articles to add to the depth and breadth of the learning experience. For this goal, I found a great resource that was (unbeknownst to me) right there in my course - a tool called XanEdu.

Through a partnership with XanEdu (www.xanedu.com), eCollege now allows instructors to add a special type of Content Item to the left-hand tree of a course that gives immediate access to a huge library of copyright-cleared reading resources and references. Basically, by adding this Content Item (or items) to my course, I could create a course pack (like the booklets we used to have to house for check-out in the library, or have an outside printer get together for students) that would be immediately accessible to my students. The articles in the World History section of XanEdu were excellent and it is really proving to be quite helpful.

My next thought was that since I had the opportunity to stare with a proverbial Tabula Raza with this course, that I'd like to be able to utilize some new technology to ultimately take the way in which I present my material to the next level. The last time I was scheduled to teach the U.S. History course, I had periodically visited the multimedia studio available to instructors on our campus to record some simple audio presentations to add as introductions to each of my modules. It occurred to me that it would be fun to add some audio right in my lectures to add a bit of the dynamics of the live lecture. However, the preparation for and visiting with our campus audio gurus had been a pretty time-consuming project, and I couldn't imagine going through that each time I wanted to add some simple comments to my audio lectures. For this issue, I was ultimately pointed in the direction of another company with whom eCollege has partnered - Impatica.

Impatica (www.impatica.com), I found out, would allow me to use some standard PowerPoint features to initially create my narrated slide shows, then, with a few simple clicks of my mouse, convert them into a nice, compact, easily viewable format that requires no complicated software downloads for my students. Using the microphone that I already had for my computer, I created the narrated lectures in a few short moments. I noticed, too, that Impatica compressed the PowerPoint file significantly from the original file - great for my students on dial-up connections!

Here, though, I began dreading the prospect of creating a whole new pool of test questions from which to create my weekly quizzes, as well as the big mid-term and final. I then remembered hearing, at some point, that the publisher who prints the textbook has pre-formatted exams for use online, but I had no idea how to get my hands on these huge "banks" of questions - as I find out that they are housed in another Learning Management System (LMS) other than eCollege. After a bit of poking around, I found out that eCollege, as well as a number of other course delivery companies, have partnered with Respondus (www.respondus.com), a company whose software will allow course authors to download batches of questions to their hard drive, manipulate those questions there, and then re-upload the batch of questions with the click of a button. Pretty simple.

So after some digging around, at this point, I'm feeling more comfortable with the prospect of taking on the task of authoring my second online course. Although it will still certainly be a large undertaking, I'm seeing that there are many options out there that will help me through the creative and development process… .

Although our narrative isn't based on an actual instructor, this is a scenario we envision many instructors going through. We hear the above ideas (and more) quite frequently, and in many cases, we see that eCollege partners and third-party software can be utilized. Basically, there are many options available that will allow instructors to take their ideas to the next level - to turn ideas into reality. We have fully integrated some technology/products, like the XanEdu course-packs, into our system so that it's virtually seamless to the students. And, with partnerships with publishers (like Thompson and McGraw Hill) and content providers (Tata, for instance - they create vibrant, interactive business simulations), there are an incredible amount of resources available.

Whether you are an instructor who is completely new to the world of online teaching, and are in need of some ideas to get started, or if you are a veteran and just want to see what else is out there that can help take your course to the next level, keep in mind that there is a vast amount of help (and ingenuity) out there.

       --Peter S. Cassidy, M.A.
       --Errin Klein, M.A.

TIP

Placing an Impatica Presentation in an eCollege Content Item

To get the correct files into eCollege's Course Management System, click on the "Course Home" tab in your course, and then on the "Author" button. Next, click on the "File Manager" button, and click onto the folder where you'd like to keep the Impatica files - it's very important that both files are uploaded to the same folder. You might choose to create a new folder just for the presentation--for example, for the Unit 1 Presentation, you might click into the Unit 1 folder in the "File Manager," and then choose: "Select an Action: Create a new folder," naming the folder presentation1. You will then click on the presentation folder and choose: "Select an Action: Upload a File" twice - choosing both the associated ".imp" and ".jar" files.

In order to add the hyperlink to the Impatica presentation, you need to get the Web address (URL) of the ".imp" file. The easiest way to do this is using the Visual Editor in your course.

In the Visual Editor (be sure you're in the Author view), in the box that pops up, choose "Link to File or document."

Then choose, "I have already uploaded the file."

Click on the folder where you uploaded the two Impatica files, and then click the radio button next to your ".jar" file.

In the text link box you may type anything (you won't end up using this text), then click "Add Link."

Next you need to copy the Web address (URL) for the link you just created. In order to see and copy the URL, though, you need to switch to the HTML view of the Visual Editor.

If you have never looked at HTML code before, don't worry. We are only going to pay attention to a particular piece of the HTML view.

Now click on the HTML/Design toggle button in the top right-hand corner of the Visual Editor. In the HTML view, you will see some code that should look something like the following: <a href="/EC/courses/crs-engl2222-274001/unit%201/presentation1/implayer237.jar" target="new">example</a>

The only portion of that code that we are interested in is this: /EC/courses/crs-engl2222-274001/unit%201/presentation1/implayer237.jar (yours will look a bit different--especially the "crs-engl2222-274001" portion).

Delete all of the rest of the code on that page, and then open the HTML page that was created when you made the original Impatica file. On the HTML page, you will view the HTML source code (PC--right click, MAC--click and hold in the white frame area around the presentation) and choose "View Source." The source page will look something like this:

Now, copy the APPLET (the entire area inside the RED box) code, and go back to the Visual Editor. Paste the APPLET code below the code, and then replace the two ".jar" pieces (indicated in BLUE boxes in the image above) with the /EC/courses/crs-engl2222-274001/unit%201/presentation1/implayer237.jar.

Click "Save Changes," and then click back to the "Course" tab to view the file as your students would.

Note: If the presentation is too big for the frame in your course, the instructions for resizing presentations can be found here: http://impatica.com/support/faq.html (see topic #16: How do I change the size of my Impatica for PowerPoint presentation?)

       --Peter S. Cassidy, M.A.